Temple of the Traveler: Book 02 - Dreams of the Fallen (28 page)
Read Temple of the Traveler: Book 02 - Dreams of the Fallen Online
Authors: Scott Rhine
Simon, the owner, charged down the colonnaded cobblestone path with a halberd raised. Roaring, the architect swung the curved blade down on the sheriff. Tashi didn’t flinch. He clapped his hands and caught the pole between them. “How?” the architect muttered.
Jotham covered his eyes and said to the sheriff, “Don’t hurt him.”
Tashi shifted to the side, disarming the architect. The sharp blade nicked him on the tip of his right middle finger and he tossed the halberd aside. He didn’t seem to notice the blood dripping. Simon turned to flee, and the sheriff gave a short shout of his own. He shoved the architect hard between the shoulder blades, and the man slid to the cobblestones, scraping his face. The sheriff’s blood streaked the back of the landowner’s vest.
An archer on the wall said, “Surrender.”
Tashi placed his foot on the neck of the architect and said, “
You
surrender.”
The archer lowered his weapon.
“You can’t have the boy; I won’t let you sacrifice another innocent,” hissed Simon, with his face mashed against the stone. When he whipped his hand around to attempt a wrestling take-down, Tashi caught it.
“You’re brave, but accuse me of that again, and I’ll kick you through your rock garden hard enough to topple that stone,” growled the sheriff.
“Forgive me, he’s not normally like this,” Jotham began.
“Why are you trying to reawaken the gods?” asked Simon.
The priest scoffed, “They aren’t asleep; we just can’t hear them.”
“I’m tired of people and gods telling me what to do,” the sheriff announced. “I’m going to finish shutting down the temples for good, and I want your wife to give me the weapons.”
“
That
, I can help you with,” said the architect.
“Parley?” offered Jotham, and the man on the ground agreed.
Tashi helped the architect to his feet and dusted him off a little, smearing even more blood in the process. “All clear, they’re here to talk,” the landowner said to his people.
When Jolia stepped out of the house, she was livid. “You brute!” she accused the sheriff. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” She fussed over Simon.
“I’m two inches shorter than he is, and unarmed,” noted Tashi.
The concubine-turned-washerwoman glared daggers at him. That somehow stung him worse than the blade had.
“Indeed, the sheriff seems to be worse off from the exchange,” said Jotham. “Close that gate, Owl, and use the thick bar this time, not that broken little latch.” He handed Tashi a clean cloth for his fingertip.
“I didn’t even feel that,” Tashi said.
“It’s very sharp,” explained Simon, picking up the halberd again.
“What’s that?” asked Jolia pointing to the back of the blade. “Ew!”
When Tashi saw the piece of flesh, he retrieved it and stuck it back on. Jolia remarked, “It’s bleeding a lot. We may need a heated fire poker.”
Tashi winced. “No need. I’ll just twist this cloth tight for a while.”
“When the flow slows, it should be sticky enough to hold,” Jotham explained. “He heals well with time and quiet.”
“Let’s sit you down,” Simon said, ushering the motley bunch into his living room.
The sheriff removed his boots to be polite. Tatters helped remove everyone’s outdoor footwear. Then, Tashi sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed.
“He’s certainly settled in,” commented the architect.
“The calming will help,” Jotham predicted. To Owl, he said, “Make sure no one disturbs him.” The priest walked their host back into the hall for a private word.
“I’m sorry. You’re priests of the Traveler; since there’s only one temple left, I thought you members of the Left Hand,” said Simon.
Quietly, Jotham asked, “Where’s the boy?”
“I’ll buy his apprenticeship from you,” said Simon. “How much?”
“Where?”
“He’s with Sophia, my wife. She wants to be his mother.”
Jotham looked at the door to the study where the architect had glanced. “If he’s willing, I won’t take a copper beat. But I would ask three things from you. The first two are trivial, and you may refuse if you wish. The last isn’t negotiable.”
“Ask.”
“First, I need to borrow a blank ledger book and a cot to stay in for four days.”
Simon almost laughed at the simplicity. “Done. Whatever for?”
“I need to copy a book in my own handwriting.”
“I’ll even throw in the ink,” offered the architect. “Second?”
“What was the artifact of the final altar?”
“A special piece of rope.”
“A silver cord,” the priest guessed. “It’s how she found her way back.”
“Yes.”
“Might I see it? Not touch it, just to look.”
“My wife wears it around her waist.” Simon opened the door a crack. Jotham could see that she was still young and that she doted on Brent. Her hair was swept back with a blue ribbon, and she wore an apron around her front. But from the back, they could see the silvery rope peeking out beneath the apron strings. Home and hearth radiated from her. She was the center of this complex.
“It maintains her life-force and the balance of this whole place,” Jotham observed. “How?”
Simon shrugged. “She described it once as a standing wave.”
The priest nodded. “So many things are falling into place and beginning to make sense.”
Sophia noticed them first and wrinkled her brow. She touched her nose and pointed to her husband.
Simon shrugged. “I . . . ran into the gate when our guest was opening it.”
She spelled out the word “c-o-l-d” with her fingers.
“I’ll get a compress in a few moments,” the architect agreed.
“She chooses to be the Mute, another of the Arcana,” Jotham noted.
When Brent heard the tenor’s distinctive voice, the boy burst from his chair and ran to greet him. “Master, you’ll never believe what I found! It’s a wonderful place. Can we stay here?”
Simon patted the boy on the shoulder. The two had the same hair and eyes. They could have been related.
“Our host has agreed to let me stay four days. I confess that it’ll feel strange being under a roof again. Even when I worked for the Library, I was seldom in one place for long.”
“Is that because of your time in prison?” asked Brent.
“Possibly,” Jotham admitted.
Simon seemed surprised. “What?”
Sophia laid a finger on her lips to silence him. She signed, “Don’t j-u-d-g-e. You w-e-r-e in, too.”
“I meant stay permanently,” Brent prompted.
“If you so desire. But it hinges on the reply to a last request, one that our host won’t like,” said Jotham.
“Ask,” Simon demanded reluctantly.
“Not you. My request is for Sophia,” Jotham said, facing the woman in a teenager’s body. Her smile reached clear to her eyes, which were shining with excitement. “I’ll grant you absolution and your fondest wish, but only if you accompany us to the Final Temple.”
“Over my dead body!” Simon insisted.
She signed him to silence again.
“We plan on closing the foul place like we have all the others of its kind,” Jotham explained.
She gestured to the priest as if to say, “There you have it.”
“It’s dangerous and arduous,” her husband insisted quietly. She pointed at his belly and made a rounding motion. “True, you’re in better shape than I am, but I’m a
man
.”
She cocked an eyebrow.
Jotham announced, “Brent, let’s wait in the living room.”
The boy followed as Jotham shut the study door behind them. “Why do you need her?” asked the boy.
“All the artifacts have to be assembled in one place, at the only remaining Door.”
“Why?”
“I intend to find out when I assemble all the pieces,” Jotham promised. “That’s why I have to write out my own copy of the Book of Dominion—the Traveler left secret messages that only appear when we dovetail the teachings. We are agreed that he is held prisoner. I believe that the books he wrote give us the secret of how to set him free.”
“Do you need the Book of the Bards?” offered Brent.
“Not yet. I can only add one dimension at a time and hold it within my mind,” said Jotham.
“Before you get too busy, let me show you the cookies,” said the boy magnanimously. “They’re very good.”
****
The architect eventually relented. He and his wife would be going along. Simon and Sophia spent the next few days packing. She also took the time to sew Brent another set of clothes and scheduled a farewell feast for the final day. The servants would let the Viper’s spy loose the day after the group departed.
The priest transcribed day and night, halting only briefly to rest his hand, eat, and sleep. Brent looked over his shoulder on a number of occasions, but did not interrupt. Jotham thought nothing of it until, over lunch the next day, the boy asked, “Why is the type of tree important for the trebuchet?”
Jotham stopped buttering his bread. “You need a balance between strength and light weight. Do you know what the chief advantages of the man-powered catapult are?”
Brent shrugged. “You can make them anywhere that has trees and stones. A small team can launch a boulder the weight of three men with surprising accuracy.”
Everyone at the table was staring. Jolia asked from the kitchen door, “And the drawbacks?”
“To build them fast and sturdy, you need metal. But that’s in short supply. Whatever you’re trying to obliterate has to be worth what you’re spending to do so,” the boy recited.
“What are you teaching him?” asked Simon.
“He’s been reading over my shoulder and has an eidetic memory. It’s probably the bards’ influence. They can recite hours of text verbatim,” explained the priest.
Sophia brought a piece of vellum to the table and handed him a piece of charcoal.
“Can you draw what you saw?” asked the architect.
Brent proceeded to sketch a chart of arm position versus throwing distance. His sketch of the mechanism was boxy, but accurate. Awed, Simon said, “He’s a prodigy. Our boy is gifted.”
Jotham smiled. “He has many virtues. This one may be transitory.”
Sophia patted him on the head and brought over her own chalk set. She made a show of gifting it to the boy. “Thank you. I don’t know how to use it,” Brent said.
She smiled and signed, “I s-h-o-w you.” Brent had already picked up most of the signing letters, but Simon often echoed the exchange so that all the guests could hear the conversation.
“Not now,” decreed the architect. “Dinner’s not the time for work. Sophia made that rule herselrent, please wash your hands or you’ll soil the tablecloth.”
Jolia brought him a wet rag.
“So what
can
we do during meals?” the boy asked.
“Philosophy,” Simon announced. “Who has a good abstract question?”
“What is writing?” asked Tashi.
Sophia raised her eyebrows at this unexpected source of the discussion. “Indeed,” the architect said, agreeing with the proposed topic. “Jolia, you go first.”
The former concubine looked uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to another as she became the center of attention. “A way you don’t forget something you need to do?”
“Memory,” Simon summarized.
“Or memorials, like on the gravestones and battlefields,” Owl expanded.
“We record positive achievements, too,” another guest chimed in. “And I’ve seen new laws posted in the village square.”
“Communal, long-term memory,” said Simon as he wrote on his wax tablet.
“Letters are also a way to send a message to someone else far away.”
“Long-distance communication,” Simon echoed.
Brent said, “Not just far in distance, but time. The book of the Bards spans many lifetimes, knitting them together in a common thread.”
“Communication of what?” asked Jotham.
“Military orders.”
“Proclamations of love,” Jolia said, warming to the game.
“Ideas,” Brent generalized.
Simon nodded. “Impressive. Writing is a way to store or transport ideas outside of time or bodies.”
Tashi grunted. “More than a container, it’s a vector for infection.”
“I wouldn’t use the word infection, but reading
is
a door into a person’s most intimate places,” Brent suggested. When Jolia raised her eyebrows at this, the boy added, “The thoughts and personality.”
“It’s how nations and religions infect humans,” Tashi insisted.
Sophia spelled out, “B-i-t-t-e-r?”
“Am I wrong?” Tashi asked harshly. Several people bit their lips to avoid conflict. “Our alphabet came from the state-run temples. They were codified to propagate the teachings of the church and state.”
“Words don’t make people into slaves,” Jotham insisted. “But along the propagation lines, you could call them seeds. They’re used to grow ideas in young minds.”
“Eew,” Jolia exclaimed. “You’re saying writing is sperm of the gods, trying to . . . you-know . . . our brai” This was met with laughter.
Simon intervened with, “Let us agree that writing is a seedpod for ideas—the source and intent are irrelevant. As with many tools, it can have a variety of uses.”
Jotham mused, “When I write my histories, paper is a medium that enables me to examine an event from every angle. I agree that the process steps outside time. But to be read, we still have to present it in a linear fashion.”
