Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (64 page)

“Damn,” he whispered. So much for his idea of
placid monks.

“Zips fixed, ropes over. On my way,” Robbi
reported.

Aja was holding off four monks with his
lasgun, but Morgan could see it was still trigger-locked. Aja had
never shot a man in his life, and monks swinging keys at him were
unlikely to push him into murder. The boy had too many other
options.

“Away, Aja,” he ordered.

“Milord,” the boy protested, backing toward
the column.

“Away,
Captain
,” he said, emphasizing
the boy’s rank and responsibilities. He threw the velvet pouch, and
nearly quicker than the eye could see Aja caught it and was gone.
The four monks searched around each other, dumbfounded, trying to
find him.

Morgan knew they wouldn’t, then he had no
more time to think. The staff wielders were upon him. The clash of
metal striking metal rang out in the temple. The tallest monk was
also the fastest, getting in two attacks to the other monk’s one.
Morgan parried all of them, swinging Scyld with a two-handed grip.
The tall monk switched tactics, bringing his staff around in a
swipe meant to break ribs. Morgan jumped back and the tip of the
staff grazed his chest and sliced his shirt open. A second swipe
left a trail of blood on his skin and reduced the front of his
shirt to nothing but a rag hanging from his shoulders.

“Son of a bitch,” he swore. The staffs were
razor sharp on the ends.

Wils was down, maybe dead. Jiang was
surrounded. They were outnumbered five to one, and the monks were
loaded with deadly weapons. Shooting their way out might be their
only chance. He started to give the order to unlock triggers,
knowing York would come in with carbines blazing, but was stopped
short by the sudden backing away of his attackers.

“
Bo si wong gi
,” the tall monk
whispered, wide-eyed, staring at his chest.

Morgan knew it was a mess. He had scars from
wounds that should have killed him. Then the monk’s gaze shifted
from his chest to his hair, and his eyes grew even wider. From what
Morgan had seen of the strange and varied beings that inhabited the
future, he didn’t know how a white stripe in his hair could cause
such a shocked expression. Half the inhabitants of the Old Dominion
had something weirder than a stripe going on with their hair. After
a second of stunned staring, the monk lowered his gaze and fell to
his knees, leaving himself to Morgan’s mercy—or the lack
thereof.

“
Bo si wong gi
,” the monk repeated in
a voice full of wonder. The words were quickly taken up by the
other monks, and wherever the words were spoken, monks knelt on the
floor, all of them facing him.

Morgan didn’t like their reaction. He didn’t
like it at all, but neither was he going to second guess it, not
yet.

“Morgan check. Aja away. Wils down. Jiang
check. Bail. Bail,” he muttered into the tech-jaw, still holding
his sword in a defensive position.

Warily, he began making his way toward Wils.
York and Robbi burst through the curtained doorway at the same
time, their guns at the ready, expecting the order he hadn’t yet
given.

“
Bo si wong gi... Bo si wong gi
.” The
words were becoming a chant, rising up from a floor littered with
the saffron-colored robes of supplicating monks.

York took one look and gestured for Robbi and
Jiang to get out, while he went for Wils.

Morgan reached the one-armed bandit at the
same time as York and helped heft him onto the older man’s
shoulders. With Robbi covering them, they backed their way to the
door.

Once outside, they raced for the wall with
Morgan taking Robbi’s place as rear guard. By the time they reached
the ramparts, Wils was coming around. Aja was waiting for them, a
breach of orders, but one Morgan would deal with later. With a
quick, underhanded throw, the boy tossed him the velvet pouch.
Morgan caught it and quickly looped it onto his belt.

Unbelievably, no monks were following them.
The courtyard was deserted, filled with nothing but falling snow
and the muffled sound of the chant coming out of the temple.

Bo si wong gi
. Morgan didn’t even want
to know what it meant.

York went over the wall first, taking Wils
with him in a harness down the zip line. Robbi and Aja went down a
parallel line. Morgan clipped onto a rope, and he and Jiang went
over the wall with descenders, dropping in near free falls to the
valley floor.

The snowstorm had heightened into a blizzard
while they’d been in the temple. No moon had risen, and the wind
and the cold cut through Morgan as he slid down the rope, freezing
his gloved fingers around the descender. Somewhere below them in
the night, their camp awaited with hot food, warm tents, and a GS
rover to rake them into the canyons of the Middle Kingdom. From the
canyons, they would make their way into the lower valleys and head
toward the sea.

Falling through the darkness, his life
hanging by the thin line of rope, Morgan felt the weight of the
gold dragon pulling him down. It was a bitter victory. The
bitterest. The smell of the worms was in his nose, churning in his
gut, lapping at his mind.

Dragons, snakes, and worms... his nightmares
resurrected.
Christ have mercy
.

~ ~ ~

Inside the monastery, in the assembly hall,
the tall monk knelt before the High Lama of Sonnpur-Dzon. The old
man’s white hair streamed down his robes. Blue tattoos swirled up
the left side of his face, the archaic symbols nearly lost against
the darkness of his skin and in the folds of his wrinkles. Incense
rose from the burning censers flanking the yellow pillow on which
he sat.

“You are sure it was him?” the old man’s
voice wavered in the thin, cold air.

“There is no doubt, Most Holy One. I saw the
signs for myself. The white stripe in his hair and the mark of the
sacred ash gracing the skin over his heart.”

“Others have had the stripe of the time weir
in their hair,” the old man said, lifting a hand to the pale blond
streak running through his own.

“Yes, master, but none other has ever had the
ash leaf emblazoned on his chest. It is him,
Bo si wong gi
,
the Prince of Time we have so long awaited. He is come,
master.”

The old man’s eyes drifted closed, and in the
several moments that followed, the younger monk feared his master
had fallen asleep.

But such was not so. Without opening his
eyes, the High Lama lifted a silken cord from around his neck and
draped it over the younger man’s shaved head. A silver disk hung
from the cord, rimmed in gold and inset with a triangle of
carnelian.

“Take this to Deseillign, to the White Palace
on the edge of the Waste. Take it to the desert daughters and tell
them their talisman has arrived. Tell the Lady Avallyn her traveler
has finally come.”