The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2) (12 page)

Sevana’s brows drew together. He’d lost her. “What doesn’t?”

“The rules of travel magic.” He raised a hand to stop them
from objecting. “Hear me out. No matter how amazing the old magic is, and how
incomprehensible most of it is to us, there are certain fundamental rules that are
inescapable. One is that in order to transport both people
and
objects,
it would take more than just a mental picture of where to go. It would take a
command, an insignia,
something
to move a group of people and their
luggage all at once. Also, it troubles me that this only happens in sleep.
People wish aloud to go to different places all the time. Why wait until the
user is sleeping? Why the delay? I can’t imagine that this was an intended
feature.”

“It didn’t make a lot of sense to me either,” Sarsen
admitted. “No offense to Jacen.”

“Even he admitted that he wasn’t sure why it worked that
way,” Sevana added thoughtfully. “It was just the only theory that made any
kind of sense that we could think of. So you think something else is at play
here?”

“I think the original design has been badly knocked askew
somehow.” Master’s tone grew more ruminative. “Although I’m not sure how. But
I’m very hesitant to do anything else until we have more information. Just
knowing where the gadgick originally rested and what the area looked like
around it will tell us a great deal, I think. If I can just answer one of the
questions I’ve posed, it’ll allow us to make some logical deductions from there
and perhaps we can think of a different line of attack.”

Since she had spent the whole of yesterday with her thoughts
circling each other like a dog chasing its tail, she didn’t have any objections
to more information. Pushing back from the table with a slight scrape of her
chair, she waved for the other two to follow her. “In that case, let’s go find
Decker.”

Decker hadn’t the faintest idea, as he never hunted in that
area, but he took them to Krause, who in turn took them to Hube. Hube, as it
happened, was the village carpenter. He sat in his cluttered, dusty shop,
carving on a long beam of wood, and listened to their request. Then he sat back
on a nearby barstool, absently brushing wood shavings from his shirt and beard,
dark eyes crinkled up at the corners in silent amusement.

“Do I ‘member how the stones were laid out? I took it apart
brick by brick and then rebuilt it meself. Of course I ‘member!”

Sevana felt like raising her eyes to the heavens in a
heartfelt prayer of thanks. “Then can you describe it to us?”

“I’ll do you one better.” He stood and twisted about,
reaching for a slightly dingy pad of paper lying nearby, and grabbed a pencil
that had seen sharper days. With rough, steady strokes, he sketched out in bold
lines the layout. “This here, this is where the fountain’s topper was,” he
explained even as he kept drawing, his eyes never leaving the paper.

“Wait, the topper?” Master pointed out the narrow window of
the shop to where the fountain sat, several blocks away. “Do you mean to tell
me that a part of that fountain was carried
intact
from the ruins?”

“Sure was.” Hube nodded in confirmation, pausing long enough
to respond directly. “That decorative lookin’ piece on top is straight from the
ruins. All I did was clean it up a bit and cart it over. Now, all the stones
that make up the fountain are from the platform.”

“Platform?” Sevana prompted impatiently.

Hube went back to his drawing. “Don’t know what else to call
it. Never could figure out what it was for. A large stretch of stones made up a
raised platform, stretching about the length and breadth of the courtyard, I’d
say. Most of the stones have been picked up and carted off, they being the
easiest ones to get to, see. And they were pretty. I used ‘em to build quite a
few things in the village—houses, streets, walls, and the like.” He tapped the
center of the platform area he had marked off. “But the top of the fountain, it
sat right smack in the middle. Had a canal of sorts running toward it from either
end, splitting the area straight through. Probably carried water to it at one
point, but the spring that fed it was well dried up by the time we came along.”

“Pretty?” Sarsen asked with a slightly baffled frown.

Sevana shared the confusion. The stones looked to be of
excellent cut, no mistake, but she hadn’t seen much of a difference between the
ones used for the fountain and the ones used everywhere else.

Hube nodded. “Used ‘em to tile the inside of the fountain
with, and you have to know what you’re lookin’ for ‘cause of the water
distorting things, but the stones had a really pretty design carved into ‘em.
Most people have at least one in their homes, above the fireplace or the
doorway or some such. A decorative piece, you could call it.”

Sevana’s eyes closed in fatalistic understanding as the
pieces started to click. “I don’t even have to look to know.”

“Neither do I,” Master agreed, blowing out a breath.

Hube blinked at them, head cocked in question, obviously not
following.

“The pretty designs on those stones weren’t designs at all,”
Sarsen explained patiently. Although from the expression on his face, it looked
like he wanted to find some hard surface and start banging his head against it.
“They were, in fact, magical incantations that gave the artifact power and
direction.”

Hube’s eyes bulged, nearly falling out of his head.

“I’d bet direction more than power,” Master added. “Finally,
finally
this is starting to make sense. How did the gadgick know who and
what to transport? Everything on top of that platform, of course. The canal
that connected to the fountain supplied it with water so that it had all the
power it needed. By removing the stones, and using it to build all over this
village, it has turned this entire place into a platform. Putting the fountain
back
in the center and supplying it with water was the final piece. It had
everything it needed to function again.”

“It also explains why the destinations are so random, and
why it’s transporting only a person at a time and no objects.” Sevana felt torn
between elation at getting some true answers and frustration that the answer
had been right in front of her this whole time. She just hadn’t known enough to
know what questions to ask. “I’d bet that part of the incantation inscribed in
those stones also gave it
instructions
. With the stones literally
scattered everywhere, with no rhyme or reason to it, the gadgick must be
getting some very confusing and mixed-up signals.”

“I’m amazed it’s actually working as well as it is,” Sarsen
agreed. “Although we’re still missing something—I mean, it’s only transporting
people. If the stones are throughout the village, shouldn’t things be
disappearing as well? Or—” he cut himself off as all three of them exchanged
understanding looks. “The water.”

“The water,” Master agreed. “I’d lay good odds that the
water plays into this somehow. I’m just not quite sure how. Direct contact?”

“It would have to be.” Sevana chewed at a thumbnail before
adding, almost to herself, “Or it could be the reflected light…no, I suppose
not. It wouldn’t explain why the stones outside haven’t had some sort of
effect.”

Hube looked between them with a wildly panicked expression.
“W-wait, did I cause all this?”

Master laid a comforting hand on his shoulder, expression
and voice gentle. “Master Hube, you could
not
have known what those
stones were. Or what they were intended to do. Indeed, it’s taken
four
Artifactors
to figure it out! And even now there are parts of this puzzle
we haven’t worked through completely.”

“Unfortunately true,” Sevana grimaced. Oh, to have some sort
of device that would let her go back in time. It would make solving the current
problem so much easier.

“Indeed, by telling us what you have and giving us this
wonderful drawing to look at, you’ve given us valuable information that we were
in sore need of.” Master gave him a particularly charming, sincere smile known
to make puppies whine and children giggle. “For that, you have my heartfelt
thanks.”

Hube nodded in acknowledgement, but he clearly felt rattled
by the notion that he’d directly played a part in the current disastrous state
of affairs.  

Sevana turned to the other two men. “As I see it, we have
two options at the moment. Either we focus on the fountain and try to dismantle
it,
or
we first go throughout the village and hunt up those inscribed
stones and remove them. The second option won’t fix the problem, not really,
but it’ll give us more leisure to work with.”

Sarsen grimaced. “Although it would be very tedious.”

“It would be just like a scavenger hunt,” Master disagreed,
face lighting up with childish enthusiasm. “It sounds fun!”

She and Sarsen both gave him a weary look. Why did he have
to be so cheerful at the worst times? “I say we try dismantling the fountain
first,” she said firmly.

Master actually
pouted
at her, although his dancing
eyes suggested that he was only half-serious. “You never want to play with me,
sweetling.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why do I always have to be the adult?
Fountain first.”

“I’m not sure if that will work well, Sev,” Sarsen warned.
“I mean, look at what happened yesterday.”

“Well, I’m half-inclined to agree with you,” she admitted
with a wince. “But I’m still trying to be hopeful. Yesterday, we attacked the
fountain
magically
. And we actually targeted the gadgick more than the
fountain. If we can just remove one or two stones from the very base of the
fountain, draining most of the water, we
might
be able to weaken the
gadgick enough to turn if off completely.”

“That’s a very large
if,
sweetling.” Master frowned
and rubbed at his chin as he thought. “But I suppose it bears trying. We’ll
need to approach this cautiously, though. Say, one of us tries to remove the
stone, the other two have shields and protective charms at the ready.”

If it meant avoiding the disastrous scene from yesterday,
Sevana was all for it. “Then I’ll handle removing the stone.”

Both men let out a squawk of protest, words overlapping.

“Sev, you can’t take on the most dangerous part of the job—”

“Sweetling, you’re still sore and aching from yesterday—”

She held up both hands to forestall the rest of their
objections. “This isn’t up for debate, gentlemen. This is a task that
I
took
on. I will be the one that bears the brunt of the dangers. I would rather have
the two of you protecting me in case this does go wrong.”

“But sweetling—” Master started again, stubborn and worried.

“No,” she said in a tone that brooked no disagreement. “If
you’re so worried about what might happen, then you’d best focus on casting
strong shields around me.”

Master stared at her for a long moment, eyes searching for
any sign of hesitation on her part. He didn’t find any. With a long groan, his
shoulders slumped and he complained to Sarsen, “She’s impossible to deal with
when she gets like this.”

“I know.” Sarsen grimaced, passing a hand wearily over his
face. “Alright, Sev, we’ll try it your way.”

“Good.” Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. “Let’s
go try it, then.”

“Wait, now?!” Sarsen objected, scrambling after her. “Oh, my
thanks, Master Hube.”

She paused and nodded thanks to the man as well—he had been
very helpful—before asking Sarsen dryly, “What, you have something else to do
on your schedule?”

“Well, no, but—”

“This isn’t going to take any elaborate preparations,” she
pointed out, not slowing her pace as she started up the street and toward the
main square.

“She does have a point.” Master kept up with her quick pace
easily, not seeming to be at all fazed by her snap decision. “And if this
doesn’t work, we need to know it now so that we can go on to the next idea. We
have plenty of time, as it’s still relatively early in the morning. We might as
well try it now rather than later.”

“Well, I suppose you’re both right….”

Finally, they both saw the sense of trying it now. It
wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to see if it would work or not. Either
the shield would not react or it would. It was as simple as that. Hmmm. But how
to approach this problem specifically? They’d tried magic yesterday. Would it
be better to go with a completely non-magical approach this time? Perhaps the
shield had only been designed to react to magical interference. Perhaps taking
a stonemason’s tools to it wouldn’t trigger the shield at all.

Even inside of her head that sounded like wishful thinking.

During the course of her career, Sevana had found it handy
to carry a wide range of tools on her. Most of the time, all she really needed
were her wands, crystals, potions, and the protective charms. But occasionally,
she found it necessary to carve an incantation into rock and she didn’t like
having to go all the way back to her workroom just to fetch the right tools.
Because of that, her pouch always had a cross pein hammer and a bull point
chisel, both tools of the trade for stonemasons. These two tools alone had the
right weight and precision to let her carve fine details into stone. They might
not be right for the job of working a stone out of a fountain, but for the
purpose of testing a theory, they’d do just fine.

Sevana crossed the square, not oblivious to the onlookers
that paused and watched the three Artifactors make a beeline for the fountain.
If they wanted to look, she’d let them. They had proven yesterday, after all,
that the shield really would only react to whoever attacked it and no one else.

She stopped right at the basin’s edge and took a look at the
fountain with new eyes. The ‘decorative piece’ as Hube called it sat in the
very center, on the third and upmost level of the fountain, and didn’t look at
all extraordinary. Oh, it looked interesting, granted. Some ancient and long
dead stonemason had carved it to be a fairy maiden with a jug on her shoulder
and flowers all around her feet. The jug let out a constant stream of water
that flowed from the basin at her feet and into the second level, and from
there to the third. The water didn’t have a strong flow to it, compared to
other fountains she’d seen, but it kept the water moving at a strong enough clip
that some of it sprayed her face lightly with errant drops as she knelt at the
fountain’s edge.

She took out her bull point chisel and hammer from her
leather pouch, shifting to try and find a more comfortable angle for her knees.
“Are you two ready?”

Master and Sarsen stood near either shoulder, their wands
out in one hand, a protective charm clutched in the other. Hinun stood directly
behind her, not only looking on with great interest, but keeping other people
from getting too close. In fact, he stood so close that she could feel his
breath against her back. Now, just where had he come from? He’d been napping on
the inn’s front porch during breakfast and they’d left him there when they went
to speak with Hube.