Temple of the Traveler: Book 02 - Dreams of the Fallen (37 page)

“Do you even have a grandmother who taught you recipes?”

Meekly, she said, “No. My real grandmother died of the flux. I made up the rest at the orphanage. The Secret Police have been my family ever since—they educated me, fed me, and kept me healthy.”

When he saw the pain in her eyes, the anger drained out of him slowly. Closing his eyes so he wouldn’t be helpless, he asked, “Why did you seduce that sentry?”

“Legato ordered me to. I had to.”

“I find that had to believe. No one forces you.”

“Casualty estimates for this mission are 50 percent. That means, statistically, one of us won’t come back from the grotto,” she explained. “Given your inexperience, I’m betting I’ll be the survivor. I was trying to do everything I could to improve your odds.”

He snorted. “So you risked losing me to save me?”

“Yes.”

She put her forehead against him, and he melted. He wrapped an arm around her for a few minutes, not trusting himself to say anything. Only when he heard the smith’s heavy tread approaching did he say, “Get changed. I’ll stall the others while you prepare. You’ve got to give the team a briefing.”

When Pinetto and his friend arrived at Prince Legato’s fireside council meeting, Kasha was bragging to the others. “Prince, you would have been proud of the ambassador. Well,
you
would have been aroused and cheering. Hell, I think all of us were, secretly. She left the guy half-naked and smeared in almond butter. He won’t say a word about the missing hour. He was thrown off his last assignment at the grotto for drinking on duty, so no one will think twice about the memory gap.”

Stonily, Pinetto recited the mission report, finishing with, “There’s no sacred wine left. This was her last intelligence run.”

“I don’t know,” began Legato. “She’s pretty handy at . . .”

The smith reiterated for his friend, “Her
last
intelligence run.”

The prince grumbled, but reluctantly agreed.

Pinetto proceeded to map out a plan to burn down the spruce forest after they had transported the throne safely to Kiateros. The prince nodded. “Sneaky and vicious. I like it. I’ll send a copy of the plan to central command for the resistance movement, in case we don’t make it. The same messenger will carry an order to the Forge to send as many men as possible to meet us at the border. If we can make it there, they can escort us safely to the capital. Even without me, they can hide the pieces of the throne for a hundred years if necessary.”

The men were cheering as if the feat had already been accomplished.

Sajika strode up in her stiff-necked collar, but she was more subdued than normal. “You may want to hear my side of the story before you celebrate too much.”

Pinetto brought her a chair, and the ambassador sat opposite Legato in the circle. She took a deep breath as the murmuring subsided to a dull roar. “As I’m sure you heard, the forester was a fountain of information. He was a drunk but had good reason.” She paused as silence fell around the fire. “In short, they have something ugly trapped there in the mine—something ancient, magical, and quite mad.”

Someone dropped a tin cup into the fire, and the clink and rattle was the only sound until Sajika continued. “Once upon a time, at the juncture of three cliffs, they built a town. It wasn’t much of a town, but it was highly defensible, a good military outpost. The natural caves at the base of the cliff were enhanced by miners for food storage. One hot summer, some local kids explored the caves to find a comfortable, private place to make out. No one cared until the mayor’s daughter disappeared.”

Pausing in her story, she grabbed the smith’s flask and helped herself to the liquid courage. “They found a copr bedroll in a shaft far in the back. It took a thousand yards of rope to reach the first ledge. Even that wasn’t the bottom. But the rescue team saw two things from their perch—the daughter’s body and sparkling in the depths.

“They’d discovered a huge cave full of gems—clusters of huge, six-sided rods in every color imaginable. They were rich. The town flooded with new workers, eager to profit. As they dug deeper, they found bigger gems every year, some as long as your arm. The last cave was called the Crystal Grotto. It had active pools where new crystals were being formed. But the grotto was walled off from the rest of the mine by a fence of perfectly upright rods and a pool of steaming acid.

“During the Scattering, a few decades ago, there was an earthquake. A cave-in at the mine killed five, and several of the local springs turned acidic. Trees died. Animals shied away. Then people started disappearing. They’d always find the body a week later at the mouth of the grotto—without the head.”

The smith took his flask back and had a swallow of his own.

“People began to complain about a large creature roaming the woods. Miners fled with their families, hoping to avoid the doom. The king was petitioned. Nothing helped. The hunting only stopped after fourteen victims were killed.”

She looked at every man who had volunteered for the mission. “The king walled the mine off and struck it from the map. He posted signs that declared Crystal Springs a plague town. That’s what the masses believed: a sickness that caused hallucinations and violence, like rabies. Even so, the beast wakes every seven years near Emperor’s Day. They appease it by running a herd of cattle off the cliff top. It goes back to sleep, sated by the suffering and life-force offered.”

“How do they know it’s still there?” asked the prince, his voice almost squeaking.

“Even from the cattle, it saves the heads as souvenirs,” she explained. “When the Pretender put the Obsidian Throne into the mine, the men carrying it didn’t return. Imperial wizards warded the opening with their strongest spells and recharged the defenses every day. Twenty-one guards man the outpost. They work twelve-hour shifts, ten men at night and five during the day. It’s one of the most grueling posts in the northern empire. Suicide and alcoholism run high. If a man stays here more than three years, he sometimes starts to hear voices coming from the caves.”

“Any good news?” asked Legato feebly.

“They shipped two-thirds of the men south to try to intercept Queen Lavender before she reached Semenea, the capital. This is the best chance at the throne we’re going to have in decades.”

Legato seized this information to rally his men. “You heard the ambassador. This is the safest it’s ever going to get. She even volunteered to go with us.” She nodded when the men looked to her. “So grab your gear. We leave at dawn. The rest of the caravan will catch up with us. We need to strike while the metal’s hot. The horned one has prepared the way for us!”

When the small group of trusted advisors was all that remained of the twenty-five, the smith added, “The beast sounds like one of the Dawn race. It’s probably wild with hunger. The other gods probably put the beast in this pit because they couldn’t kill it, and it was crazy enough to scare them.”

The astronomer refused to give up. “But we have the Defender of the Realm, carried by the last in the line of the messengers, sent on a mission from Kiateros himself.”

The smith laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “In the last letter I wrote to Anna, I released her from our vow and signed everything I had over to her. I’ve been a walking dead man since Innisport.”

“We can do this!” said Pinetto. The others left silently. But he couldn’t face sleeping the same tent as Sajika just yet. He stared at the flames for a long time.

Instead of going to bed, Pinetto grabbed Kasha and four other members for a night strike. “The prince says we need a morale booster. We’re going to sweep the enemy garrison and have it ready by the time the others arrive. A gold bonus for each kill.”

“New money,” said the knifeman.

For their final member, the astronomer chose an extremely ugly little Kiateran that the others called “Sin.” He’d be good for crawling through small gaps into the enemy sleeping quarters.

****

With Pinetto’s wolf spirit, night sight, and the greedy killers, the men of the garrison didn’t stand a chance. They only lost one of the archers, and that because he tried to stand in front of a man running away. “Use their own swords to decapitate them. Put the heads in this bag,” he ordered. “When their relief shows up, the Pretender’s troops will assume the beast got them.”

When the adrenaline faded, the astronomer stared at the sunrise, hugging his knees; his stomach ached like something was trying to claw its way out.

Sin plunked down next to him. “You’re not the usual Imperial. You’re helping my people.”

“You’re not the usual Kiateran,” Pinetto replied. “My best friend is the Defender. My girlfriend is the ambassador to your kingdom. One of the Pretender’s men did things to her I don’t want to think about. I needed to punish someone to feel better.”

“
Do
you feel better?”

“No. Does the killing get any easier?”

“It’s not supposed to. If it ever becomes just another job, or the begging of the victims merely irritates you, then you’re the monster.”

“What else do you know about monsters?” Pinetto asked casually.

“This one is female. Her name is Eutheron,” said the twisted, little man. “Her only weakness is during the moment of feeding. When she gets to seven, she slows down briefly. It takes a lot of energy to project a physical body into this realm, but it’s like a shadow puppet to her. If you disrupt her form, she’ll just gather another. Distract, redirect, or confine her. In a body, she’s subject to physical limitations.”

He suspected this was really the same dwarf who’d reforged his friend’s sword—Kiateros. However, Pinetto concentrated on getting as much information as he could while it was flowing. “How?”

The dwarf shrugged. “She’s quite vain. But be careful; she hates the children of Osos more than I do. You can fool her if you think about one thing while doing another. Your friend the sword-bearer will also confuse her; the smell of my blood will mask some of the other traces.” He had other, seemingly random advice. However, Pinetto didn’t dare move, didn’t risk speaking. He felt a tad unhinged by what awaited them.

At last, the fallen god asked him, “What can I offer you for your service?”

The idea rose in his mind like a bubble from the bottom of a sauce pan. When it reached the surface, the size and heat surprised him. “I want to have a child with Sajika. I’m Imperial and she’s from Bablios.”

The dwarf grunted. “Not my area of expertise. Your best chance is on the border of the three kingdoms. On one side, there’s a plum orchard; on the other there are apricots. In between is a new fruit, partaking of both natures. Give your woman this fruit and she might bear you yours.”

“I’ll do my best to get your throne.”

The dwarf leaned over and whispered one last instruction in his ear. “Tell no one else what we discussed tonight.”

Pinetto was still sitting there like a statue when the twenty other volunteer spelunkers arrived. He couldn’t tell them about the dwarf or the prediction that seven more would need to die before they had a prayer.

Sajika didn’t have her brown hair up in its typical knot; rather, it’d been hurriedly bundled, with shorter hairs poking out. Over the previous weeks, she had grown accus
tomed to Pinetto fixing it. When she found out he had gone ahead, the ambassador frog-marched men out of the mess tent to arrive in time to save him.

While they argued, Pinetto opened her pack and pulled out her small, expensive, silver-backed mirror. He made faces into it and smiled. When Sajika tried to grab it from him, he stood up and held it out of her grasp. “Don’t make me hurt you,” she threatened.

The smith placed a firm hand on her shoulder. “Shh.” She almost stomped his instep, but the burly man’s look of concentration and compassion stilled her. “Pinetto, why did you take the mirror?”