The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2)

by Honor Raconteur

  She spotted him quickly, coming toward her from the Hall’s main steps. Following him on either side were two men she didn’t recognize with Gid trailing along behind the group. One of them middle-aged, scrawny looking, with a receding hairline and the thickest glasses she had ever seen on a human being. He looked well-dressed, however, and neat as a pin. More interesting, he had a magic pouch resting on his belt. Magician of some sort?

  The other man stood a head taller than either of the men he walked with—quite the feat as Decker couldn’t be considered ‘short’ by anyone’s standards—but had a very massive and solid build , as if he were a walking barrel. His skin had tanned so dark as to almost make him look Sa Kaoan, but his bright blond hair and blue eyes marked him as Windameran through and through. He also dressed impeccably well and had not one, but two magic pouches riding on his left hip.

  Sevana perked up hopefully. The promised magicians, perhaps?

  “Sevana,” Decker greeted. “Good work.”

  “You shall pay for not warning me she’s afraid of heights,” she informed him darkly.

  He froze and glanced at the old woman, still buried in relatives, before asking slowly, “What if I didn’t know?”

  “You’ll still pay,” she growled, hours of pent-up frustration leaking out.

  Decker slumped, muttering, “I reckoned as much,” before heaving a great sigh. “What if I buy you dinner?”

  After skipping lunch and having a very measly breakfast, food sounded like a sublime plan. “I will magnanimously forgive you if you do so. For now, who are your tagalongs?”

  Decker turned and gestured to Glasses with an open palm. “This is Danel Goffin, Wizard and—” Decker turned to indicate the man standing on the other side “—Piotr Roland, Wizard. Gentlemen, Artifactor Sevana Warren.”

  Goffin took a step forward and offered her a hand, which she reciprocated, and found his grip to be pleasantly firm without being overpowering. “Artifactor Warren, it’s a pleasure. Prince Bellomi came to me personally the day you left and asked that I come here immediately.”

  “I’m glad you did,” she answered truthfully. Flying off to the rescue had proven to be a major pain. Sevana would willingly hand that chore over to someone else. She released her grip and offered a hand to Roland. “Wizard Roland.”

  “Artifactor Warren,” he greeted in a surprisingly high voice, grip somewhat flimsy. “Pleasure. Hunter Decker just showed us your tracking board and the charms you put on everyone. It’s a wonderfully simplistic system. Thank you for setting it up and making our jobs easier.”

  “I was trying to make my life easier,” she responded dryly. “After all, I had no idea how long it would take for anyone to show up and take over. But I assume that I don’t need to explain the system to either of you?” That had better be the case, otherwise they weren’t magicians of a high enough caliber to be trusted with any job, much less one of this magnitude. But both men just gave her a smile and nod of confirmation, not at all worried. Satisfied, she waved a hand toward her temporary workroom. “Then feel free to move it to wherever you need it to be. I won’t miss it.”

  “We certainly will,” Roland assured her. “However, perhaps you can explain just what kind of magic we’re up against? Pierpoint gave us some information, but he didn’t know much, and I think we need to know what’s causing this.”

  They certainly did. “Over dinner,” she said firmly. “I’m famished.”

  ~ ~ ~

  With two other magicians at the village’s beck and call, Sevana didn’t have a rude pre-dawn awakening and so slept until the sun had properly risen. It made for a much better rising and she didn’t feel homicidal upon opening her eyes, just grumpy. Shuffling around, she managed to get dressed, put her hair up into a very messy bun, and find breakfast without knocking anything over or breaking anything. But with a happy belly and some of that amazing hot cider in hand, she felt ready to get to work.

  She expected Sarsen to come in at some point tonight or early tomorrow, and when he came, he would have a lot of questions. Right now, she only had answers to some of them. So she took some of her most sensitive tools, her notebook, and a cushion (she did not intend to sit on that hard cobblestone all day) and went to the fountain to work.

  The sun slowly climbed high in the sky, moving the shadows around the courtyard and warming her up pleasantly as the sunlight touched her. Sevana blocked out all the distractions—the smells of food being prepared, the sounds of people walking around and talking to each other, the clatter of carts and horses crossing the area, all of it. With single-minded determination, she focused on the task in front of her.

  Without warning, a hand landed on her shoulder and she dropped the wand she held, upset the notebook open in her lap, and instinctively reached for the sword at her side before she recognized the man leaning over her. “Decker! For the love of all mercy, don’t do that!”

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said patiently, “But I called your name three times and you didn’t even twitch.”

  She put a hand to her thumping heart to make sure it would not beat its way out of her chest. “You nearly gave me heart failure.”

  “It’s well past the lunch hour.” He sank onto his haunches in front of her, a half-smile on his face. “I was afraid with the way you were focused, you’d work right through it. And Master Krause and I are rather hoping you’d tell us what you found.”

  Now that he mentioned it.… She peered up at the sky with squinting eyes and discovered the sun had already headed for the western horizon. It had to be two in the afternoon at least. Had she really been sitting here for seven hours? In spite of the thick cushion under her, her whole backend felt numb. Yes, past time to move. With a groan, she put a knee under her and rolled upwards. Decker offered her a hand, but she chose instead to put a hand on his arm and use him as a lever to push her way up. Wincing at the stiffness, she said aloud, “Mental note: bring a proper chair tomorrow.”

  “Did you discover anything?” he asked her.

  “Not much, which in and of itself tells me a great deal.”

  Decker blinked at her, eyebrows furrowing in confusion as if he didn’t quite know how to take that comment.

  “Where’s Krause?” she asked him, not wanting to repeat the inevitable explanation.

  “Oh, he’s there.” Decker pointed toward the one inn on this side of the village that served lunch. The ombudsman stood on the porch, obviously waiting for them.

  “Good.” Picking up everything, she shoved it all back into her bag, except the cushion. That she tucked under her arm before walking slowly toward Krause. Her legs, back and buttocks tingled painfully as the blood started flowing again. Oww. Yes, she’d definitely bring a chair tomorrow.

  No one said anything as she took a step up into the inn and crossed into the dimmer and cooler room. After baking under a warm sun most of the day, the environment felt pleasant to her overheated body and she unconsciously smiled. The tavern here had a solid plank floor, no sawdust, and highly polished round tables scattered everywhere. The bar that stretched the length of the room held no customers, and its polished surface shone from being recently cleaned. For that matter, the whole room looked as if it hadn’t seen a single patron the entire day, but instead stood ready for tonight.

  Krause took a table near the bar with all the ease and familiarity of a regular patron (which he might very well be for all she knew) and waved them to join him. Sevana deposited everything in her hands onto the surface of the nearest table before she eased into the chair at his left, not at all sure how her backend would feel about sitting on something solid again, but the angle of it felt fine. She sank back against the wood and relaxed.

  A serving girl that could have been Krause’s daughter with those looks came out and took their order of “anything hot and easy to dish up” and disappeared back into the kitchen. Krause turned to Sevana with an eager smile and asked, “What have you discovered?”

  “Not much,”
she admitted easily.

  “But she said that tells her something,” Decker added, still bemused on this point. “Care to explain that?”

  Master had trained her from an early age that part of being an Artifactor was explaining things to your clients. After all, they paid your wage, so you owed them explanations on the job you did. She’d gotten better at doing so over the years, but had never changed her opinion that it was troublesome. With a resigned sigh, she started from the beginning.

  “I explained to you earlier that an artifact buried in the fountain was the cause of all of this.” Both men nodded impatiently. “I also explained that the power level of it is such that I alone can’t break it, which is why I called a colleague in, yes? Good, we’re on the same page. Today, I wanted to get more information on the origin of the artifact and come up with a few plans of attack on how to defeat it. This is what I discovered.

  “First, the age of the artifact and the stone around it dates it at the eighth century, about the time that Windamere was re-taken by Gadon Dragonmanovich and made into the country we know today. This is very, very interesting.”

  “How?” Krause asked, absolutely riveted.

  Just how much magical history did they teach in schools? Probably not enough for him to follow her explanation. Assuming, of course, that he remembered something he learned forty years ago, which might be stretching the bounds of credulity.

  “There was a time when magic had very few limits, a time when magicians made their own spells and the class of Artifactors didn’t exist. We magicians refer to this as ‘the time of great magic’ because that’s exactly what it is. We have legends, stories, partial histories and such that tell of amazing feats that the magicians of history were able to do. But they were also done in a time of great political upheaval. I’m sure you learned in school about the multitude of nations that began, were conquered, fell to plague or pestilence, or merged with other countries through marriage. Well, all of that shifting about destroyed records or caused them to be lost. And then, at the very end of the eighth century, that great plague swept through all of Mander and wiped out half of the population. I’m afraid the magicians were hit the hardest by it.”

  “Wait, explain that,” Decker requested, just as fascinated as Krause. “I’ve never heard that the magicians were hit so hard by the plague.”

  “Of course they were,” she said in exasperation. “Think, man. If you suddenly contracted a deadly disease, what would you do?”

  “Go see a doctor.”

  “And when he can’t help you?”

  “See a magician,” he said in sudden understanding.

  “They were infected more than anyone else because every single person in their area with the plague came into contact with them. Most magicians didn’t have a cure for it either, and so died of it as well.” Except the magicians that lived in remote enough regions to not contract the plague or were selfish enough to hide away and let humanity rot. “Many, many techniques and secrets that were passed down from master to student were lost entirely because of this. Worse, some numbskull hit upon the brilliant idea that torching things would keep the sickness from spreading, so whole libraries and record rooms went up in flames.”

  “Ah,” Krause raised a finger hesitantly in the air. “That’s not true?”

  “Well, it is,” she felt forced to admit, “But hot water and strong soap does the job just as well, you know? And if it doesn’t come into direct contact with the person, then it’s highly likely it’s not carrying the disease.”

  Krause and Decker exchanged a speaking look, their expressions saying oops. Which poor blighter’s house had they torched in order to keep a disease from spreading? Rolling her eyes, Sevana moved on. “At any rate, we the magical community lost more in sheer knowledge than I can begin to describe. The whole system of magic that our ancestors used became lost almost overnight. The survivors and newly awakened magicians had to experiment and forge their own system of using magic as the old ways no longer made any sense to them.”

  “So the magic that you use now,” Decker summed up quietly, “is entirely different.”

  “As day is from night,” she confirmed grimly. “That artifact dates to the time right before the plague spread, so it was likely used only once or twice before being stored away. For some strange reason, it had been sealed inside of a stone as well. Perhaps to keep it out of the wrong hands? The purpose of doing so died with the creator. At any rate, it’s lain dormant until you people moved it and fulfilled the conditions it needed.” She could tell from their blank expressions she would have to explain that too. “Any magic used, no matter how ancient, has certain conditions that must be met before the magic is activated. This artifact seems to need reflected light—sunlight, in this case—running water, and direction.”

  “That,” Krause said emphatically. “That’s the part that I don’t understand. What direction?! We haven’t given it any!”

  “You have,” she denied flatly. “This part is half-conjecture on my end, but it makes sense from what I know of ancient artifacts. There are two things you must understand. Magic is not stagnant, like a tool, but is a living thing itself. It’s as alive as water or wind. It likes to move. It likes to be used. This artifact was lying in the ground for six hundred years and was dying to fulfill its purpose. It leaped at the chance as soon as the conditions had been met. And I’d lay good money that to use the artifact, one would simply picture within their mind’s eye the place that they wanted to go in order to direct it.”

  Decker slumped so that his head hit the table’s surface. Against the wood he complained, “Even in dreams?”

  “As I said, magic likes to be used,” she responded tartly. “It might be overreaching its designed bounds, but it’s also not unusual for magical things to develop quirks over the years. I have a pair of mud-off boots that now rejects not only mud, but any dirt whatsoever.” They were rather fun to wear, too, as it felt like she walked on air. “And those boots are only eight years old! Can you imagine what would happen to something that’s several hundred years old?”

  “I don’t need to imagine,” Decker grumbled.

  “While all of this is fascinating, does it help in any way?” Krause asked.

  “I won’t really know until I can consult Jacen, our historian in the Artifactor community.” She looked up with a smile as the girl came back with their food, efficiently plopping it down in front of them with a clink of china. Mmmm, it smelled heavenly. Not bothered that she didn’t recognize anything on her plate, she picked up a spoon and dug right in.

  “Did you find a way to stop it?” Krause pressed, ignoring the plate set in front of him.

  She had to swallow the mouthful she had—pleasantly spicy—before she could respond.

  “Yes and no. Apparently, the maker gave his toy a shield to erect while it was in use to prevent someone from tampering with it accidentally. Smart, in a way. I imagine that if someone did knock the thing over or hit it with another spell while it was transporting, the result wouldn’t be pretty. But that makes our job harder. We have to get around that shield first. Once we do that, we can either work a spell directly against it to counteract its elements and neutralize the artifact’s power—”

  “Or?” Decker prompted impatiently when she took a long pull from her tankard.

  “Or we wear away the power that it’s using slowly and remove one of its conditions so that it can no longer work,” she finished. Just how they would manage that, she didn’t know offhand. She had a few notions to try out, though, assuming Sarsen didn’t come up with something better once he got here. “At that point, I’m going to take great delight and pleasure in digging that artifact free and taking it apart. We hardly ever find a still functioning artifact to examine.”

  “I thought you said the old magic didn’t make sense to you anymore,” Krause objected, still ignoring his plate of food.

  “Well, not all of it,” she admitted with a blasé shrug. “But given eno
ugh time and experimentation, we’re able to figure out a great deal. Those charms you’re wearing around your neck are a result of such research.”

  Krause and Decker both touched the two small metal charms with surprise and looked at them far more carefully than when she’d put them on the first time.

  She ate peaceably while they mulled over everything she had said. Eventually, Krause picked up his spoon and started eating as well.

  “After lunch, what do you plan to do?” the ombudsman inquired.

  “Nothing more I can do at this moment,” she denied, seriously considering finding something to satisfy her sweet tooth. Apple tarts sounded good. “Right now, I’m just waiting on Sarsen to arrive.”

  Sarsen had more or less stolen her idea of using clouds to fuel an airborne vehicle to create his own version of transportation. Instead of designing something he sat on, however, he had made a very long glider that let him hang underneath the wings. He claimed that because his glider didn’t weigh as much and had a more streamlined design, it could go faster than either her skimmer or mini-skimmer. She hadn’t yet had the chance to race him and prove him wrong.

  His glider didn’t have the same on-the-spot landing ability as the mini-skimmer, so he came in along the main road, lowering his legs from the back harness and running along, slowly coming to a stop. With such a showy entrance, most of the village came running to see who approached, alerting Sevana as they went.

  She had to push through a crowd of spectators, ruthlessly using her elbows to move people bodily aside, and even then she had to squeeze through. With a grunt of effort, she almost exploded out of the crowd and into open air. By that time, Sarsen had unhooked himself from the glider and taken off the goggles he wore while flying, letting them hang around his neck. He waved when he saw her and started jogging forward.

  “Sev!”