The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2) (4 page)

“This is Artifactor Sevana Warran. She’s agreed to help us,”
Decker said to the others.

“Gentlemen,” she greeted with a general nod to the group. “I
need to speak to the mayor or whatever leader you have in this village.”

“We have an ombudsman,” Decker volunteered. “He’s our mayor,
of sorts.”

“That’s fine. Take me to him. We have things to do this very
night to prevent mischief happening tomorrow.” Oh, wait. Snapping her fingers,
she pointed at the grandfather clock still on the skimmer. “And I need two men
to carry that.”

“Ummm…” the butcher looked at the grandfather clock with
misgiving. “Begging pardon, Miss Artifactor, but two men can’t be carrying the
likes of that.”

“It has a weight cancellation charm on it,” she explained
impatiently. “It’s not heavy, just awkward.
Move
.”

Decker, at least, understood the importance of the clock
well enough to instantly climb back on board. With his lead, two other men
climbed inside after him and assisted in moving the clock out of the skimmer.
As they carefully maneuvered the clock free, Sevana directed, “Take it to
whatever inn or house that I’m staying in while I’m here. I’ll set it up
properly in a minute. For now, take me to the ombudsman.”

One of the huntsmen extended a hand to her, his craggy
features somewhat undiscernible in this twilight lighting. “I’m Muller, Miss Artifactor.
If you’ll follow me.”

She accepted the arm. “Sevana. Call me Sevana. Let’s go.”

He waved her onto a gravel road that led directly to the
main street, from the look of things. She hadn’t parked far from the village so
it took bare minutes to reach the outskirts. As she walked, a heavyset man with
white hair ran toward them, tugging on a jacket as he moved.

“Krause!” Muller raised a hand and waved, getting the other
man’s attention.

Krause waved back but didn’t say anything until he lumbered
to a stop. “I heard Clari’s back,” he said to Muller, his eyes on Sevana.
“Who’s this?”

“Sevana Warran, an Artifactor,” Muller introduced
succinctly. Krause’s eyes lit up with relief and pleasure. “Sevana, this is
Krause, our Ombudsman.”

“Sir,” she greeted. “I’ll make this short as we have a lot
to do tonight. I’m going to put locating and protective charms on every man,
woman and child in this village. I need you to call them all.
Now
.”

He didn’t even think to question her. He just gave a short
sigh of relief before promising, “They’ll be at the main square within a half
hour.”

“Good. Go.” As Krause ran back through the village, calling
out to people as he went, she turned to Muller and said, “I need a place to set
up. Somewhere quiet where I can work and think.”

Muller stroked his chin for a moment and thought. “How much
room do you need?”

“A single room will suffice.” If she needed any more room
than that, she could always retreat to Big and work there for a day. But she
didn’t think it would come to that.

“Then the court building has a back room that’s fairly
empty. Just a table and some chairs in there.”

“Perfect.” She turned to see that the clock was steadily
catching up with her. “The clock needs to go in there. I have to fetch some
things before I meet with everyone in the village.”

Muller looked at her blankly, not following at all. “How do
you fetch things with a clock?”

She smirked at the man. “Watch and be amazed, huntsman.”

The room they gave her to work in could not have been more
bland. Four dark paneled walls, a threadbare carpet on the floor, and that
simple rectangular table with eight chairs Muller had mentioned to her. But it
suited her needs down to the ground. She didn’t have to worry about shoving
someone else’s clutter out of the way to make room for her own.

Sevana spent the majority of the night setting up shop, so
to speak. She calibrated the clock to connect to the one in Big, went through
to fetch her charms, and then stayed up until well past midnight attaching them
to every person in the village. As she put the charms on them, the glow board
she’d tacked onto the wall updated and kept not only a running tally for her,
but a precise location. It was this map board that she would use in the future
to determine where people had been randomly transported to.

Of course, the children just liked to stare at the board
because it was glass and had pretty lights shining on it.

The charms were the least of what she fetched to Chastain.
If the time with Bel had taught her anything, it was this: she needed more than
two modes of land transportation. The far-see glasses worked perfectly as long
as she limited it to one person. The skimmer worked just fine for groups of
people but moved slower than frozen honey. If she wanted a quick method of
travelling over land with just two or three people, she didn’t have a good
solution. Or she
hadn’t
at least. After Bel and company had left Big,
Sevana turned her mind to the problem and developed a smaller version of the
skimmer which could comfortably carry two people or three in a pinch.

She got up early that morning, even though she had been up
most of the night, and went through the clock portal back to Big. Most of the
equipment in her workroom she left alone as she still didn’t quite know what
she needed yet. But she went up immediately to the second storage room, where
she put all of her vehicles, and grabbed her mini-skimmer, dubbed
Cloud
Putter
. Even though she had made this as slender and portable as possible,
she still had a devil of a time hauling it downstairs and she thought she’d
never
get it through the narrow confines of the clock. It actually left skid marks on
the sides of the wood, it was that tight of a squeeze. Huffing, puffing, and
cursing aloud, she finally managed to shove it through and out the other side. Then
she just lay on it for a while, breathing hard and blowing loose strands of
hair out of her face.

“Uh, Sevana?”

Half-draped over the mini-skimmer, she looked up into
Decker’s perplexed face and growled, “
What?”

He took a long look at the situation and asked, “It’s too
late to offer help, isn’t it?”

“Worlds too late,” she informed him crossly. “Unless you
want to carry it outside for me.” Which was help that she wouldn’t turn down at
the moment.

Being an intelligent man, Decker beamed at her and gave her
a bow. “It would be my great pleasure to do so.”

Amused despite herself, she rolled off of it and got to her
feet, rolling her shoulders as she moved to work some of the building tension
out.

He paused with his arms outstretched and looked it over from
stem to stern. “If I can ask…what is it?”

“Think of it as a miniature skimmer.”

His eyebrows rose dubiously. “This is?”

Well, alright, maybe it didn’t look like it. It was shaped
like an oval tube with narrowing ends on the front and the back, a hole going
straight through the center with an iris that could open and close at her
command via a lever on top. Carved into the tube were two seats, a leather
cushion stitched in, with a folding compartment in the very back that could
hold two bags or a small person. From the sides were collapsible sails that had
wind charms sewn into them that would catch the wind and ride it, keeping the
vehicle aloft. But it remained true to the skimmer in general principle if not
in looks—clouds propelled it forward. Best yet, it moved at three times the
speed of the skimmer.

“It looks like a large dragonfly,” Decker muttered as he
picked it up with both arms, awkwardly holding it at an angle.

“That’s actually where I got the idea,” she admitted. “It
moves faster than the skimmer so I thought it best to fetch it now before
figuring out who got transported last night.”

“About that…” Decker paused in the doorway and looked back.
“I actually came to tell you. Denni is the one that you need to fetch. Quickly
as you can too.”

She didn’t like the tone of his voice or the concern she
saw. “Why quickly?”

“He’s two.”

“Stone the crows!” she swore aloud. Could this morning get
any more complicated or frustrating?! “How often do the children get
transported?”

“As often as the adults,” Decker said grimly.

In other words, far too often. “His parents?” she demanded,
already grabbing up different wands, potions and crystals and shoving them into
her bag. “Where are they?”

“Waiting outside.”

Sevana lost no time in opening the door, leaving it wide so
that Decker could get through. A young mother and father stood waiting,
agitated and gripping each other’s hands tightly. Sevana hadn’t a child of her
own, but she was far enough apart in years with her brother that she was
half-sister, half-mother, so she had an inkling what these people must be
feeling. It gave her an unusual sense of sympathy, enough so that the first
words out of her mouth were, “He’s fine. The protective charm I put on him last
night will make sure of that. I can fetch him back quickly.” They relaxed a
hair, but tears were still standing in the mother’s eyes and Sevana didn’t
blame her for them.

“Is there anything I can bring with me that will calm him?”
Sevana asked. “A favorite blanket or toy?” The last thing she needed was to
deal with a squalling child while bringing him back.

The mother rallied enough to say shakily, “Yes. He has a
blanket he loves.”

“Get it,” Sevana ordered. “I’ll take a look at the board and
get his location.”

The dark-haired father moved quickly, turning and sprinting
back down the narrow street. Sevana spun just as quickly and darted back
inside, looking for the boy’s name on the side panel first to find his color.
Pure white, eh? Alright, then…she scanned the board’s surface and found him in
a second. Phew. Not as far as Clari had flown.

While she did this, Decker had taken
Putter
out and
come back in to ask, “Find him?”

“Yes.” Without trying to explain anything to him, she moved
around the table and back outside, her mind whirling as she walked. The area
between Chastain and the boy was level grassland and farms. She could move just
as fast, if not faster, using the far-see glasses. Did she dare strap a two
year old onto the mini-skimmer and expect him to not somehow wiggle free and
fall off?

Years of experience with her younger brother said no.

As soon as she hit the door, the father skidded to a stop in
front of her, panting for breath but with a small blue and white quilt clutched
in his hand. Sevana took it from him as she explained, “He’s just outside of
Gerrety and safe. I can have him back before lunch.”

Both parents did a silent prayer of thanks.

Pointing to the mini-skimmer, she told Decker, “Put that
back inside. I don’t dare use it with a two year old.”

He blinked at her. “I thought your vehicles have
anti-falling charms on them?”

“That one doesn’t, not yet. Just the straps to hold you in
place and I know two year olds—they have this uncanny ability to do things
they’re not supposed to. It’s safer to use the glasses for this trip.” There. That
would have to suffice as she didn’t want to stand around yakking while the
child was stranded somewhere alone. Tucking the blanket under one arm, she
extracted the glasses from her pouch, put them on her nose, and did a quick hop
out to the main street. The feel of cool morning air passed by her in a blur as
well as scents of food that came and went too quickly for her to properly
identify. Once she came to the main thoroughfare, she spotted a place out of
town and closed the shades again, going to the edge of the village within
seconds.

She repeated this process several times over the next hour,
flying through planted fields, passing crops of trees, and over unending grassland
that she knew the look of very well after flying over it yesterday. According
to the charm’s locating dot, the kid should have ended up just north of Gerrety
City. Sevana thanked any god listening for that small favor. Having to search a
large city for a small child did
not
rank among her favorite pastimes.
Once she saw Gerrety on the horizon, she slowed down slightly and took smaller
leaps, taking the time in between to scan the area and see if she could spot
the kid. Sevana had almost reached the outer wall of Gerrety before she found
Denni, not by sight, but by sound. She could hear his terrified wailing for his
parents quite clearly.

“Denni!” she called out, walking in the direction that she
heard his voice. “Denni! Answer me, kid!”

The wailing stopped for a second, as though he was
hiccupping for breath. “W-who?”

“You met me last night, remember?” Reasoning with upset two
year olds didn’t always work out well, but Sevana was game to try as long as he
listened. “I put the charms on you. Your parents sent me to fetch you home.”
She waited a beat. No response to that. Hmm, alright, switch tactics. “Your
father gave me your favorite blanket. You want it?”

That
got a response. Denni shot up out of his hunched
posture in the grass, finally coming within line of sight of her, and dashed
forward on chubby little legs. Kid certainly looked a sight what with that
snotty face and bed-mussed hair. His mother had apparently anticipated he might
be taken as she hadn’t put him in a nightgown but sturdy trousers, a blue shirt
and thick socks.

Sevana untucked the blanket and waved it in front of her as
if enticing a bull. It worked like a charm. Denni didn’t so much as grab the
blanket as tackle both her
and
the blanket, ending up fetched against
her legs. She took advantage of the opportunity and picked him up under the
arms, slinging him onto one hip with ease. Kid was
so
much lighter than
Bel had ever been. “You set?” she asked him, unable to see his face as he
burrowed into his quilt. “I’ll have you home for lunch.”

“Home?” he asked, daring to peek up out of his blanket.

“Home,” she repeated firmly, relieved he wasn’t in the mood
to keep squalling. “Just hang tight.”

Denni grabbed her shirt with a fist, other arm full of his
blanket, and hunkered into her like a mole burrowing into his den. Sevana
turned to face north, opened the shutters on her glasses, and took the first
long leap back toward Chastain.

The boy didn’t know what to make of this at first. When she
stopped, he let out a huge breath of pent-up air, more taken aback than scared.
But after the second long leap, he let out a squeal of excited delight. Sevana
paused and looked down at him. He nearly bounced in her arms, waiting for her
to do it again. Come to think of it…Bel had enjoyed this too. “Having fun?”

“Ya!” he said, Kindin accent slipping through his speech.
“Again!”

Again, huh? Chuckling, Sevana obliged. Perhaps she hadn’t needed
to worry about taking the mini-skimmer with Denni after all. If this was how
the kid thought of thrills, he’d have taken to the air like a homing pigeon. Ah
well. The glasses were faster anyway.

He never got tired of the jumps and squealed and laughed and
bounced in her arms so that an ache developed in her right side from holding on
to him. Sevana reached the main street of the village and, with outright relief,
put the kid down on his own feet.

“Awwww,” Denni complained, trying to climb back on her.

“You can do it again the next time you get transported in
your dreams,” she assured him dryly.

He thought about that quite seriously for a moment. “After
my nap?”

Sevana couldn’t help but laugh even as she groaned. Children
really had no sense of time or patience, did they? Although his question did
bring up an interesting point—would naps be enough to trigger the curse or did
it take a full night’s sleep to do it?

“DENNI!” a frantic mother’s voice called.

Sevana prudently stepped back as two worried parents dove
for their child and picked him up. Denni, not seeing anything to worry about,
beamed at them and said in baby-babble, “Fun
zoom
! Again, Mama, again!”

“Zoom?” his father repeated blankly.

Not in the mood to explain, she headed for the main street
and a much delayed breakfast. The couple would likely hunt her down later and
offer thanks of some sort—they seemed like the type—but right now all she
wanted was a full belly and some answers to the questions buzzing around in her
head.