Decimus Fate and the Talisman of Dreams Read online

  Thank You

  I want to say a huge thank you to all the readers who have supported me over the last few years. Whether you bought one of my books or downloaded a free copy during a promotion, I want to thank you for taking a chance on a new author.

  And. if you left a review, or took the time to send me a message, then you are totally awesome and I am in your debt! I would love to buy each and every one of you a beer or a coffee, or an ice cream cone with a chocolate flake on top!

  To Logan and Callum, my two amazing boys.

  To Judith who suggested the idea of a fantasy

  whodunnit during a chat over the garden fence!

  And to Julie who reads my waffle

  corrects my mistakes

  and helps me stay on track.

  Decimus Fate

  and the

  The Talisman of Dreams

  Peter A. Flannery

  BLACKHEART BOOKS

  Prologue - The Blue Tile

  The Tutor

  The Sage of Blackfell House

  The Fool’s Hope

  Fate

  The Lord of the City

  The Hidden Realm

  Coming Home to Roost

  The Monastery of Tan Jit Su

  A Date With Destiny

  The Talisman of Dreams

  We Are Kane

  Finding Fate

  The Countess

  Of Golems and Gold Handprints

  Contrato Indissolibus

  The Snare of Temptation

  The Sword of a Demon Hunter

  Raven Mother

  The Price of Healing

  The Golem and the Raven’s Call

  Abigail

  Wreathed in Smoke

  Weasel

  Veleno

  Reckless & Free

  He’s Back

  A Difficult Choice

  Demons, Daggers and Debts

  Until Tomorrow

  The Rich Man in the Forest

  The Monastery and the Mound

  A Father’s Love

  Just For a While

  Prologue

  The Blue Tile

  The artisan felt sick with fear. He had no idea why the emperor’s sorcerer had summoned him, but he was terrified that it might have something to do with the ‘blue tile’. For the last two years he, and twenty other magical artisans, had been working to complete a bowl shaped chamber that was designed to absorb the magical energy of anything placed within it.

  Built into the floor of a marble hall, the chamber was lined with thousands of blue tiles each one imbued with magic and set in place with binding spells. All the thousands of tiles were identical, except for one.

  It was almost a year ago when a stranger had stopped the artisan on his way to work at the palace. The artisan had found the man’s presence unsettling and began to walk past him until the stranger spoke.

  ‘I know how to save your son.’

  The artisan stopped.

  ‘What do you know about my son?’

  ‘I know that you have tried everything to save him, and that all your efforts have failed.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ asked the artisan. ‘Are you a physician?’

  ‘No,’ said the stranger. ‘But I know of a cure if you are willing to pay for it.’

  ‘But I have no money. I have given everything I have, and still my son is going to die.’

  ‘Not if you do something for me,’ said the stranger.

  The artisan’s eyes grew narrow with suspicion. Many people had made tempting promises, but this man seemed different.

  ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘A simple thing,’ said the stranger and, reaching into his robes, he drew out a blue tile that looked identical to those being used in the palace. He handed the tile to the artisan. ‘All I want you to do is set this into the chamber as you would any other tile.’

  ‘Is it dangerous?’

  ‘No,’ said the stranger. ‘No one will even notice that it’s there.’

  As the artisan turned the tile over in his hands he noticed a design etched into the back… three parallel lines joined together by a series of overlapping diagonal lines.

  ‘Can you really save my son?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the stranger and, with a sigh, the artisan tucked the blue tile into his clothes.

  That was almost a year ago and the stranger had been true to his word. How he found a cure the artisan did not know, but that did not matter. All that mattered was that his son was alive. But now the artisan was about to pay the real price for saving his son’s life. He was certain that his interference had been discovered. However, as he continued, he noticed other artisans making their way to the palace. By the time he reached the chamber the entire compliment of workers was there.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ said a powerful voice and the artisans looked up to see the emperor’s sorcerer standing on the crystal disk of the recepticule. Tall and slender with grey hair and dark green eyes, the man walked down the steps and into the base of the chamber.

  ‘Come, please,’ he said, inviting the artisans to join him.

  Still uncertain, but somewhat relieved, the artisan joined his fellow craftsmen as they made their way down into the voluminous chamber. It really was an awe-inspiring sight; a great bowl of enamelled blue tiles rising around them in a shimmering wall that formed a full three quarters of a sphere.

  ‘Magnificent work,’ said the emperor’s sorcerer. ‘A true credit to your art.’

  The artisan breathed a sigh of relief. He was not about to be punished. He and his fellow craftsmen were here to be thanked.

  The emperor’s sorcerer moved among the men, shaking hands and patting shoulders. Slowly he moved through the group and climbed back up the stairs to address them.

  ‘The emperor is delighted,’ he told them. ‘And as a final reward your families will each be paid a stipend of five silver coins a month for the rest of their lives.’

  The faces of the artisans lit up with pride.

  ‘What you have created here is unique and impossible to replicate.’ The sorcerer’s green eyes shone with satisfaction as he stood on the recepticule and reached out to the activation column where three stone spheres sat in gold cradles. Moving slowly, he picked up the first of the spheres, each of which was marbled with gold.

  This first sphere activated the chamber’s containment field and the sorcerer’s form seemed to shimmer as he placed the sphere in the white marble housing of the column. As he did this, the artisans began to shift and murmur. They were now trapped in the heart of the chamber.

  ‘You have given us a way of increasing the emperor’s power,’ said the sorcerer as he lifted the second of the marbled stone spheres.

  And now the artisans began to panic. Placing that sphere would harmonise the magical energy that each of them possessed. With a single voice of anguish they cried out as the sorcerer set down the second sphere. Some dropped to their knees as the arcane essence was drawn out of their bodies until it filled the chamber with glowing light.

  The third sphere would vaporise the artisans in a blinding flash of energy that would be absorbed by the tiles before being channelled into the recepticule on which the sorcerer now stood.

  The artisan watched as the sorcerer raised the final stone sphere. He and his fellow craftsmen had been used, and now their magical energy would be harvested to make a powerful sorcerer even more powerful. All around him, his fellow artisans wailed in terror, but not him. His thoughts were of a secret blue tile and of the beloved son who was alive because of it.

  Looking down into the chamber, the sorcerer gave a smile of triumph as he lowered the fin
al sphere into its niche. The cries of the artisans were suddenly cut off as the chamber flared with a blinding white light and the sorcerer gasped as his body was filled with a surge of magical power.

  As the light faded the sorcerer drew a breath. The device had worked perfectly, but then he frowned. No… not quite perfectly. As the plasma of vaporised souls slowly dissipated, he became aware of a flaw in the perfection of his new device.

  Rushing down from the crystal disk he entered the chamber where the air was filled with the smell that follows a lightning strike. Face tight with outrage, he whirled about. Focusing his mind, he scanned the device with his magical perception, trying to determine exactly what had been done, but he sensed nothing.

  Was one of the tiles damaged or misplaced? He swept his gaze over the myriad of tiles but could see nothing but perfection. The sorcerer ground his teeth and magical flames surrounded his fists as he let out a primal cry of rage. Something had been done to his beloved creation and he had just killed the only people who could tell him what. Slowly the rage went out of his body…

  It didn’t matter, he told himself. The device worked. So long as he did not try to do too much, he could increase his power until no sorcerer in the world could match him. Feeling calmer he walked out of the chamber and returned to the crystal disk. Finally he dismissed the invisible flaw as irrelevant and his lip curled in a sneer. He was the emperor’s personal sorcerer, the most influential magic user in the world, and his name was Oruthian Bohr.

  Back in the chamber, thousands of blue tiles tinkled softly as they cooled. They looked identical. There was nothing to tell one of them from another, except that the back of one tile was etched with a design known to mystics as the Web of the Wyrd. To others, this design was known to have a different meaning; to them it was known as the ancient symbol for fate.

  1

  The Tutor

  The merchant knew he was being followed, but he had no choice except to push on through the narrow streets of Guile. It was almost midnight and the air was thick with the sickly sweet smell of hops from the brewery at the end of Cooper’s Row. Veils of mist hung over the road forming yellow haloes around the few oil lamps that burned in this, the poorest quarter of the city. The ramshackle buildings rose three storeys high, looming over the road and punctuated by narrow alleyways that ran between them.

  Leading his mule, the merchant hurried along. It was a damp night and cold, but the merchant was sweating. Every dark alleyway seemed to be filled with menace and his heart was beating so fast it left him breathless. Madam Carletta of the Fool’s Hope Inn had advised him to hire protection but he had baulked at the cost.

  ‘No one would dare attack a member of the merchant guild within the city walls,’ he had told her, but the landlady of the Fool’s Hope had not been so sure, and now he bitterly regretted not taking her advice. He kept glancing backwards but he never saw the black man in the dark clothes who came after him.

  Turning in the direction of his home, the merchant pressed on. The crossroads ahead of him were lit by one meagre lamp where normally there would be four. The open space was dark and forbidding but still more appealing than the menacing presence he sensed in the streets behind.

  Grabbing his mule’s bridle he started forward then stopped as a young man stepped out in front of him. The man appeared to be in his early twenties with a narrow face, dark hair and a pointed nose that had clearly been broken at some point in the past.

  ‘Not so fast, my friend,’ said the young man.

  The light from the solitary oil lamp glinted off a thin-bladed dagger and a glowing sigil on the back of his hand marked the young man as an apprentice mage.

  Trying not to panic, the merchant pulled his mule to the right then stopped again as another figure emerged from the shadows. He turned, only to find two more young men blocking his way while a further two now stepped up behind him. Unlike the apparent leader of the group, these young men had the broad shoulders of those accustomed to physical work. They were dressed in moleskin breeches with the waxed cotton jerkins worn by the ferrymen who plied the rivers of Guile. All of them were armed with knives or the long machetes used for hacking through the thick reeds that grew along sections of the river. It was clear that they had been waiting for him.

  ‘You can’t attack me,’ said the merchant. ‘No one attacks a member of the merchant guild. Not within the city walls.’

  The leader gave a mocking laugh.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘They won’t find your body in the city.’

  The merchant started as one of the young men stepped up behind him. Using his knife he cut the straps on a saddle bag and drew out a metal chest about two hands wide. There was no visible lock or keyhole, only an engraved plate lying across the join where a normal lock would be.

  The young man took the chest to the leader of the group who cradled it in the crook of his arm. He placed his right hand on the engraved plate which began to glow causing him to wince and remove his hand as if it had been burned.

  ‘I’m told,’ he said, now tapping the engraved plate with the tip of his knife, ‘that only your hand can open this chest.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said the merchant. ‘You can’t force me… The chest will only open if I want it to.’

  The leader gave a wicked smile. ‘Oh, you’ll want it to,’ he said. ‘By the time we’ve finished with you, you’ll be begging it to open.’

  The merchant was now sweating profusely and shaking with fear.

  ‘Please!’ he cried. ‘I promised to pay Master Veleno his share.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the youth. ‘But we don’t work for Master Veleno.’

  ‘Then he’ll kill you!’ gasped the merchant. ‘He’ll kill you if you defy him.’

  ‘But who’s going to tell him?’ said the leader. ‘You’ll be dead and I don’t see anyone else around.’

  The merchant’s eyes darted around the crossroads. The streets were empty. There was no one to witness the attack. Turning back to the leader he drew a breath to plead for his life then stopped as a second street lamp suddenly flared into life. Everyone turned, and there, standing beneath the newly lit lamp, was a dark and imposing figure.

  The man was tall with the ebony skin of people who hail from the Southern Isles. He was dressed in black leather breeches and a black leather doublet with articulated plates of hardened leather on his right arm and shoulder. A bandolier of throwing stars angled across his chest and a slender shortsword hung at his waist. He stood with a relaxed stance that spoke of confidence. He was not heavily built and yet he possessed the kind of physical presence that would give any man pause. The man’s stern features were gathered in a frown and even in this meagre light they could see that his eyes were blue.

  ‘Oh, but you boys have made a terrible mistake.’ The man shook his head as if he were truly sorry for the fate that awaited them.

  ‘There’s been no mistake,’ said the leader of the group. ‘This just means we bury two bodies in the forest tonight.’

  The stranger smiled as if he found the threat endearing.

  ‘You still have time to walk away,’ he told the leader. His voice was deep and warm but with a hard edge that was distinctly intimidating. ‘If you return the chest and leave, Master Veleno might not learn of what you did tonight.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said the apprentice mage and with a jerk of his head he directed his companions to attack.

  Knowing they would be severely punished if Master Veleno heard of their attack, four of the young ferrymen rushed forward. Two were armed with knives and two with machetes, but the black man in the dark clothes did not back away. Instead he stepped forward to meet his attackers. One of them raised his machete to strike, but the stranger closed in quickly. He grabbed the young man’s arm and spun him around, forcing him into the path of the other three assailants. With a savage twist the stranger flipped the young man onto his side and he screamed as one of the bones in his arm broke with an audible
‘crack’.

  Two knives now flashed towards the stranger as a third man hefted a machete. With impressive speed the stranger disarmed his first opponent before delivering a backhanded blow that broke the young man’s nose. Arching away from a knife-thrust, the stranger caught his second attacker’s wrist, removed the knife from his hand and flipped him onto his back. Then, with agility that belied his size, he spun about, landing a roundhouse kick squarely on the jaw of the last attacker who had just raised his machete to strike. The man’s knees gave out and he dropped his weapon as he stumbled to the floor.

  Still holding his downed opponent’s knife, the stranger turned to face the leader of the group. The fight had taken all of ten seconds and the stranger had not even drawn his sword.

  Two of the original gang remained standing. The ferryman to the left had not attacked and he stood with his knife trembling in his hand. The leader was clearly shocked by the speed with which the stranger had defeated his companions, but he also looked surprisingly confident. Still holding the merchant’s chest he reached into his tunic and pulled out a small crystal sphere that was filled with a swirling green light.

  ‘So you know how to fight,’ he said in a mocking tone. ‘Let’s see how tough you are when you’re breathless and paralysed.’

  The black man glanced at the glowing sphere and his brow gathered in a frown.

  ‘I’m warning you,’ he said. ‘This is your last chance to walk away.’

  For a moment the young man hesitated then he smiled as he threw the crystal sphere at the stranger’s feet. The sphere shattered and a glowing green gas flowed towards the stranger and the ferrymen lying close by. The magical fumes seemed to seek them out, engulfing their torsos and swirling about their heads.