“Who be your guide?” the raspy voiced merchant asked.
“We don’t have one,” Maude answered. “How necessary do you think one is? We’re an experienced adventuring group not a bunch of tourists.”
“How bad do ya want to get back with all your parts? If ya can afford a good guide you got near fifty-fifty chance o’ comin’ back alive.”
“And without one?”
“Not sure, don’t know what number is less than zero. Since ya be an experienced group I guess bout whatever a third o’ zero is,” the brusque storeowner replied seriously.
“I suppose you just happen to know a good guide right? One that might just happen to work for you?” Maude countered, growing more and more distrustful of the man.
He shook his head at Maude’s veiled accusation. “Nope, I happen ta know the best guide, but he works for hisself and by hisself. He throws me a few coins for sendin’ good payin’ customers his way, but it be up ta you. Use him or not, makes no difference ta me, but ya got about twice a good o’ chance o’ comin back if he be yer guide as opposed to most any other.”
The proprietor hopped down off a box or stool that had made him appear taller than he was. Maude and the others were surprised to see that when he came around the counter that he was not more than a head taller than Borik was, but he was obviously human and not a dwarf.
“If ya got good coin I’ll show ya what ya might want to think about takin’,” he told Maude as he started pulling out various items and stacking them in a pile on a clear space of floor.
“Gold is no problem. Give us the best of what you have. If it passes my inspection, I’ll pay you well. You can also give us the name of your guide. If his price is reasonable, we’ll think about hiring him.”
The man shook his head once more. “Ya won’t find him lest he knows yer lookin’ for him and wants ya ta find him. Tell me where ya be stayin’ and I’ll send him to ya.”
“We’re staying at the Murder Hole. We’ll be in the common room most of the night waiting for him, but we won’t be staying long so if he wants a job he better not take long to find us,” Maude warned the short man.
“He’ll see ya tonight, don’t ya worry.”
“How will we recognize him, or him us?” Maude asked.
The squat merchant looked from Maude to the exceedingly handsome cleric, the dwarf wiggling his finger in the eye socket of a skull on the shelf, and to the brightly colored elf staring into the eyes of a stuffed seven-foot carnosaur trying to match its ferocious snarl.
“It ain’t gonna be a problem on either counts.”
Later that evening, the group sat at a table near the wall where they could watch the front door of The Murder Hole. They sat sipping ale and watching customers enter and leave for the past three hours. Not one for patience, Borik soon found himself staring into his mug more than the door. Malek scanned the room, unsuccessfully, for attractive women but managed only to get a wink from the buxom serving wench and one huge sailor that had introduced himself as Buck.
Just as it looked as though their guide was going to be a no-show, Maude hissed to get everyone’s attention. Standing just inside the doorway was an elf like none of them had ever seen; not that people have seen many elves for a very long time. If Tarth was anything of an example of his race, this creature was the polar opposite. He was tall like Tarth was, but that was where any similarity ended.
He was more muscular than any elf they had heard of, and his face was set in a steely, no-nonsense grimace. He wore a vest made from the scaled hide of some massive reptile and boots made of a similar material with soft leather leggings pulled over the tops. His open, sleeveless vest revealed a montage of elaborate tattoos covering nearly every square inch of bare flesh. Even his face was adorned with mystical-looking patterns. His long, dark hair was pulled tightly back in a ponytail, revealing his well-pronounced pointed ears for all to see. Maude quickly realized that this elf must be the guide they were waiting for.
Maude whispered to her companions. “Hey, this must be our guy.”
Tarth looked up from his game of cat’s cradle and his eyes went wide. With unusual focus, he hissed, “wildling! They’re savages!”
There was a sudden lull in the general din of the common room as the strange elf glanced about the room, although Maude was certain he had identified her and her band as the ones who were looking to employ him. The elf was taking in everything and everyone around him, looking for possible traps, danger, and exits. If he was looking for trouble he found it, or it found him.
“Hey, elf, what happened, you lose a fight with a bunch of scribes? Looks like they marked you up pretty good!” a large, burly sailor, obviously not a local, taunted.
The elf ignored the jibe and began walking towards Maude’s table, but the drunken sailor was not going to be ignored. He stood up and put himself directly in the elf’s path.
“I’m talking to you, ya pointy-eared bastard!” the sailor snarled, poking the elf in the chest.
A hush fell over the entire crowd and the only noise was from the table of sailors new into port as they egged their friend on. The locals all picked up their drinks and scooted back, ready to dodge out of the way of the impending brawl.
The sailor stood more than a head taller than the elf and outweighed him by well over a hundred pounds. In the blink of an eye, the elf’s hand flew up and grabbed the wrist of the burly sailor. Even from where Maude sat, she could hear the sound of the sailor’s bones grinding together. The tattooed elf’s other hand grabbed a fistful of the rowdy sailor’s shirt and chest hair, lifted him several inches off the ground, carried him back to his seat with one hand, and dropped him heavily into it.
The manhandled sailor’s mouth gaped open and shut in disbelief of the elf’s strength and clam demeanor. Throughout the brief episode the elf never spoke, never threatened, and never even changed the expression on his face. As soon as he deposited his aggressor back into his seat, the elf turned back towards Maude and her party and stepped up to their table.
“You are looking for a guide,” the elf said as a statement, not a question.
“Yes we are. If you are available, we would like to hire you to take us into and back out of the jungle,” Maude answered.”
“I am Kar’Rok,” he told them then looked at Tarth. “Hello, cousin.”
Tarth gave a tiny nervous wave, but he stared at the tabletop, refusing to look Kar’Rok in his feral, golden eyes.
The jungle elf took a chair from the table behind him and sat down. “I am available, for the right price. How long do you plan to be out?”
“As short a time as possible,” Maude replied then pulled out the crude map that the King’s advisor had provided. “We need to go here. It’s an old temple of some kind.”
“Ah, treasure seekers. You wish to risk your lives to plunder the riches of forgotten ghosts.”
“Actually, we are after a particular artifact, not random looting,” Maude replied darkly, not liking the elf’s judgmental tone.
Kar’Rok shrugged his wide shoulders in dismissal. “It makes no difference to me, other than the amusement I get from watching people risk their lives and come closer to death than they have ever been before for glittering trinkets.”
“We can handle ourselves. We have been close to death many times before.”
“Not this close,” the elf stated ominously. “Very well, I will take you if you can afford me. There are others who may take you for a better price, but you will better your chances of survival by hiring me. It all boils down to how much your lives are worth.”
Maude haggled the cost with the wildling, and they soon came to an agreement. Borik spit a mouthful of ale out onto the table at the elf’s exorbitant fee, but a nod from Tarth indicated that it was worth it.
“Very well, when do you want to leave?” Kar’Rok asked.
“As soon as possible,” replied Maude.
“Meet me on the southern road at sunrise the day after tomorrow,”
Kar’Rok told them. Maude told him they would be there and he left them alone without further word.
“It looks like we have one more day here, so take advantage of it while you can. Get whatever you think you may need, and be ready to go morning after next,” Maude ordered.
“Great, another day in this cesspit,” Malek groaned.
“Look on the bright side, cleric, now you can convert that serving wench that has an eye for ya!” Borik laughed, elbowing Malek in the side.
The cleric screwed his handsome face up in disgust. “Convert her into what?”
“Ah c’mon, she has lovely eyes and a beautiful, pearly white tooth.”
Maude turned to Tarth while the other two members of her little adventuring group were squabbling. “What do you think of our guide, Tarth?”
“In a savage land like this, his kind will be the one most likely to see us through it alive, if he does not kill us himself,” Tarth replied, more coherent than usual.
“He called you cousin. Are you related?”
Tarth looked at Maude as if she had asked if he were kin to demons. “No civilized elf would ever dare be said to be related to their kind. My people have more in common with the sea elves than Kar’Rok’s primitive kind. They are brutal savages lacking in nobility, decency, and often literacy. No, his calling me cousin was his way of insulting me,” Tarth informed Maude sourly.
Having gotten most of their supplies gathered the day before, Maude and her band spent the next day exploring the city and finding things to occupy their time while they waited for the day to turn.
They toured a zoo that had a menagerie of animals the likes of which they had never seen. Giant, killer reptiles like the one that Tarth saw stuffed at the trading post, ten foot tall apes with huge powerful arms, and a massive hunting cat with fangs the size of daggers and weighing over a thousand pounds were just a few of the creatures on display.
A dark-skinned woman juggled torches and blew fire over the heads of the watching crowd, and a man played a flute while a venomous serpent swayed in rhythm to the music.
They found a portion of the city where the ramshackle homes and businesses were kept at bay by a large park and a sturdy, stone wall. Past the wall were opulent homes of the city’s elite, built from marble and sporting fluted columns supporting massive porticos and terraces.
Guards patrolled the streets and walls of the wealthy citizens’ part of the city. As the sun began its retreat behind the dense foliage of the jungle beyond Borne’s Landing, Maude’s Marauders returned to the inn to sleep away the rest of the night so they would wake well rested for their journey.
The grey haze of the following morning found Maude and her group approaching the west side of town. In the slowly dissipating early morning mists that always seemed to cover the ground, they saw Kar’Rok waiting for them just before the gates. His garb was not much different from what he had worn the night he met them at the inn except for the steel greaves and vambraces he wore on his arms and legs. Over his reptile scale vest, he wore a front and back plate of what looked to be dark grey bones held tightly together by steel wire. He carried a recurve bow made of a dark wood with composite strips of the same grey bone-looking material. Along with a quiver packed with long, lethal arrows, he gripped a staff with what appeared to be double-edged broadsword blades affixed to each end of the staff, each about eighteen inches long.
“Do you have everything you need?” he asked as the party approached wearing packs and leading a small but sturdy-looking burro laden with the bulk of their food, water, and equipment.
“Yes, we have everything,” Maude replied.
“No, you do not. It is impossible to have everything you need, for the jungle is full of more surprises than anyone can possibly prepare for. You can only hope that what you have will be sufficient to keep you alive. Let us depart.”
“Well if he ain’t mister sunshine,” Borik whispered to Malek.
The party followed the elf through the gates built into the massive wooden wall that kept the jungle’s predators at bay. Just beyond the gates, a massive wall of vegetation stretched out to the horizon. The massive canopies of the soaring trees created a shadowy wall of darkness within the impenetrable jungle.
As they followed the westward road out of town, they saw groups of men and guards just starting their morning work of hacking the ever-encroaching forest further away from the city wall. Men, many of them apparently prisoners given the shackles around their ankles, chopped away at thick-stalked plants and young trees with wide, rounded blades while guards watched with loaded crossbows, swords, and spears.
“How often do they have to clear away the forest growth from the walls?” Maude asked their guide.
Kar’Rok looked as though he was going to ignore the pointless question, but he gave in to her inquiry. “Constantly. Two groups start out from the gate and work towards each end of the wall. It takes about two weeks. By the time they finish, they must start back at the gates and repeat the process. If they work quickly, the labor bosses give them a day off.”
“The jungle grows back in only two weeks?” Maude asked, amazed at such growth.
Kar’Rok nodded. “There are plants and trees within the jungle that can grow a foot or more in a little over a day given optimal conditions.”
It took less than an hour for the road that was used mainly by foresters to bring in the heavy logs used for construction to dwindle to little more than a narrow path. Less than an hour after that, any sign of a trail disappeared completely. Kar’Rok pulled one of the wide blades like the ones used by the workers from a sheath on his hip and began hacking at the foliage that obstructed their passage and view ahead. If not for Kar’Rok blazing a trail with his machete, the sea of dark green, broad-bladed leaves, and plant stalks would have completely enveloped them.
Even the ever-fearless Maude was unnerved by the realization that one of those massive, thousand-pound cats could be lurking only a few feet off the trail and she would never know it was there until it made a meal out of her. So unsettled by her inability to see past the length of her arm, she actually breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the thick green sea of vegetation opened up some as they entered the hardwood forest.
The trees had thick, rippling, grey-green trunks that supported a dense canopy hundreds of feet overhead. The treetops were so thick that the jungle was thrown into a perpetual twilight. She figured it was this limited light that caused the thinning of the previously near impenetrable undergrowth.
The jungle floor was still far from barren however. Massive ferns and flowering plants covered the ground, but at least they could now see a score of yards around them. The jungle was a chaotic symphony of sound. Wind blew through the treetops overhead, climbing creatures jumped from branch to branch, howling warnings and mating calls to their brethren, a huge roar echoed from some enormous animal far in the distance.
Tarth was gazing at a highly fragrant flowering bush from which sprouted the deepest red blooms and was just about to pluck one of the beautiful flowers for himself.
The unexpected sound of Kar’Rok’s voice stopped the slender elf. “Do not touch that, cousin. That is called a blood rose. Its thorns are hollow and will inject a poison that will paralyze you for hours.”
“Why would a plant grow such a method of protection?” Malek asked as Tarth quickly snatched his hand away and tucked into the folds of his robes.
“It is not a method of protection, but one of feeding. As you lie helpless as its base, one of the jungle’s many predators or scavengers come and tears your body to shreds while you are still alive, feeling everything, but unable to so much as scream. The blood rose sends tendrils up through the earth and feeds off the blood that flows from your dead body.”
The party gave an involuntary shudder as they resumed their march through the jungle, as wary now of the plant life as they were the many carnivorous animals that inhabited this untamed frontier.
An hour later, Kar’Rok called a ha
lt. “We will camp here for the night.”
“Already? We have only been traveling a little over seven hours. There must be three hours or more before the sun sets,” Maude observed.
The elven guide turned his cold stare at Maude. “Darkness comes quickly in the jungle. With your human eyes, it would be foolhardy to continue any further today. Try to find some dry wood for a fire. It is best to keep one burning throughout the night.”
The adventurers were glad to drop their gear, and once a fire was going, stripped out of their armor. The padding and clothing beneath the steel was soaked with sweat. They hung their doublets and sodden clothing near the fire to dry.
“Those of you that wear the metal armor need to drink more water than you may be accustomed to from now on. I was negligent in not advising this before. Drink as much as you can now, and continue to drink throughout the day or your body will fail you.”
They all did as the elf instructed and Maude turned to Kar’Rok. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What is your armor made of?”
Kar’Rok turned a chunk of unknown flesh speared on a small stick over the fire. “It is made out of the rib and finger bones of the fleshreaver. It is a bipedal reptile as tall as a man. It uses the claws on its long hind legs to disembowel its prey. They are swift, very intelligent, and their bones are nearly as strong as iron, but they are incredibly light.”
“Do your people hunt them then?”
“It is a symbol of pride and prowess to the people of the jungle. A young warrior who kills one during his rite of manhood makes his own armor out of the bones of his kill,” the wood elf answered with pride.
“Do you live in Borne’s Landing?” Maude inquired.
Kar’Rok looked askance at the large human woman. “I could never live in an established city; especially a human one. I live in the nearby jungle where only a few can find me when I am needed.”
“Do your people live near Borne’s Landing as well?”
The Sorcerer's Torment (The Sorcerer's Path) Page 35