Temple of the Traveler: Empress of Dreams

by Scott Rhine

  Pinetto’s head snapped up, glaring at the demon. The ground smoldered beneath him. “The gods planned for one of us to die?”

  Bagierog returned his stare. “We saved you both from the slaughter time and again. Eutheron was our common enemy, the thing that the gods kept in reserve to scare us into obedience. Archanos paid Baran Togg the highest honor he could. What about that do you object to?”

  The wizard looked down. “Nothing, I guess.”

  Tashi was barely able to squeeze his thick fingers through the basket hilt. Taking a deep breath, he pulled. Nothing moved. Planting his legs in a stance called the Boulder in the Field, he summoned the strength to fight giants. The blade began to shriek as he dragged it slowly out of the bronze. Fighting it with both hands, he wrestled the weapon free. Holding it, blade shining in the sunlight, he said, “I could just carry it on my hip.”

  “No,” the three others said at once.

  Pinetto handed him a folded pieced of fabric. “Here, I brought another yard of cloth woven with sesterina wire in case my cape needed repair again. Wrap the sword in the cape and then the oil cloth to waterproof it.”

  Tashi bundled it onto his pack before the three mountain men joined them.

  Karl gave each of them an oar. After they each climbed into a canoe with one of the experts, he reminded them of the basics of paddling as a team through white water.

  When they pushed off into the swift river, she asked her paddling partner, “Erik, what’s this white water he’s talking about?”

  “Class-three rapids and a few small falls.”

  She didn’t have time to object, she was so busy paddling. Within an hour, she had blisters and had tipped the canoe twice. The demon, invisible to everyone else, laughed at her from the shore. Tashi had to bite his lip as they caught the canoe again and steadied it while she climbed in.

  “Well she sure curses like a sailor,” said Urik, who was now her guide. Erik swore he’d walk home before riding with her again.

  “Maybe three-person canoes would be better,” suggested Pinetto. “That way, we could keep going after dark, with one night-sighted person per vessel.”

  “We’ll trade at the next town,” Karl said.

  Chapter 15 – The Song of Serog

  After the rapids, Sarajah had no more canoe problems. However, the magic cloak, which had kept her warm in the north and protected her in many ways, did not keep her dry. She longed for an end to cold and wet. Fortunately, the river trip passed much more rapidly for Sarajah than her previous walk north had. They avoided enemy sentries twice by passing at night. The day they reached the warship docks of Reneau, water patrols were too tight. They were forced to leave the water and proceed on foot.

  By nightfall, they’d delivered the letter to Simon’s home. The caretaker recognized them and insisted they stay the night and dine with him. Seeing the blazing fire, Sarajah agreed. He read the letter immediately and sighed. “We will come in spring. I can get a good price for the house, but it’ll be lower since the balancing rock fell.”

  “When?” she asked.

  “Emperor’s Day.”

  “The day Sophia died . . . at the Battle of the Falls.”

  The caretaker clasped a hand over his heart. “Master Simon must be heartbroken.”

  “Yes. We all were. She was kind and irreplaceable, my first real friend. Rebuilding a country and raising a son are providing a distraction for Simon, but I’m sure seeing his friends and coworkers will help even more.”

  The old man provided an excellent meal of partridge and an array of vegetables they hadn’t seen in weeks. The wine was a rare vintage. When she objected, he said, “It won’t survive the journey north. It would only end up in the cellar of a noble who never met Mistress Sophia. I think we should use it to toast her memory.”

  Urik and Erik drank as much as he poured and had to be carried to the guest-student bunks. The caretaker led Tashi and Sarajah to the master suite and lit the lamp there.

  “I couldn’t,” she said, touched by his kindness. The bedroom was huge, with down comforters, framed architectural sketches on the walls, and a hundred reminders of the previous owner. The smallest thing set her crying: the apron Sophia had worn during their last visit, folded on the ladies’ dresser.

  “She liked you, and this is her home. Her final note said that if you ever visited again, you could take anything you liked from her room.”

  “She knew she wasn’t coming back, even then. But she still went with us.” Sarajah grabbed Tashi and buried her face in his chest, tears flowing freely.

  “Stay as long as you need to, madam,” the caretaker insisted. “Good night.”

  Tashi patted her as gently as he could, trying not to catch her hair or rip anything. He carried her to the bed and let her cry herself out.

  Sarajah awoke four hours later. In the dark, by the light of the Compass Star entering through a skylight, she ran her hand over the simple apron. Tashi sat up, alerted by the movement and ready for battle. “It’s just me, dear. Get some rest. I’m going to stay up and write a little.”

  “Just don’t draw on the wood paneling. Expensive,” he mumbled, rolling over. The bed creaked as his weight shifted. Feathers leaked from a pillow as he flopped his arm over onto her side. That would’ve bruised, she thought. She wanted to seek physical comfort from him but didn’t want to destroy the gorgeous room. It would’ve felt too much like desecrating Sophia’s grave. She also didn’t want to reach either emperor with a black eye or missing teeth.

  She stoked the fire and opened her book to the blank pages. Across the top, she wrote: The Song of Serog. Then she stopped for a long while. How did you tell the tragedy of your adopted mother? She started with the dispassionate facts.

  ****

  Dreams came before all peoples. They will exist long after.

  Sera was a painter by trade. Even before ascending, she saw events in her sleep, some far away and others yet to be. She was named for a delicate, brown bird that sang at night, what you would call a nightingale. That’s what I remembered most about her as a mortal—her song. Her husband died in the attack that cut the holy mountain in half. Childless, she adopted seven orphan girls. Her daughters excelled in song, dance, acting, and other soothing arts.

  After ascension, she became a master of dream manipulation. In the Halls of Eternity, she could transform herself almost at will. Sera was so strong in the dream realm that she could heal the injuries of other gods there. Those she could not heal, she could soothe by consuming their pain. She would take the pain into herself and make it a physical injury. Then, she would use her powers to make the injury fade.

  She never carried a weapon, always easing suffering instead of inflicting it. Then peace was ruled a crime.

  Not content with being the most powerful, Osos wanted to be all-powerful. Still, she managed to remain neutral in the many Dawn wars until her daughter Ashterah married the rebel Archanon. To prove her loyalty, Sera had to fight for Osos. When she refused, he threw her into the deepest pits of Nightmare, changing her name to Serog. Because her daughters could still speak to her in dreams, even hell had a light.

  Then the murders began. Serog watched in horror as her daughters, on both sides of the conflict, were killed. She could do nothing to save them. The impotence drove her mad with rage. Each died of a wound that she could have healed. She remembered each face, each villain. By the time she had only three daughters left, her form changed to reflect her constant wrath—the silver dragoness.

  When Osos opened the prison gates to renew his offer, she escaped Nightmare and rampaged across the human world. Her hunger for the guilty knew no limits. She laid waste to entire towns avenging her gentle daughters. In the City of the Gods, Osos gathered two of the surviving girls, Deliah and Zariah, which was a form of ‘little Sera.’ He afflicted them with a wasting disease so they needed the intercession of a great healer to live. The disease was as painful as it was crippling, but he denied them any ease, tormenting th
em for his sport. Serog was compelled to come to the aid of her daughters.

  While she was curing her children, Osos trapped them all with the One True Blade. Then he commanded her to choose: back to the pits or into his army. Her daughters were too weak to flee.

  “I curse you,” she snarled. “One day, I will eat your heart and dance on your grave.”

  “Before that, you will submit,” he countered.

  Words in the undergirding cause ripples in our world.

  Serog tried to slay the monster Osos before he could harm any others. He drove her back to Nightmare, but the dragoness wounded him deeply. To heal, he needed more power than his slave gods could provide. Thus he captured the Traveler and made him share the secret power of boundaries.

  That was when his greed turned him into the Compass Star. The two daughters in the palace were fused into wizard glass, just like every other living thing in what became the Inner Sea.

  The stunned gods needed help to rebuild the fabric of reality and mend their own bodies. They located the life stones of the two girls, shards of glass that held the multidimensional echoes of their once-beautiful spirits. In exchange for these shards of life, Serog swore to guard the Door to Nightmare in the School of Bards. For to have a usable prison, there must be a Door in.

  Serog, with all her skills, could not restore the spirit echoes of her daughters in physical form. However, she could teach them about resonance, iron will, and perseverance. She strengthened their spirits and showed them how to take over a human body so they could live again. Such a body was too weak for them and was consumed like wax before the flame. Then they needed to find another body to possess. Committing murder after murder drove gentle Deliah to end her own life. She shattered her stone in a final act of contrition and entrusted the pieces to the fish of the ocean. In the process, she damaged Zariah’s stone. The necklace with her shard washed ashore in the plague-lands.

  Fate found the perfect host for Serog’s surviving daughter, one immune to the drain of the possessing spirit—me. I was half-Imperial and half-plague-lander, a child with the local variant of the same name: Sarajah. I had to consent to the possession for it to be binding. I did so to gain freedom from my own nightmare.

  Zariah killed my owner and traveled to the ruined temple her mother guarded. Together we became the most powerful witch in the world. Together, we consumed the life force of over two thousand humans. Most traded willingly. Some were criminals. I watched every one of them die without being able to stop her.

  When the Sheriff Tashi wrestled Serog to the ground, Zariah left voluntarily to spare her mother suffering. The daughter repaid the debt at last and the nightmare was over. I, Sarajah, was freed. The Doors to Eternity were closed. Serog was released from her service to the gods.

  ****

  Sarajah didn’t want to add that Serog adopted a new daughter, Humi Kragen, to get revenge on the sheriff. Her story demanded a better ending. Staring at the blank page on the right side, she closed her eyes for a moment only.

  Tashi woke her by asking, “What did you draw this time?”

  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.

  Chapter 16 – Piracy

  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 ne
arby 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.