The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2) (19 page)

“Well, sweetling?”

“There’s still some residue of power left in it,” she
responded. “I’d be careful, if I were you.”

“Straight in the box it’ll go, then.” Master had taken the
caution of fetching one of his ‘behave boxes’ from his workroom before coming
here. He’d invented them ages ago, as a young apprentice, but still used them
to this day. Once something was placed in the box, it was cut off from all
outside magic and would be obediently dormant until released again.

Sarsen slowly turned, facing Master, and she leaned forward
just as Master lifted his box up. She put the gadgick directly into the box
without anyone else touching it and he closed the lid as soon as she pulled her
hands free. Sarsen barely got a good look at it during this process, but he
didn’t utter a word of protest. Then again, after everything that had happened,
he likely didn’t want to tempt fate by leaving it out in the open any longer
just to satisfy his curiosity.

Master latched a few seals and buckles into place, making
sure that it couldn’t be casually opened, before he looked back at them with a
satisfied smile. “We might have had a few bumps along the way, but the job is
done.”

“And thank all mercy for that,” Sevana grumbled as she slid
off Sarsen’s shoulders and to the ground. “It’s too late for any of us to get
any work done at this point.” It was, in fact, only a few hours until sunset.
“Although I suppose I can remove the dam at the very least and let the fountain
fill back up again.”

“Replace the grill first,” Master reminded her.

She flapped a hand at him. “Yes, yes. Are you leaving for
Jacen’s now?”

“Hmmm.” Master thought for a moment before shaking his head.
“I don’t know the roads well enough to navigate in bad lighting. I’ll wait
until the morning.”

She shrugged, as it didn’t really matter to her either way.
“Sarsen, if you’d pitch in? We might as well start the cleanup.”

“Sooner it’s done, sooner we can go,” he agreed.

Sevana clapped her hands together loudly, raising her voice
so the whole square could hear her. “Alright, folks! The problem’s solved, the
show’s over, go on about your business!”

This made people give a shout of joy and they clapped in
celebration. A slight smile on her face, she put the grill back in place with a
wave of her wand before she climbed off the fountain’s edge and headed for the
dam. She just had one more thing to do tonight before she could be satisfied
with a full day’s work. 

A guttural scream ripped through the night air, followed by
the sound of tinkling glass as it shattered.

Sevana went from a sound sleep to an upright position in her
bed before she could even get her eyes open. What in all the wide green world
was that?! Hinun, who had been asleep across her feet, was already off the bed
and tearing through the door, low growls coming out of his mouth as he
sprinted. Even Sky awoke as she rolled quickly out of the bed, her bare feet
slapping against the wooden floor as she snatched up a protective crystal and a
wand.

“
Master! Sarsen!”
she called out, sprinting out of
her room and into the dark hallway.

With all of the noise going on, several people had awoken
and come out of their rooms to investigate. She had to shove one curious trader
aside just to get through. Hinun let out a high-pitched whine from Master’s
room, and she knew in a flash of dread, just where the noise had been coming
from. Swearing, she sprinted the distance and slid into the room.

Master sat on the edge of his bed, a hand to his head, blood
gushing out between his fingers. The window nearby lay in a spray of broken
glass all over the floor, and the room looked like a storm had blown through
it. Not heeding the splinters on the floor, she went directly to Master,
snatching up a towel from the washstand as she moved and pressing it against
his head. “What happened?” she demanded, even as she used her hip to nudge a
hovering Hinun out of the way.

“Thieves. But not your garden variety. These had a rather
gifted magician with them. They’d nearly levitated the box out the window
before I felt the magic and woke up.” He winced and looked up at her. “Sevana.
They’ve got the gadgick.”

Just the thought of that artifact in the wrong hands made
her blood run cold. A lot of evil could be done with it. Making a split
decision, she turned to Hinun and ordered, “Get Decker.
Now
.” She’d need
his tracking skills for this. Then she turned further and saw Sky hovering in
the doorway, his eyes wide at the scene. “Get Sarsen.”

The boy nodded and spun on his heels, disappearing in a
flash.

“I can’t believe he slept through all of this,” Master said,
almost as if speaking to himself.

She snorted, not one bit surprised. “Don’t you remember that
time the house was on fire? He slept right through that, too.”

“I suppose his sleeping habits haven’t changed since
childhood.” Master half-raised a hand toward the towel. “How bad is it?”

“Not that bad. It’s just because it’s a head wound that it’s
bleeding like this.”

Sarsen stumbled into the room in the next moment, eyes wide
in his face, his pouch in his hand. “Master! What in sweet mercy happened?”

“Thieves,” Master explained again. “They were levitating the
box out of the window when I woke up. I tried to stop them and they yanked the
box forward, hitting me in the head, and then jerked it through the window
glass.”

Hence his head wound and the glass all over the floor. Got
it. “Did you see any of them?”

“Not a soul. But they had to have a fairly high level of
ability to be able to do what they did while remaining on the ground. It would
take a seer spell to see through the building and work a levitation spell at
the same time.”

She understood that without the explanation. That’s what
made this whole situation so much worse. Sevana rose to her feet. “Sarsen. You
deal with Master. I’ll go after the thieves.”

“Not alone!” both men protested simultaneously.

“I’ll take Decker, Hinun and Gid,” she assured them, already
heading for the door. “I doubt any magician and his little band can handle an
Artifactor prodigy, a huntsman, and two Illeyanic wolves.”

“Sweetling,” Master called after her. She stopped in the
doorway, half-turning to see him. He grimaced a smile. “Be careful. For my
sake.”

Careful? She’d done far more dangerous things than chasing
down a group of stupid thieves. But she gave him a sloppy salute to reassure
him—otherwise she feared he would try to follow along, despite the head injury.

As she stepped out of the room, she found Sky huddled near
the doorway, arms wrapped around himself. “Sky. Stay with Master and Sarsen,
help them if you can. This time, you can’t follow me.”

He looked up at her with solemn eyes. “You’re not afraid?”

“What? You think they’re more dangerous than a water
dragon?” she scoffed.

The boy blinked, thinking that through, and then a fierce
smile took over his face as he put the danger into perspective. “Take no prisoners.”

She returned the wolfish smile. “You bet.”

 ~ ~ ~

By the time Decker arrived at the inn, Sevana was more than
ready to go. She had gotten dressed in the darkest clothes she owned, put
several useful things into her pouch, and strapped on not only her sword, but
her long dagger as well. If it came down to a fight, she was more than ready
for it.

Decker’s stallion pulled to a sharp stop in front of the
inn, two wolves in his wake. The huntsman looked as if he had thrown on the
first clothes at hand, although she noted with approval that he also had
several weapons strapped to him. “What happened?” he demanded before the
stallion could come to a complete stop. “Your wolf was frantic to get us here.”

“The gadgick has been stolen.”

Decker could not have been more surprised if she had smacked
him in the back of the head with a club. “WHAT?!”

“You heard me. I’ll explain the details as we go, but we’re
already a good thirty minutes behind them and losing ground fast.” Turning to
the two wolves, she pointed toward the east side of the building. “I believe
the thieves stood over there to do their work. Get a scent, if you can.” Hinun
might not be able to pick out their scents from the rest of the
villagers’—after all, he’d only been here a few days—but Gid could.

Both wolves leaped lightly onto the porch and went directly
to where she indicated, their noses to the ground, tails wagging slightly as
they searched.

Sevana grimaced, but bowed her head to the inevitable and
extended a hand to Decker. “I’ll ride with you.”

He quirked a brow at her. “You’re not going to ride your
flying thing?”

“I can’t see the ground well enough from the sky to do any
tracking,” she explained with limited patience. “And it attracts too much
attention. If we discover later that we need to ambush them, we won’t be able
to with me flapping about up there.”

“Good point.” He grabbed her hand and kicked one boot free
of the stirrup, letting her get a good foothold to swing aboard with.
Fortunately, his saddle design had enough room to accommodate two people, if
barely. She felt a little squashed between him and the cantle, but she could
still breathe. She wrapped both arms around his waist in a firm grip, already
knowing that by the end of this mad chase, she’d be saddle-sore and cranky. If
this wasn’t such an emergency, where she couldn’t go back to Big and get one of
her other vehicles, she’d
never
consent to climb onto a horse.

Decker put his boot back into the stirrup. “Looks like they
have the scent. Gid, Hinun, you sure? Yes? Then lead on.”

As soon as the stallion moved, Decker’s weight pressed back
into her a little more, although he kept such a good posture that she didn’t
feel squashed. Conversely, she felt reassured by the closeness, as she didn’t
feel comfortable up here at all. Considering that she flew about in the air on
a regular basis, the height from on top of a horse shouldn’t bother her at all.
This rationale didn’t help her an ounce. She eyed the distance to the ground
and fought an uneasy coil that wrapped around the base of her spine.

The wolves couldn’t go too fast without risking losing the
trail, of course, which limited their pace to a trot. At this speed, they left
the village fairly quickly, exchanging cobbled streets for packed dirt that
softened their hoof beats slightly.

The highways at this midnight hour were completely deserted,
the only light coming from the half-moon in the sky. Both wolves and horse must
have known the road ahead well, as their pace didn’t falter. Sevana felt the
slight chill of night air along her exposed skin and fervently hoped that the
thick jacket she wore would be enough to combat the cold. She hadn’t grabbed a
cloak for fear that it would prevent her from easily accessing either her magic
pouch or her weapons.

“Alright, explain,” Decker ordered without turning his head.

“Not much to tell,” she admitted morosely. “Master said a
thief with good magic ability tried to levitate the box with the gadgick out of
his window. The magic woke Master up, he tried to grab the box, the magician
used it as a weapon to hit him in the head, and then he broke the window
getting the box out quickly. Master never saw his face or got a look outside.
He kept saying
thieves
, though, so for some reason he thinks there’s
more than one person.”

“Maybe he heard multiple people run away?” Decker suggested.

A plausible theory, and likely the answer. Sevana hadn’t
thought to question it until just now.

“But how did they know about the gadgick to steal it?”
Decker asked in true confusion. “You just got it out of the fountain this
afternoon!”

“What, are you joking? Bel and Aren classified this thing as
a
national emergency
. We had multiple people from all over come to help
us, even if only short term, and then leave again. Rumors, I’m sure, spread
like wildfire about this thing.” If anything, she should have realized that
thieves would likely target it and taken precautionary measures. After all, she
had thieves that tried to raid her mountain on a consistent basis. Wouldn’t an
ancient, powerful artifact be a more attractive lure? She mentally kicked
herself for the oversight.

Decker let out a groan. “You’re right. So, a magician thief.
Or a magician that thieves hired for this one job. Is that common practice?”

“More common than I care for. The black market adores anything
magical, and the higher quality it is, the easier it is to sell. The gadgick
will fetch a pretty penny if they can get it to the right dealer.”

“And, ah, why do you know so much about this?”

“The first year I was in business, I didn’t have any anti-theft
protections up and some fools raided my storeroom. It was quite the adventure
getting everything back.” The original thieves had paid for the stupidity as
well. She’d made sure of that.

“So you’ve dealt with this before.”

“I’ve never had to track someone down in the middle of the
night before, but yes.”

“If it came down to a fight between us and them, then…?” he
trailed off, glancing over his shoulder at her. Why he bothered, she had no
idea. In the pale moonlight and with trees shadowing the road, she could barely
see anything at all.

“A silly question, Decker. Of course I would turn them all
into toads.”

For some reason, this made him smile. “Of course. What was I
thinking?”

“More importantly, how fast do you think we can catch up
with them?”

“Now, that I can’t tell you. It depends on where they’re
going. Right now, we’re heading straight north, but that can’t last long. This
road dead ends and forks off in two different directions—west toward Kindin or
east toward the coast. The coast offers them a quick escape route to Belen, one
that will be hard for us to immediately follow as we don’t have a ship on
hand.”

Sevana would bet her left hand the thieves would choose to
go to Belen. It boasted one of the largest black markets in the world. In fact,
it was there that she had found most of her stolen goods years ago. But they
might well choose to go into Kindin instead, as it offered its own variety of
markets, so she shouldn’t be too hasty in making assumptions.

“No other trails they can choose?”

“Oh, this place is riddled with game trails. It depends on
how well they know the area, how prepared they are for pursuit. I would think
that if they knew about the gadgick, they’d know who was tasked with taking
care of it.” He sounded grim. “I imagine that everyone knew the Artifactor
prodigy, Sevana Warren, had been sent here by the king to deal with this
situation. In their shoes, I’d do a lot of preparation to handle you before I
ever came to steal the gadgick.”

She growled wordlessly. Decker’s logic was impeccable in
this case and she couldn’t disagree with any part of it. In their shoes, she’d
likely have several traps and at least one bolt hole, if it came to that, to
evade their pursuit. With the magician they had, they might very well be able
to escape detection by her, depending on how skillfully they worked their magic.

Only one thing really weighed in her favor: she had a pair
of Illeyanic wolves tracking them down. That magician might be able to
camouflage things to where she couldn’t magically detect them, and he might be
able to cover their tracks at a certain point to where even Decker couldn’t
follow, but he probably hadn’t taken the wolves into account. It would be
another task completely to throw
them
off the scent. Or so she hoped,
anyway.