Temple of the Traveler: Empress of Dreams (17 page)

She jerked back from the page. In ink, on the final page, Sarajah had drawn an elaborate dragon holding a man in place with her coils as she consumed his liver. The title of the new trump card was Vengeance.

While Pinetto transcribed the story of Serog onto spare parchment at the mansion, Tashi played bodyguard for the green-eyed seeress. Sarajah talked to the craftsmen of the town, personally appealing to them to aid their landlord in his time of need. Though they all owed Simon their careers, only about half were willing to make the journey north. One of the older foremen decided to take over existing contracts and carry on the Reneau business. More workers would have stayed, but Sandarac was drafting able-bodied men to work on his ships. Such workers were treated little better than slaves. A contingent of young, unmarried men were willing to start as soon as possible; therefore, Sarajah tasked Urik to escort them north. The chamberlain gave them a small allowance for food and in case the pass into Kiateros was snowed closed.

During the course of the public debate in the supply barn, one of the men said, “We don’t have many other choices now that the blockade of the Inner Sea has started.”

“Blockade?” asked Tashi, still in his heavy coat to hide his armor.

“Yeah, if people don’t pay the Empress Humi for a new Imperial banner, their ships don’t make it where they’re going. Nobody gets to the islands. You need a special military flag for that.”

The seeress locked eyes with Tashi. “No merchant ships at all?”

“Naw. A couple tried to sneak through, but they disappear like magic. Merchants have to stick to rivers and skirt the shores. As soon as they try to cross the Deep, they wash up wrecked. All the sailors are talking about it.”

The chamberlain tapped Tashi on the shoulder. “Pardon, sir, but I didn’t recognize one of the workmen, and he disappeared a few bits ago. The lady here is very recognizable, and some might want to make a quick gold by notifying Sandarac’s spies.”

The bulky half-troll nodded and jerked his head toward the door. When she followed, she asked, “Problem?”

“We’re out of here.”

They left together, beating the chamberlain back to Simon’s house.

“I just finished two copies,” said Pinetto, eating a large sandwich made from an odd assortment of meats and leftovers.

“I thought it was the woman who ate strange combinations,” joked Tashi.

“I call it my Winter Pantry Special. Erik and Karl already packed most of the leftovers. I didn’t get to eat because
somebody
needed a scribe.”

“The olives and roast beef look good together. How did you toast the bread?”

“I had to bleed off some energy because my quill was smoking. Want some?”

“Yes!” said the half-troll, snagging the biggest portion.

“Gentlemen, move. No time for swapping recipes,” said the seeress. “We have a letter to post and a military courier to steal.”

“Is she kidding?” asked Pinetto with a mouth full of sandwich.

“Somebody called her the Queen of the Pirates, and now she has something to prove,” teased Tashi. She threw a bulky backpack at him, and he caught it one-handed. “Is that pickled egg in the bottom layer?”

“I thought it might add counterpoint to the bland turkey,” said Pinetto, slipping into his ring-mail shirt. After Tashi shrugged on his pack, he helped the thinner man assemble his gear.

“Where did you put the papers?” shouted Sarajah from the master bedroom.

“The original I packed in your satchel; the copies are hanging by the fire to dry.”

Sarajah came back to meet them in the entry hall, ready to depart, with the loose papers in her hands. “You scorched the symbol for Archanos at the front and end.”

Pinetto nodded as he stuffed apples in his pockets. “It’s kind of my trademark now. Makes it hard for people to forge my signature. Besides, Archanos is Serog’s son-in-law.”

“Don’t say her name out loud.”

“I have one question about the story. Since your mother taught Zariah to be a vampire, is she one, too?”

“Kind of. Without being a member of the Council of the Gods, she has to make a living somehow. Don’t worry; she doesn’t do it often, and she only eats people who deserve it.”

“Could you be a little more specific about that?”

“Here, you hold onto this copy of the story, and I’m going to mail this one,” Sarajah said, scribbling a quick cover letter.

Sandarac:

I have attached a history lesson. What do you think Humi or her goddess is going to do to you when you’re no longer necessary?

Z.

****

Karl located the smallest courier ship available at the Turiv docks—the
Mallard
. “There are three men on deck, prepping it for departure tomorrow morning.” They waited for the majority of the crewmen from the nearby ships to go drinking at nightfall.

She called, “Bagierog,” and he appeared in heartbeats.

“I’m not going on that ship,” said the panther.

“But our deal,” she insisted.

“The Inner Sea is worse than the waste places. It teems with insane spirits that are always hungry. No thank you. Just say my name to the wind and name your destination, and I’ll meet you there.”

“Then you owe me three full services and some free information.”

“Your favored will live another hundred years with care. When he dies, it will be like the end of a dream to a sleeper—a dream that passed in a few bits. He will have to gather his energy to form a new body. Depending on how motivated and skilled he is, that could take him a century.”

“I could die before he can come back to me,” she said, working through the ramifications.

“Likely. Do you want my help here?”

“No, this is cake. I won’t waste your valuable service on this.”

Sarajah said to Tashi, “You divert their attention to the gangplank and I’ll sneak up from behind, over the roof of wheelhouse. Pinetto, you kill any that try to shout or run for help.”

The wizard pulled out a large, military dart and nodded.

“What do the two of us do?” Karl asked.

Tashi told them, “Climb on board as soon as you can and get ready to sail out of port.”

“It’s dark.”

“Pinetto can do the steering once you get everything ready. We just need to be able to haul keel as soon as I cut the lines securing us to the wharf.”

The wizard winced. “Can trolls swim?”

“Like rocks,” said the invisible panther.

“Maybe I’d better cut the lines and you could pull up the anchor,” suggested the wizard. “You’re just itching to use that new sword, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Tashi said with a grin. “All right, we move on three . . . where the blazes did that woman go?”

“Crap, she’s on the wheelhouse roof already,” noted the farsighted wizard.

“So much for chatting at the gangplank,” muttered Tashi, running for the ship as fast as he could. Using stacked boxes on the docks as a ramp, he launched himself through the air to the center of the tiny ship. When his feet struck the thin cover of the cargo hold, he splintered it and kept going through.

“Why do we even plan?” asked Pinetto, mustering his energy reserves. He could hear the cat laughing uproariously.

“What the hells was that?” asked the ship’s captain, stooping over the new hole in his deck. The other two sailors leaned over the splintered hole as well.

Sarajah took advantage of the commotion. Reaching down, she smacked one sailor’s skull into the other. While they were dazed, she made knife-handed thrusts into their necks and chests.

When he heard the thump, the captain looked up. His eyes grew wide. By the torchlight, he could see her grin. He moaned with fear and drew in a breath to scream. Pinetto’s dart hit him in the midsection and the weapon’s explosion blew him over the rail into the sea.

Enjoying himself, Bagierog sliced through the ropes binding the ship. Karl and Erik ran onboard before alarm gongs could sound. In the darkness, Tashi tried to jump out of the hold through the hole he’d created. He missed the hole, making a loud thump.

The wizard heard the large cat creature say, “I’m going to pee myself.” However, he couldn’t respond because he had to use his bolo to disable a patrolman who came to investigate the commotion.

On the second attempt, Tashi landed on the deck. Head down, Tashi shuffled over to Sarajah to ask, “Anything else I can do?”

“Anchor,” said Sarajah, dragging the unconscious bodies to the side of the ship one at a time. He obeyed, trying to make up time and burn off the embarrassment by hauling the chain up as fast as possible.

Pinetto climbed a rope on the side to reach the deck. As the northern men unfurled the sails, he barked, “Get those flags up. We don’t want to find out what spell has wrecked the ships.”

“You woke half the town,” Tashi complained to the wizard.

“To save your girlfriend . . . who did the rest of the fighting. I forgot that this is another three-way border and overcharged a little. What was your excuse? You washed your feet this morning and can’t do a thing with them? Great distraction.”

Pinetto sighted the Compass Star with his sextant. By then, Karl was in the wheelhouse steering out to sea. “Keep her on that heading,” he pointed. “Straight to Center. I’ll see if I can find a decent chart. I’ve never been in the Deep before.”

The wizard ran to the wheelhouse and suddenly ended up flat on his back, choking. Backpedalling on his behind, he crawled outside. Everything was normal again. He took a slow step forward, and his cloak billowed out behind, as if in a strong breeze. After another step, he felt the tug backward on his neck again.

Pinetto hissed. “Sarajah, can you get me the quill off that desk?”

“Why, is your arm broken?”

“Please.”

She sighed and brought him the writing implement. He reached his right arm into the room to accept it. The barrier was only for him, but only part of him? It resisted more the deeper into the room he went. Seeing nothing on the floor or ceiling, he backed up and stood on his tiptoes to check out the roof. There was a military-grade ward circle on a metal plate.

Experimenting, he backed into the room. No choking, but the repulsion bounced him back to the seeress.

“Are you asking me to dance?” she asked dryly.

“No,” Pinetto said, smiling. “But I think I just made one of the biggest magical discoveries of all time. Watch this.” He took off his cloak, balled it up, and threw it as hard as he could at Karl in the center of the warded region. The fabric shot back as if kicked by a giant, unfolding as it went. “Yes!” he said, jumping up to celebrate.

Turning to watch his juvenile antics, she didn’t see the fast-moving clothing and got swept off her feet. She shrieked and Tashi came running.

Pinetto told him, “Grab my cloak. Don’t let it near the wheelhouse.”

“Sure,” Tashi said, looking to the seeress for explanation.

After rolling to her feet, she shrugged. “It seems to have a life of its own.”

As Pinetto rummaged through the desk area, he said, “I put a new, super-charged, portable ward on my cloak to repel spirits.”

Sarajah raised an eyebrow and took the cloak from Tashi to examine it. “You wove all the anchor points with sesterina and put wizard glass beads in the center of each.”

“That helps prevent the energy decay that wood bases have. A metal resonator maintains the loop longer, which is why the navy used this metal plate. The glass core holds a higher initial charge.” The wizard opened a leather courier pouch and dumped the contents onto the desk.

“It has six points in the circle instead of the traditional three and a pink lens in the center. Each point is a swirl representing interlocking male and female symbols. The pattern within a pattern forms a reinforcing, defensive matrix of positive, feminocentric, creationistic energies that—”

Tashi nodded. “Yeah, the sex magic. Heh. Genius. You never take that thing off, even to sleep. It must be charged enough to—”

“I-i-ck!” Sarajah handed the cloak back to Tashi immediately. “How does this make the cloak fly?”

“I think my new creationist wards and traditional pain and death wards
repel
each other,” Pinetto said, unfolding a chart.

Tashi wadded up the cloak and tossed it toward the pattern center harder than Pinetto ever could.

Sarajah dove out of the way as the clothing catapulted back almost too fast to see. Tashi had to chase the cloak down as it almost fluttered off the stern of the ship. “Would you two
stop
?”

Pinetto shushed her as he read the packet of orders included in the pouch.

“I’m going to smack him,” she hissed to Tashi when he returned.

“You have to admit, he does design some pretty great devices,” Tashi whispered. Unfurling the cloak, he played with it like a kite near the boundary region.

“Does any ward repel any other ward?” she wondered.

“No one’s ever made them portable and strong enough to try. My guess is any wizard smart enough to make one can’t get a woman to have sex with him.”

She snorted at the theory.

Tashi wouldn’t stop playing with the cloak. “I want a hammer with one of these wards.”

“What’s the point? It would never hit the wizard in the middle.”

Pinetto interrupted. “You need to see this.”

“You found the maps?” she asked.

“Charts. Yes. According to this, Muro is almost twenty hours away on this bearing. We could arrive there at about two hours till sunset. Center is almost that far again. The routes to both are clearly marked.”

“Great. Between the three sailors here, we can take four-hour shifts and be there in two days,” she decided.

“Not so great. This pouch is a delivery for General Navara—invasion plans for Center. The message is addressed to his supply headquarters . . . in Muro.”

Tashi swore. “Out of one war zone and into another.”

“I don’t know how many islands have been taken already, so we can’t risk being seen by any of them. We’ll have to stay about twenty-six miles away from any other island until we get there.”

Karl shook his head. “That makes navigation doubly difficult. Not only do we have to steer without landmarks, but the farther we get from land, the riskier it gets.”