by Layton Green
“Ever wondered what the darvish are really like? Where they live, what sort of powers they have?” Will leaned forward. “Ever wondered about your father?”
“Course I have. But since no man alive, or at least no man I’ve ever met, has seen a darvish, then I don’t s’pose I’ll be gettin’ any answers to those questions, will I? But thanks for probing that wound, friend.”
Tiny smacked a towel on the bar and turned to walk away. Will grabbed his arm. “I’ve seen one.”
The big man tried to jerk away, but Will’s forearms, naturally strong and hardened by years of construction work and his recent adventures, kept the grip.
“Eh?” Tiny said in anger, looking down at Will’s hand as a number of other patrons slid their stools back, ready to jump to the barkeep’s defense.
“I haven’t just met a darvish,” Will said. “I’ve seen their city.”
He released Tiny’s arm as the bartender stood with a dazed look. Then Tiny slapped the bar and howled with laughter. “Ye hear that, laddies? This one here says he’s been to the land of the darvish. Which is real interesting, since my ma said they have streets of lava and no human can survive the heat.”
“I didn’t say I’d walked the streets,” Will said. “I said I had seen it, from high above, inside a cave deep in the Darklands. And I’m no liar.” With Yasmina vouching for the tale as well—her word as a wilder seemed to carry great weight—he gave a brief recounting of how the darvish girl had helped them escape Fellengard and led them into the Great Chasm, right up to the precipice overlooking the last darvish city on Urfe.
The bartender’s face grew paler and paler. “It’s just like my ma said,” he whispered. “What my pa told her. The colored walls and geysers and canals—” He grabbed Will by the shirt. “It’s true? You’ve really seen it?”
“I have.”
“Then tell me everything you saw, everything about them.”
Will swiped the bartender’s hand away before it burned him again, and raised his empty mug. “I’d be happy to discuss an exchange of information.”
After Tiny rushed to the cellar to procure bottles of his best ale and aged cuts of elk, he ordered one of his employees to take over the bar, then cleared out a party of delvers from a table in the corner so he could dine with Will and the others. Yasmina and Will tensed at the interaction with the delvers, sworn enemies of the darvish, but Tiny explained that everyone who came to the ruined city left their patriotism behind and switched their allegiance to the gods of loot, vice, and buried treasure. In its own way, the city was one of the more accepting places on Urfe—if one could manage to stay alive.
Judging by the way the delvers were staring at Tiny, Will wondered if the hard-eyed albinos shared his egalitarian outlook. The bartender might want to lock his doors a bit tighter that night.
As Tiny recounted some of his life history, Will grew saddened by the tale. The bartender’s mother had died young, stricken by a coughing disease that sounded like tuberculosis. After she passed, Tiny became an expert spelunker and explored Urfe’s cave systems in search of his father. Though he had many extraordinary adventures, he finally gave up and settled in Praha. The cool climate suited him, his odd appearance didn’t raise as many eyebrows, and if people did want to mock him, he said with a grin, he was free to bash in their skulls.
He told Will where to buy a map, and said they were currently in the most settled part of the city. Much of Praha had not been mapped or explored for centuries. A constant stream of expeditions left from Tiny’s inn to explore the dungeon of some dead mage or find the hidden loot of an outlaw who had come to Praha to escape the authorities. Ages ago, the city was the unofficial capital of the menagerists, after the discipline fell into disfavor. The bounties placed on the heads of the renegade mages had attracted bounty hunters to Praha, which had driven those who dared practice the forbidden art of fusing species even deeper underground.
“Lucka, where are all the mages?” Dalen asked. “Why don’t they rule in Praha like everywhere else?”
“Oh, they’re around. Usually outcasts or deviants of some sort. No self-respecting wizard wants to sully their reputation by living here, and even if they did, it’s dangerous for them. The thieves and assassins don’t want them spoiling the fun by imposing the rule of law or hoarding all the treasure, so they tend to pick off wizards when they can.” Though Dalen tried not to react to the statement, Will saw his hand tighten against his mug.
“Not only that,” the barkeep continued, “I’ve been told by more than a few mages who passed through that sometimes their magic doesn’t work the same here.”
Will and Dalen exchanged a nervous glance. Good thing the illusions worked atop the arch, or we might all be dead.
“Do you believe the rumors?” Yasmina asked. “About the Nephili and the magical disease that ravaged the city?”
Tiny leaned back in his chair and finished half a mug in one quaff. “Live here long enough, and there’s no rumor about it. You see it in the architecture, you feel it in the air. Something happened here. Something powerful and alien. And then there’s the Old City,” he said mysteriously.
Mateo looked up from his meal. Unlike Will and Dalen, who had barely touched their food as they listened, Will’s cousin had not let his curiosity affect his appetite. Yasmina ate quietly as the bartender talked, absorbing the conversation with calm, watchful eyes.
Tiny noticed their blank looks. “The Old City is a walled section to the north, on a bluff above the river. You have to walk through the Agora to get there, which no sane person would do, then scale the Wailing Wall atop the bluff and deal with the Skinwalkers.” He pulled a hunk of meat off a bone with his teeth.
“What about a powerful mage? Could one get through?” Will asked. “If he wanted?”
“Maybe they have, lad.” He licked a spot of grease off his fingers. “And maybe they haven’t.”
“What’s in there?” Dalen asked, leaning forward. “Inside the Old City?”
“No one I know has ever been. Or maybe I should say no one has ever returned. Every now and then an expedition will set out to explore it, because the talk of danger inside its walls are outweighed only by the rumors of the treasure. They say it was once the palace of the Nephili. They also say,” the bartender said after a long swallow, “that one of their kind still lives there.”
Will couldn’t keep the stunned look off his face, and Tiny gave an uneasy laugh. “Not many believe that rumor. Alive for thousands of years, right here in the city? Bah.”
In his fascination in learning about the city, Will had almost forgotten to ask about their own quest. “We’re looking for someone named Skara Tenjilk. Do you know anything about him?”
Tiny wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Never heard of him.”
Will sat back, disappointed. Had they wasted the entire conversation?
“But I’ve heard of her. Skara’s a lassie, you fool. Though no lassie I’d ever like to cross.”
Why hadn’t Mala told him Skara was a woman? Then again, why had he presumed she was a man? “Who is she? Where can we find her? We’re told she lives in the Nilometer.”
“Does she? I wouldn’t know. The Nilometer’s on the maps, though. You won’t have any trouble locating it, though the docks be one of the more dangerous parts of the city. Watch your backs, and don’t ever go there at night. Oh, and if you do happen to find yourself within a hundred yards of Skara Tenjilk, you better make sure she knows you’re coming.”
-7-
The morning after Will and the others stepped through the portal to Praha, Mala left Freetown in the company of a gypsy caravan bound for the plains west of the Great River. By the second night of the journey, deep into the Valley of Cyrmarcyth, she knew someone—or possibly something—was following the caravan.
Someone who had left fresh boot prints, glimpsed through a spyglass at daybreak, on the muddy bank of a stream the caravan was paralleling.
Someone who
traveled after the sun went down, and avoided notice during the day.
Someone who had approached the camp the night before, evidenced by the panicked whinnying of the horses, and who was deterred by a nightflare and the rattle of clanging swords.
Mala’s gaze swept the terrain, the sprawling grasslands visible for miles in either direction, searching for incongruities. A raven cawed as it launched off a tree and flapped towards the white-capped mountains rising like bleached arrowheads on the eastern horizon. Iron-grey mullets made playful leaps out of the rushing stream, and a pair of squirrels scrambled across the broad limbs of a cottonwood.
Danior Whitehill, a tall, lean man with scarred forearms and a pronounced widow’s peak, climbed up beside her in the cramped viewing box that topped the observation wagon. After Mala, he was the caravan’s best fighter—though a vast gulf separated the two.
“Who do you think is out there?” he asked.
She lowered the spyglass, a three-foot long tube mounted on a swivel. Though a day’s ride inland from the coastal road, the Valley of Cyrmarcyth was not a particularly dangerous stretch. It was too exposed for most bandits or a Protectorate death squad, either of which they would have seen coming from miles away.
Nor were the plains known to be home to creatures dangerous enough to attack an armed gypsy caravan, even one as small as the six-wagon party in which she traveled. Thus she had elected to tag along with a group for this leg of the journey. Alone, she exposed herself to more risk, especially at night. She would not want a night shamble or a burrow wyrm to catch her sleeping.
Still, it was the Ninth Protectorate. Something dangerous could have wandered down from the Dragon’s Teeth, or a renegade menagerist might have unleashed a new creation on the Barrier Coast. The footprints had been human, but that didn’t rule out shapeshifters or a handful of other possibilities.
“I’m unsure,” she answered. “I hope it’s nothing more than a curious village lad.”
“I haven’t seen any villages in some time.”
“Perhaps the lad is en route to a destination, staying close to the caravan for safety. Traveling at night to avoid questions.”
Danior grunted and waved a hand at the brown, windswept scrubland marking the southern reaches of the plains. “You said the footsteps were fresh. So where did they come from? Where did they go?”
“If I knew the answer, I wouldn’t still be looking.”
Danior was a hard man, unperturbed by her sarcasm. “Maybe someone is concealed in one of the cottonwoods.”
“The closest footsteps to the trees are clustered near that rock pool, almost a hundred feet away.” Mala returned to watching the terrain, her hand slipping instinctively to the smooth silk of her weighted sash.
“And? What course of action do you propose?” Danior was the only member of the caravan who did not seem uncomfortable in her presence.
That’s fine. Let the others be wary. These are not the sorts of times in which one’s guard should be relaxed.
“We should travel through the night and keep a constant watch,” she said, “resting only as the horses need. If we’ve entered someone’s territory in error, perhaps a peaceful exit will suffice.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
She turned to face him. “Need you ask that question, Danior? What else, at the moment, would you suggest?”
With a curt nod, he descended the ladder and left her with her thoughts. As she continued her watch, sipping on a steaming mug of coffee to relieve the chill of the morning, the rest of the caravan staggered to life and spurred the horses southeast, towards the Shoehorn Pass at the southern edge of the Dragon’s Teeth. From there, it was a day’s ride to the Koraxi desert, an old Romani name for dry and blasted land. Their ultimate destination was the vast grasslands west of the Great River, where Mala planned to purchase a horse from the plainsmen and continue on her own to New Victoria.
The thought of her ultimate destination caused her hands to feel clammy, despite the warmth of her mug. Most people thought that courage went hand in hand with fighting prowess, but in Mala’s experience, most people were fools.
Over the course of her life, she had learned to control her fears and make swift and rational decisions in the face of great danger, but she did not consider herself a courageous person. That particular trait was the domain of simpletons and dreamers and heroes. Though all the heroes she had known had finished their lives gutted by a spear, a sword, or an arrow.
Most who sought to be heroes did so for the wrong reasons. Tamás, though valiant, longed for glory and had a petty streak. The previous leader of the Revolution had died screaming at the hand of a pyromancer, his flesh melted from his bones by a Fire Sphere, too foolish to realize his rescue mission in an abandoned building in the Gypsy Quarter was a trap.
Gunnar, may he rest in peace, never had the ambition to be a hero, and she had loved him for that. He had saved her life more than once and was a hero in his own way. No other man with whom she had dallied had possessed half of Gunnar’s strength of character.
Except for Will Blackwood, that was. The blond-haired young warrior who, until recently, she had thought of as little more than a village dreamer with a nice sword. Yet he had gained prowess as quickly as any warrior she had ever known, and had proved himself time and again.
Did he have a pure enough heart, a clear enough head, and a strong enough arm to be a hero one day?
She rolled her eyes at the thought.
Will Blackwood. A hero in training he was, indeed.
Another pretty face with a death wish.
She had known that he loved her before he said the words. She wished she could say the same. She preferred taller men with darker hair, men with a rougher edge who did not talk so much and who had fewer designs on saving the world. She could admit that her flavor of lover would probably never win her heart, not truly, but she had no desire to relinquish the key to that particular lock.
Mala did not need home or hearth. She needed adventure, excitement, and someone as wayward and ignoble as she felt herself to be.
She could admit that when Will had kissed her at the inn, his calloused hands cupping her face and his long blond hair brushing her shoulder, she had felt a thrill of attraction for the first time. She told herself it was the heat of the moment, the sweet seduction of parting ways.
Or had the balance between them shifted? The thought annoyed her, for while she thought he possessed true courage—and admired him for it—she thought him foolish for the very same reason.
So, no, it was not bravery that drove Mala towards the wizard capital of the Realm to confront the man who haunted her darkest nightmares. Nor was it a promise to herself, because Mala thought promises were also the domain of fools. A promise was ignorant of the future and impervious to changing circumstance.
She had never told anyone, not even Allira, the story of how she became an orphan. Not because of lingering trauma, though shock and fear had governed the early years of Mala’s life. And once she discovered the identity of her parents’ murderer, she knew enough of the world to know the knowledge was best kept to herself, lest the man hunt her down and finish the job. She had kept her secret all these years, a burden like a two-ton anvil on her back.
Even now, the memories caused her to wince inside, though she fought against the pain with a vengeance.
Pain was weakness, and in her world, weakness meant death.
Most people thought that Lord Alistair’s massacres in recent years against gypsies—she refused to use the term Roma, because gypsy was what her people had become—were a new development. The prevailing wisdom was that one did not hear about the persecution of the gypsies in old Albion because there were almost no gypsies left.
Mala knew otherwise.
The wizards, she knew, would never forgive her people for their refusal to give up their pagan beliefs, and for their role in the revolutions and uprisings over the centuries. As long as her people continued their foolish bel
ief in Devla and asserted their right to worship as they pleased, the ruling thaumacracy would always consider them a threat. The proud Roma clans, widespread across the continents since the Age of Fire, had been reduced to beggars and slaves and itinerant wanderers, shepherded like three-legged livestock into the last outpost of the Barrier Coast, their only plan for survival a desperate hope that Devla would send someone to save them.
Oh, how she hated the prophets who came and went like pollen on the wind, spreading lies and desperate hope. The latest debacle was almost beyond imagining: the current Prophet had proclaimed that Caleb Blackwood, Will’s brother, was the Templar. Did the man even know that Caleb was from another world? A pacifist and a layabout? Even if the Prophet did, he wouldn’t care. Caleb had opened the Coffer and was a tool for the man’s gain.
Despite the muttered whispers of gadje she caught when no one thought she could hear, Mala loved her people. She truly did. But she thought they were all fools who would end their lives rotting away in the fens or burned alive by wizard fire.
The return of Zariduke and the appearance of the Coffer—whatever its true nature—were remarkable events. Yet they were pebbles in the river of history, a mote in the Congregation’s eye. Mala did not believe in salvation from the gods, especially not one particular god who was supposed to look after his people.
Any chance of that had died with her parents.
The attack had come when she was ten years old, traveling with her clan in the countryside outside Londyn. In broad daylight the raiders had arrived, unconcerned with reprisal, a band of mercenaries and strange men and women in black robes led by a beast of a man, coarse and vile, red of hair and beard and with eyes that burned hotter than a blacksmith’s hearth. Her father called him the Despiser. Like the other black-robed killers leading the attack, a silver belt cinched his black robe at the waist, and he did things no normal human could do. Things like stopping swords with his palm, thrusting his fist straight through a man’s heart, and even taking flight during battle, as only a wizard was supposed to do.