Temple of the Traveler: Empress of Dreams

by Scott Rhine

  Komiko had never been prouder of her emperor. “Come, sire, I’ll clean you in our bedroom.”

  ****

  Majah had been first off the island, leading a small contingent of girls to the rocks. As soon as she reached safety, she saw why. Ember was single-handedly protecting the Dancers and Pagaose from repeated magic assaults. She regretted ever saying a harsh word about the princess. Next time they met, she vowed to kneel to the girl. When the awful moment occurred and news of Ember’s immolation filtered back to her, she knew she had to act. Anyone associated with the villainy would be eliminated. Panicked, Majah located her Uncle Ashford in the crowd. “Get me to the new lighthouse immediately!”

  Lord Ashford’s face brightened. “With his favorite whore eliminated, the emperor has finally conceded to our terms?”

  If her father didn’t surrender soon, there would be no deals. “Yes,” the girl lied.

  The military leader signaled for one of the rescue yachts outside the harbor to attend him. “Good girl. Did you visit him in the bathhouse as I suggested?”

  “No, Lady Corrie gave orders to the guards to prevent me.”

  “We’ll have to fix that meddling vixen.”

  Majah shook her head. “It’s better this way. Because I’m not a pure-blood, he must wait till the Dance.”

  They raced to the Scar and the new lighthouse there. Majah ran up the steps and removed her dress sandals. Climbing the spire as she had their garden trees as a child, she tied her burgundy cloak to the lightning rod at the top. The winds had picked up, and two soldiers had to hold her legs, lest she plummet to her death. From this height, she could see that one of the Pretender’s ships had landed. With effort, she made out the name—the Dominion. That was her father’s ship!

  Heedless of her bare feet or the threat of invasion, she ran to meet the invaders, with Lord Ashford and his men trailing. She passed Ashford on the stairs, and he muttered, “This whole dynasty runs too much for my taste.”

  The invaders had only seized two signal posts and a constable’s shack when word reached them. Lord Vinspar, the ship’s commander, gathered them on the beach. “The fire mages sent to murder Pagaose against my counsel have killed women and children instead, including the pregnant Princess Ember, whom Sandarac swore to take as his own wife after Pagaose’s death. Sandarac has no honor and does not deserve our fealty. My own daughter says that the true emperor saved her from the carnage and killed the fire mages with his bare hands. My brother assures me that even now, the navies of Archanos are on their way to smash our armada. Pagaose offers us amnesty, land, and brides. Only Intaglios stands against Center, and they have no honor. Who then shall we serve?”

  “Long live Emperor Pagaose,” chanted the men Vinspar had planted in the crowd.

  Satisfied, Vinspar temporarily handed his Honor over to his older brother and followed him to the military academy. Ashford told him, “Send your ship, the Dominion, to the Great Library in Bablios before the Pretender realizes you’ve surrendered. Otherwise, he’ll just use the warship to bring in more young men. We’ll erect tents for your men here and make the cadets watch over you. However, come the Dance, your daughter is the only real contender.”

  Vinspar placed a proud arm around Majah. “Just be sure to include some brandy in the rations so we can toast her. I’ve missed home.”

  Ashford bit his lip, reluctant to play interrogator. “To make your defection convincing, we’ll need information about the other ships and all the temples of Intaglios.”

  Vinspar grunted. “Gladly. I’ve already slapped irons on my three. If I know Sandarac, he’ll pull every other mage he has into the conflict now. Humi is sending something called a Roseate Lens. I don’t know what it is, but he plans to burn down most of Center with it.”

  Majah was horrified. “What will he rule, then?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” her father said sarcastically. “The College is outmoded and obsolete. Sandarac’s regime will plow under the old and rebuild with his model. Being one of the old, I objected.”

  ****

  On paper, Pagaose welcomed the moral Imperial troops back into the fold, but he did not attend the ceremonies. Through Anna, he proclaimed a national day of mourning for Ember and Unity. They left her remains on the island and stacked aromatic woods and incense around her.

  Komiko posted the new bounty on fire-mage staffs. The witch tried to comfort Pagaose in the bedroom, but he wouldn’t consider sex. “In her honor, I will remain celibate till the Dance.”

  “That’s weeks away,” Komiko objected.

  He stared at her. “I abstained for almost forty years in my previous lives, woman. I can honor Ember for that long.”

  Pagaose stared at the bed. “Get rid of it. I never want to see this furniture again.”

  “How, sire?”

  “Add it to her pyre. We’ll light it at sundown.”

  Komiko bowed and then hastened to tell Corrie what had happened.

  It would be a bleak month for everyone.

  After the funeral ceremony, everyone left. Pagaose, Anna, and Komiko were the last ones present. When Komiko collapsed from grief, he had Anna accompany her back to the palace. At midnight, the fires went down enough for him to draw closer. The dragon landed behind him. “I felt the black in you from a mile away. I wanted you to know that I had no hand in this foul deed.”

  “I know. Truce for an hour?”

  “Certainly, but why? I can’t drain this grief from you; it would give me indigestion if I tried.” Serog rested her chin beside him, watching the fire with him.

  “I wouldn’t ask. To forget my child would be to deny she ever existed. Besides, you’ve borne enough sorrow of your own, woman.”

  She almost challenged his label, but Serog recalled that she’d left human form because of her own pain. When he put his arm around her neck, it felt natural, not threatening in the least.

  “Now that I’m crowned, I wish they’d free Abbot Small Voice. I need someone wise to talk to.”

  Serog sighed and then whispered, “Navarra starved him for a month, but your friend refused to sign anything for Sandarac. When they tortured his monks, the abbot first demanded expensive ink used for religious decrees and then the quill of a dove. While they searched for the quill, he drank the ink. It was poisonous. I had to deliver this message to Humi myself because no human messenger dared.”

  It was considerably more than an hour later when he asked, “How do you survive the loss of so many innocent loved ones?”

  “Eat the guilty,” she answered quickly.

  “It doesn’t help.”

  “No,” she admitted.

  Several minutes later, he said, “My friends don’t understand what needs to be done. They try, but they’re all so fragile and limited.”

  “I warned you.”

  “You did.” He sighed, burying his face in her scales. The smell was comforting, almost medicinal. After a long silence, Pagose said, “I never even got to see or hold my daughter, Serog. It’s not fair.”

  “No,” the dragoness repeated.

  When she had to leave to complete her rounds, she breathed on the emperor and said, “Sleep.”

  A mortal without the protection of his famous magic sword, he slumbered. In that moment, the goddess of vengeance realized two things: she finally held the embodiment of the hated Osos in her claws, and she couldn’t bring herself to kill him in his present state.

  “It would be too merciful,” Serog said, not believing the excuse even as she uttered it. She flew off into the darkness, searching for criminals to punish.

  Chapter 45 – Two Months in a Blur

  “Those lizards were huge,” Murali the gamekeeper said. “Where’s that onion potion?”

  “We used the last of that a month ago and all the salve last week,” Pinetto noted, taking the last bundle of their clean bandages from storage. The crew of Nothing Sacred resembled the ship’s hold—ragged and hollow. They collected new alchemy components in a ha
phazard manner to pay for the trip. “Gods, has it been six weeks already?”

  Tashi pulled off Murali’s boots while Hindaloo split the pants leg with a sharp dagger. They used the captain’s cabin for the operation so the other men wouldn’t hear the screams.

  “Time flies when you’re running for your life. What are those creatures on the beach?” asked the gamekeeper.

  Pinetto shrugged, “They look like little dragons without the wings and they move fast.”

  Tashi scratched his beard. He’d stopped shaving when Sarajah mentioned how distinguished Baba Nesu’s beard had looked. Unfortunately, Tashi’s had bare patches and itched like mad. “I think I saw ghosts like them guarding the Kragen Palace. They attack in packs, knock a man down, and kill in short order.”

  Murali took a swig from his flask and looked away while the smuggler stitched him up with a curved, bone needle. “We only survived because we landed at night and explored when it was still relatively cool out. Lizards like it warm to hunt.”

  “I don’t think we want any of those in the royal zoo,” Pinetto said.

  Murali snorted. “Better than those butterflies.”

  Pinetto nodded. “Big, pale, and cute till they suck the blood out of a man.”

  “Like my first wife,” the gamekeeper joked.

  “The tailor ran slower than you did; now I’m the best we have at stitching,” said the plague-lander, wiping his hands clean of the blood. “This is going to scar you permanently.”

  “Just like my second . . . ouch!” The flesh around the puncture wound on his calf was an evil red, and he winced when Pinetto wrapped it.

  “One butterfly is harmless. The swarm of two hundred covering that man was the problem,” Tashi said to keep the gamekeeper alert.

  Murali was sweating. “I think they could smell fear.”

  “I hate bugs,” said Pinetto. “Every island is a new hell, and I grew up around scorpions.”

  The gamekeeper whispered, “We didn’t know the bee stings on the Island of Lotus Honey could be fatal.”

  Pinetto said, “Only to Imperials. Everyone else just falls asleep. Everything in this cursed place hates the children of Osos.”

  The smuggler shrugged. “Your uncle was old. Old people sometimes have bad reactions to bites that younger, stronger men don’t.”

  “After all the bloody battles he’s fought in, he died for picking a flower for Sarajah’s hair!” Pinetto growled.

  Tashi looked away. The old man had picked the bouquet as a favor for him. “The omens for our quest looked bright when we found the golden bear cub in the first week.”

  Pinetto could tell his friend was trying to change the subject. “No matter. We only have one island left, the farthest one. This one has to be Ashter Island.”

  “I think we’re missing something. No one on the last island had heard of the island of invisible mages,” complained Hindaloo.

  “No one on the last island ever heard of soap,” Pinetto countered.

  “Lavender-scented soap and plum perfume,” Tashi said wistfully.

  “Down, boy,” Pinetto said with a laugh.

  Hindaloo shook his head. “Every man on this ship is thinking the same thoughts. She takes long baths.”

  “And wears less than she ought,” whispered Murali.

  Tashi said, “The mask mages made the outfit for her, and it’s cooler than the Crooked Island dress.”

  “Not to mention how it accents the valleys of her hips,” said Hindaloo. Tashi glared at the plague-runner. “All we found out from the mask mages was that there are ten demons in these parts from before the fall of Archanos.”

  “The Chorus,” said Pinetto. “They work together in harmony to feed magical power to Archanos. That’s important because the Chorus is probably guarding his wife and weapons cache.”

  “A shape-shifting wife. Ho! Imagine what she could do to a man,” said Hindaloo.

  Pinetto grabbed the plague-runner by the shoulder and pulled up. “I’m going up on deck to charge my ring. You need to go with me.”

  Tashi’s hand had ripped a chunk of wood out of one of the beams, and he was huffing like a bull about to charge.

  No fool, Hindaloo followed the wizard without a word.

  The gamekeeper distracted Tashi by asking, “How heavy was that fish you caught? It fed the whole crew for days.”

  Tashi began retelling his deep-sea fish tale. After ten bits, Murali’s eyelids dipped. Tashi shook him awake again. “Tell me about the tigers.”

  “The tigers, biggest I ever saw! Not afraid of people. Walked right up to it and scratched its chin. Just like Kitten.” The gamekeeper shut his eyes. “Just like my little Kitten.”

  ****

  Tashi knocked on the door to the captain’s cabin. Sarajah said, “Enter.”

  After he closed the door behind him, she stepped out from behind the desk, and his heart fluttered. “You’re magnificent.”

  She smiled. “You say that to all the women on this ship.”

  He swayed with the swell of the ocean and whispered, “I need you.”

  Sarajah shook her head. “We agreed, not during the voyage. It would kill morale. I have to be seen as an officer.”

  He looked at her exposed thigh and said, “They all like the uniform. I’ve even caught Pinetto staring.”

  “Oh. That’s bad. I thought it made them easier to . . .”

  “Control, manipulate?”

  “Lower your voice. We are not having this discussion now.”

  Tashi grabbed the back of her neck by surprise and pulled her into a kiss. She kneed him in the groin in response. He backed against the door. Her knee came away bloody. When she noticed, she apologized. “I didn’t mean to.”

  Tashi crouched over, gritting his teeth. “Not you. Curse.”

  She got a bowl of water and cleaned him as he swore in shame. When he slowed, she asked, “Why did you do that?”

  “Murali is dying without the potion. We’re being whittled away by a thousand little cuts. If you die on this island, I wanted to kiss you one last time. I need that.”

  “All you had to do was say that,” Sarajah whispered. She kissed him tenderly and passionately until he pushed her back.

  “Enough. Bleeding again.”

  “We’ll find a way past this,” she insisted.

  “Really? What’s my card?”

  “Those are subject to interpretation.”

  “You won’t show me. Maybe I want a choice this time. How am I going to die?”

  She glided to her shelves and removed a box. “Once you read it, a part of you agrees with the fate and you make it true. It’s best if you don’t know.”

  He held out his hand. When he opened the box of drawings, his was on top. He was chained by a pit with the caption ‘the Sacrifice.’ Angry, he said, “I guess that’s why you don’t want to get too invested.”

  She slapped him so hard his ears rang. Tears were pouring down her cheeks. “Don’t you dare doubt my commitment. I’d quit today if I thought it would save you. I’d live with you on any of these godforsaken islands for the rest of my life, but you wouldn’t be happy. I spent half my time with the masked mages asking if they could lift your curse, but nobody will cross my mother—nobody but you.”

  “I couldn’t kill her, or you’d never be able to look at me again. Although, I can’t free her and keep my honor.”

  “Isn’t that the irony? Your stupid honor is one of the things I admire most about you, and it’s the one thing that will prevent us from ever being joined. And the lack of physical contact is the one thing that makes you miserable.”

  Tashi stared at the floor. “Sometimes, I just want you to touch me.”

  She whispered, “If my sister Ashterah can heal you, I’d be willing to give up the quest and leave the emperor to solve his own problems.”

  “I couldn’t,” said Tashi in a voice barely audible about the waves.

  “I know. That’s what the chain is in the picture. You put
it there yourself.”

  He looked closer at the drawing, and, indeed, his hand was fastening the manacle. He rose to his feet. “I need to go surfing, clear my head. There’s a little island just before the Invisible Mages. We’ll go by it tomorrow morning. It should be perfect weather.”

  Sarajah shook her head. “We don’t have time or provisions.”

  He looked in her eyes, those beautiful, gray-green eyes. “It’s customary to give a condemned man his last wish.”

  Her tears made her turn away again. On his way out, he added, “I’ll say good-bye to Pinetto then. He’s still getting over Baran; this could break him if I don’t prepare him.”

  The click of the door closing couldn’t be heard over her sobbing.

  Chapter 46 – Greenland

  The next morning, he and Pinetto rode their paddleboards to shore as Nothing Sacred anchored a short distance away. Riding ocean waves was harder, but with practice, even more exhilarating. Then, they paddled back out and repeated the ride until they were exhausted. Wearing nothing but loincloths, the two friends lay on their backs on the unsullied beach, drying in the sun.

  Eventually, Tashi said, “Sometimes people leave us when we’re not ready.”

  “Stop,” Pinetto said holding up a hand.

  “I have to get this out. Sarajah—“

  “The birds have gone silent,” Pinetto said.

  Tashi rolled to his feet and groped for the sword on his side that wasn’t there.

  Twelve men with glassy javelins and sand-colored clothing surrounded them. They weren’t ethnic islanders; rather, these warriors were taller and green-eyed—the same eye color as Sarajah’s. They all appeared to be half-breed Imperial/plague-landers in prime physical condition.

  The girl had misread the journal entry in several ways. “Ahh . . . Mages who can see invisible.” Pinetto raised his hands in surrender. “Archanos needs them for the war; don’t hurt them.”

  “Do not defile the great one’s name, infidel.” The lead warrior slashed at Pinetto’s face with the side of his javelin.

  Tashi caught the weapon and locked eyes with the warrior. “Either of us could kill you all. He stays my hand out of reverence.”