by Scott Rhine
Tashi shrugged. “No. How can someone with such a short lifespan as ours comprehend his desires?”
“Try.”
The sheriff pondered for the briefest moment. “Well, the last abbot of this monastery thought that the Traveler wanted those of us in his service to follow in his footsteps. After learning one of the Great Secrets, the abbot went to the Imperial throne and… gods! I can see it all. The abbot was responsible somehow for what happened to the emperor. He caused the Scattering!” Tashi sat down, stunned and overwhelmed.
“You know enough now. Keep following your path and find innocence, then I have no doubt but that the Answer will find you,” the giant said cryptically.
Tashi coughed into his left hand. When he looked down, the fingertips were red. That meant something important. While the sheriff still reeled under the maelstrom of summoned memories, the guardian asked, “Your question has been answered. Do you pardon my slight so that I may depart now?”
“Yes,” Tashi said without thinking.
“Free!” bellowed the giant exuberantly. Opening the base of the shrine like the door to a storm cellar, the giant chanted words that the abbots of the past recognized as the Song of Opening. The key at Tashi’s chest resonated with the rumbling song. His past links were too busy remembering the chant itself to stop the giant in time. For a heartbeat, strange, brilliant light burst forth from the doorway, illuminating the sky as clearly as any lightning bolt.
Just for an instant, he glimpsed the Silver Halls of eternity. Tashi, Sheriff of Tamarind Pass and Abbot of the Outermost Isle, had to throw up his arm to avoid being blinded.
Chapter 13 – The Event
The four men rowing the stolen boat south along the seashore glanced up at the light display and their leader swore. Their new lieutenant was more practical and urged them to row faster.
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A merchant selling compasses in Innisport was shocked to see all of the needles in his shop tilt to the left for a full second and then return to their true aim.
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On the north shore, twenty dreamers around an ancient ruin awoke as one. No one in the village could go back to sleep for hours, until well after dark.
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A blind sage on the Island of Muro, surrounded by cavorting seagulls, raised his face to the event and cried, “The Doors…”
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Jotham the Tenor felt as if he had stumbled over the edge of a precipice and his inner ear struggled to avoid the fall. “… have been opened,” he muttered.
“What?” asked Brent.
The priest shook his head to clear it. “Something has happened,” he said, turning his head toward the Inner Sea. Word of this phenomenon would reach the Prefect of Bablios from a hundred different sources over the next few days. Such an event could be seen as a Great Sign, heralding the beginning of a new dynasty. It could have worldwide, political ramifications if not properly analyzed and controlled. The spymaster would therefore have agents swarming Tashi’s position within the week. All of this meant that Jotham couldn’t afford to wait the week in quarantine to satisfy the locals. “We’ll have to leave sooner than I anticipated. I’ll arrange for a beast of burden so that you can ride.”
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On the eastern shore, a wandering actor by the name of Nigel had recently departed from a town on less-than-auspicious terms. He was not the best actor, but he had eight good plays memorized. His voice was commanding, his hair was touched with distinguished gray at the temples, and his lean frame was worn but not unattractive. Nigel won the men over with a quick joke and a piece of news, and the women with poetry and practiced flattery. These skills were so natural that the actor rarely spent his own coin on either food or drink.
His downfall was poor improvising. Caught up in a role, he would sometimes go too far, lie too freely, and speak too much. Recently, the town constable of Vernetti questioned him about his whereabouts the evening before, when the mayor’s dogs had chased a trespasser over the south wall. Nigel should have stayed with the simple misdirection, “Ask the barkeeper and he’ll tell you I never left the inn.”
Instead, he ad-libbed a barmaid to back his story. Such things had been true in the past for him. The actor genuinely liked women, but none of the ones that could’ve shared his life ever took to traveling. The ones who remained tended to be actresses, gypsies, and serving women who wanted their ears tickled. When the sole barmaid turned out to be the barkeeper’s daughter, Nigel was forced to leave town before dawn. Never mind that he wasn’t guilty of anything they suspected. The truth might damn him more than the empty accusations.
His only defense was a fencing foil that he used for several of his plays. It had no blade to it, thus fell outside the emperor’s stricture. Though Nigel had grown quite skilled with the foil over the years, he knew that it couldn’t stand for any length of time against a knight’s sword, an arrow, or even several peasants armed with clubs. Even the best swordsman in the world could fail if he chose the wrong battle; true warfare was in the mind. Thus, he ran.
As was his practice, the fugitive actor flipped the same coin at every intersection. Whichever way it indicated; that was the way he traveled. Nigel reasoned that if he cdn’t predict where he was going himself, then his pursuers couldn’t either. His lucky coin had never failed him. However, this time, something odd happened. It came down neither heads nor tails, but perfectly on its edge.
Astounded, Nigel bent over and examined the coin from all angles. This had never happened in three cycles of roaming. It must portend something. The balance was so precarious that it eventually had to fall one way or the other. Until that happened, Nigel was afraid to move. Perhaps something was telling him to wait. It might be that, by staying here, he’d miss the search parties.
The crossroads had once been the site of an expansive way house, providing shelter and sustenance to all travelers. With the fall of the religious order that had run it, the crown had burned out the interior with torches. Later, locals pulled the soot-stained walls down and used the stones for their own building projects. The only evidence of the comfort given in years past were the treacherous, half-covered remnants of a basement and a slab of granite foundation too large to be moved by oxen, hammer, or rain.
After setting up camp and a camouflaged lean-to on this stretch of granite, he returned to find the coin still in perfect balance. Nigel thought of several ways he could use the trick to earn money from the villagers, but couldn’t duplicate it with any other coin. He’d seen stage magicians perform similar tricks with eggs on Emperor’s Day, but never months beforehand. “Uncanny.”
Chapter 14 – The Closing of Doors
The giant Guardian of the Shrine vanished, closing the door after him.
Unfortunately, after witnessing such wonders, Tashi could only think of horrors. Doors to Eternity were places where the heavens touched the earth. The symbol in the corner of the Door’s stone foundation, where an artist would sign a painting, was the flare eternal, the six-armed icon of the Spirit Temple. Although the positioning of this Door was different, this stone rectangle had the same proportions as the gate in Tamarind with similar, shimmering, inlaid designs in an inward spiral. His teacher had told him that miracles came from the other realm, but this time Tashi experienced for himself what the power from other realms could do. The air around him felt chill and unreal.
Normally, only the high priests, one wise and wizened leader at each temple, knew how to open the Doors. But given enough time and artifacts, the collection of wizards in the fortress might be able to open this one. With such magic to tap, the heretical wizards could rule the world as tyrants. Even without Jotham to guide him, Tashi knew that this possibility had to be prevented at all costs.
Sages of the old temples theorized that the Doors had been points of ascension for the Dawn People. The oldest temples had been built at these points of ascension to honor the Dawn folk and be closer to their footprints. Yet Tashi suspected that the walls had r
eally been built to contain the miracles left behind. At each site, there was always a special artifact, a key that helped control access to the Door. At the Great Library, it had been the tuning fork around his neck. Here he could see no such obvious device.
Only then did the sheriff begin to examine his surroundings. Something was different, gnawing at his overwhelmed senses. The first thing he noticed about himself was that his clothes were now pure white. Even stranger, the petals of all the lotus flowers around the shrine had changed colors and now boweer a great weight. Closer examination proved that the flowers were now made of solid sesterina. Tashi’s mind swarmed with questions. Did this alchemy always happen? Was this the reason the monks kept the flower garden? What else could be transformed with such brief contact with the other realm? Scooping the petals from several, the sheriff managed to gather a king’s ransom. The petals were still soft to the touch, meaning that the conversion had not been complete. Was this because the exposure had been so brief, or did only one part of the flower contain sesterina, like raw ore found in a mine? He stacked the costly petals and stuffed them into his belt pouch.
Next, Tashi considered taking the giant lens from the courtyard and melting the naming symbol from the gate. Though it might achieve his ends, Tashi grimaced at the other possible outcomes. The vandalism might do nothing but get him captured. It could permanently rupture the Door, leaving it wide open to passersby. Such extreme power might even sink the island or result in another Scattering. He simply didn’t know enough about the celestial mechanics involved to risk such an action.
His next instinct was to collapse the walls of the miniature shrine and see if the walls around him fell due to sympathetic magic. Yet, such destruction would endanger lives and not accomplish his goal. What about pouring the Emperor’s Sand in the cracks of the gate and fusing the edges together like the cobblestones? This would require improbable cooperation from the craftsmen. Upon examination, the cracks were thinner than a human hair, much too narrow to admit even a single grain of sand. Tashi sighed, already tired. This thinking was hard work!
The only two artifacts here were the book and the miniature model of the garden. How could an empty book help him? The new abbot inspected the ancient tome. There was nothing remarkable about the object other than the feeling that he was holding a wineskin that had already been drained. “What about the knowledge from inside?” he thought. The book didn’t seem to respond to questions like the giant had; rather, this new source tended to augment his own experience when considering a specific topic. Shifting his attention to the model, years of information about each room of the monastery filtered through his brain. When he reached the model garden, there was an empty place where the gate should have been.
With great effort, Tashi dragged the model onto the Door to cover it again. Once it was in place, a tiny shrine the size of a bracelet charm appeared in the appropriate location in the scale model. Laughing at the ease of the solution, the new abbot took the charm out of the model and placed it in his pouch with the petals. Until the replica was restored to its proper position, this Door couldn’t be activated, at least not from the mortal realm.
Walking back to the courtyard, Tashi found the area unexpectedly uninhabited. The executioners had fled, taking all of his belongings. The sheriff had to scavenge a sword from the unmoving bodyguard to have any weapon at all. He’d felt naked without a blade in the garden.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked a dwarf behind him.
“Pardon?” responded Tashi, unsure whether he should draw his sword on the small one when a good kick might prove more effective.
“You don’t have any boots on,” the artificer said in his own guttural language. Yet somehow Tashi understood.
Looking at his own feet, the sheriff felt embarrassed. “Thank you. I should go back.” The dwarf stopped him, however, handing the boots over to him. They were their normal, brown, leather color with the smells of sweat and the road still clinging to them. “Thank you again. How may I repay you?”
Licking his lips, the dwarf whispered, “What was inside the Door?”
Eyes wide, gazing at the horizon, Tashi answered, “Everything.”
The dwarf nodded at this reply, grunting, “I thought as much.”
The sound of his disappointment gave Tashi a brief pang of regret for his own actions. “I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to see it, too. But I couldn’t let the Door fall into the wrong hands.”
Dvardoc the wizard scuffed his feet on the paving stone and muttered, “I understand.”
Looking about him at the Mandala, the sheriff said, “Was all this your design?” The dwarf nodded, modestly. “It’s breathtaking. I’m sorry we had to break it, but Kragen had to be stopped. What are you planning to do now?”
“Go home,” rumbled Dvardoc with longing.
“Do you think I might prevail upon you to help me again?” Tashi asked.
“You cannot come with us, but for a fair portion of what you took from the garden, I will lead you by a secret way to the shore. The crypts below this place go farther than any of them imagined,” said the dwarf, laying a finger upon his nose.
“New money,” said Tashi, shaking the dwarf’s hand with an iron grip. “Will this get you in trouble with the others?”
The dwarf shook his head. “My deal was with the dead one alone. Besides, I left them something at the gate which should make up for my not saying a proper farewell.” As soon as the craftsman had collected what remained of his tools and ancient devices, the two disappeared into the crypts, barring the doors to the Hall of Remembrance from the inside.
Chapter 15 – The Fury
From her boat, Humi saw the unnatural storm clouds. Her eyes narrowed and she ordered the rowers back to the island. When she arrived, the docks were deserted. This was unprecedented. She immediately pulled her dagger, a small, sharp type that all divers carried. Without a word, Humi sent two rowers ahead to explore while the rest of them protected the boat’s cargo.
An agonizing interval passed where everyone clutched the nearest weapon they could find. Eventually, the two rowers returned to explain that all the soldiers and laborers from this side of the island were now lining the inner walls of Kragen’s personal zone at the barriers between the wizard territories. War banners were flying prominently from every camp. Inside, Humi was wailing in fear. Outside, she wore a mask of stone. A mere diving girl wouldn’t be able to demand an accounting from this lot, but the Lady of the Deep could not be denied.
She strode into the heart of the conflict. Humi blew through the outer layer of guards without a word. When she reached the gate between realms, she spotted Kragen’s chief steward in his trademark, gold-brocade cape. The administrative head of her lord’s household was as bland as toast, even when discussing the as blaest scheme or sums of money that would make a monarch drool. But now the steward’s cheeks flared red as he engaged in heated debate with lead soldiers and emissaries from the two neighboring ki mages. Was this a mutiny?
Rage burned in Humi’s eyes as she shouted, “What is the meaning of this?”
Her tone was so similar to the late wizard’s that the drugged bodyguard with a bandage over his throat snapped to attention. However, Morlan’s body could not endure the surge of pressure this entailed, and he immediately slumped back against the wall. Every professional soldier in the room winced at this display of loyalty.
The lord’s retainers all respected Humi, but each feared to be the first to tell her the news. One of the apprentice ki mages in the room was offended at the girl’s presumption. This was a meeting to decide the future leadership of the sept, the greatest magical and criminal force in the world. The mage glared at the lord’s most recent concubine. Stranded out here in the sticks, Kragen had gone slumming. And the trollop had made the most of his attentions. She was supposed to be the most productive diver on the Great Project and yet the girl was bone dry. Scanning Humi with his aura sight, the mage saw something that m
ade his mouth gape like a fish. This changed everything. The apprentice sank to his knees and prostrated himself before the Lady of the Deep.
When the others in the room stared, the apprentice explained, “All hail our former lord’s only son, the sole heir of the house of Kragen.”
The news should have made her weep for joy, but the words ‘former’ and ‘heir’ told her volumes. Surely, Lord Kragen had known about the child; it explained several small changes in his manner, a softening. In an instant, she saw the life she had always hoped for flash before her. Then, like lightning, it was gone, leaving a void so great that the resounding roar shook her world. This vision of happiness had been stolen from her; the love of her life was now dead, and these jackals were trying to rip his corpse to pieces. Humi wanted to cry for a dozen reasons, but couldn’t afford to show an iota of weakness before this pack. There was too much she needed to know, alliances she had to forge, and orders she had to give. Only then could she permit herself to return to their tower bedroom and collapse in grief.
The chief steward of Kragen’s palace didn’t seem surprised. The other emissaries raised their eyebrows in his direction, looking for confirmation. With a silent nod, he changed the political playing field for all of them. When one of the military men asked for written evidence, the steward went to a fire-proof chest and produced a codicil to the lord’s will. Reading aloud, the head servant announced, “Humi Kragen shall be henceforth known as my first wife, with ceremony to follow once the Court of Zandar makes good on its debts to me and returns deed to her ancestral lands, along with a suitable title. This will be my dowry to her. As for the male child she carries, I name it as my lawful heir with all the rights and duties that confers.”