The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2) Read online

  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.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sevana didn’t do anything elaborate for breakfast. Actually, she ate and worked at the same time. She held a diagnostic wand in one hand, scanning anything and everything in her path, and bought food from various bakeries and shops so that she could eat with the other. As absolutely nothing had shouted power being used! to her during her short time here, she started at the very outer edges of the village and started walking around in an ever-closing spiral that would eventually end at the center of town. If she didn’t find anything after searching here, she would start looking outside the village proper. But she didn’t think it would be outside. These village streets seemed to hum somehow, as if every part of them had been touched with magic, only she wasn’t quite sensitive enough to see it for herself.

  The ombudsman, Krause, caught up with her before she could make it completely around the edge of the village, huffing and puffing as he came. He dabbed at the sweat dewing on his forehead with a handkerchief, skin ruddy with exertion. In proper lighting, he looked like a grandfather with that snow white hair and stout frame. “Sevana,” he called as he jogged toward her. “Have you found anything?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Krause, if it was that easy to figure out, those other magicians you called in would have been able to solve it.”

  He slowed to a stop, expression slightly dismayed. “Is it truly that difficult?”

  Motioning him to fall in step with her, she tried to explain it in layman’s terms with the hopes that if she explained it to him he would explain it to everyone else and she wouldn’t end up repeating herself a hundred times.

  “Think of magic as strong wind. When it’s active, you can feel it and see the effect it has on the things around you. It’s easy to see that the wind is there. But when it’s not active, there’s nothing to feel, nothing to see. You might see traces of it left behind, if it was strong enough, but you’d have no idea which direction it came from or really how strong it was. I know that this curse is strong, diabolically so, because traces of it lingered behind on the people it transported. But right now, our metaphorical wind is not blowing, so I’m going to have to track it down the hard way.”

  Krause, thankfully, followed this explanation closely. “I believe…I see. So you are now tracking it down?”

  “Trying to. This wand,” she waved it a little in the air, “is a tool I use for such cases. I’ll walk around the entire village first. If I don’t find the source here, then I will go outside of it.”

  “I quite understand.” He gave her a game smile in support although his eyes were still worried. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

  “Not at the moment.” Rethinking that, she added, “Did Decker tell you what Aren promised?”

  “About sending other magicians to help? Yes, he told me.”

  “When they arrive, notify me. I need to coordinate with them.” Solely so that she could hand the troublesome task of rescuing people over to someone else.

  “I will do so,” he promised. Then, as if sensing he was doing nothing but hampering her, he gave a deep bow of the head and retreated back the way he had come.

  Sevana kept walking, wand scanning in front of her from side to side, similar to the motion that a blind man with a cane would use. She felt blind too, as if she were just feeling her way around in the dark. Not the best feeling to have.

  Chastain could not be considered a large place, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it still somehow took nearly four hours for her to cross over every section of it until she arrived near the center of the main square. Of course, her progress was hindered by every villager coming to her and offering help, information, or whatever else they could think of. Sevana waved them away as often as not, occasionally taking readings as some of them had been transported in the past several days. She took notes on them, recording their experiences in the small leather book Pierpoint had given her. Interestingly enough, the range of their travels varied wildly. So far, Clari held the record in distance traveled by a large margin. Sevana couldn’t put a finger on why. Perhaps the dreams they had affected the spell? Hmmm.

  She finally arrived at the main square. As she walked toward the fountain, she leveled her wand at each building, slowly taking in the reading levels, but these structures didn’t differ from anythi
ng else in the village. Aish. She really would have to start searching outside the vil—wait.

  Sevana froze in place, the wand in her hand nearly vibrating from the force of the magic it detected. Whipping out her notebook, she set the wand to record what it saw, and her hair stood on end. The number was exactly what Pierpoint had recorded on the front page.

  Her head whipped up to see what she had pointed the wand at. The courthouse? No, surely not. After all she had gone in and out of that building multiple times since last night. She would have surely felt or seen something before now. But the only other thing in her path was the large stone fountain that dominated the very center of the square.

  Double-checking, she lowered the wand a tad to where it pointed directly at the fountain and nothing else. The strength of the magical reading increased significantly. No mistake. This was it.

  Her lips peeled back in a feral smile. “Found you.”

  Sevana plopped down right there on the cobblestones, sitting cross-legged and ignoring the cold that seeped quickly through her pants. Spring it might be, but stone was always cold. Even when she had strong morning light like today, that wouldn’t change. She rummaged around a little in her pouch, taking out what she needed for more precise readings by switching to a more sensitive diagnostic wand. She propped open the notebook so that it rested on her knee, letting her easily read the breakdown of the spell as numbers and letters scrawled over the cream colored pages.

  The wand first recorded the power level of sixteen, and while that didn’t surprise her, it still made her wince. But then it started breaking down the elements forming it: running water (duh, of course, it’s a fountain!), reflected light, and artifact.

  Artifact.

  Sevana swore aloud, thumping a fist against the ground in mixed satisfaction and anger. She’d known it had to be an artifact by the way things worked, but at the same time, she truly wished she’d been wrong.