Tiger's Dream (Tiger's Curse Book 5)

by Colleen Houck

  “Love,” Ana guessed as she sipped her tea.

  “Yes. But he refused to say anything about it. Then, one day, I found the scarf.”

  “Scarf?” I asked.

  “Yes. The workmanship was exceedingly fine. I knew of only one seamstress who could do work such as that.”

  “But how do you…?” I paused, not knowing how to ask the question.

  “How do I see the workmanship with eyes that have gone dark? I don’t, young man. I use my hands. My fingers have held silk threads since before I could walk. It’s a simple thing for me to tell good work from bad.”

  The man coughed dryly and reached for his mug. Finding it empty, he felt across the table until he found the pot and pulled it closer. His servant tried to help but the old man gave an adenoidal snort and the servant backed off. The old silk maker poured his own tea, slopping the scalding liquid over the rim of his mug and burning his fingers.

  The man didn’t seem to notice the heat, and I wondered if he, too, had once pulled boiling cocoons from the pot. The man sucked the tea from his fingertips before setting the pitcher down hard enough to make a sloshing sound.

  “Tell us, where is your son?” Ana pressed.

  “She called him to her side this afternoon with an emergency order. He still hasn’t returned though it’s been hours.” The man wrung his napkin as he went on. “We couldn’t deny the emperor. I begged my son to consider the consequences of his actions, but he wouldn’t listen. The emperor plans to marry her. Everyone says so. At the very least, he will never let her leave. I love my son but if he pursues this girl, it will be the death of him. No one thwarts the emperor.”

  Just then there was a tumult at the door, and the young man we’d just been talking about rushed into the room. His chest heaved as he sucked in deep breaths, and the look on his face was one of abject terror coupled with determination. He knelt by his wizened father. “You must tell me where the wizard is, Father!”

  “Son! You’ve returned.” He clutched his boy’s hand to his chest but the young man asked him his question again. “Wizard?” the old man echoed.

  “Yes, wizard, Father. The one you told me about every night. The one who lives in the mountains. I must find him!”

  “What are you going on about?” the old man said weakly. He pushed against the table to stand and ended up nearly falling over as the table squealed in protest and shifted toward Ana and me. Both of us caught our mugs of tea before they spilled.

  The young man’s eyes burned like freshly struck flint as he took hold of his father’s silk robe. They wavered together like two weak saplings in a storm. The only way they could remain upright was if they locked arms and held on to one another. “Tell me, son,” the man said, “what can I do?”

  The young man’s mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. I could see the immense pressure built up inside him. It was like the bag of popcorn in the microwave Kelsey had taught me about. You had to leave it in just long enough. Too long and the corn would burn. The boy in front of me was burning and I wondered if we were already too late to save him.

  “Tell us about the girl,” I said, hoping that I could help guide him to the heart of the matter.

  Grimly, the boy told us of how he had fallen in love with the girl trapped in the emperor’s palace and that she would be forced to become the bride of a man she despised. His only hope to save her was to beg favor of the wizard, the one his father had told him stories of since the time of his youth.

  “But, son, there is no such wizard,” the father said, his limbs shaking. “I thought you knew. It was just a story. Your mother believed in the wizard and shared tales of him when you were young. I thought I’d continue the tradition to help you remember her.”

  I could see the bunched muscles of the boy’s shoulders slacken in defeat. Lifelessly, he said, “Then there is nothing I can do. There’s no way to save her from her terrible fate.”

  Ana murmured in a hushed voice, “Perhaps there is something we can do to help.”

  As if noticing our presence for the first time, the young man turned and studied both of us. “Who are you?” he asked. “And why do you visit my home at such an hour?”

  Without preamble, Anamika channeled her power and held out a hand. The Divine Scarf wound down her arm like a snake and undulated before them, shifting colors. The boy fell back. “What…what is it?” the old man asked.

  When she murmured a command, the Divine Scarf left Ana’s fingertips and flowed over the outstretched palm of the old man. He rubbed the edge of the cloth between his fingers and cried out, “How is it possible?”

  “What…what is it, father?” the boy asked, wetting his lips and staring at the scarf.

  The man lifted his eyes to us and said, “I can see you. Both of you. Your fabric touches my mind’s eye and shows me color and shape once again.” He quickly bowed. “We are humbled to be in your presence, Great One.”

  Ana smiled when the young man followed suit, and she gave them a gracious nod, bidding them to be comfortable, and opened her hands to show she meant no harm. “I am glad that the scarf gives you this gift, but I fear it is only temporary.”

  “It does not matter,” the old man said, turning to his son and then back to her. “I can see the face of my son again. It is a more valuable prize than I could ever ask for.”

  “We have been sent to help you rescue your lady,” she said to the young man. “As you can see, we have a magic of our own. Tell us, what were you planning to ask your wizard to do to help you?”

  “I…” he stammered, “I wanted him to sneak into the palace and rescue her. He would wear my scarf as a sign that I have sent him.”

  “But surely it would take a long time for someone unfamiliar with the palace to find her,” Ana suggested.

  “That is true,” he answered, “but I can draw a map.”

  Ana drummed her fingertips on the table while she thought. “I think it would be best for you to rescue your love yourself. You already know the area.”

  “Yes, but my face is familiar to the guards. I am known there.”

  “Then we will disguise you.”

  “Disguise me?”

  “Yes. The scarf has the ability.”

  Ana held out her hand and the scarf shot toward her. “I am sorry to darken your eyes once again,” she apologized to the old silk maker.

  He waved a hand dismissively and Ana wrapped the scarf around her form. When she lifted it away, she was me. The young man gasped as he looked from me to Ana and back again. “How have you done this?” he asked in amazement.

  It was disconcerting looking at myself. Anamika must have sensed it, so she whispered to the scarf and my face melted away, revealing her own once more. “My name is the goddess Durga and this is Damon,” she said, indicating me. We have a great deal of magic, and we have come here for the sole purpose of saving the one you love. Will you assist us?”

  “Yes, Goddess,” he said hoarsely. He knelt at Ana’s feet and clutched his hand to his heart. “I would do anything to save her.”

  An hour later, we were walking with him to the city. We waited for the moon to set so we’d be surrounded by darkness. Using the scarf, we transformed his figure into that of a soldier and tied the precious scarf the girl had made him around his neck. He crept forward quietly, and when he came upon the city gate, he managed to gain entrance despite his very un-soldier-like mannerisms.

  Ana and I had become invisible, blurring time around us so we couldn’t be detected, and we trailed along behind him, just squeezing inside the gate before it shut on us. Then everything bad that could possibly happen to screw up our plan did.

  The lovesick fellow was stopped by a contingent of soldiers and was asked why he’d abandoned his post. The poor boy didn’t address the outranking officer appropriately or give him an acceptable answer, so he was clapped in irons and carted away to the nearest holding cell. We had to wait an hour for the group to leave him so we could release him from the chai
ns that held him fast.

  After we got him out, he lost his way, and we squandered precious time moving from building to building until he finally found the entrance to the palace wall that he frequently accessed. Again he struggled to gain entrance, and it took me and Ana causing a distraction to get the guard away from his post long enough for the silk maker to pass through.

  Finally, we were beneath the girl’s window and the boy was about to climb up when I heard a guard approaching. I groaned when I saw it was the same guard who had just imprisoned our charge a few hours earlier. Ana and I were too far away to warn the young man, so she put her hand on her amulet and drew on her power. The youth, who would have been easily recognized, immediately transformed into a horse with the scarf tied around his neck.

  “What did you do?” I hissed.

  “I do not know,” Ana replied, her grip on the wagon wheel we hid behind intense. “I simply asked the scarf to change him to something unthreatening.”

  “The scarf can’t do that. Change him to an animal, I mean.”

  “Apparently, it can,” she said blandly.

  The scarf had been able to change Kadam to our tiger forms but not to another animal. But then I remembered the way that Lokesh had merged humans and animals. It seemed that unifying the Damon Amulet gave Anamika access to powers that had previously been limited. “Great,” I said. “So now he’s a horse. He’s not even a fast one,” I pointed out. “He looks like he could barely pull a plow.”

  “I did not choose his form,” she answered a bit too loudly. “The amulet chose it.”

  “Well, the amulet chose wrong. Change him to something else. Something with a few more teeth or at least longer legs.”

  The poor horse, I mean man, whinnied to the window above, trying to get the attention of his lady. Although he was successful, she seemed hesitant to climb down to him despite the fact that she had a rather obvious bunch of fabric tied together, ready to drop to the ground.

  I rubbed my hand over my head. “This isn’t going well,” I said. At least the soldiers had walked past, ignoring the horse. But now the man-turned-animal, thinking he was in the clear and seeing that he’d caught the girl’s eye, was making such a ruckus that he was sure to bring them back.

  His cries had become insistent and high-pitched. When the girl ducked back inside, pulling her mound of fabric with her, he kicked the bricks in frustration and rose up on his hind legs.

  “That did it,” I said, pulling the chakram from the loop on my belt and preparing to fight. The group of soldiers was returning, and if this was going to work, we’d have to enter battle mode.

  Ana touched my back. The warmth of her hand shot tingles all the way down my spine. “Wait, Sohan,” she said.

  Just as I predicted, the soldiers responded to the noise. They circled the poor horse, who was now screeching and baring his teeth. I sighed as they captured him and dragged him off to the nearest stable. Rising, I prepared to trail along behind, but I found Anamika standing still, staring up at the window. The girl was leaning out watching the men drag off the horse, and she was in tears; the faint sounds of her weeping carried to us across the courtyard.

  As I watched the men and the horse disappear into the shadowy darkness, I shook my head. “They’ve made a real mess of this,” I said to her.

  “Yes,” Ana replied distractedly as she took hold of my outstretched hand. “Or, perhaps, we have.”

  “We have?” I asked her. “None of this was our fault.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder in the direction the horse had been taken. “The guy’s been bumbling around for hours.”

  Ana didn’t answer. Her entire mood was fretful. She bit her lip and allowed me to lead her toward the stable without even cloaking us. Unlike the young man, I knew how to be silent and unseen. The darkness melted around us. With my heightened sense of smell and hearing, it was almost too easy to avoid detection.

  We crept into the barn and found our charge banging his feet against the wood of his stall. More time passed before he finally settled down and the last guard departed. Ana approached the young man and patted his side. “I am sorry that this has happened. We will do the best we can to fix it.”

  The horse whickered and blew air out of his nostrils. Ana touched one hand to the amulet and kept her other against the side of the horse. She closed her eyes and drew upon her power but nothing happened. Again she tried. The torches outside flickered and went out. Air stirred the bits of hay in tiny whirlwinds. Her hair lifted from her shoulders and fanned out all around her.

  Even I could feel the strength of her power. It filled my frame and made all the hairs of my body stand on end. The ground shook with a tremor, and it was the possibility of causing an earthquake that finally made her stop. “I cannot change him back,” she said. “The amulet will not allow it.” She sunk down onto the hay and buried her face in her hands.

  The horse-boy lowered his head and blew a breath onto her hair.

  “Hey,” I said, crouching down next to her. “The kid’s fine. We’ll just leave him here and go find the girl on our own. Once we get her out safely, we’ll break him out and set them up on a nice silkworm farm somewhere far, far away.”

  “You make it sound so easy, Sohan.”

  I gave her a winning smile. “Not everything needs to be hard, Ana.”

  Taking her hand, I pulled her up and saw a shining tear fall onto her cheek. Lifting my fingertip, I gently caught it and thought of the time she’d turned one of Kelsey’s tears into a diamond. Just as I thought of it, the sparkling tear transformed. Ana gasped in awe as I moved the diamond to my palm.

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I saw you do it in one of your temples, and I was just remembering that when it changed.”

  She touched her finger to it, rolling it around on my palm. “What did you do with it? The one I created for you?”

  “I…I gave it to Kelsey the day I asked her to marry me.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s a tradition in her time for a man to give a woman a diamond ring when he proposes marriage.”

  For some reason I felt very uncomfortable telling her about Kelsey and our engagement. It wasn’t like she didn’t know. I stammered, “She still wears it, you know. When I saw her on her wedding day, she wore a mangalsutra. Ren had it made for her and the diamond was there.”

  She turned away from me. “We are wasting time,” she said over her shoulder.

  I captured her arm to stop her from leaving. “Ana, I…”

  Her eyes met mine and there was something there I’d never seen before. “You do not need to explain, Kishan. I was merely curious.”

  Taking a step closer, I cupped her arm gently. “I think I prefer it when you call me Sohan,” I said, my voice low and gravelly.

  Her breath caught and we stood immobile, just looking at each other. The hoot of an owl startled both of us and she blinked and stepped back. “We have work to do,” she said.

  I nodded and followed her out of the stable. We spent several hours tracking the girl. It was easy enough for me to catch her scent after we backtracked to the window, but once we were inside the palace, her scent was gone. It was like the girl had never once left her room. Finally, we found it only to discover her room was now empty. All of her belongings had been moved.

  The sun rose and we used the scarf to disguise ourselves, but Ana was summoned down to the kitchens to work when we passed by the head cook. It took me an hour to get her since she was surrounded by people and we didn’t want to cause alarm by disappearing. By the time she changed from a kitchen worker to a palace servant and found a water jug to carry, I had been called upon to help a group of men lifting a cart to put on a new wheel.

  When that task was completed, we wound our way through the palace, checking room after room, getting lost more than once, before I finally caught the girl’s scent again. I followed it to a large room blocked by a guard. He took one look at me and stuck out his h
and, denying me entrance, but he opened the door for Ana.

  She shrugged and ducked inside. Moving far enough away from the man so he couldn’t see or hear me, but close enough to watch for Ana to exit, I wore a hole in the fine rug with my pacing, but at last, she emerged and we met at the corner of the building. “It was a harem. A rather big one,” she said, her eyes gleaming with intensity.

  “So? Was she there?” I asked.

  “No. But a lot of her silks were.”

  My shoulders fell. “Then we need to keep looking.”

  “No, Sohan. I know where she is.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “She is being prepared for her wedding. The girls will be leaving soon to dress her.”

  I took hold of her shoulders a bit too harshly. “Then we’re too late?”

  “No. We’ll follow the women. They’ll lead us right to her.”

  We waited but the women never came.

  “I’ll check with the guard,” Ana said. When she returned, she said, “They have already gone. They left through a back way. I told him I was to be summoned and he gave me directions. Follow me. We must be quick!”

  We hurried through a maze of corridors and finally came upon a bathing chamber. There were a few girls mopping up water. “Are we too late?” Ana asked. “We were to bring a gift for the emperor and his new bride.”

  “They’ve already gone ahead,” one girl said indifferently.

  “Thank you,” Ana muttered and we sped out the door. To avoid too many interruptions, we phased out of time and finally came upon a grand chamber. The door opened as a servant scurried out. We both ducked inside, passing the two guards before the door closed. I heard a voice shouting and the cry of many people. It sounded like battle or soldiers marching in formation.

  We stalked closer. The thick carpet would have muffled any sounds we made even if we hadn’t been cloaked. A man’s voice echoed in the expansive chamber, and we came upon the girl we were seeking and the emperor, her betrothed. They stood on a balcony overlooking what must have been a practice field.

  The man said, “I have a wedding present for you, my dear.” He opened a parcel and showed the contents to the girl. She stretched out her fingertips to touch the piece of fabric he held. Tears coursed down her face. The emperor continued with a mocking voice, “An interesting incident occurred last night. It seems a plow horse entered the palace grounds wearing this very scarf. He made enough noise that the guards took him away and locked him in the stables. This morning, to our surprise, we found not a horse but the silk maker in the stall. We asked him what magic he’d used and why he’d come. He won’t speak. He refuses to share his reason for infiltrating my palace in the middle of the night.”