Temple of the Traveler: Book 01 - Doors to Eternity (45 page)

After the pilot departed, the two men changed into full-dress gear. The smith conceded the necessity. “Our guide says it should be a seven- to ten-hour walk for us to catch up to the main body of the army. The runner should get there in about half the time. We’ll need to look nice for the men in brass buttons. I just hope we don’t get too muddy.” He nodded at the threat of dark clouds on the horizon.

“It could miss us,” said Pinetto. The smith snorted at the misplaced optimism.

The trio and their lone guide were ready to set off in short order. Before they took the narrow road into possible battle, Pinetto offered to make a poultice for Sajika’s raw neck.

“No time,” she insisted.

He took the black, silk sash from his old outfit over to the Ambassador. Shyly, he offered it to her. “If you wear this around your neck, it won’t chafe anymore.”

Sajika looked at him and whispered, “Thanks,” as she donned it.

Their guide said to the sword-bearer, “I thought it was the maiden that offered a favor to the knight.”

Baran Togg didn’t laugh at his friend’s gesture. “You take point, and I’ll pull up the rear. No mouth to either one of them. She represents your kingdom, and he’s saved my life more times than I care to mention. You will show respect and you will stay alert. If anything happens to either one of them because you missed an ambush, worry about me more than the enemies.” The guide swallowed and took his place with no further comment.

The ex-mercenary was in his element again, feeling in control of the situation for the first time in weeks. At the outset, they made fair time because Pinetto’s long legs enabled him to compensate for his lack of road experience. But Sajika was not accustomed to such a pace. Her new boots rubbed blisters on her feet, and they had to stop several times to try different padding. Pinetto sometimes added more breaks for her by asking for tips on how to throw the bolo. He had the basics down by lunch.

To help make up time, the smith distributed most of her belongings among the men in the group. A few things she would not let anyone touch. Without a heavy load to carry, she moved faster. As darkness neared, Baran Togg was searching for a good place to camp for the night.

His planning was interrupted by a cry from their guide. “Friend!” A hand of the Prefect’s soldiers had come back to escort them to the vanguard. Sajika took a formal message roll from their commander and read it. Reining in her exhaustion and pain she said, “We’re honored. For some reason, the generals have halted the army early for the day. I don’t know whether it was because of the bad weather or because he wants to meet us as soon as possible. Either way, the Prefect awaits our arrival.”

As their guide turned back down the road toward Myrtlebridge, one of the soldiers asked him, “If she’s such an important diplomat, why did they only send one guard?”

The guide’s eyes darted toward the bearer. “He’s enough. The skinny one said this guy took out an entire squad of Glass Daggers single-handedly. I sure as blazes wouldn’t cross him.”

Tashi found himself wandering the halls of the Fortress of Tamarind. H paid no heed to the fact that each room existed in a different season, at a different hour of the day, and was dev
oid of people. These were the rooms as they were strung together in his memory. Once again, he felt the cold of the stone as he crept across a parapet in the night as he had a month ago. This memory was fresh and full of adrenaline. Everything was hushed. But the next room was a hallway from when he was twelve. Beyond, in the sunlight at the center, was the secret garden. Children couldn’t go there; only his stepfather, the guildmaster, had the keys. The room he kept returning to, despite the guiding voices urging him to finish mapping, was the hidden chamber at the bottom of the well. In the damp, stone chamber, a ten-year-old crouched in grim quiet while the madness of adults clamored overhead. He was one of the children hiding while brother fought brother inside the ancient fortress. There, the girl a year younger than he stood smiling and playing with her golden ball.

She in her nightdress and the white flower in her dark hair became the only normal thing in his life for days. She became the beacon of all that was normal and right in his life. Tashi gripped tight the knife every time he heard the melee draw closer. He’d kill or die to protect her. When she dropped the ball and he handed it back, her smile changed his life. He could’ve stayed there in that well, in that moment, forever.

The angry voices kept insisting, but it was a very deep well.

As part of the game, she would drop the ball again. This time it rolled far away, down the back tunnel to the escape hatch. For some reason, the narrow exit door was open. He followed it out into a blind alley in Shady Side. Now, it was night, and he was an adult again. Tashi wore a kalura and the amulet from the abbey around his neck.

Babu, the swordsman, sat on a low wall across the street, holding a scuffed and dirty ball with flaking gold paint. “This is a dead end,” the comedian advised.

Shaking his head to clear it, Tashi remarked, “You’re dead.”

The comedian smiled. “You should be used to ghosts by now.”

Tashi looked down at the cobblestones as he walked over to his former companion. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you a proper burial.” He began an explanation of everything that had followed the assault on the wizard tower.

But Babu interrupted him, “You can’t stay here. You have obligations.”

Tashi sighed.

Babu pointed down the main road. Up ahead, all roads merged into a great city at the foot of an impossibly large mountain. As the roads and hedges climbed the mighty slopes, they became a kind of maze. The great city could have held every village he had ever visited and more, and Tashi had seen half the known world. The city twisted around the sides of the mountain, vanishing into the clouds above.

“At the top, in the center, is a place where you can ask any question.”

Tashi nodded, with his eyes threading a path up the slope. “The Stairs of Supplication. One petition to the gods per village per lifetime.”

Babu laid a finger aside his nose and dropped the ball to the ground. Tashi’s eyes instinctively followed the movement. When he returned his attention to the wall, his companion had vanished. The sheriff sighed and bent to pick up the toy. Then he was struck a glancing blow by a wagon that crushed the ball under its wheel.

The shock woke him from the drug dream. His physical body lay in the back of a gypsy wagon, dressed as he’d been in his dream. Outside the door to the wagon, the angry voices whispered about how to counter his resistance. As there was a window open on the side to let in the cool, night air, he crawled though it and dropped to the grassy ground beneath.

The wagon sat just off the main road, camped for the night. Up ahead, he could see a lone mountain and points of light decorating its side. This mountain was not as grand as the one in his dream, but he knew they were linked. Sleeping around the campfire were several guards and a certain actor. Without a sound, Tashi strode over to Nigel’s slumbering form, clamped a hand around his mouth, and dragged him into the bushes. The panic in the wandering actor’s eyes spoke volumes. Tashi removed the man’s own dagger and held a finger to his lips. Nigel nodded.

The actor winced. “Agreed.” They shook hands and Nigel leaned in close to hiss, “I dropped it in your sash, an old, street-magician’s trick. That way they won’t find it when they search you.”

“Who?” began Tashi. Just then three armed guards came out of the bushes. The sheriff held up his hands in surrender.

“I told you he’d come after me,” the actor shouted.

The senior guard scratched his head. “Well damn me. I’ve never seen anyone get away from Zariah’s handmaidens. I guess they’ll have to up the dosage and use leather cords.”

Tashi’s master taught him to use the strength of the river instead of fighting against it. The sheriff submitted to the binding and allowed himself to be led back to the wagon, for they would take him to the heart of the great city faster than he could walk himself. He could then use the time to ponder the question he would ask.

Tashi was tossed into a large, underground cell. The cell had begun as a natural cave and had been converted into a dungeon with a minimum of effort. The dirt floor against his face smelled cool and da
nk, like the bottom of a well. The association took him elsewhere for a moment, but he shook his head to clear it.

As he started to rise, a simian-like scream ripped the air. Tashi jumped to his feet and smacked his head against the rough-hewn, stone ceiling. The pain helped give him clarity of focus. An educated, male voice in the dark recesses below him and to his right said, “Yes, we seem to have a visitor.”

The educated, male voice sounded obscurely familiar, but he refused to chase it. “I was just in the great underground kingdom looking for the Stair,” Tashi babbled.

What he had thought to be a stalagmite crawled closer, rattling a chain behind it. The prisoner greeting him looked like a stylized sculpture of a thin-bearded, pot-bellied monkey in a loincloth. It had black, jagged teeth, and gnarled claws. Oddly, the only features the sheriff found out of place were the tiny horns on the side of its head.

“Gargoyle,” muttered Tashi, dropping into a defensive stance.

The screaming ape to his left howled in panic, and others began to close in from the sides, but the horned one waved them back. “Everybody calm down. Unless I miss my guess, he’s less welcome here than we are, which means we should help him just to spite Sandarac the Usurper.”

Tashi blinked and shook his head, but the image of the gnarled cave monster remained. He recognized the voice as belonging to a man he’d met in the last few days. “You’re the members of the Forge? Human?”

“Aye. The four of us are members: I’m Bjorn, this is Sven, Olaf, and of course Ekvar.”

They all looked the same to Tashi, but he waved hello anyway. “The actor turned you in. He turned me in as well. I’ve no quarrel with you. Truce?”

“Truce.” The howling gargoyle grunted an objection, but the horned one confided to Tashi, “Don’t worry about Ekvar; he hasn’t been the same since you broke his jaw. You’re just stuck half in the dream state right now because of the drugs they gave you. Do you remember eating anything lately?”

“Plums. The juice ran down my chin.”

The gargoyle nodded. “Our drugs were in the bread. We give it to the injured to ease their pain, but the rest of us want to remain sharp. It’s not easy getting by on just the soup broth. Your perceptions will be a little skewed for a few days. I’m shocked you can even stand right now. Out of curiosity, what do we look like?”

The gargoyle talked with his hands, drawing attention to its formidable, blackened claws. “Zariah the Seeress arose from those ruins to stand at the right hand of the Usurper. The old keep was shattered, but they’ve managed to put up a crude amphitheater over the original site. A village sprouted up there, if you can dignify it with that title. The huts are lucky to have a grass roof. Crops won’t grow on the ground because of the salt. Animals shun the place because of the unclean magic. So they have to import almost all their food.”

Tashi remembered his former mission. “The Door to Eternity is still there and open just a crack. This Zariah has learned to use the mana that leaks though.”

The gargoyle nodded. “Aye. She’s become more skilled and more greedy of late. In the Village of Dreams, people buy their favorite pleasures and illusions. Once they have spent all they possess, the worst addicts agree to work two days so that they can sleep one. Most of the dregs do house chores, street cleaning, and supply hauling. But these are the outer circle under the weakest influence of her power. They sleep on mats in the street. The closer one gets to the center, the stronger the magical effects become. Inside the rickety amphitheater, with its racks of beds smaller than slave-ship berths, one can get temporary relief from pain. What was once a blessing for the sick has been perverted.”

The stone monkey spat. “Her soldiers are garrisoned at the outskirts of the large building. The somnambulists feel no injury, no matter how deep or crippling; they know no fear, and never rest when on duty. They do her bidding absolutely. Her slaves chew a mixture of bark and bitter herbs to stay in their semi-wakeful state. You can recognize them at a distance because they are all gaunt with dark circles under their eyes. There is no sleeping in the Village except on her mats, and for those you pay.”