Brock almost startled to hear the name. Alabasel Frond was the guildmistress of the Adventurers Guild, and he had thought that her nickname was whispered only among the town’s youths. Apparently adults used it behind her back, as well. It was a reference to her flinty gaze, which, like the gaze of the basilisk, supposedly had the power to turn a person to stone. But Brock suspected that in the woman’s case it had less to do with any sort of magic and more to do with her ruined face.
He’d seen her, just once, from across the marketplace, and his eyes had gone immediately to the series of oddly shaped scars running down one cheek, all the way from her iron-colored hair to her neckline. The scars looked like winking stars, or plus signs. Rumor had it that they were the result of a run-in with some monstrous Danger that had caught her in its grip, wrapping one long tentacle around her head as its savage barbs found purchase in her skin.
He couldn’t imagine the pain she’d have felt pulling free of that embrace.
“Six months ago,” Quilby continued, “they drafted a promising young mage just as she was settling into her hard-earned place in the Mages Guild. The two previous years, they took Stone Sons in the early days of their apprenticeships.”
Brock felt his father’s hand again on his shoulder, and he realized he’d been rocking on his heels. All the adults were looking at him expectantly.
“You’re afraid they’ll take an apprentice from the merchants?” he asked.
“Quite the opposite,” said Quilby.
Brock’s eyes narrowed. “So you…want them to take an apprentice from the merchants?”
“A particularly promising apprentice, yes.”
Quilby smiled, and Brock felt the color drain from his cheeks. “No way.”
“Son,” said his father, “Lord Quilby has been spreading rumors for weeks now. Making sure certain people hear about…a very promising young recruit.…”
“You want me—”
“Lord Quilby needs a man on the inside,” said the woman, and Brock could swear the temperature in the tent fell when she spoke. “We think that man could be you.”
“I don’t understand,” Brock said. “Does the Adventurers Guild need an accountant? Because my talents—”
“Your talents go beyond bookkeeping,” said Quilby. “Come, Messere, now is not the time to begin feigning humility. We need a young man with eyes sharp enough to see the things Frond would keep hidden, and wise enough to do so with discretion.”
“You need a spy, you mean.”
“Just so,” said Quilby. He tapped the side of his nose purposefully, then produced a small circular token from his breast pocket.
Brock sought his father’s eyes. When he found them, he pleaded silently for help. But his father only nodded gravely, then pushed Brock’s shoulder toward Quilby. “Go on, son.”
Brock took one step, then another. Inside, he felt the dull thrum of panic. But on the outside, his movements were measured and calm. He had seen this ceremony enough times to know what was happening and how he was meant to act. He stood before Quilby, arms rigid at his side, and he lifted his gaze to meet the merchant lord’s.
The Guildculling was meant to take place under the open sky, before the public. It was supposed to be the moment Brock was finally recognized, before king and commoner, as the worthy heir to his parents and their lofty station in Freestone.
Instead, he was getting this back-alley shadow play. He suddenly had a feeling he’d proven himself worthy of all the wrong things.
“Brock Dunderfel,” Quilby began, fairly quivering, “I hereby claim you for the Merchants Guild.”
“Thank—”
“And,” Quilby continued, adding to the familiar ritual, “I claim you for the Merchants Guild’s Shadow.”
Brock had no idea what Quilby meant by that. It wasn’t part of any ceremony he’d ever witnessed. He waited a moment, to be sure the man had finished. The perfumer’s mixture, left to boil unattended, filled his nose with the acrid smell of burnt chemicals. “Thank you,” he finally said, his mouth dry. “I humbly accept.”
Quilby handed over the token, and it was official—Brock was a member of the Merchants Guild. Just as he’d always expected. And yet this had gone nothing like he’d thought it would.
“Now,” said Quilby, as Brock swayed on his feet, “whatever happens out there—whatever other tokens you accept upon that stage or in the days to come—you are first and foremost one of us. Don’t forget it, but…” Quilby tapped his nose again. Keep it secret.
Brock realized with a dawning dread that he’d just made another promise. Perhaps the most difficult promise he’d ever made.
He looked down at the piece of bronze in his hand. It bore the familiar sigil of the Merchants Guild.
On the reverse was the image of a spiderweb.
Zed’s mother peered down at him with a suspicious expression.
“Gone an hour, and you’re already a mess,” she said briskly. She licked her thumb and scrubbed at a smudge on Zed’s face. “Did you even comb your hair?”
She was outfitted in her guild’s gray tunic dress and servant’s smock. The noblewoman who employed her had given her the morning off, but she would need to return to her duties once the Guildculling was over.
“It looks dumb when I do,” Zed grumbled.
“And half wild when you don’t,” she replied. “We’ll settle for dumb.”
Zed rolled his eyes and glanced away as his mother fussed over a cowlick.
A crowd had formed around the stage as the Works Guild finished their preparations. The square looked incredibly grand today, with the many banners of all the city’s guilds floating over the stage, like colorful blossoms in a giant’s garden. The display twisted a knot in Zed’s stomach.
The square’s large amphitheater was the focal point of Freestone’s community life. Nearly every royal proclamation was made here, along with the city’s weddings, Guildcullings, and even executions. Zed often wondered what it would be like to walk that stage alone toward his death, the crowd cheering and hissing as he shuffled to meet his fate.
Though the square’s appearance changed from event to event, four immortal figures always remained the same. The statues of the Champions of Freestone rose from tall plinths, circling the square’s great fountain, which separated the merchant tents from the stage.
Ser Jerra Freestone, the Paladin.
Magus Zahira Silverglow, the Enchantress.
Mother Aedra, Priestess of the Golden Way.
Dox Eural, the Assassin.
The heroes watched silently over all that happened in the square. Long ago they had been great friends and adventurers. After they saved the city during the Day of Dangers, each had founded one of the four High Guilds.
All except for Foster.
Zed’s eyes drifted to the empty pedestal in the fountain that represented the fifth of the friends, his likeness banned forever from the city of Freestone.
Foster Pendleton: the Warlock. The Traitor. The Father of Monsters.
Foster the half-elf.
Life wasn’t always easy for an elf-blooded boy, in a city whose most famous example was the man who’d destroyed the world.
Freestoners generally blamed the elven half of Foster’s heritage, of course. Llethanyl’s unchecked zeal for magic was legendary. The elves, Zed had learned secondhand, blamed human foolishness.
Still, the two cities maintained a sisterhood of sorts, even if it was a strained one. Every six years, either Freestone or Llethanyl sent adventurers across the Broken Roads to trade and to renew the friendship between their two peoples. Zed’s own father had been one among many—a whole party that had come and gone in a fortnight. His mother talked about the visit as if it were a dream.
When Zed was six, his mother had paid a week’s wages to have a letter written to the Sea of Stars, pleading with them to inquire about Zed’s father during their upcoming visit with the elves. Besides that he was a ranger and a mage of some sort, all she knew
of him was his name: Zerend. She’d given the same name to their son.
But by the time the adventurers had left for their journey, she’d still received no reply.
So it came as a surprise when a message arrived several weeks later, sealed with the stamp of the Adventurers Guild. It was a letter of condolence; Zerend had died soon after his visit to Freestone.
Zed had never seen his mother withdraw so completely. Days passed before she spoke a single word to him…to anyone. Her guild had nearly dismissed her.
“Your ears are turning red,” Zed’s mother said softly, drawing him from the unpleasant memory. He could hear a catch in her voice.
Zed looked down at his feet. His mother worried about him constantly, maybe even more than Zed himself did. Sometimes he would find her just staring at him—watching him with a look of such pure misery it set his ears tingling.
“Oh, Zed.” His mother wrapped her arms around him. “Listen, whatever happens today—whoever claims you—just know that I’m already so proud of you.”
“What if…what if no one does?” he asked. It was a worry he could barely manage to speak aloud. What if no guild wanted to take on the first elf-blooded child to appear in generations?
To be guildless was rare, but not unheard of. Those few who fell between the cracks and went unclaimed in the Guildculling were pitied and reviled by the rest of Freestone. Usually they were forced to live as beggars…or worse.
Of all the executions that took place in the square, the vast majority were of guildless criminals. Zed had even heard rumors the past few months of guildless beggars simply…disappearing. As if they’d never existed.
Zed’s mother was silent as she held him to her. Finally, she let out a quiet breath and said, “Then I’ll claim you for my own guild. We’ll call ourselves the Best Guild, just to show them.”
Zed snorted into her smock.
The second bell of the morning rang from the Golden Way Temple, echoing throughout the square.
“I have to go,” Zed said, pulling away.
His mother kissed his forehead. “Any of them would be lucky to have you. Just as I’ve been lucky.”
Zed could feel his eyes starting to burn. He nodded quickly, wiping at them, and turned around. He plunged through the crowd to the front of the amphitheater, where the other participants were filing in.
The young nobles were all seated near the stage—Zed recognized Micah Guerra frantically searching the pouch at his hip, likely for a small wooden badger that wasn’t there. Seated beside him, a girl with olive-colored skin who looked remarkably like Micah shushed him.
The rest of the children all congregated behind the nobles in nervous, fidgeting clusters, dressed in the best clothes they had. Zed didn’t need to look around to know that his best was among the worst.
He searched the crowd for Brock, remembering that his friend had asked him to save him a spot. It wasn’t like Brock to cut it this close. What was taking so long?
There were just under a hundred participants in all. Most were human, though a small pack of brawny dwarven children hung together near the edge, about a foot shorter than the rest. They were the descendants of the dwarven merchants and smiths caught in Freestone during the Day of Dangers, cut off from the ancient city of their own people.
Zed caught the eye of one of them—his friend Jett—and the two exchanged a nervous grin. Like most of the dwarven boys his age, Jett was already shaving, though in recent weeks he’d decided instead to try for a beard. So far he’d managed impressive whiskers and a healthy patch of stubble on his chin.
“Not much of a spot,” chirped a voice behind Zed. He jumped and turned to find Brock smiling at him.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Zed asked, shaking away his nerves. He looked down—Brock had on the same shoes from that morning.
Brock shrugged off the scrutinizing look Zed was giving him. “I was a little distracted.”
“By what?”
“My father.”
Zed gasped. “You didn’t get into trouble, did you?”
His friend glanced up at the stage with a faraway look. “I don’t know. Maybe.” When he noticed Zed’s worried expression, he smiled. “It’ll be fine. I never stay in trouble for long.”
The guildmasters had gathered on the stage, each one standing before their guild’s banner. Most of the symbols on the banners were fairly straightforward—the smiths’ banner depicted a hammer and anvil, the scribes’ a feather quill.
The guildmasters from the four High Guilds were given extra berth, and their banners towered over the rest.
Horns sounded throughout the square. Zed felt his stomach clench with nervousness.
The Guildculling had begun.
Forta, the city crier, moved to the front of the stage, dressed in her Stewards Guild colors. All at once the square quieted.
“Oyez, oyez!” Forta called, her rich voice filling the square just as fully as any horns. A few straggling conversations came up short. The Mages Guild always cast a charm to augment the crier’s voice for well-attended occasions.
“Today is the Freestone Guildculling,” the crier announced. “Today, you sons and daughters of Freestone will become sovereign citizens of our city—one of the few lights that still dot the darkness.”
Zed knew what was next. He’d heard the story time after time, year after year. And yet it never failed to move him.
“Two hundred and twenty-three years ago,” Forta began, “Freestone awoke to a new world. Before that day, the lands of Terryn were vibrant. Travelers walked the long roads from city to city in safety. Farmers tilled fields of grain as wide and open as the sky.”
The crier paused, and Zed tried to picture it: farmsteads larger than the meager plots that fit within Freestone’s walls, and great quilts of wheat that stretched all the way to the sea. How could a world possibly eat that much grain?
“It was an age of exploration and adventure,” Forta called. “It was an age of friendship—when humans, dwarves, and elves all worked together for a better world.
“Then there came the day that all changed: the Day of Dangers.”
As if on cue, a cloud drifted over the sun. Zed’s arms broke out into goose bumps as the square was cast in shade.
“Monsters—hungry, unnatural beasts once consigned to their own hideous planes of existence—appeared from nowhere. They fell upon the lands of Terryn like a plague. They hunted the roads and blighted the farms. They butchered every person that they found, whether human, elf, or dwarf; man, woman, or child.
“Monsters destroyed our world.” Here Forta paused, casting a long look over the square. “All in the span of a single day.
“Only those few cities that could protect themselves survived,” she said. The crier’s voice grew softer, though it still echoed magically throughout the square. “We were among the lucky. We were protected—by our wall…” The crier raised her hands, indicating the high barrier that surrounded Freestone.
As if they needed the reminder; the wall was visible from every part of the city. The only thing Zed had ever seen beyond it was sky overhead.
“By our wards…” Forta continued, nodding to Silverglow Tower, the tallest structure in the city. The obelisk loomed high in the city’s center, where the wizards maintained the city’s magical protections.
“And,” Forta finished, “by our champions.” She brought her hands together slowly, pointing to the statues of the four Champions of Freestone. “It is because of them that we survive to this day, despite the machinations of Foster the Traitor. And it is through their creation of the four High Guilds that Freestone still stands as one of the last bastions of civilization in all of Terryn.”
The entire square burst into cheers and applause. Zed and Brock cheered as well, Zed pumping his fist high into the air. Forta gave the crowd a satisfied look, lingering for a moment in the applause.
Finally, she raised her hands to call for silence. “Let us now begin, as we alw
ays have, with the claims of the High Guilds. First I call the guildmaster of the Knights Guild, Ser Castor Brent.”
A tall man dressed in gleaming armor strode forward from beneath a brown banner depicting a shield made of interlocking stones. The crowd immediately went wild again—stomping their feet and chanting “Stone Sons.”
The Knights Guild had been founded by Jerra Freestone, easily the most beloved of the Champions. The second son of the royal family, he went on to become the most accoladed warrior in the city’s history. During the Day of Dangers, he led the knights that barricaded the gates against the monster horde, until Zahira Silverglow and her mages could finish erecting their magical wards.
Ser Brent nodded gravely, then raised his hand to quiet the crowd once more.
“The Knights Guild claims six boys as squires this year,” he called in a booming voice. Zed saw Micah Guerra sit up a bit straighter in his seat. The girl beside him crossed her arms, her mouth pulling into a tight frown.
The guildmaster read from a sheet of parchment. “Wil Merle, Niko Medina, Dav Levitan, Scot Blar, Trevis Berklund, and Ed Dorty. Squires, please come accept your Knights Guild tokens. You will report to the barracks at first bell tomorrow morning.” Now the knight finally cracked a smile. “The last one to arrive has latrine duty.”
Laughter filled the square, and the six boys chosen received hoots and swats on the head as they climbed up to the stage. Ser Brent handed each new squire a token, emblazoned with the Knights Guild emblem, to show that they had been claimed.
Zed glanced at Micah Guerra. The boy’s mouth was wide open in an expression of undisguised shock. The girl beside him touched his arm, but Micah yanked it away from her angrily.
“What about me?!”
Zed would hardly have believed it if he hadn’t seen Micah with his own eyes. The young noble leaped to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at the guildmaster.
Ser Brent’s smile immediately fell. He raised his eyebrows in a look that could only be interpreted as a warning.
Hushed whispers filled the square as people realized what was going on. Micah was contesting the claim. Zed had never heard of this happening before.
The Adventurers Guild Page 3