The Dreamwalker's Path

1/ Main Street Market, Sanctuary

Somehow, Caitell had ended up wearing Jardel’s coat. It was a heavy, leather thing that had been beaten and bruised by years of wear, and the shoulder seam needed to be repaired, but it was warm, and it smelled like a camp fire. She wasn’t actually sure that the latter part was a good thing, but she was willing to bet that for females of his species, it would be a pretty big turn on. Mostly, Caitell was grateful that the jacket was warm. Section zero could get pretty cold in places, at least by Sanctuary’s standards, and she didn’t have the ability to hold fire in her belly to keep her warm.

To Jardel’s credit, he’d even given her his coat without her asking, or rather, he’d tugged it off and plopped it over her shoulders, nearly knocking her over with the unexpected weight of it. Jardel was a big sort of guy, but his coat was a lot bigger.

Caitell pushed up the sleeves for what had to be the hundredth time so that she could use her hands to poke and prod at the wall of a book store. “I’m not going to lie,” her voice, heavy with boredom, broke the silence between them. “I have no idea what in Time we’re looking for.”

Jardel replaced the door that he’d accidentally pulled from its hinges. “The child, I believe,” he reminded her. For a brute of a man, his voice was ever so mild. “Emelye?” He looked at Caitell for verification that this was the name of the girl they sought. “A little girl with brown hair. Or anything unusual.”

Caitell sighed. She didn’t bother explaining that she’d seen the girl just before Emelye had disappeared. It just didn’t feel like a conversation that she wanted to have. “Yeah, it’s more the latter part I was referring to. How are we supposed to find something unusual in a place that isn’t very usual to begin with?”

Jardel considered this for a moment, and then smiled.

“Perhaps we should then look for something usual instead.” Caitell grinned. “Very clever.”

“Well I can’t say much for my face by human standards, but I’ve got a killer personality.”

The witch faltered for a moment, old prejudices bubbling to the surface and goading her to ask him if he meant a killer’s personality. He must have seem her thoughts on her face, because he opened his arms in an offering of peace.

“Sorry,” she murmured, heat rising to her face. She hid behind the high collar of his jacket and shuffled off in the direction they’d been heading.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he fell into step with her. “I’ve had my share of unfair thoughts in the last Hour’s passing.”

Caitell nodded, but she still felt a little guilty, because even though he was being kind to her, she still wanted to hate him.

If only he hadn’t been a Westie, she thought, they might have been able to build a friendship.

They walked on for a time, calling out Emelye’s name, and stopping only occasionally to check on things that might be considered unusual in their already unusual world.

“I take it you weren’t born here,” the demon remarked the third time Caitell went down one street claiming that it was another before having to backtrack.

“What makes you say that?”

“You don’t ever really seem to know where you are.” Caitell pondered this. “I’ve been here since 1109 in

Linear Time. I don’t know how long that is exactly, but I assure you, it feels like an eternity.”

Jardel nodded. “Yeah, I wasn’t born here either. Tami was, though, and Xyri. Both of them always knew where they were going.”

“Chapel always knows, too.” She didn’t know why they were using the names of their respective friends. It wasn’t like the demon knew who Chapel was any more than she’d really known either Tami or Xyri. Her experiences with them had been limited to the occasional glimpse from across the street, or in a fight.

“So why’d you come to Sanctuary, then?” she asked him, redirecting the subject.

“My parents sold me while I was still in the egg. I went from hand to hand for a while, and when I got tired of being sold off, I killed the auctioneer. His mother was an Hour, she petitioned Time, and Time granted her request. What about you, Witch? What brings you to Sanctuary?”

Caitell fluffed her hair. “I invented popcorn before it was supposed to be invented.”

Jardel blinked. The skin beneath the scales of his belly glowed with the fire inside of it, and the glow rose to his throat. She could see the flames in his mouth when he opened his mouth to laugh. “How world-threatening.”

Caitell fluffed up like a cat who had her tail pulled. “Well, okay, maybe I slept with someone I shouldn’t have, and when I told people about it, he pulled a few strings, but I did invent popcorn, and Time made sure that no one knew about it.”

Jardel made a sound of understanding. Caitell wasn’t sure if he was mocking her or not, though, so she resolved not to speak to him any more until she could figure it out.

Her resolve waivered when she realized they had walked right into what was left of Main street Market.

The Main street Market existed in all twenty-four of the districts in Sanctuary. It was, in fact, the only place in Sanctuary where time really passed. You could always find the market, and with the market you found one of the Twelve Hours, and that Hour represented the time that it was in Sanctuary, and the section that the Market was considered to be in at that point.

It was midnight in Sanctuary, which meant that Main street Market was in section zero. Normally that meant the square would be alight with fireflies, Chinese floating lamps, strings of glass lights, and magic spells. Now, however, it was dark, the only light coming from the two white orbs that Caitell had cast earlier to light their way. Carts lay open and empty along the outer parameter of the Square. All of the venders had, by now, finally given up, tired of being alone and staring at the remains of the clock tower.

Caitell stood in front of the pile of rubble where the clock had been and was confronted with a realization more horrifying than the dismantled market or the ruined structure.

This, she realized, this was why Jackal had died.

Not just Jackal, she corrected herself. All of them. Even herself, through Jackal, and through the other three links that the child-gangs had to the Alchemist. This is where their hatred for each other had been bred, where it had been carefully tended by wicked hands and poisoned words. This was where the source had been. The thing that had made all of them murderers, in the end. What was it that Lyriel had called him? The devil that made them do it.

She turned away, “I need a minute, okay?” she pulled Jardel’s jacket tighter around her.

“Are you all right?” The thick gravel of his voice made it impossible for Caitell to be sure, but she thought she heard a prick of smugness in his voice. Leave it to an Eastling, he must be thinking, to get a little squeamish at the memory of death.

She pursed her lips and glared over her shoulder, “I just wasn’t expecting to come up on it so soon, just give me a minute.” A moment later, her conscience caught up with her. Why should he be smug about something like this? What would he gain from that? Taking a breath, she turned around to regard him a second time. “Sorry.”

Jardel shrugged. “Just let me know when.”

Caitell wondered how he could be so unbothered by the sight of the rubble. After all, his friend—what was her name?— Tami, was gone, too.

The Alchemist had wiped them both clean, and used them to send messages to the Eastlings and the Westies. He’d done the same with the Northers and the Southbits, and when he was done, when the last of the Alchemist had finally slipped out of their hearts, he took their souls with them.

She cast a sidelong glance at Jardel and wondered what he thought about the matter.

To her surprise, the Phanin was looking down at the ground, hands folded in front of him. She wondered if he was praying.

“Hey,” she nudged him lightly, “We should probably look through the rubble. Emelye might be hiding behind some of the bigger sections.”

Jardel nodded. “I suppose we had better,” he rumbled, heaving a sigh that made his throat and cheeks glow with the fire of his belly and moving off to start on the opposite side of the courtyard. “We’ll take different sections and meet in the middle, all right?”

Caitell agreed with a nod, although Jardel was already overturning larger pieces of coquina and brick and didn’t notice. She moved to the side opposite of Jardel and began picking through, half expecting to uncover some sort of twisted trap that the Alchemist might have set in the stone of the tower itself.

There would be no chance of that, Caitell told herself. The Hours had probably made sure that there was nothing of any magical worth left in the Tower before it fell. Not even a psychic signature was left behind.

Ah, to have that sort of power…

Caitell peeked behind a waist high remnant of a wall, as she thought about the extent of what one of Time’s Hours could really do. It wasn’t just acting as the law that governed the people—oh, that was part of it, to be true, but what kept the Hours safe from the more dangerous inhabitants of Sanctuary wasn’t their colorful surcoats. It was power. The sort of power that could be so fined tuned as to erase the emotional residue of an incident, to wash away only Time knew how many years of malign psychic residue from the stone itself...

The witch pulled herself onto the broken wall and looked out in the direction she was searching. “Any sign of anything?”

She looked over her shoulder at the place where Jardel was systematically pushing large pieces of debris one way or the other so that he didn’t have to climb over things.

“Not really,” his response was a little bit dour. “Just a lot of rock. I don’t feel anything in the stone or smell anything in the air except for us.”

“What a bust,” Caitell muttered, holding her hands out to balance as she eased herself back down to the ground.

As the witch had disappeared from his immediate view

again, Jardel turned back to the stone beneath his palms.

He’d said that he couldn’t feel anything except for the two of them, and while that was true, he hadn’t been entirely honest.

There was something here in the rubble. Or there had been. He could taste a thin trace of whatever it was, close to the ground, but just barely. Not enough to identify it, certainly not enough to share. It could be anything. Residual magic from the Alchemist’s practice, any one of the numerous occupants that may have sneaked through the tower ruins hoping to find something interesting that they could hand down to their kids, or sell for a pretty penny. The area wasn’t heavily trafficked, per say, but there had definitely been some scavenging since the Tower had fallen, and recently, if the faint scent he was picking up could be trusted.

Along black tongue flicked between lips, and Jardel crouched close to the ground. He expected the magic, whatever its source, to be more concentrated near the ground, to have a stronger flavor. But there was nothing. By the time he stood up again, he had grown immune to what little he’d been able to taste in the air. It was gone, completely.

Jardel pushed a stone out of his path and lumbered toward the center and toward the witch. “You know, what little is actually here is way too refined or faded to get anything off of,” he told her. “We should call it quits here and move on.”

“Yeah, I was kinda—” a pause, the witch clambered over a rock toward him and then disappeared again, “kinda thinking the same thing. What’s here is residue from the Market vendors, I would guess, or at least it doesn’t match the feeling of a little girl—Yikes!”

There was a high pitched squeal and rolling debris. The tumble concluded with a sharp, “Ouch! Ah, shit.”

“Caitell?” Jardel jumped over the next few stones and circled around the large wall that separated them. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, I just sliced my hand open, epitome of poise and grace that I am. I guess I stepped somewhere that wasn’t stable.”

He found her sitting on the ground, legs crossed, holding a bleeding palm out for her own inspection.

Jardel stepped down into the small pit she’d fallen into. The ground beneath his boots crunched, and when he looked, he realized there were shards of glass scattered on hardwood floor.

He frowned. “What the hell?”

Caitell looked up from her bleeding hand and looked around. “I guess this is the inside. Hey, lend a girl a hand, would you? I’ve got glass stuck in my palm.”

Jardel crossed the remains of the room and knelt down next to the woman. “I’m surprised you didn’t get any stuck in your ass. There’s glass everywhere.”

“Yeah, it looks like the Alchemist had a bunch of shelves in here. Full of glass, apparently.” She winced when Jardel took her hand and pulled out one of the larger pieces embedded in her skin.

“I think I can heal it for you, but there’s a lot of glass still stuck in your skin.”

“Ah, no problem,” Caitell shook her other hand to free it of her long sleeve and held it over her palm. She licked her lips and braced herself with a deep breath before yanking her hand back.

The remaining shards pulled themselves out and hovered in the air.

“Gnyaah...it stings, it stings...” she tried to shake off Jardel’s grip but he held her still.

Before Caitell had time to ready herself, the Phanin’s nostrils glowed, and he snorted.

“Holy cogs what the hell are you doing?”

More disturbing than the fact that he’d snorted a fiery snot ball at her palm was the fact that the fire was a pale blue, and all though she knew it was hot, it didn’t feel like it was burning her.

He closed his other hand over hers, killing the flame.

“Sorry...I didn’t think that you’d let me do that if I told you what I was going to do.” He released her hand, and it was whole again.

Caitell looked at her palm, flipped her hand over, wiggled her fingers, flipped it back, and made a fist. “With a skill like that, it’s no wonder you guys had such a fast recovery time.”

Jardel scratched a scaled neck with sharp claws. “Pale fire only heals minor surface wounds. When we were dragons, it was used for hardening our scales, nothing more. It was just coincidence that we discovered it also heals things like cuts.”

“Oh, I see,” she looked up from her hand to Jardel. Amazing what you learned through open minded conversation. “Well...You know, thanks and all that.”

Jardel nodded. “Of course. Do you need help up, still?”

“No, I got it.” She carefully raised herself to her feet and brushed off her backside and her legs. “Guess I really was lucky,” she muttered, looking down at the glass that ran all along the edges of the room. “I wonder why he had so many jars.”

Jardel stood up and looked around. “Well, he was a collector, you know. I’m sure they were to keep whatever he collected.” “Yeah, I guess...”

Caitell moved along the outer perimeter of the room, raking the glass toward the center of the room with her foot. “Still, that’s a lot of gla—oh hey!” she bent down and picked up a large, decanter. “That’s fancy...And not broken.” She rolled it between her hands and looked to Jardel. “Why isn’t it broken?”

The demon extended his hand. “Glass breaks because of the way it’s made. If there’s more pressure on the outside of the glass than in the glass itself, then it shatters...” He turned the decanter over in his hands. “Or because it had a spell on it.” He looked over at Caitell. “No offense, but you are a witch, how do you not sense that?”

Caitell shrugged. “I wasn’t given formal instruction, and humans don’t have natural instincts anymore. Even when I was a child learning magic took a lot of practice and a lot of natural talent that very few people have. Truth be told, I’m more telekinetic with a bit of extra. Jackal taught me a bit, but he was always...” She shrugged. “Even before the Alchemist he didn’t really think in a straight line.”

Jardel tried to think of something to say in response to that, but the silence stretched for a little too long and turned a little too awkward. He was about to suggest that they head back when Caitell pointed at the decanter again.

“There’s frost etching on the base,” she noted, holding her hand out for it again.

“Mm, probably the spell he used to make it unbreakable.”

“Yeah, or a label,” Caitell muttered, squinting in the darkness, and the little orb that had followed her down into the pit fluttered closer.

“Hwonne bebriceth the hwyrfling onsteppan Bealu.” She read each word slowly, running her fingers over every character that was etched in the glass.

“Oh,” Jardel noted dryly, “Yes, well, that clears everything right up.”

“It’s English,” she supplied, “Before my time, English, but English.”

“Do you know what it means?”

“Uhmm.” A long pause as she puzzled through it. “When breaks the orb...” her voice faded and she muttered. “Ah, basically: Mischief walks when the orb breaks.”

She looked into the decanter. “I’m guessing it had a glass top, like a ball or something.”

“And I’m guessing that the top broke when the tower fell.”

“Probably.” Caitell hugged the decanter to her. “It’s not much, but we could take this back to them. Time might know what the Alchemist was collecting in here, or at least what was in the jar.”

It seemed like a long shot to Jardel, but he figured it was better than coming back empty handed. “Let’s get out of here, then. Do you need a hand up the steps?”

“No, I got it,” she skipped up and turned back to wait for Jardel.

That was when the hands came back.

There was no reason why they should be out of the Temple, so Caitell hadn’t thought to warn Jardel not to put his hands on the wall when he came up the stairs.

But the hands reached out, four hands of four different, fully grown gods, grabbed at the thick arm of the dragon- man, and they yanked him into the wall.