The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2)

by Honor Raconteur

  “Out,” Sarsen supplied after swallowing a mouthful from his mug. “While you slept, I have been working.”

  “I don’t see how that has anything to do with missing people,” she informed him as she sauntered over to the chair. Halfway into it, she froze as a disturbing thought occurred. “Unless…unless that thing has suddenly started transporting more than one person at a time?” she asked in sudden alarm.

  He waved a hand in negation. “No, no. Nothing like that. I actually had everyone clear out after breakfast this morning. They’re waiting outside the village just in case something goes wrong today.”

  She let out a breath of relief as she slid the rest of the way into the chair. “So you’re saying that we’re ready to go?”

  “Waiting on you,” he confirmed with a quirk of the brows.

  She looked at the appetizing spread of food in front of her, obviously ordered for her as Sarsen hadn’t touched the plate at all, and informed him firmly, “I’m eating first.”

  “Figured you would.”

  Tucking in, she ate the food with considerable pleasure. Half the fun of eating food that she didn’t make came from the fact that she wouldn’t have to clean up after the meal either.

  “Here’s my idea for the casted spell.” Sarsen slid a piece of paper across the table to rest in front of her.

  She chewed as she leaned forward slightly, reading the diagram with ease (in spite of the abominable handwriting). “Why have both of us attack simultaneously? You think we can overwhelm the shield easier that way?”

  “I’m not as optimistic as either you or Jacen,” he responded with a minute shake of the head. “This thing has given every sign of having an almost individual awareness. Either the person who made it designed it very, very well so that it can react on its own in most circumstances, or…or it’s developed some very interesting quirks over the past few hundred years. Regardless, I don’t think that it’s going to react well when we hit it. In fact, I predict that by the time we get through that shield, we’re going to feel half-dead afterwards.”

  “Pessimist.”

  Sarsen shrugged, not insulted. “Perhaps.”

  She looked at his design again, not seeing any flaws in it, but not really expecting any. They did, after all, train under the same master. She mentally reviewed everything she knew of that gadgick as well, different scenarios and simulations flashing through her mind, and she had to grudgingly admit that perhaps Sarsen would prove right in the end. She hoped Jacen would be right—that a fast, fierce attack would be able to break through that shield. But she wouldn’t bet on it either.

  Even Jacen hadn’t been willing to bet that it would work.

  With a scrape of the spoon against her plate, she popped the last bite into her mouth. “Alright, let’s be about it.”

  Sarsen stood with her, leading the way out the front door and into the mellow morning sun. Even if she hadn’t known that the villagers had left this morning and waited outside, she would have been able to tell just from the smell alone. She couldn’t detect any scents of food, baking bread, spices, or anything else that she had come to associate with the usual morning of this village. Their footsteps across the cobblestones rang in an eerily hollow way. She’d never heard silence quite this loud before.

  In silent camaraderie, she and Sarsen stopped a few feet from the fountain and started their preparations. Sarsen pulled out two vials from his pouch, one which contained fairy’s kiss, the other the flickering blue light of shiranui fire. He unstopped both with a slight pop as the corks left the bottles. Wands in hand, they coaxed both elements out, winding them around the wands so that they could draw the casted insignia into the air itself in blazing white lines. The spell hummed as Sevana wrote the incantation within a small circle, enclosed it with a circular line, and began the second line of script. She felt and saw the difference when the last line completed the incantation. It warmed the air considerably and flickered with shiranui power.

  The incantation wouldn’t hold long. The shiranui already wanted free, to be released, and it would be fighting her control in a few moments. That’s why it worked so well for casted spells—but also why it didn’t work at all for charms. It was too unstable for that.

  Sarsen completed his written incantation as well and put the vials back in his pouch. He took a half step to the side, putting more distance between them, and glanced at her. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” she confirmed.

  “Alright. On three. One, two, three!”

  In perfect unison they said strongly, “KLAK NE FOLE!”

  For a split second, she thought it worked. The shield flinched, concaving inward as if a log had just been swung at it, forcing it to bend backward or break. In the next heartbeat, it flared upwards in a surge of power so strong it sent a thrill straight up her spine. It raged like a blue and white bonfire, beautiful and dangerous all at once. She knew instantly that Sarsen’s pessimism had been dead-on—nothing a human could do could match the reflexes of a magical device.

  She had just enough time to half-swear in her head before the shield threw back their attack, making the incantations splinter in a thousand pieces and scatter like broken glass. In sheer instinct, she threw her arms up to protect her face, curling slightly inwards to keep her head from smacking first into the hard stone under her. But that was all she could do. The force of it robbed her of breath, of reason, as the backlash hit her with all the force of a giant’s hand.

  Sevana lay there gasping, lungs on fire with the need for oxygen, head swirling, every nerve in her body screaming with a sensitivity that just bordered on pain. Her back and head protested at the abuse from slamming into solid ground. It took several seconds for her to draw enough air into her lungs to be able to breathe properly. Then it took a few more before her vision cleared instead of looking dark, as if she were going to pass out any moment.

  “Sev?” a hand touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Sev?”

  Sarsen. She swallowed—a useless gesture that made her throat burn—and managed, “Alive.”

  “I can see that. You’re breathing and your eyes are open.” Even though the words were half-joking, Sarsen sounded relieved.

  “I thought—” an errant cough cut off the rest of the sentence and she had to clear her lungs and throat before she could try again. Owww. Coughing bad. She had to remember not to do that for the next few days. “I thought you said we’d feel half-dead after we were through with this.”

  “I did.” Sarsen let go of her and rolled back so that he could lie flat again. Now that she could pay better attention, he looked like she felt—deprived of air, eyes whirling, a fine tremor shaking him from head to toe. She could hear it in his voice, too, as he spoke. “I feel more three-quarters dead. You?”

  “Same,” she groaned. “Ugh. Never trust an evil spell to measure properly.”

  “Since when was it evil?”

  “It’s thwarting me. Anything that thwarts me is evil.”

  Sarsen started to laugh and then groaned when it made already unhappy muscles twinge. “That sounds suspiciously like Sevana-logic.”

  “Is there any other kind?” This back-and-forth levity oddly helped. She didn’t feel like death warmed over anymore. Her status could now be updated to ‘ineligible for burial within the next twenty-four hours.’ “More importantly, did we succeed?”

  They both timidly raised their heads to look forward.

  The fountain looked completely unharmed, not even singed, as water flowed out of it unimpeded. It looked, actually, as if they hadn’t done a single thing.

  Sevana let her head fall back. “It’s official. It’s evil.”

  Sarsen at her side groaned. “Pure evil. Now what?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Decker found them ten minutes later, still flat on their backs in front of the fountain, neither of them anxious to move and test the limits of throbbing muscles. He called for help, picked Sevana up bodily and took he
r straight to the small doctor’s clinic a block away.

  She informed him that just because her eyes were spinning around in her head, that didn’t mean she couldn’t walk.

  He ignored her.

  It took two men to carry in Sarsen. Sevana sat propped up on one of the two beds in the room, watching blearily as they carried her friend in. In this small of a room, they found the walkway too cramped for three men to really move around in, but they managed to shuffle about and gently set Sarsen down on the edge of the bed. He collapsed in a controlled fall so that his head hit the pillow, not bothering to go through the extra effort of bringing his legs up, which made him look like a deflated balloon.

  The doctor, a rather thin man with a beak of a nose and wispy hair, leaned in front of her, blocking her view of the room completely. He came so close she could smell his breath, a not entirely pleasant sensation. “What are you doing?” she grouched.

  “Checking for signs of concussion,” he responded without batting an eyelash. “Your eyes are reacting normally. Good. How do you feel?”

  “Like a building fell on top of me.” She knew exactly how that felt, too. “Will you move?”

  “Nothing broken, tender, bleeding?” he persisted, trying to lift her arms so that he could get a look at her from every angle.

  “No, no, and no,” she responded in exasperation. “Decker, did you have to bring me here? This is pointless, we’re not injured.”

  Decker put his shoulders against the wall in a clear sign of determination to keep her from leaving. In an arch voice he drawled, “Do you remember what you said to me when I got to you? I asked what happened and you said, ‘Death to all evil!’”

  Alright, out of context, that probably did sound…less than lucid.

  Sarsen let out a pained chuckle. “We’re not injured, Decker. We were just talking about how the fountain is now officially evil because it’s thwarting us before you showed up. That’s why she said that.”

  He blinked in sudden understanding. “Oh.”

  Krause shouldered his way through—no mean feat, considering how jam-packed the room had become—and demanded, “Then what happened?”

  “Our hopeful plan was more hopeful than we’d imagined,” Sarsen answered wearily. He finally dragged both legs up onto the bed so that people had more room to walk, although judging from that wince, it hurt to do it. “The shield slammed up almost before we could get the spell fully released and it reflected our own attack back at us.”

  If not for their personal protection charms, they’d be seriously burned by now. Not to mention the cracked skulls, bruises and broken bones the doctor had obviously expected.

  Krause’s forehead furrowed into a deep line. “So what now?”

  “We don’t know,” Sarsen admitted.

  “I want to put gunpowder around the base of the fountain and blow it up,” Sevana suggested in black humor.

  “No, Sev,” Sarsen told her again, patiently. To the room of alarmed adults he added, “You’re right to look scared, as she’s only half-kidding. I admit, if we break the fountain free of the square, we could lift it out entirely and take the problem to a remote region so that we can slowly figure out a solution elsewhere. It would give the village some peace again.”

  “I’d rather not have a gigantic hole in the middle of town,” Krause said weakly.

  “I reckoned as much.” Sarsen dredged up a half smile.

  She’d let Sarsen have his way—for now. But if they didn’t find another solution within the next week, she’d sneak out in the dead of night and blow it sky high.

  From Sarsen’s pouch came a small, tiny voice calling out, “Sarsen! Sarsen! Pick up your Caller!”

  They both looked at the bag in dread. “Master,” she sighed.

  “Of course he’d call, just to see if it worked or not,” Sarsen said rhetorically.

  “Wait, what are you doing!” she protested as he reached for his bag.

  “Answering him, of course.”

  “What do you mean, of course?” she spluttered. “If you do that, he’ll rush over here in a bout of his parental concern, and then we’ll never be rid of him!”

  Sarsen paused and gave her an odd look. “You sound as if you don’t want him here.”

  “Of course I don’t want him here! He’s insanely expensive!”

  He gave her quite the look for that. “Sev, we can obviously use some experienced help on this one. We tried everything we could think of and the thing threw us around like a pair of wet dolls. I, for one, want the man’s devious mind. Not to mention his power. Three Artifactors might well be able to crack the gadgick.”

  He might well be right, and she wouldn’t really be opposed to another opinion, but she hadn’t been kidding—Master’s fees were no laughing matter. She’d already invested a lot of time into this problem and she deserved the reward that came with it. “If you answer him and he comes, his share is coming out of yours,” she warned him.

  Sarsen didn’t quite roll his eyes as he brought the Caller out of the bag, letting it rest in his open palm. “Master.”

  “There you are!” She couldn’t see the face of the tiny Caller from here, as its back was to her, but the tone conveyed enough to guess at the expression. “Sarsen, you look like five miles of bad road during a summer storm. What happened?!”

  “Our plan didn’t work. The shield reacted faster than we could and our own attack was reflected back on us.”

  “Tell me you were wearing a shield charm.”

  “We both were,” Sevana assured him, feeling like shaking her head. What did he take his former students for, anyway? Idiots? “We’re fine, Master. Just a mite sore.”

  He spun about in Sarsen’s hand to look at her. “Oh no, sweetling, don’t tell me you got hit by this too!”

  “Did you forget the part where this is my contracted job? Why in sweet mercy would I make Sarsen do all the work?”

  “Because you’re devious and conniving,” Master and Sarsen said in unison.

  She gave them a lethal glare. “You’re both going to pay for that later.”

  Master waved a hand, dismissing her threat altogether. “I don’t want either of you to move or try anything else until I get there.”

  “Don’t you dare come!” she objected. “You’re insanely expensive. I do not want to pay you.”

  Master gave her his patented, parental, I can’t believe she just said something so stupid look. “Sweetling, do you honestly think that I am just going to sit over here and watch this play out? It’s defeated two of my best students and is still kicking. Of course I’m coming!”

  Decker, still planted near the doorway, cleared his throat. When he caught her eye, he said mildly, “Didn’t you get permission from the king to commandeer help as you needed it? And a seal to act as a purse to pay for it?”

  Sevana snapped her fingers as she abruptly remembered. Actually, in the face of this nearly insurmountable problem, she had forgotten that. “Bless your memory, Decker. I can make Aren pay for him! Alright, Master, in that case you can come.”

  “Like I was waiting for your permission.” Master shook his head in amusement. “I’ll be there tomorrow. Now, I mean it, you two. Do. Not. Move.”

  “Not a problem,” Sevana assured him sourly.

  “Neither of us feel like it at the moment,” Sarsen chimed in, equally sour.

  “Good. Sleep. It’s the best medicine for you at the moment.” With that said, the Caller went still and quiet again.

  Sevana would absolutely never, ever admit this aloud, but she felt vastly reassured that her Master was coming. He had never once met a problem that he couldn’t defeat. Lips curved at the corners, she settled down a little more into the bed, closed her eyes, and drifted off into a sound sleep.

  Sevana had a foot halfway into her boot when a knock sounded in a loud rap on the door. Through the wood, a very familiar voice called, “Sweetling!”

  Master? She blinked, more than a little taken aback. The v
illage clock had barely chimed out the eighth hour! Most people had barely eaten breakfast at this point. For that matter, she’d been awake just barely long enough to get dressed. How in sweet mercy’s sake had he made it all the way from the Standor Mountains in a little over sixteen hours?!

  “Enter!” she called after several seconds of dumbfounded surprise.

  The door swung sharply open, revealing the form of her aging master. Joles Tashjian looked as he always did—white hair in a knot on the top of his head, skin wrinkled and the color of aged bronze, his customary jacket bulging with multiple pockets filled to the brim. Despite the fact that he ate like a starving horse, he always looked a tad too thin. He didn’t appear to be at all tired from travelling throughout the night. In fact, he seemed unfairly spry and alert, a feeling that Sevana did not share in the least. After yesterday’s events, her body felt sore and misused, and she had not had the best night’s sleep because of it.

  Hinun padded in behind him, and came directly to her to greet her with a nose in her ribs. Used to this treatment, she gave him a good scratch behind the ears in welcome, making his tail wag happily.

  Master leaned down in front of her, looking her over with a paternal/clinical eye. “Sweetling, you look roughed over.”

  “I feel it, too,” she responded churlishly. “I think what really rankles is that even after all that, the fountain doesn’t even look singed. Have you seen Sarsen yet?”

  “He said he’d meet us for breakfast.”

  Food sounded like a splendid idea. “How in the world did you get here so fast?”

  “Oh, that?” Master lit up in a smug smile. “It works.”

  She regarded him blankly, beyond confused by what he meant. It works? What did? He pointed toward the window and she finished shoving her foot into her boot, tied it, and went to see what he seemed so pleased about. Through the small window, she could see a contraption sitting just outside the building’s main door. It looked like nothing more than a wooden box with four ordinary wooden wheels. But she recognized it instantly. “You finally got that contraption to work?!”