by Logan Jacobs
“We’d be happy to help,” I answered.
“Wonderful!” Murillo clapped his hands. “You’ll be rewarded handsomely, of course, and the Academy is prepared to offer some of that reward in advance.”
“Great,” I answered. “We can leave first thing tomorrow, but you haven’t told us where to find these... Shodra.”
“No,” Murillo agreed with a remorseful grimace. “The trouble is, we don’t actually know the precise locations of each of the items.” He picked up a map from the side table and moved the tea set to spread it out on the coffee table before us. There was a star marked in black in the Canterrose Range labeled ‘Speir Peak Fortress.’
“We’ve determined that one of the Shodra is likely somewhere in this area,” Murillo said, and he drew a massive circle in red across the northern quarter of the continent.
“Well, that narrows it down,” Lavinia grumbled. “And here I thought the Mage Academy knew everything.”
“Not everything, I’m afraid,” Murillo replied. “Of course, if we are able to figure out anything more specific, we will send word to you immediately, but for the moment, the burden of finding the Shodra falls to you as well. Following the civil wars, many of our mage ancestors decided that the safest course of action would be to destroy information rather than risk it coming into the wrong hands, and so much of what we knew about the Shodra was lost then.”
It didn’t seem like much had changed. Most of the work we did for the Mage Academy was to bring them books to burn. Now they were facing the consequences of those policies.
“Take this map,” Murillo said as he folded it up again. “It will give you somewhere to start, at least. I would recommend looking through the library here in the tower for any other mention of the Shodra and clues to their whereabouts. We already checked, of course, but perhaps you’ll find something one of our mages missed. If you speak to Archmage Crane, he can direct you toward the most relevant books.”
“Thanks,” I said as I took the map and tucked it into my pocket.
“I’ll let you go, then,” Murillo said, and he stood to see us all out. “I’m sure you’re exhausted, and you’ll have a lot of work ahead of you yet. It will be worth it, I assure you. The Academy does not quickly forget those who serve it. Do not hesitate to come to see me if you need any assistance, though I must ask that you keep the details of this mission a secret, even from the other mages here. You may find it necessary to seek aid from outside sources as well, in which case I urge you to give away as little as possible. We do not want anyone to know that we are seeking the Shodra, or where to find any of them.”
“We understand,” I assured him. “We’ll be discreet.”
As we left Murillo’s office and started down the stairs, Dehn snorted derisively.
“He wants us to get all this shit and he can’t even tell us where to look?” he complained as he hopped down a step that was just slightly too steep for him. “The city guard would never go for bullshit like that.”
“The city guard wouldn’t even respond when we had proof of Previn’s heist plans,” Aerin reminded him. “It seems like they don’t really mobilize for anything.”
“Yeah,” Dehn admitted, “you got a point. Still, he coulda had a little more for us to work with before he bothered us with this. I don’t want to spend all day in some stupid library.”
“We’ll need to ask around town, too,” I replied. “You don’t have to come to the library.”
“I think it’s exciting!” Emeline said. “If we pull this off, we’ll be famous! More than famous! Figuring out the location of even one of the Shodra is the kind of thing that they make statues of people for. Just think of the stories people would write about us! We’ll go down as the greatest guild in history!”
“Ease up there, kitten,” Lavinia said as she grabbed the back of Emeline’s robes to keep the mage from tripping on the next step down. “Save some of that energy, we’re going to need it.”
“What I need is a nice hot bath and a glass of wine,” Maruk said.
“That sounds lovely,” Yvaine agreed. “I wouldn’t object to an evening in front of a roaring fire, either.”
“We don’t have a fireplace,” Lena said with a confused frown.
“Oh, I do, dear,” Yvaine replied brightly. “I had one installed just last week.”
“You’d better set aside some of that reward money we’re going to get from this mission for stronger supports in the guild hall, Aerin,” Lavinia warned. “Before the princess puts in a bathhouse.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Yvaine said as she threw a good-natured smirk over her shoulder.
“The real challenge would be persuading you to use it, Lavinia,” Maruk added with a sly grin, and the ladona woman elbowed him in the ribs. “Oof! Getting caught in the rain doesn’t count as bathing, you know.”
I laughed as we made our way across the lobby to the doors. We’d rest tonight, and tomorrow, we’d figure out where to find the Shodra. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I thought about what Emeline had said, and I knew we were up to the challenge.
Chapter 5
Early the next morning, Maruk, Yvaine, Emeline, and Lena left for the University Tower to look through the books in the library for clues as to the whereabouts of the Shodra as Murillo had suggested. Aerin, Lavinia, Dehn and I were going to head down to the black market to see if anyone there knew anything, but since the black market wouldn’t be very active for another hour or so, we had some time to kill before it was worth going.
I decided to put it to good use and convinced Dehn and Lavinia to practice with me while I rehearsed more of Cygne’s techniques. Merlin was less easily persuaded, and he napped on top of a standing punching bag in the training room while the rest of us worked.
Lavinia, armed with a bow and arrows tipped with balls of soft foam, was good at being stealthy, and she even managed to hit me a few times despite my attempts to interrupt the mana she used for special attacks.
Dehn, on the other hand, was having a little more trouble with the exercise. Since I could see their mana even with my eyes closed, I’d needed the pair to try to attack me from behind, and it had taken about fifteen minutes to convince the halfling that this wasn’t cowardly and dishonorable. Of course, even then, he couldn’t seem to help himself from shouting as he ran up to me, so I always knew where he was, anyway.
“Aaaaaaarrggghhhh - ack!” There was a thump behind me as Dehn tripped and apparently somersaulted after I’d interrupted whatever attack he’d been about to spring.
I opened my eyes and turned to him as he was picking himself up off the floor.
“You know the point of this is that I’m trying to stop you without knowing exactly where you are, right?” I asked. “That war cry kind of gives you away.”
“A real warrior doesn’t have to sneak up on his enemies!” Dehn insisted. “You just got lucky, I’ll get you this time. Let’s go again.”
Just then, the door opened with a bang, and Aerin’s face appeared, flushed with excitement.
“Come quick!” the healer urged.
“What is it?” Lavinia asked as she set down her bow and quiver. “You look like it started raining gold coins.”
“I petitioned Theira to ask about the Shodra,” Aerin explained quickly, too giddy to pay any mind to Lavinia’s snide comment. “She sent us a sign, come on!”
We followed the elf upstairs to the dining room where she’d laid out the map Murillo had given us along with a few coins, candles, and religious tokens.
“See!” she squealed as she pointed to the table.
“Uh, what exactly are we supposed to be looking at, Aerin?” Lavinia asked.
“Here!” Aerin insisted as she pointed again, and I realized she was indicating where a spot of wax had dripped onto the map from one of the candles. “When I was praying a bubble of wax popped on this candle, and it dripped right here. This is within the area that Murillo said w
e should start to look. It’s a message from Theira, she’s showing us where to go!”
I leaned over the table to get a better look at the map and the spot where the wax had landed. The only point of relative interest nearby was a tiny village. I supposed it could have been a sign from the goddess. After all, she’d helped us out before, though back then, she had come in person.
“That’s not a message from a goddess,” Dehn retorted. “You dragged us up here for this? I was just about to hand Gabriel his ass.”
“No, you weren’t,” Lavinia told him, but when she turned to Aerin, she raised an eyebrow skeptically. “But he’s right, a drip of wax isn’t a lot to go on. Why didn’t she just pop in like she did back at the Shadow Delves?”
“She’s a goddess!” Aerin sputtered. “She doesn’t make house calls! What would you know about it, anyway?”
“I’m just saying, if she really wanted to help us, she could have given us a clearer sign than that,” the ranger replied.
“Hey,” I interjected before the argument could get too heated, “it’s somewhere to start, at least. We’re still going to go to the black market, we can ask around if anyone knows about anything strange with this village.”
“Speaking of,” Aerin said, “we could probably head over there now. It won’t be very busy, but people will be more willing to talk to us if we’re not competing for their attention with actual customers.”
It was still gloomy when we locked up and started for the black market nestled among abandoned buildings near the city’s eastern wall. Merlin trotted ahead, his bottlebrush tail held high as we wound through the backstreets and alleys. Lavinia and I had convinced Aerin to let us bring along a little of the gold we had saved in case we needed to persuade anyone to give us information, though the elf was adamant that her haggling skills would make monetary incentives unnecessary. She was right, at least, about the market not being very crowded, and there were only a few vendors outside in the square when we arrived.
Aerin swept past them all and led us instead into one of the dilapidated old apartments, where we passed through a beaded curtain into a dim shop that was hazy with sharp-smelling incense. A panthera man with the ring-like spots of a jaguar on his arms and dozens of gold earrings in his round, furry ears looked up from where he was lounging on a pile of pillows as we approached. The incense was set on a stand on the low table in front of him, and the smoke coiled up lazily between us. Though the man’s face was hairless and mostly human in its features, his golden irises were larger than normal, and the pupils were vertical slits like a cat’s. He eyed Merlin warily and his tail, fitted with more gold jewelry, flicked in an irritated way.
“Good morning, Tepeyol,” Aerin greeted warmly.
“Mmm,” the panthera man hummed in response. His gaze returned to Merlin. “What is wrong with your cat?”
“He’s a puca, actually,” I explained as I scooped Merlin up. Tepeyol didn’t seem to like him, and it was better we didn’t annoy the man whom we were asking for help.
“We’re looking for some information,” Aerin said, and she took out a map where she’d marked out the area with the village that the wax had dripped over on Murillo’s map. We had decided it would be best not to show that to anyone, just in case they would be able to figure out that we were searching for the Shodra and were going to bring them to Speir Peak. “Do you know anything about this area?”
Tepeyol spread the map flat on the table with a large hand tipped with long nails that were filed to claw-like points and painted cobalt blue and leaned over to peer at it in the dim light from the windows. They were covered by sheer, colorful fabric, and there were no lanterns or candles in the shop. As I looked around, I wondered if it was a shop at all, as I’d previously assumed. There didn’t appear to be any merchandise laid out, just rugs and heaps of pillows everywhere, and a dark doorway in the back covered by another beaded curtain. I decided it must be a lounge of some sort, an opium den, maybe, or whatever sort of recreational drugs people here used. It occurred to me that it might not be incense that Tepeyol was burning.
“I might know something about this place,” the panthera man said at last, and his eyes flicked back up to us.
Aerin smiled and placed a small pouch on the table. Tepeyol opened it, took a look inside, and slipped it into the folds of the robe he wore.
“This village,” Tepeyol said in a rumbling purr as he tapped the spot on the map, “the people there do not bury their dead. They cut them up into little pieces and burn them.”
“Gross,” Aerin said.
“Awesome!” Dehn said.
“Why do they do that?” I asked. It was strange, at least as far as I was aware of the customs of the people around here, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with the Shodra.
Tepeyol’s gold eyes slid over to me, and he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I do not recall.”
“Hey, no,” Aerin insisted. She cast a nervous glance at Dehn and lowered her voice. “That was seven ounces of orora I gave you. Why do they do that to their dead?”
“I do not recall,” Tepeyol repeated coolly. I could hear the stubborn note to his tone, and his tail switched lazily near his ankles.
Aerin pressed her lips together in a tight line, then reluctantly took out her coin purse. The gold coin clinked against the others inside as she took it out. Tepeyol’s slit pupils widened into dark circles, and his tail went still.
Aerin set the coin on the table, and the panthera man reached for it but hesitated at the last moment and withdrew his hand.
“Two,” he said.
“What?” Aerin’s ears flushed pink. “Absolutely not, this is more than fair for whatever you could tell us. We could just go to the village and ask them ourselves for free!”
“Then perhaps that is what you should do,” Tepeyol replied without missing a beat. I’d never seen someone bold enough to try to call Aerin’s bluff like this. I certainly wouldn’t have. She was right, we could just go to the village ourselves, though if there was nothing significant about it, and it didn’t get us any closer to finding one of the Shodra, we’d have wasted a few days on the errand.
Before Aerin could respond, however, Dehn pushed past her, climbed up onto the low table, and twisted the panthera man’s robes in one tattooed fist and hauled him forward.
“Tell us what you know, catboy, or I’ll beat it out of you,” the halfling growled.
Tepeyol’s eyes widened in shock, though the surprise was quickly replaced by an expression of hate, and his ears flattened against his head.
“Let go of me,” he hissed, and I glimpsed long fangs when he spoke. I shifted my grip on Merlin, who had started to twist around in all the excitement, and moved my free hand to the hilt of my dagger. This wasn’t how I’d planned for this to go, but I’d back up Dehn if I had to.
The halfling didn’t let go and instead swung a mean left hook into the panthera man’s jaw. The pair of them tumbled back in a flurry of claws and spiked armor, but Dehn came up on top, and he delivered several more swift punches to Tepeyol’s face before the latter managed to grab hold of him and hurled him clear across the table at us.
“Shit!” Aerin turned to help Dehn, but the halfling was already dragging himself to his feet. Tepeyol stood as well and touched his jaw lightly where Dehn had hit him. His lip was bleeding and there was a look of pure loathing in his gold eyes, but I sensed that he wasn’t going to attack us. He reached down and slid the gold coin from the table.
“There is a curse among those people,” the panthera man said thickly. “Their dead come back if they are not cut up and burned. That is all I know, now get out.”
Dehn looked like he wanted to throw a few more punches, but Aerin was quick to usher the rest of us back out into the street.
“He was telling the truth,” the healer said with a frown. “But what does a curse like that have to do with the Sh-- with... you know?”
“Nothing,” Lavinia answered bluntly. “It was ju
st wax, Aerin, not a message from Theira.”
“You didn’t believe she’d help us before, and I was right about that!” Aerin shot back. “She sent Gabriel to us. I know this means something!”
“It wouldn’t hurt to ask a few more people about the village anyway,” I said as I put a hand on the healer’s shoulder. “Maybe someone else will know more about it than Tepeyol.”
The elf’s shoulders slumped slightly, and she leaned into me. “Yeah, okay, we can ask around.” Her hazel eyes slid over to Dehn. “But you need to stop beating up my informants. I have enough trouble staying on good terms with some of them as it is, the best ones are always so suspicious.”
“I got him to talk, didn’t I?” Dehn grumped.
“Just be nice for fifteen minutes, okay?” Aerin sighed and shook her head. “Come on, I know who we should see next.”
We spent most of the day asking Aerin’s contacts around the black market about the area around the village or whether they’d heard about any interesting magical items anywhere, but we learned nothing except that there was a chicken on one of the farms outside the city that had laid an egg with a spot pattern that some people thought looked like the face of the god Otrein.
“Maybe the others had better luck at the library,” I said as we started back for the guild hall.
“Maybe.” Aerin kicked dejectedly at a pebble and Merlin squirmed out of my arms to chase it as it clattered down the street.
“What if they didn’t?” Lavinia asked. “Do we just come back tomorrow and try again?”
It wasn’t as though I really expected we’d find a good lead after just one day, but I wasn’t sure if asking roundabout questions to fences and palm readers was the best use of our time.
“We can check out that village,” I answered. “Maybe it leads us to one of the Shodra after all, and if not, we won’t have spent much time following up. We don’t all have to go, some of us can stay behind to keep researching in the library and asking around.”