The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2) (6 page)

Sevana shifted slightly to avoid having her whole backend
become numb. Sitting cross-legged here on the cobblestones probably didn’t
count as the brightest of ideas. But she didn’t feel like moving yet—despite
her tingling legs. She just kept thinking that if she sat here staring long
enough, a brilliant solution would just come to her and she wouldn’t have to do
this the hard way.

Her gut said otherwise.

Decker came to her side and dropped down onto his haunches
without saying a word. For several moments they stared at the fountain in
companionable silence, neither of them looking at the other. “You’re stuck,
aren’t you?”

“Not exactly,” she grumbled. “I can think of three possible
solutions.”

“But?” he encouraged.

“
But
…none of the solutions can be done alone.” She
heaved out a resigned sigh. Who was she trying to fool? “Stone the crows, I
might as well face it. I’m going to have to split the commission.”

“It’s going to take two people?”

She propped her chin into both hands, balancing her elbows
on her knees so that she hunched over. “I don’t have enough power. Even
borrowing the power of other elements, the castor of an incantation has to add
their power into the mix as well to actually
activate
a spell. I cannot
come up with anything that will defeat a sixteen level spell, not on my own.
Even with another person it’s going to be a mite tricky.”

“How so?” Decker’s brows were furrowed in a worried frown.

“Blending magic with someone else takes more than power. It
takes complete trust in the other person’s skills, their instincts, and a
certain amount of experience in working with them.”

Decker studied her profile for a moment before offering,
“You sound as if you already have someone in mind.”

“I do. Let’s hope he’s available.” Otherwise she’d call in
Master, who was harder to deal with. Shifting to one hip, she dug around in her
pouch until she found her miniature Caller.  Setting it on the ground in front
of her, she enunciated clearly, “Sarsen.”

Several seconds ticked by before the Caller lifted its head
and assumed Sarsen’s rather lanky features. “
Sev! Now this is a surprise.
You hardly ever contact me.
”

“Got a job I could use an assist on. You free?”

“The last time you called me in for ‘help’ I was up to my
eyebrows in espionage, politics and frozen mobs.”

“Is that a complaint I hear?” she demanded wryly.

“Sweet mercy, no! Most fun I’ve had in ages. So what
category does this job fall into? Fun, dangerous, or dangerously fun?”

“Yes,” she told him seriously.

“Excellent. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Where are
you, anyway?”

“Chastain Village.”

“Where?”
he asked in bewilderment.

“Windamere-Kindin border,” she elaborated with forced
patience. “A little west of Vanorman.”

“Ahh. I know Vanorman. Alright, I should be able to find
you quickly enough. It’ll take me three days to get there, though. I’m at
Master’s right now.”

Oh? “In that case, if he has any dragon’s breath or a wind
element of its same power level, bring it with you.” She had a hunch she would
need it.

“You want me to filch from Master’s stores?”
the
twenty-nine year old objected in true horror, making a sign with his hands that
warded off evil.
“Don’t you remember what happened to us the last time we
did that?”

She did. Vividly. With a grim smile she assured him, “Trust
me, when he learns what we’re up against, he won’t mind.”

Sarsen paused, his miniature looking up at her in suspicion.
“Sev…
just how bad is it?
”

“If this goes wrong, it’ll rearrange the landscape of
eastern Windamere.”

His hand flew in a quick gesture, making a silent prayer of
safety.
“I’ll raid his storerooms tonight before leaving. Just call Master
and explain why. I trust you’ll fill me in completely when I get there?”

“You’re not going to be of much help otherwise. And I’m
half-hoping that you’ll think of a solution that I didn’t.”

“Me? Out-think the Artifactor prodigy?”

“Hey, miracles happen!”

“Now I know you’re desperate. Call Master. I’ll pack and
get there in two days.”

The Caller went still and she picked it up and plopped it
back into her pocket. She wanted to get off this cold, hard stone and in a more
padded chair before calling Master. He’d keep her talking for at least an hour
on the details, knowing him. Rising, she stretched both arms over her chest
before bending and retrieving her ceramic tankard from the ground. “I’m going
to bed. After all, I’ll have to get up early and go to someone’s rescue. If the
gods are kind, or at least listening, it won’t be another squawking child
either.”

Decker grimaced in sympathy. “From your lips to the gods’
ears. In that case, good night, Artifactor.”

Master foiled her plan to get to bed early by keeping her
awake for three hours talking about the problem. He was worried, justifiably
so, and traded information and ideas with her freely on possible solutions. In
the end, he gave Sarsen free reign over his storerooms and let them have
whatever they thought they would need. She would think him generous if he
hadn’t looked so obviously shaken by her descriptions.

Of course, Decker woke her up early that morning to play
fetch. The dreamer had gone to the island of Ence, of all places (why would anyone
dream of that gods-forsaken place?). Ence sat on the very eastern edge of
Windamere. In fact, any further, and you fell right into the ocean. It took
most of the day to fetch the old woman back, and while grateful for the quick
rescue, the matron did
not
appreciate the method. Sevana’s mini-skimmer
scared the living daylight right out of her and she clung and prayed the entire
way home.

By the time they touched down in the main square, two hours
or so of daylight were left, and not enough of the day for her to really dig
into the problem and do any real work. The skimmer made soft scraping sounds as
its full weight came to rest on the cobblestones and the two women became
almost swamped with people. Mostly the old woman’s family, judging by the hugs,
tears, and overlapping inquiries of “are you alright?!”

Sevana quickly unbuckled and wiggled her way through the
press of bodies until she could get free. Once there, she took in a deep breath
and looked around for Decker. The next time that he sent her harrowing off on a
mission to rescue someone, he needed to
warn her
they were afraid of
heights!

She spotted him quickly, coming toward her from the Hall’s
main steps. Following him on either side were two men she didn’t recognize with
Gid trailing along behind the group. One of them middle-aged, scrawny looking,
with a receding hairline and the thickest glasses she had ever seen on a human
being. He looked well-dressed, however, and neat as a pin. More interesting, he
had a magic pouch resting on his belt. Magician of some sort?

The other man stood a head taller than either of the men he
walked with—quite the feat as Decker couldn’t be considered ‘short’ by anyone’s
standards—but had a very massive and solid build , as if he were a walking
barrel. His skin had tanned so dark as to almost make him look Sa Kaoan, but
his bright blond hair and blue eyes marked him as Windameran through and through.
He also dressed impeccably well and had not one, but two magic pouches riding
on his left hip.

Sevana perked up hopefully. The promised magicians, perhaps?

“Sevana,” Decker greeted. “Good work.”

“You shall pay for not warning me she’s afraid of heights,”
she informed him darkly.

He froze and glanced at the old woman, still buried in
relatives, before asking slowly, “What if I didn’t know?”

“You’ll still pay,” she growled, hours of pent-up
frustration leaking out.

Decker slumped, muttering, “I reckoned as much,” before
heaving a great sigh. “What if I buy you dinner?”

After skipping lunch and having a very measly breakfast,
food sounded like a sublime plan. “I will magnanimously forgive you if you do
so. For now, who are your tagalongs?”

Decker turned and gestured to Glasses with an open palm.
“This is Danel Goffin, Wizard and—” Decker turned to indicate the man standing
on the other side “—Piotr Roland, Wizard. Gentlemen, Artifactor Sevana Warren.”

Goffin took a step forward and offered her a hand, which she
reciprocated, and found his grip to be pleasantly firm without being
overpowering. “Artifactor Warren, it’s a pleasure. Prince Bellomi came to me
personally the day you left and asked that I come here immediately.”

“I’m glad you did,” she answered truthfully. Flying off to
the rescue had proven to be a major pain. Sevana would willingly hand that
chore over to someone else. She released her grip and offered a hand to Roland.
“Wizard Roland.”

“Artifactor Warren,” he greeted in a surprisingly high voice,
grip somewhat flimsy. “Pleasure. Hunter Decker just showed us your tracking
board and the charms you put on everyone. It’s a wonderfully simplistic system.
Thank you for setting it up and making our jobs easier.”

“I was trying to make
my
life easier,” she responded
dryly. “After all, I had no idea how long it would take for anyone to show up
and take over. But I assume that I don’t need to explain the system to either
of you?” That had better be the case, otherwise they weren’t magicians of a
high enough caliber to be trusted with any job, much less one of this
magnitude. But both men just gave her a smile and nod of confirmation, not at
all worried. Satisfied, she waved a hand toward her temporary workroom. “Then
feel free to move it to wherever you need it to be. I won’t miss it.”

“We certainly will,” Roland assured her. “However, perhaps
you can explain just what kind of magic we’re up against? Pierpoint gave us
some information, but he didn’t know much, and I think we need to know what’s
causing this.”

They certainly did. “Over dinner,” she said firmly. “I’m
famished.”

~ ~ ~

With two other magicians at the village’s beck and call,
Sevana didn’t have a rude pre-dawn awakening and so slept until the sun had
properly risen. It made for a much better rising and she didn’t feel homicidal
upon opening her eyes, just grumpy. Shuffling around, she managed to get
dressed, put her hair up into a very messy bun, and find breakfast without
knocking anything over or breaking anything. But with a happy belly and some of
that amazing hot cider in hand, she felt ready to get to work.

She expected Sarsen to come in at some point tonight or
early tomorrow, and when he came, he would have a lot of questions. Right now,
she only had answers to some of them. So she took some of her most sensitive
tools, her notebook, and a cushion (she did not intend to sit on that hard
cobblestone all day) and went to the fountain to work.

The sun slowly climbed high in the sky, moving the shadows
around the courtyard and warming her up pleasantly as the sunlight touched her.
Sevana blocked out all the distractions—the smells of food being prepared, the
sounds of people walking around and talking to each other, the clatter of carts
and horses crossing the area, all of it. With single-minded determination, she
focused on the task in front of her.

Without warning, a hand landed on her shoulder and she
dropped the wand she held, upset the notebook open in her lap, and
instinctively reached for the sword at her side before she recognized the man
leaning over her. “Decker! For the love of all mercy,
don’t do that!”

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said patiently, “But I
called your name three times and you didn’t even twitch.”

She put a hand to her thumping heart to make sure it would
not beat its way out of her chest. “You nearly gave me heart failure.”

“It’s well past the lunch hour.” He sank onto his haunches
in front of her, a half-smile on his face. “I was afraid with the way you were
focused, you’d work right through it. And Master Krause and I are rather hoping
you’d tell us what you found.”

Now that he mentioned it.… She peered up at the sky with
squinting eyes and discovered the sun had already headed for the western
horizon. It had to be two in the afternoon at least. Had she really been
sitting here for seven hours? In spite of the thick cushion under her, her
whole backend felt numb. Yes, past time to move. With a groan, she put a knee
under her and rolled upwards. Decker offered her a hand, but she chose instead
to put a hand on his arm and use him as a lever to push her way up. Wincing at
the stiffness, she said aloud, “Mental note: bring a proper chair tomorrow.”

“Did you discover anything?” he asked her.

“Not much, which in and of itself tells me a great deal.”

Decker blinked at her, eyebrows furrowing in confusion as if
he didn’t quite know how to take that comment.

“Where’s Krause?” she asked him, not wanting to repeat the
inevitable explanation.

“Oh, he’s there.” Decker pointed toward the one inn on this
side of the village that served lunch. The ombudsman stood on the porch,
obviously waiting for them.

“Good.” Picking up everything, she shoved it all back into
her bag, except the cushion. That she tucked under her arm before walking
slowly toward Krause. Her legs, back and buttocks tingled painfully as the
blood started flowing again. Oww. Yes, she’d definitely bring a chair tomorrow.

No one said anything as she took a step up into the inn and
crossed into the dimmer and cooler room. After baking under a warm sun most of
the day, the environment felt pleasant to her overheated body and she
unconsciously smiled. The tavern here had a solid plank floor, no sawdust, and
highly polished round tables scattered everywhere. The bar that stretched the
length of the room held no customers, and its polished surface shone from being
recently cleaned. For that matter, the whole room looked as if it hadn’t seen a
single patron the entire day, but instead stood ready for tonight.

Krause took a table near the bar with all the ease and familiarity
of a regular patron (which he might very well be for all she knew) and waved
them to join him. Sevana deposited everything in her hands onto the surface of
the nearest table before she eased into the chair at his left, not at all sure
how her backend would feel about sitting on something solid again, but the
angle of it felt fine. She sank back against the wood and relaxed.

A serving girl that could have been Krause’s daughter with
those looks came out and took their order of “anything hot and easy to dish up”
and disappeared back into the kitchen. Krause turned to Sevana with an eager
smile and asked, “What have you discovered?”

“Not much,” she admitted easily.

“But she said that tells her something,” Decker added, still
bemused on this point. “Care to explain that?”

Master had trained her from an early age that part of being
an Artifactor was explaining things to your clients. After all, they paid your
wage, so you owed them explanations on the job you did. She’d gotten better at
doing so over the years, but had never changed her opinion that it was
troublesome. With a resigned sigh, she started from the beginning.

“I explained to you earlier that an artifact buried in the
fountain was the cause of all of this.” Both men nodded impatiently. “I also
explained that the power level of it is such that I alone can’t break it, which
is why I called a colleague in, yes? Good, we’re on the same page. Today, I
wanted to get more information on the origin of the artifact and come up with a
few plans of attack on how to defeat it. This is what I discovered.

“First, the age of the artifact and the stone around it
dates it at the eighth century, about the time that Windamere was re-taken by Gadon
Dragonmanovich and made into the country we know today. This is very, very
interesting.”

“How?” Krause asked, absolutely riveted.

Just how much magical history did they teach in schools?
Probably not enough for him to follow her explanation. Assuming, of course,
that he remembered something he learned forty years ago, which might be
stretching the bounds of credulity.

“There was a time when magic had very few limits, a time
when magicians made their own spells and the class of Artifactors didn’t exist.
We magicians refer to this as ‘the time of great magic’ because that’s exactly
what it is. We have legends, stories, partial histories and such that tell of
amazing feats that the magicians of history were able to do. But they were also
done in a time of great political upheaval. I’m sure you learned in school
about the multitude of nations that began, were conquered, fell to plague or
pestilence, or merged with other countries through marriage. Well, all of that
shifting about destroyed records or caused them to be lost. And then, at the
very end of the eighth century, that great plague swept through all of Mander
and wiped out half of the population. I’m afraid the magicians were hit the
hardest by it.”

“Wait, explain that,” Decker requested, just as fascinated
as Krause. “I’ve never heard that the magicians were hit so hard by the
plague.”

“Of course they were,” she said in exasperation. “Think,
man. If you suddenly contracted a deadly disease, what would you do?”

“Go see a doctor.”

“And when he can’t help you?”

“See a magician,” he said in sudden understanding.

“They were infected more than anyone else because every
single person in their area with the plague came into contact with them. Most
magicians didn’t have a cure for it either, and so died of it as well.” Except
the magicians that lived in remote enough regions to not contract the plague or
were selfish enough to hide away and let humanity rot. “Many, many techniques
and secrets that were passed down from master to student were lost entirely
because of this. Worse, some numbskull hit upon the brilliant idea that
torching things would keep the sickness from spreading, so whole libraries and
record rooms went up in flames.”