Temple of the Traveler: Book 02 - Dreams of the Fallen

by Scott Rhine

  Seating herself on the stool inside, Sarajah waited impatiently for the crowd of witnesses to thin.

  As time passed, she tried to rest. But every misstep of her many decades began to nag at her physically. Normally she would have just fed off someone else’s life-force to take the aches away, but she no longer had that power, not while bound at least.

  She remembered being half-dead in that wilderness so many years ago and holding the shard against her chest. Her domineering spirit sister was now gone. Freedom had come at a horrible price. “What’ve you made me into?”

  Alone, she yielded to the lure of the cards. The first card drawn and laid was the Hungry Ghost. The first card represents you. “Lies,” she hissed. The kitchen was quiet. She put away the discomfiting cards and peeked out of the pantry. Jolia was scrubbing by the entrance with her back turned. That way was blocked. The cook was still hard at work making meat pies, but the hallway leading past the pantry and to the back door was completely clear for the moment. Sarajah made a mad dash for the back door and closed it behind her.

  She closed her eyes and willed her racing heart rate back to normal. When she regained composure, Sarajah looked around at her new surroundings. She was now stranded on a hard rock path only one pace wide. The only thing between her and the windy abyss was a hip-high stone wall. The seeress followed the downward slope of the path to get out of the chilling wind. At the end of the path, out of sight and smell of the kitchen, were two wooden doors carved with half-moons. She almost cackled out loud with relief. The metaphor for her life was perfect. She was trapped in an outhouse that dangled perilously over a cliff.

  Sarajah was just about to open one of the doors for some much-needed privacy when the other door opened. The curly haired aristocrat, the artist, stood a pace away, startled. She struggled with her predatory instincts. She wanted to feed and this man was a potential danger. But that action would surely doom the boy and his quest. Instead, she decided to bluff her way through. “Pardon me, sir. I have cleaning to do.”

  “By all means,” said the aristocrat, backing away. Once she stepped though the door, however, the man grabbed her around the throat from behind. “The cards, the green eyes, and the voice gave you away, hag. The Viper has a bounty posted on you now.” She twisted her upper body and almost slipped free, but her attacker found purchase on the medallion’s chain and pulled hard, choking her. Soon white spots appeared before her eyes, and her feet danced off the ground.

  At first she cursed the Viper, then she cursed Zariah for getting her into this situation. Finally, she felt only outrage at being punished for another’s crimes. “I’m not Zariah.”

  Suddenly, a single link in the chain snapped, and she fell gasping to the ground. “Bugger,” muttered the spy, drawing his dagger. “Now I’ll have to risk getting blood stains on my new ruffled cuffs.”

  For years, Sarajah had effectively ridden the back of a predator. Her body still had the reflexes. When cornered, she did what any born killer would. Her only decision was whether to disable or to kill him outright. In that heartbeat, she settled on incapacitation, not out of morality, but because that was what Zariah did best, how she fed. She landed three blows before the man even knew he was in danger. Within moments, the ex-priestess had pulled the unconscious aristocrat into the privy with her.

  After calming her heart once again, the first thing she noticed was that the hole in the toilet seat dropped straight into the river below. It’d be an ideal way to dispose of the body. The second thing she noticed was how much energy escaping this trap had cost her. Her hands were shaking and looked old to her. Finally, she noted that her chain was gone, as was the binding of any possible powers she might have.

  Sarajah had been in this position many times. She knew that she could feed, and salivated at the thought. This man had tried to kill her, and would certainly expose her; his death would be self-defense. She’d been through the ritual so many times, there was no doubt that she could drain his body of life energy before dumping the husk. Not to do so would be wasteful. She’d even be young again, payment for the years Zariah had stolen from her. All she had to do was lean down another few inches. All she had to do was choose.

  Sarajah struggled with this decision for what seemed like ages, not wanting to become Zariah again, but knowing no better way.

  In the end, she reasoned that she’d never have the strength to dispose of the body without feeding. Bending forward, she touched her lips to the exposed neck. Nothing happened. The feeding had never been her, merely the rider. She cried for a while, both for what she’d lost, and what she’d almost become. After she cried herself out, she calmly took the dagger and coins from her would-be killer. She wedged the dagger in the door crack to trap the unconscious man in the privy.

  With some reluctance, Sarajah picked up the chain with the magic coin and placed it in her pocket. Then she returned up the narrow path to the manor house to let Jolia know that her new boyfriend was an agent of the Viper. The consort might well finish the man off for her.

  Sarajah sought out the tall woman. When their eyes locked a second time, Jolia pulled a cleaver out from under her apron. “I was hoping you wouldn’t see through my disguise.”

  “Truce, woman. I came to warn you. The old priest sent me.” The new scrub woman lowered her weapon. “The Viper has a reward out on you, and the man you were flirting with is one of his agents.”

  “You’re lying,” said Jolia, without conviction.

  “I knocked him out and stuffed him in the outhouse. Check him out yourself,” the seeress said. Jolia followed her outside. “Recognize that dagger design?”

  The former consort sighed. “I never have luck with men. What are we going to do with him?”

  “We? I’m leaving as soon as I can. You’re the one who has to live here.”

  The former consort cursed a blue streak. “Can’t you just magic the spy?” Sarajah shook her head. “Well, you can help hold him while I tie the trouser snake up. We can’t let him send a message to the Viper.”

  “Hide him in your bedroom. There may be other spies and we don’t want to tip them off. I’m also not sure how our host will feel about me ambushing his students in the outhouse.”

  Jolia giggled as she lifted. Together, they trussed up the spy.

  “You’re strong,” Sarajah commented.

  “Who do you think carried Sandarac to bed all these years?”

  “Life isn’t fair, princess. I’ve lost everything, too.”

  “I’ve noticed your hobo wardrobe.” When the green-eyed woman glared at her, Jolia added. “I brought an outfit that’ll match your complexion.”

  “You’re too kind. Forgive my sharp tongue.”

  “Don’t stop on my account; I love watching those generals cringe whenever you’re around.”

  “I’ll give you a list of herbs that will keep him manageable.”

  “Now I just have to find a way to explain this to Simon.”

  Chapter 25 – The Basement

  The basement was a dark, cramped, wood-paneled room with eight sides.

  Brent scratched his head, talking to himself. “Everybody was so nice. When I found a few clues, everything changed. I didn’t even understand half of them. What am I doing down here?” As the boy set down his wet belongings and placed the dim lantern on the narrow stairs, he found another fragment of the bardic tome concealed in his cloak.

  “Caesura: a pause in music or verse inserted for meaning or effect, the use of silence for emphasis.”

  Brent pondered this definition like a proverb while he wrapped the warm blankets around himself. The quote wasn’t referring to literal music. Perhaps it just meant the lack of speaking. For some reason the people upstairs weren’t talking to him on purpose. The only person he knew that wouldn’t talk about certain things was Tashi, and that was because of the gods. If he tried to tell them, he had a fit and passed out. The gods could forbid direct communication. But Jotham had explained about indirect communi
cation. One could point the way with metaphor, but the student had to make the leap himself. So someone upstairs wanted to tell him something important, but he had to find it for himself.

  Turning up the lantern as high as it would go, Brent examined his surroundings. The eight-foot walls turned out to be sets of drawers a little wider than his hand, reaching clear up to the rosetted ceiling. A hip-high step stool sat in a metal groove in the floor that circled the entire room. With the stool, even someone his height could reach the topmost drawers. The steps and drawers glided so smoothly, Brent had to admire the design.

  He hung the lantern on a small hook on the archway behind him and started opening drawers, searching for patterns and meaning in the stacks of vellum sheets inside. Brent roamed the room soaking in drawings at random. After a short time of searching, he noticed that the drawings were categorized by the type of project: private homes and bridges were the easiest to identify. Each of the eight walls had a separate symbol on top that corresponded to the contents. Within each category, the drawers appeared to be ordered chronologically. Armed with this knowledge, Brent began to flip through some of the older drawing sequences.

  Simon the architect had signed the final version of every drawing. But on the biggest projects, especially the early ones, another hand sketched them first and wrote notes explaining the solutions. They were beautiful, elegant, genius. They were also written by another person, not the precise lettering of the final specifications, but a more delicate, flowing hand. If it’d been only the text style, Brent would have suspected the use of a secretary. But the sketches were different, too. Those signed by Simon were careful, inked with rulers, and at right angles. The early sketches were freehand, at every angle and orientation, sometimes having no bearing on the project at hand.

  Taken as a whole, they were proof that the true architect, the visionary, was a woman and not Simon. This may explain why the famous teacher never worked far from home, and why Simon loved secret passages so much. He was hiding something, or more specifically someone.

  This revelation was fascinating, but useless. Certainly that fact wasn’t something the gods wanted hidden from mankind. Brent sat down on the bottom step to think. The spring-loaded wheels under the step collapsed with a satisfying thunk.

  Someone wanted to give him a message hidden in the silence. Brent stared at the archway where his lantern hung. The nautilus symbol above it was obvious in retrospect. There were eight walls and only seven storage cabinets. The last one must be for secrets, but where? Brent stood up to examine the panels on either side of the door frame. As he did so, the bottom step rose.

  “The stairway moves,” muttered the dark-eyed boy.

  Testing his theory, he located the lip of the bottom stair, and lifted. It moved the barest fraction of an inch and wouldn’t budge any further, no matter how hard he strained. Exhausted and dispirited, Brent rested his arm on the railing, and fell on his butt as the entire staircase moved to the left on wheels. He blinked several times at the storage cubby hidden behind the staircase. The closet contained only two things: a tiny scale model of some temple and a long, bamboo tube with sealed ends. The boy had to reclaim the lantern to examine both more closely.

  Unscrewing the tube’s cap, Brent glanced at the rolled-up drawings inside. For the most part, it was a set of sketches of the model church from every viewpoint. Some were formal, cut-away drawings, but most were elegant freehand, jumping from topic to topic without rhyme or reason. The artist spent a lot of time detailing the gargoyles, the roof tiles, sandstone blocks, and even the cloakroom beside the altar. She had several sketches of the altar itself, and the view of the ceiling. The final series of drawings revolved around tunnels. One set went from the guest cottages to the hospitality wing, and another series led from the infirmary wing to the graveyard on the backside of the temple. He was sure that they told some sort of story, but the pictures were too grim and chaotic for him. The model seemed more concrete, and less macabre. Brent resealed the tube and placed it back in its custom stand.

  The model church had six arms, like his holy symbol. Brent felt certain that the church in the model and drawings represented the Final Temple of the Traveler, the place their quest would take them next. Knowing this, he studied every detail intently in case it might come in handy later.

  The main temple itself was about three stories tall. The rooftops of the model were all removable to enable easy inspection. Even the floors moved to reveal the web of tunnels. Most interesting was the large, open meeting hall, probably the sanctuary. The roof in the center was made of some ultra-light stone, carved to delicate precision. The altar was made of an interlocking grid of jeweler’s wire. Brent recognized the workmanship in the piece and the hours of intensive labor it had taken to get the intricate pattern right. When he attempted to lift the sounding board above the pulpit to get a closer look, the entire back wall of the model sanctuary rotated. There was another room behind the altar. In this inner sanctum lay a tiny toy sword, smaller than his little fingernail. The toy had an amber handle and a Sesterina blade. This was probably the holy artifact of the altar. Jotham would know which sword it represented. He wanted to put the toy in his pouch to take along, but it felt too much like stealing.

  He lay staring at the richness of the model, marveling at the attention to detail. Even the outbuildings and tombs were to scale. So absorbed was Brent that he nearly didn’t get out of the secret room in time when he heard the steward returning overhead.

  As he returned the staircase to its original position, something nagged at the back of his mind. Everything he had found was important, but nothing here warranted such extreme measures of concealment. The keystone was still missing from the arch of his knowledge when someone opened the doorway at the top of the stairs and summoned him.

  The steward led him straight-away to the master’s study. The master’s workroom was lined with books, drafting tables, and other tools of the architect’s trade. Sarajah, dressed in a brown shift, was already in the room when Brent arrived, but he was too distracted to notice that the chain was missing from her neck or how her eyes kept darting about nervously. The instant they were alone, she hissed, “What did you see, boy? What’s the architect hiding?”

  “I looked at some drawings,” Brent explained. “He’s not really the genius here, some woman is.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” hissed Sarajah.

  Just then, Simon glided into his study from a hidden door. “Actually, your son is most perceptive. He’s the only one in twenty years to uncover my secret.”

  “He’s not my son,” corrected Sarajah. “He doesn’t have any parents.”

  Simon asked, “What else do you see in the drawings, boy?”

  “We came about a book, sir,” began Sarajah.

  The architect held up a hand. “Please. I answer one question per person, but first you must answer mine completely.”

  The seeress was annoyed, but sensed a connection forming between the man and boy.

  “She writes so much because she has to. They won’t let her speak. She’s mute.” Connections formed in Brent’s mind. The outline became starkly clear.

  Simon stared open-mouthed. “Who are you? Who sent you?”

  “The cards.” The dark-eyed boy teetered and fell over into a chair.

  Sarajah struggled to explain to their host. “He’s been under a lot of stress lately. I’m not sure he ate breakfast or lunch. It might be the after-effects of a fall he had a couple days ago.”

  The architect’s wife, who had been listening from the wings, rushed in and started fanning him with her apron. Brent mumbled, “The Doors. The Doors let you choose.”

  The mute woman stroked his forehead and made shushing sounds.

  Brent looked into her eyes and he knew. “I want my question now,” he said weakly.

  Master Simon blinked. If his wife hadn’t been there, he might have sent the visitors packing. He didn’t like their feel. Instead, he said, “Perhaps when you
’re not feeling so overwhelmed.”

  Sarajah sensed the critical moment and pressed for the boy who might not have been so blunt. “I’m sure it is a small thing, but will ease his mind so that he can have a restful sleep.”

  The mute woman nodded, not taking her eyes off the boy’s face.

  “Ask,” said Simon with dread.

  Facing the architect’s wife, the genius who had drawn the originals of Simon’s most elaborate designs, Brent said, “What did you learn from the Traveler?”

  Sarajah sighed, afraid the boy had head damage like the sheriff’s.

  “Out!” shouted Simon, grabbing the slotted staff from behind his office door. “My wife does not speak.”

  “You didn’t say she cannot speak, sir,” noted Brent.

  The wife merely remained placid, looking at the boy in wonder. She signed to her husband. “You were right,” admitted the builder. “He sees. You don’t have to tell him anything. We have a right to our lives.”

  She signed again, arguing silently with her husband.

  “What’s going on here,” asked Sarajah.

  “This woman is the Answer we’ve been looking for,” explained Brent, standing shakily with the seeress’s help.

  “Impossible. She’s too young” said Sarajah, uncertain of her own assertion.

  Simon gripped the boy’s sleeve. “Hear my story first, before you ask. You have to know what she has been through, what this will cost her before you ask.”