Time Raiders: The Protector Read online

  “You understand the process?”

  They should. They’d been thoroughly briefed on the procedures to follow. Several times. Yet now that their jump was only moments away, both Cassie and Brody listened to her last mission brief intently.

  “During the transport, I’ll imbue each of you with the knowledge and language skills you’ll need to survive in the seventh century. You’ll arrive dressed in the appropriate clothing, at the site we’ve selected.”

  She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and withdrew two wide cuffs of beaten silver. An oval quartz crystal sat dead center in each bracelet.

  “Once you put these bracelets on,” the professor said, “do not take them off. The ESC is your escape, your only escape, if something goes wrong.”

  ESC. The acronym stood for emergency signal cuff, which pretty well said it all, in Cassie’s opinion. She swallowed, slid the cuff over her wrist and pushed it up until it bit into the flesh of her upper arm. Max clamped his around his wrist.

  “One last caution.” The professor looked at each of them in turn, her expression grave. “From past jumps, I know I can smooth over any ‘debris’ you leave behind so there’s no trace of your impact on history. But this only applies to actual historical events. If you’re injured or killed, I can’t make you whole, because you were never really part of that time period. So stay safe, and for God’s sake, don’t lose your ESC.”

  With that fervent plea, she ushered them into the transporter.

  As they took their seats, Cassie could only admire Max’s stoic calm. She knew he had to be a mass of raw nerves inside. He was the first—the only—person selected for a jump who didn’t possess some kind of psychic skill. Professor Carswell was convinced it was that skill, that openness of mind and spirit, that made her volunteers so receptive to transport.

  But time had become critical. The last three missions confirmed the fact that they weren’t the only ones searching for the medallion pieces. Mysterious attacks on the lab and intruders breaking in to Professor Carswell’s home pointed to the fact that someone here on earth wanted the power the medallion would give him or her.

  Worse, they were also competing with hunters from another galaxy. Tessa Marconi had brought back living proof in the form of one very large, very powerful Centaurian who said that his former leader had vowed to keep humans from completing their search for the medallion.

  So Max Brody and his intimate knowledge of China’s ancient capital were Cassie’s ticket to getting into the imperial palace, locating the fourth piece of the medallion and getting out again, fast!

  Assuming she didn’t lose him during the jump.

  He wasn’t one of their tight-knit Time Raiders cadre. Since he didn’t possess a psychic power—none that had been documented, anyway—would he be lost, like the first travelers Carswell had sent back?

  As the professor donned the weird crown with earpieces containing crystals matching the ones in their ESCs, Cassie reached out and gripped Max’s hand. “We’ll make it,” she told him.

  “We have to,” he replied grimly.

  His fingers threaded through hers and their eyes met. For that moment, that infinitesimal moment, they were bonded by excitement and fear.

  “Hang on,” he muttered.

  It happened so fast, Cassie barely had time to register the tingle that raced across her skin and made the hair on her arms stand straight up.

  One moment she was gasping as the temperature inside the capsule dropped a good forty degrees. In the next, an ugly, flat-nosed creature thrust its head through a swirling white haze and blasted her with the foulest breath in the history of the universe.

  Chapter 2

  A woman’s duty is not to control or take charge.

  —Confucius

  “G et away from me!”

  Shrieking, Cassie leaped back to escape the fearsome creature. She didn’t move fast enough. It butted her shoulder and sent her flying into a mound of slushy snow. Hideous black gums and giant-size yellow teeth followed her down. Scuttling backward like an oversize crab, Cassie doubled her fist and swung with all her strength at the snapping jaws.

  The creature brayed in pain and jerked its head up. And up. And up. Its long neck writhed like a furry python. Its hooves beat the earth in a frantic retreat.

  A camel, Cassie realized when she’d blinked away the snowflakes clinging to her lashes. It was a camel! Complete with tasseled bridle and saddle.

  A gloved hand shot out of the swirling white and grabbed the skittering animal’s reins. Cassie followed the hand to an arm sleeved in rough wool. The sleeve led in turn to a wolf pelt draped over a set of broad shoulders, a bristling blond beard and a pair of eyes narrowed to slits under a flat-brimmed felt hat.

  “Do you try to escape?”

  “Huh?”

  With a jerk of his chin, the stranger summoned an underling to take the camel’s reins.

  “Be warned, slave. Try again to escape, and I swear by Thor’s hammer I will strip you naked and whip you to within an inch of your life.”

  Cassie’s jaw dropped. That was Max under all those layers of beard and fur and wool. He’d made it! They both had!

  Giddy with relief, she was still trying to assimilate that astounding fact when he grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet.

  “Hey! Back off, Brody.”

  His hand tightened brutally. A warning glinted in his steely eyes. “I am Bro-dai the Bold. Your master until I deliver you as I have been charged to do. You will address me with respect, slave, and speak in the tongues I have taught you.”

  Oooh-kay.

  Cassie struggled to reset her mind to their new reality. She was astounded that Max had made the transition before her. Then again, he hadn’t blinked awake to a gust of noxious camel exhaust.

  She took a quick glance around to orient herself. It was late afternoon, she noted, close to dusk. Misty gray clouds obscured a sun sinking fast toward snow-covered mountains. The faint glow of the rising moon shone through the haze above another mountain peak.

  Squinting through the swirling snow, she saw she’d landed a short distance from a group of travelers. They were all bundled against the cold. Some wore coarse blankets across shoulders hunched under the weight of corded bundles or straw baskets. Others held on to the reins of pack animals or stood between the yokes of heavily ladened carts. All were watching the interaction between Cassie and Max with varying degrees of interest.

  He played to the crowd by giving her arm a shake. “I will not tell you again, slave. You will address me with respect.”

  All right, already! She got the message and assumed a sullen scowl. “Yes, master.”

  “We travel thousands of leagues to reach this point,” he said in disgust, “and you fall from your saddle like a drunken Magyar.”

  That was one way of explaining their sudden drop into the seventh century, Cassie thought as she stamped her feet against the biting cold. A heavy cloak covered her from chin to knees. Beneath the cloak she wore a scratchy wool tunic, baggy pants and boots stuffed with straw. The pants, unfortunately, were soaked from her immersion in the icy slush. She twitched, trying to separate bare skin from clammy fabric, and glanced behind her. The massive castle looming out of the snow made her eyes widen.

  Professor Carswell had delivered them right on target. They’d landed not twenty yards from the gates of the fortress guarding the mountain pass that led to China’s ancient capital.

  The fortress was part of the Great Wall, which snaked across steep peaks and ridges for almost four thousand miles. Damned if the fortifications didn’t look every bit as formidable up close as they had in all the pictures Cassie had seen of them. She was squinting through the snow at the high, undulating walls when Max gave her arm another squeeze.

  “Your duel with the camel drew the guard’s attention,” he muttered under his breath. “Keep your story straight.”

  Her heart thumped at the sight of the heavyset figure tramping toward them. Bu
ndled up in quilted cotton, leather armor, a bronze breastplate and conical helmet, he wore a distinctly unfriendly expression on his face. The two soldiers trailing him hefted vicious-looking pikes. Not the kind of men Cassie had planned on messing with ninety seconds into her mission.

  “Move aside!”

  The brusque command scattered the travelers waiting to pass through the gate. Merchants and wayfarers jumped out of the way. Caravan tenders, dog-cart drivers and goat herders shooed their animals aside.

  Max stood his ground, his fingers still digging in to Cassie’s arm above her ESC.

  “Who are you?” the guard demanded. “And who is this female who screeches like a scalded cat?”

  Amazing! She understood every word, every inflection. Professor Carswell was incredible.

  “I am Lord Bro-dai,” Max replied. “Vassal to a prince who rules a land where the sun does not set in summer. He has sent me to deliver this gift to your empress.”

  The guard didn’t appear particularly impressed with the proposed gift. He raked Cassie with a contemptuous glance before addressing Max again. “Why would our most glorious empress want a lowly slave such as this one?”

  “She is a seer, with powers that will astound all who witness them.”

  Sudden wariness replaced the guard’s sneer. Like all people of his time, he feared the power of magicians and shamans as much as he revered it. His wariness increased as Max launched into their rehearsed spiel.

  “My prince took the woman in a raid on an island with grass as green as her eyes. He didn’t know her powers until the witch conjured up a storm that almost sank our ship. She’s made this journey hell, too, by calling down sandstorms, raging winds and now this blizzard.”

  His eyes bulging, the sergeant of the guard backed up a pace. Cassie half expected him to cross his fingers in the age-old sign for warding off evil spirits.

  “Wait here,” he ordered with nervous bravado. “I must consult my captain.”

  Signaling to the two pikemen to keep watch on them, he tramped back to the guard post built into the wall beside the gates. Cassie maintained her sullen expression as she whispered an aside to Max. “He bought it.”

  “So it seems.”

  “You want to ease up on the arm now?”

  “Sorry.” Max loosened his grip and let his gaze drift toward the walls stretching into the mists. “Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath.

  Well, thank God! She wasn’t the only one grappling with the fact they’d actually jumped fourteen centuries and landed smack in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. Despite his “me Viking, you slave” bluster, Max was still half in shock, too.

  The wonder of it, the sheer incredibility, sizzled through Cassie’s veins. She was here, mingling with travelers on the fabled Silk Road, waiting for permission to enter the empire historians agreed was the richest and most advanced of its era. An empire ruled for the first—and last!—time in its long history by a female.

  If Athena Carswell was right, Empress Wu Jao possessed the fourth piece of the medallion, or knowledge of its location. She most likely didn’t know the bronze piece’s significance. Professor Carswell herself hadn’t grasped that until she’d interpreted the Ad Astra journals. Now it was up to Cassie—and Max—to locate it.

  Their quest hit an unexpected detour when the guard returned. He was accompanied by his captain and a mustached civilian draped in an exquisitely embroidered, fur-trimmed cloak. A dish-shaped fur hat covered most of his shaved head and topknot, leaving his long queue to swing from side to side as he strode forward and promptly took charge of the situation.

  “I am Li Woo-An.”

  The captain of the guard stood back and said nothing. This was obviously Li’s show. Cassie understood why with the man’s next pronouncement.

  “I am an inspector with the Bureau of Imperial Oversight and Protection of our Most Heavenly Majesties.”

  Oh, hell! No wonder the captain deferred to this civilian. The Bureau of Imperial Oversight, etc., etc., was the name given to the secret police force Empress Wu had created to spy on and eliminate her rivals. These guys made their twentieth-century counterparts in the Gestapo look like bumbling amateurs.

  A whisper from a resentful slave, an anonymous note from a spurned lover, a twitch of a jealous concubine’s eyebrows—any of those could result in princes and commoners alike being hauled in for “questioning” on trumped-up charges.

  Once taken into custody, all suspects soon confessed to their crimes, whether real or imagined. No surprise there, since one of the bureau’s favorite ways to extract confessions was to put the accused in an urn full of oil and light a fire under it. Entire families had been executed or forced to commit suicide based on such confessions. Cassie could almost feel the suspicion as Li addressed Max.

  “You say this lowly slave is a seer?”

  “She is.”

  The inspector’s gaze cut to Cassie. His dark eyes burned into her for long moments. Then he looked around the crowd of gawking observers and hooked a finger at a porter bent almost double under the weight of the bundles strapped to his back.

  “You! Come hence!”

  “M-me, Excellency?”

  “You.”

  Gulping, the man inched forward.

  “On your knees.”

  The porter dropped, shaking from head to toe. A moan of terror escaped him as Li reached under his cloak and drew a dagger from a richly decorated sheath.

  “Be still, you fool.”

  The man’s terror turned to sobbing relief when Li sliced through one of the straps and tugged the topmost bundle free. With the cloth-wrapped package in one hand and the dagger in the other, Li turned to Cassie.

  “Tell me what is bound up in this cloth, slave, or I will slit your throat and that of your master.”

  The crowd gave a collective gasp and shuffled closer, awaiting Cassie’s answer with ghoulish eagerness. Max answered for her.

  “She does not perform such foolish tricks,” he said with a careless roll of his shoulders. “Her powers are not of that kind.”

  The crowd gasped again and Li’s mouth thinned beneath his drooping mustache. Cassie got the distinct impression the inspector wasn’t used to being shrugged off.

  “What kind are they?” he retorted dangerously.

  “She foretells changes in nature. When rain will come, when trees will bud, when—”

  “When this snow will cease to fall?” Li interrupted silkily.

  “That, too, if the spirit is with her.”

  Li’s gaze shifted to Cassie. “Speak, slave. Tell us when we will see the sun again.”

  Her heart thumping, she squinted at the hazy glow above the distant peak. The rising moon was brighter than when she’d spotted it a few moments ago. She was almost sure of it. And try as she might, Cassie couldn’t detect a trace of red around it.

  For a moment, just a moment, doubt squeezed her chest like a vise. Then she lifted her chin and went with her instincts. “The snow will cease this night and the sun will shine again come dawn.”

  The blunt response sent Max’s stomach dropping straight to the tops of his sheepskin-lined boots. Jesus H. Christ! Couldn’t she shade her answer a little more? Leave a wider margin of error?

  Inspector Li obviously didn’t care much for her boldness, either. “Your prophecy had best prove true, slave. If it doesn’t, and snow still falls at dawn, you and your master will lose your heads.”

  Tossing the cloth bundle at the cringing porter, he shoved his dagger into its sheath and rapped out an order to the captain of the guard.

  “Take them into the fort and hold them.”

  The guards relieved Max of his dagger and the sword strapped to his waist before escorting the prisoners through the gates and down a short flight of steps to a dank cell at the base of the wall. It contained no furnishings, no charcoal brasier for warmth, not even a slop bucket. The only light came from the barred grate in the door, and that was fading fast.

&
nbsp; The moment the door clanged shut, Max rounded on his jump partner. “Are you out of your mind?”

  She hugged her waist, trying to keep warm. “Not the last time I checked.”

  “Why didn’t you give yourself more latitude with this snow business?”

  “Back off, Brody. I know what I’m talking about.”

  Max hoped to hell she did. “How about cluing me in?” he retorted. “I’m not real anxious to abort our mission before it starts. Or get my head whacked off.”

  “Have you heard the old Zuni saying, ‘If the moon’s face is red, of water she speaks’?”

  “You’re risking our necks on an old saying?”

  “You want it in more modern terminology? Okay.” Shivering in the dank cold, she raised a hand and ticked off the points of her rationale. “A, a red halo around the moon or a shadow on its face is caused by cirrus clouds in the higher altitudes because B, these clouds contain ice crystals that refract the light. Ergo C—no red, no ice crystals, no snow.”

  “Does that hold true one hundred percent of the time?” Max asked suspiciously.

  She chewed on her lower lip before admitting, “More like eighty to ninety.”

  “Dammit, Jones…”

  “Look, you knew the risks when you agreed to the mission. Nothing about this operation is one hundred percent.”

  Nothing about this operation made a whole lot of sense, either, including the fact that he’d just zoomed through fourteen centuries.

  “Didn’t Confucius write something about the folly of putting women in charge?”

  “Probably. The guy was a world-class misogynist. I bet you anything he was a Centaurian.”

  The reminder of the powerful forces arrayed against them snapped Max’s brows together. He eyed his partner in this crazy enterprise and barked out a brusque order. “Take off your clothes.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re soaked from the waist down and shivering like a lost dog. You need to get out of those wet clothes.” Dragging the wolf pelt from his shoulders, he tossed it on the dirt floor. “You’ve been through military survivor training. You know the best way to keep warm is to share body heat.”