Oberon's Dreams - By Aaron Pogue Page 0,27

streets where he’d grown up. It was no place for Aemilia’s silk slippers or gem-strewn hair. She paid no mind to the muck but strode purposely ahead to a rough plank door set in a dirty wall. She knocked three times, then crossed her arms over her chest and stood with toe tapping until the door cracked open. A voice within called, “Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” Aemilia said smoothly. “And I’ve brought…a problem.”

“You always do,” the other answered, but the door swung open and the man standing sentry beckoned them urgently. “Get in here, then. Quick. Before you’re seen.”

“I know the risk as well as you,” Aemilia hissed, but she wasted no time dragging Corin in behind her.

The sentry slammed the door behind them. The rasp of the solid bolt rang loudly in the tiny anteroom, a closet scarcely three paces square lit only by the seep of light around uneven doorframes. Corin reached immediately for the handle of the opposite door, anxious to escape this confined space, but the sentry interposed himself and slapped the pirate’s hand aside.

“Who is this you’ve brought us, Aemilia?”

She ignored the question, but she made no move to force into the inner room. Instead, she answered with a quiet calm, “Who else is here?”

“Dale and Kaleoth, Tian and Kris and Maredon. Umm…”

“Delaen?”

“Oh! Yeah, she’s here.”

“Good. Jeff should be here soon, unless I miss my guess. Call them down to council.”

“Do we have enough—”

“I don’t care about a quorum, Julian. This is bigger than our rules. This man is out of time.”

For the first time, the sentry turned to Corin and looked him up and down. Julian was a portly fellow, tall and broad and deep, with a thick brown beard and merry cheeks beneath suspicious eyes.

“Out of time? It’s not our role to thwart Ephitel’s justice.”

“You misunderstand me,” Aemilia said. “We need to see Delaen.” She laid a heavy emphasis upon the name of the druids’ expert in time travel, and Julian gasped in sudden understanding.

He turned to Corin again, eyes wide. “From what time?”

“This is no conversation for dark thresholds,” Aemilia snapped. “Call them all to council, and bring Delaen to me.”

At last the sentry stepped aside. He shoved the door wide and bustled through, leaving enough room for Corin to breathe freely for the first time since they’d entered. The open door bathed Aemilia in the twisting copper torchlight from the room beyond.

Smoke washed into the room, too—hearth smoke and pipe smoke intermingled—and with it the aromas of a much-turned stew and stale beer. Raucous voices and the clatter from the other room spoke just as plainly, proclaiming this place to Corin with a deep familiarity.

“A shady tavern?” he asked. “I thought you were Oberon’s chosen people! I thought we were going to your council hall, but you brought me to a bolt-hole.”

She gave him a measuring look, up and down. “Forgive me. I expected you would find the setting comfortably familiar.”

“Familiarity is not my concern. You’re hiding. There is a fear in the air that does not much match the little you’ve told me of these people.”

She rolled her eyes. “You didn’t see how Ephitel treated me, then?”

“I thought he hated you. Are all your people outcast?”

“Not outcast. Not in the public eyes. But very much endangered. I knew this before you ever spoke forbidden lore, even if Jeff can’t see it. Ephitel believes we are a threat.”

“But you said Oberon—”

“Oberon wears the crown, but Ephitel holds the sword and aims the bow. And we believe he hopes to wear the crown as well.”

“I have made fine friends in this strange place. You are enemies of Ephitel.”

“And you as well,” she said.

“Hardly enemies. Where I come from, he is a distant and terrible figure with far better ways to spend his time. He does not know my name.”

“And yet the way you recognized his secret police, the way you moved within the crowd…you seem comfortable enough defying authority. Why are you so angry that we must do the same?”

Corin shook his head. “It isn’t anger. It’s disappointment. I’d hoped you would be powerful enough to help me.”

“Hold to that hope. We are likely your best chance within this place. You would do well to submit yourself to our guidance—”

“Your guidance? Ephitel has taken an interest in me, and you suggest some other slinking rats might somehow aid me.”

“Hidden things are not powerless things, and rats are known to hold their own against superior foes.”

Corin sighed. “For that alone you think I should