Return of the Paladin

by Layton Green

Owl staff at the ready, Yasmina stayed close behind Will, followed by Dalen and then Mateo, who was gripping his urumi blade. Their footsteps echoed in the open interior.

  Except for a bat swooping through the gloom, nothing else stirred. As they climbed, Dalen’s light rose with them, illuminating walls covered in the same bas-relief carvings. Will goggled at the time and artistry they must have taken to design. Every now and then an oval window frame, its glass long since shattered, offered a glimpse of the city.

  “I can see the entrance to the aerial walkway,” Yasmina said, twenty feet before the rest of them noticed the high arched opening. Her owl staff enhanced her powers of sensory observation in a way Will knew she did not fully understand.

  As they approached the opening, they saw the aerial bridge arcing in a gentle convex, spanning the fifty-foot gap between the tower and the spires of the squat building. They could now see that the spires were covered in circular baubles that resembled, except for their grimy appearance, gumdrops atop a gingerbread house.

  Was it an aesthetic addition? Or an infestation?

  Remarkably, as the party edged onto the walkway, Will realized it was made of natural black stone streaked with color, perhaps opal. A fifty-foot long gemstone arch with no seams and no visible support, somehow attached at that height.

  A cold wind buffeted them as they walked far enough out to get the full view. Will did not suffer from vertigo, but he saw Mateo’s face whiten as the city sprawled around them, immense and threatening. From above, the layout of the ground level looked even more confusing, a nest of high-walled alleyways and dead-end courtyards and twisting, serpentine streets. Yet what rocked Will on his heels was the bird’s eye view of the construction. The skyline abounded with bridges, archways, and other connectors that defied gravity. Many of them changed direction or arced in midair, a spider web of architecture that looked designed by a graphic artist on acid. It wasn’t just bricks and mortar, he knew, that kept the mesmerizing structures from falling.

  Except for a few low hills, the enormous city sprawled flat to the horizon. In the distance, behind the tower they had just climbed, an ash-colored river cut through the middle of the buildings. Yasmina pointed out a thicket of masts clustered around a portion of the riverside marked by canals and low structures. “Those must be the docks!”

  Though excited by the discovery, they realized the river was too far away, and the city too confusing, for blind wandering. What they did see, not far from their position, was a section that looked more populated, with smoke pouring out of chimneys and people scurrying around on the streets.

  Will and Yasmina had walked three-fourths of the way across the arched walkway to get the best view. Just before they turned back, a pack of lizard men brandishing shields and broadswords rushed through the empty doorway leading into the maw of the spired building. They wore thick breeches and soiled breast tunics that displayed their scaly, muscular arms.

  Startled by the sudden attack, Will stuffed the panic down and grabbed Yasmina, prepared to race back across the ten-foot wide archway, when he noticed one of the lizard men nocking an arrow. The bowstring twanged, and Will whipped his buckler shield in front of his body just before the missile thunked into the wood.

  With a grunt and a flick of his tongue, the nearest lizard man attacked with his sword as a dozen more surged forward. Mateo’s battle cry from behind gave Will courage, and he parried the leader’s sword thrust. When their weapons clanged, Will used the momentum of his swing to spin and drop, slicing deep into his opponent’s thigh. The lizard man fell back as green blood spurted from the wound.

  Three more took his place. Will and Yasmina scrambled backward, to the apex of the arch, nostrils flared with adrenaline. His friends caught up to him, though the precipitous walkway provided a terrible battleground. If they turned to run for the stairs, they would expose themselves to the archer. There was just enough room on the elevated walkway for the lizard men, who seemed much more comfortable in the constricted space, to surround them.

  Will felt fear surging through him. They were outnumbered, and a single misstep would send them plunging to their deaths. As the archer lizard nocked another arrow, a bright orange light flashed in his eyes, causing him to slap at the flame and drop the bow. The light sparked brighter and spread along his body, driving the lizard man back. He stumbled at the edge, lost his footing, and pitched off the walkway, screaming as he plummeted to the ground.

  “Guard my flank!” Will roared, knowing Dalen had bought them a moment to act. Still, the arch was too treacherous to risk a pitched battle. They needed to escape. “Fall back!”

  Using her walking stick as a quarterstaff, Yasmina jabbed with the owl tip to keep the lizard men at bay. Mateo cracked his flexible urumi sword at the feet of the attackers on the other side, and they hesitated, confused by the weapon. Will fended off two more, working furiously to keep them from slipping past him.

  One of the lizard men picked up the bow and quiver and took aim, hiding behind a companion so Dalen couldn’t blind him. Instead the clever illusionist caused the bow to turn into a writhing cobra, which snapped at the lizard man’s face. It yelled and threw the weapon to the ground. The bow returned to normal as it bounced off the archway.

  Will kicked another of the lizard men in the solar plexus, stealing his breath, then sliced through the leather breastplate of another. After glancing to either side and noticing a lull in the attack, he shouted, “Go! Now!”

  Yasmina and Mateo turned to rush through the narrow archway, pulling Dalen along with them. Will followed behind, backing away as Zariduke danced. The entire group of lizard men surged forward, trying to swarm him, but Will scrambled backward quickly enough to reach the opening.

  Then he made his stand.

  With a howl, he gutted the first lizard man who approached, and clanged blades with the next. Only one body at a time could fit through the tall, narrow entrance. Dalen threw light into the second attacker’s face, Will cut him down, and the third took a step back as he glanced at the bodies of his slain companions. Realizing Dalen was a mage of some sort, and that Will was more than a match for any single one of them, the remaining attackers hissed and snarled before slinking back into the darkness of the larger building, leaving their fallen companions on the archway.

  They descended the long spiral staircase and hurried into the street, worried the lizard men would regroup or gather more allies. Will kept looking over his shoulder as the party fled towards the busier section of the city they had spied from above. For all he knew, the lizard men might be the least dangerous brigands in the city.

  They needed safe shelter.

  A map.

  A solid meal would be nice, too.

  They passed what he mistook for a pair of elongated pillars standing side by side, before he looked up and saw how they conjoined high above the ground. He craned his neck even further, having to walk backwards to realize the pillars were the legs of an enormous statue, an angular being at least five hundred feet tall.

  He walked closer again and noticed, barely visible in the blackened state of the granite, carvings covering the surface of the statue that depicted smaller and more lifelike versions of the same type of humanoid. Tall and lithe and beautiful, clothed in elaborate outfits with high collars and flared shoulders, the androgynous beings had long pointed ears that curved gently backwards, causing Will to start.

  Were they elves?

  On some of the figures, slender wings could be seen poking out of their backs from various angles. Elves did not normally have wings, he thought—though neither were elves typically associated with the offspring of fallen angels, which legend claimed had built the city.

  As Will stared dumbstruck at the building, drinking in the fallen splendor and mystery, Mateo put a hand on his arm. “We shouldn’t linger.”

  “I know,” Will said, continuing down the street. He noticed Yasmina pulling her gaze away from the building.

  “Lucka, has anyone see
n anything like that before?” Dalen asked. “Were those Nephili?”

  No one had an answer.

  After crossing a bridge spanning an empty manmade canal, rats scrabbling on the muddy bottom, the party saw more signs of life. Humanoids of varying sorts passed by, crows picked at trash, and the smell of ale and baked goods emanated from doorways. The architecture was less grand, now marked by three and four-story buildings with tall arched doorways, often with a commercial establishment at the bottom. Blacksmiths, curio shops, alehouses, bestiaries, lodging houses, black lacquered doorways with ominous shrieks coming from inside, an old temple covered in scrollwork and repurposed into a brothel. It was odd, given the danger and mystique that enveloped it, to think of Praha as a functioning city.

  Or semi-functioning. As they passed through the district, sporadic fights broke out on the street around them, and grimy drunks stumbled out of the taverns to urinate. Hard-eyed thieves seemed to eye the party from every corner, angled doorway, and hidden alley.

  “This is the Wild West of Middle Earth,” he muttered to Dalen.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  His companions’ ignorance of fantasy trivia made Will long for a night out with Lance, peeling crawfish and swapping stories. He wondered where his old friend was at that very moment, and prayed he had survived the encounter with Zedock. With a start, he wondered if Lance, too, might have landed in wizard prison along with Val. Though it was Val’s voice he had heard in the tavern in Freetown, he had not seen either of them since the night in the cemetery in New Orleans.

  Most of the buildings in this section were made of pockmarked marble, blackened and crumbling like the rest of the city. Mateo stopped in front of a chalkboard sign with a drawing of a satyr. The half-man, half-goat creature was quaffing a beer as he dragged a bloody unicorn through the woods. Goat and Stag, read the sign.

  “Anyone fancy a rest?” Mateo asked. “This seems as good as any.”

  Will had never been so ready, but Yasmina glared at the sign in distaste. “Not here.”

  Respecting her wilder sensitivities, Will trudged to the next tavern, whose sign bore an image of a pale, long-fingered hand holding a mug of ale. The Cryptic Cellar, it read.

  “This will do,” she said, planting her staff on the ground.

  They entered through a wooden door and immediately had to descend a claustrophobic staircase made of forest-green marble. The steps were scuffed but solid, and had retained some of their original color. At the bottom, they found themselves in a torchlit grotto strewn with rotting furniture. Will’s eyes widened when he saw the crypts dotting the gloom, scattered among the furniture and placed in alcoves set into the walls. The elongated coffins were twice as long as normal caskets, and many of them were overturned or lying on their sides.

  The walls shone with a dull white gleam. Will peered closer and noticed the strange radiance emanating from thousands and thousands of human bones inset into the wall, top to bottom, backlit from an unseen source.

  Maybe they were short on building materials.

  Much of the furniture was occupied, and he realized the patrons all wore cloaks, shawls, or concealing clothing of some sort. The face of the first one who turned their way seemed made of smoke, with eyes that glowed like coals.

  Conversations paused, and a door creaked in the darkness to Will’s left. Something skittered in the shadows of the alcove. The mugs of the patrons looked filled with a thick red liquid, and before anyone could utter a word, Will rushed the party up the long staircase and out the door, hurrying down the street until they could no longer see the entrance to The Cryptic Cellar.

  “Great choice, Yaz,” he said, stopping to catch his breath. “What’s next, The Dragon’s Breakfast Buffet? Cannibal’s Delight?”

  She swallowed. “Bad call. I’m sorry.”

  “Aike,” Dalen said, with a shiver. “I’ll be having nightmares about that for weeks. What about this one?”

  He pointed out a sign that read Tiny’s Inn and Tavern. Outside the doorway, two bearded ruffians were clinking glasses and roaring with laughter.

  Mateo eyed the sky, which had already begun to darken. “We need to get off the streets. I vote yea.”

  Everyone agreed, and Will led the way inside, more cautious this time. He was relieved to find that, while the place was filled with the sort of hard-edged mercenaries he had expected to find in Praha, they were human. No one paid them much attention. Yasmina’s willowy figure drew some stares, but her cool gaze in return caused the leers to evaporate or seek out more pliable targets.

  Will tensed when he saw a group of albino dwarves—delvers, on Urfe—at a table in the corner. Yasmina squeezed his hand, a gesture of shared distaste for their former captors, as well as an admonition to keep his cool. Women sprinkled the crowd, and Will realized he had not seen a single child in the city.

  That’s probably a good thing.

  Despite the grim environs and the omnipresent danger, or perhaps because of it, Will felt a titillating excitement at their quest. Wandering into the unknown in pursuit of an ancient artifact, battling monsters along the way, the specter of myths and ancient riddles. It was the same sort of excitement he used to feel at cracking a new D&D module or buying the latest role-playing video game—a pale imitation, he now realized. On Urfe, that initial rush was but a taste of the terrifyingly real adventure that awaited. Some or all of his companions, including himself, might perish on the journey.

  He had become a true adventurer at last, with all the thrills and rewards and bone chilling, life-or-death stakes it entailed.

  Rough-hewn wooden tables filled the room in a haphazard pattern. The ceiling was at least twelve feet high. Judging by the dusty bookshelves and elegantly carved sconces set high on the walls, it had once been a library of some sort.

  The floor was sticky with spilled ale, the air smelled of leather and body odor. Patrons were hovered over mugs of ale and platters of meat and dumplings, and Will realized he was starving.

  As he scanned the room for a seat, a drunken brawler got in his face. Will pushed him away, then stared him down while putting a muscled forearm on the hilt of Zariduke. Mateo bristled beside him until the drunk backed down, and no one else accosted them. Finally Will spotted an empty line of seats at the end of the bar.

  A huge barkeep approached them when they sat. He was a head taller than Marek, with reddish skin and one-inch horns poking out from the top of his bald head.

  “What are ye, a gazer?” he said to Will.

  “Um, not that I know of.”

  “Then what’re ye staring at? Haven’t ye ever seen a half-darvish before?” He grinned and rubbed at a wet spot on the bar with his towel.

  “No, actually.”

  “That’s okay. Me either.”

  “Sorry,” Will mumbled, wondering if the bartender was speaking the truth about his heritage. During their escape from the Darklands, Will and the others had freed a young darvish woman named Lisha, kept chained to a rock by delvers. The cruel humanoids had forced her to survive on raw fish and heat the basin of water surrounding the rock for their barracks.

  “Four mugs of house ale?” the bartender said.

  “Sure,” Will said.

  “Good thing, because there isn’t any other.” His laughter as he walked away seemed to vibrate the stone floor.

  Tiny, Will presumed.

  Dalen tried to disappear inside his cloak, not wanting to stand out. Mateo placed their packs along a wall where they could see them, and Yasmina surprised Will by taking a long drink of ale. He had thought her wilder diet might consist of roots, berries, and herbal tea.

  The ale was only passable, the platter of meat greasy and tough. Still, it was a warm meal, and they didn’t have to dip into their supplies.

  As they ate, Will overheard wild tales of adventures from the crowd. Halfway through their meal, a leather-clad female warrior stood on a table and offered a share of the loot to four adventurers who would
join her on a quest to recover treasure in a dungeon beneath the slave pits of Karlovy, an abandoned island fortress just downriver from the city. She unraveled an old map to prove her claim, and at least ten people raised their mugs and stepped forward. Will observed the negotiations in fascination, watching as the woman interviewed the volunteers to judge their experience and try to select the best mix of talents for the campaign.

  After a while, he decided Tiny himself was probably the best source of information, but the hulking bartender rebuffed Will’s efforts to engage him in conversation.

  “Hey, Tiny?” Will said.

  “Ready for another?”

  “I need to ask you something.”

  After grunting in annoyance, the burly giant finished with another patron and sidled over. “Another round?”

  “Are you really half-darvish?”

  Tiny gave a wicked grin and offered his hand. Will accepted the gesture, and the bigger man engulfed his hand in a fierce grip. As Will wondered what was going on, he felt a prickle of heat spread outward from Tiny’s palm, growing in intensity until he felt a searing pain. He tried to jerk away but the barkeep gripped him tight. When Will reached for his sword with his other hand, Tiny finally let him go, guffawing. “Believe me now?”

  Will jerked his hand back as the other patrons snickered. Not wanting to show weakness, he resisted the urge to dunk his hand in his beer. Mateo rose in his chair, furious at the slight, but Will eased him down.

  “Bah,” Tiny said. He opened his palm to reveal a telltale red glow, though it was much duller than Lisha’s would have been. “That’s about the size of it. I don’t know if the real darvish can do more than warm up a good handshake. My ma went camping in the Carpathians when she was a young lass, and had a fling with one o’ the bastards. Must have been a handsome rogue, to sire a face like this!” He rubbed his chin and roared with laughter, though Will could see the bitterness behind his eyes.

  “Your ma doesn’t know anything about them?” Will asked.

  “Twas a story of true love, as they say. One whole night of it.”