The Library of Anukdun (Legend of the White Sword Book 5)

by P. D. Kalnay

  “Do you know what you want?” she asked as she put the final arrow back.

  “I want all of them,” I said. “These are awesome.”

  “Did you come as a… collector?” she asked.

  “No. I’m shopping for a friend. She’s run out of arrows, so I need to get her more before we leave the city. Can you make some that are shorter? These are too long.”

  “I can shorten most of them. It will cost extra.”

  “That’s fine; they need to be this long.” I held my hands apart, showing her the length Ivy would need.

  Tabeen looked at my hands.

  “Is that the exact length, or your estimation? If you’re unsure, it is better for me to measure her draw.”

  I’d always had an aptitude for judging length by eye. After my fairy transformation, my eye for measurement became flawless.

  “That’s an exact length,” I said.

  “What type of arrow do you wish and in what quantity?”

  I ended up ordering four dozen arrows for Ivy. That was more than could fit in her quiver, but we had room in the boat. I ordered twelve of the imperial armour-piercing kind, twenty-four generic wooden arrows, and twelve of the rock penetrating kind. The last ones were an impulse buy, based entirely on their ridiculous coolness.

  “If only all my customers had such expensive tastes,” Tabeen said with a grin.

  “How expensive?”

  “Five gold leafs, or twenty-five Anubean rings,” she said. “Most of the cost is for the specialty arrows. Caravan guards bring me the dragongrass, on the way back from Anukdun, but some years they cannot harvest any, and often the men I contract for the job don’t survive the journey. That drives up the price. The ladder arrows require enchantments I must pay for, increasing their cost. I haven’t sold any of those in years.”

  I knew I should bargain her down, but we still had all the money we’d brought from Knight’s Haven, and the arrows were works of art.

  “OK,” I said, “but I need them as soon as possible.”

  “Five days,” Tabeen said. “Thank you for your patronage.”

  We left the shop without paying. Ivy told me that you rarely paid upfront for anything on her world. Out on the street, Falan gave me a funny look.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You have expensive tastes, Prince Jakalain…”

  “Did I pay too much?”

  “I don’t think so.” Falan shrugged. “Fine work comes at a dear price, as they say. Shall we continue on to the Row?”

  “Let’s find something to eat too.”

  ***

  I treated Falan to street meat a few blocks away before we headed up the middle of Smith’s Row. A familiar waft of sulphur greeted us, along with the chime of hammer on anvil ringing out both near and far. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning as we entered the heavy industrial part of the city.

  It may sound strange, but I felt more refreshed and invigorated walking among the forges, and breathing the smoke-filled air of Smith’s Row, than I had breathing the fresh, salty sea air on the deck of the Starburst. An urge to push one of the many smiths aside and take their place at the forge came over me. It had been too long since I’d made anything, and it looked as if I’d need to wait a good while yet. In my heart, I knew our journey had barely begun.

  The open smithies of Smith’s Row were egalitarian in a way I’d learned the first world rarely was. Almost every race I knew stood represented among the smithies. Anubean smiths had shops next to goblin shops and those shops might be bordered by any number of other peoples, a few of which I couldn’t put a name to. Even ogres did heavy, less skilled work at the smithies along Smith’s Row. I saw some working huge bellows, and others endlessly flattening stock with sledge hammers that were larger than the Arath. Smith’s Row was a noisy place, but an interesting one.

  Falan and I browsed from the street until we reached the last smithy where I stopped because the smith, working alone in that shop, so surprised me.

  Outside of my one visit to Talanth and Sir Andriel, I had met no petrathen people. Except for Sir Andriel, Lyrian, and Erialain I’d not encountered any fae since coming to the First World. Fae didn’t willing migrate from their homelands and only travelled when the rewards of doing so were great enough. All of which made the petrathen blacksmith an anomaly. The smith glanced up from his work when we entered the smithy. The look he gave me was less than friendly—he ignored Falan altogether.

  “You want something, half-breed?” he asked, returning his attention to the glowing iron on the anvil in front of him.

  Maybe it was a fae thing. My Gran displayed no behaviour that might have been mistaken for good customer service, and Lyrian had what I’d considered a miserable personality, even when pretending to help me. Sir Andriel also proved a less than staunch ally when push came to shove on Knight’s Haven, although Ivy said I was too harsh in my judgement of him.

  “Nothing in particular,” I said. “I’m just looking.”

  I felt him probing with his metalsense. That was a new experience, and it hadn’t occurred to me that I might be able to recognise a petrathen using their abilities in the same way I’d been able to with Lyrian and her enchantments of air. The smith’s eyes narrowed and flew to my left hand.

  “Did you craft that?” he asked.

  That was a tricky question, because in a way I had, but in several other ways… I hadn’t.

  “Sort of and no,” I said.

  “Humph, are you here to buy?”

  “No, like I said, I’m just looking around.”

  He pushed the cooling iron from the anvil back into the hot coals and pulled another cherry bar from the forge—with his bare hand. Like all petrathen, I had fire retardant skin, but I wasn’t immune to heat and used tongs for the forging I’d done. Some enchantment was at play, but not one I could see with my sixth sense. What I saw was a tattoo on the back of the hand holding the glowing iron. A black hammer covered the back of the man’s hand, like an ebony brand on his rough grey skin. It was the exact same hammer I’d plated on my shield.

  I’d just opened my mouth to ask about his tattoo when I finally noticed the chain. A silver chain ran from a thick spike driven into the stone floor of the smithy to a matching silver shackle around the smith’s ankle. Chain and shackle rebuffed my attempts at probing with my extra senses like they weren’t there.

  The man spoke again without looking up from his work; it was barely more than a whisper. “Rumour has it the Arath moves across the world again.”

  “That’s what I hear,” I said.

  The arrival of a portly Anubean man ended our conversation. He wore blue robes that looked like silk, were covered with embroidery, and weren’t suited to physical work of any kind.

  “What are you lads looking to buy?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Falan said.

  The man looked us over as though trying to count the coins in our pockets. His face said he was unimpressed by the tally.

  “Then stop bothering my smith, he has no time for wasting, and he cost me a small fortune.” He took an axe handle from a nearby bench, turned to the blacksmith, and struck him across his broad back, driving the man to his knees. “I didn’t buy you for talking. What are you two looking at?”

  “Nothing,” Falan said, “we were just leaving.”

  When Falan tugged on my sleeve, attempting to tow me from the smithy, I discovered my hands had formed fists of flesh and steel. Enough was enough. I’d taken a step forward before the expression on the kneeling man’s face stopped me. His face said, “Don’t” and “Leave”, louder than words could have, so I let Falan pull me outside.

  Out on the street I changed my mind and started back, but Falan moved to block my way.

  “If that man is his property—there is nothing you can do.”

  “Nobody can own someone else,” I said.

  Falan gave me a strange look.

  “They can and they do,” he said. “I don’t think it�
�s right, but that changes nothing. You will only get arrested or worse if you go back. Come, I’ll take you to see something else.”

  My desire for sightseeing was soured, “Nah, just take me back to the inn. I’ve had enough for today.”

  Chapter 15 – Seven Swords

  Falan and I rambled about the city while Ivy relaxed at the inn. She had no interest in exploring, which I found incredible. When I asked Falan if he minded hanging out with me every day, he confessed that it got him out of the tedious errands he usually performed for the family business, while keeping his father happy. It was a win-win situation.

  Just the architecture in Gaan could have filled years of sightseeing. The city had grown over tens of millennia under the rule of the same imperial line. That empire had fallen, but it left behind an extraordinary monument. I suspected that if you gathered every ancient wonder on Earth together into a few blocks of Gaan they’d draw no undue notice—except possibly as an eyesore.

  The city’s builders put care and time into all the original construction. Countless feet had polished the tightly fitted stones, paving the streets of Gaan, but intricately carved patterns were still visible along the edges—that was just the roadwork.

  There were less pleasant aspects of the city that were hard to turn a blind eye to. Slavery was commonplace, and I saw plenty of abuses while walking beside Falan. He dragged me away from an Anubean merchant beating his goblin shop girl with a switch. Falan had rightly judged that I was about to get involved. He insisted that I’d be found in the wrong for interfering, which seemed unthinkable until we reached an open square at the end of the same street. A modest crowd filled the square, buzzing with a festival atmosphere.

  “What’s happening here?” I asked.

  “It’s the seven-day execution for this quarter.” Falan said.

  “Execution?”

  “Yes. Any arrested and tried in the last seven days will be executed.”

  “Justice moves quickly here,” I said.

  Falan frowned at me.

  “Justice? I don’t know you can call it that, Prince Jakalain. The Anubeans have only one penalty for law breakers.”

  “So if a hungry child stole a crust of bread…”

  “They would find themselves here within the week. If we stay until noon, there’s a good chance you’ll see that.”

  Two lines of jagged, semi-translucent crystalline spikes formed an X pattern across the middle of the square. All were stained dark with old blood and though I had none of Ivy’s impressive sensitivity, the place gave off an unmistakable aura of death and suffering. Thick beds of black flowers flourished between the spikes.

  “It’s called an Anubean Garden,” Falan said in my ear, “and as the old expression says: Anubean gardens are watered with blood.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “I have no interest in watching.”

  Falan gave me a relieved look before leading me down the next street.

  ***

  As practice, and in the hopes of improving my skills, I let my sixth sense fly free around me as we walked through the city. My petrathen senses found little of interest. Unlike Knight’s Haven, Gaan sat on stable ground with the fires of the earth swirling sluggishly and distantly below the surface. I frequently sensed tunnels and open spaces under our feet. Falan said the city had extensive sewers leading to the river and that the current city was built on top of older versions.

  The lack of interesting things deep below meant that most of my practice involved scanning whatever bit of the city we walked through. My windsense was proving as erratic as ever at detecting small shifts in the air, but my stonesense provided me with an overwhelming amount of information. When I was on my game, I could sense the layout of the surrounding buildings, hundreds of feet away, and could distinguish between stone and metals. I figured that even if knowing the locations of pots and pans inside buildings wasn’t useful, it still constituted good practice.

  ***

  After eight days of sightseeing, we wandered at random. Falan and I walked through a fancier part of the city filled with larger, more ornate buildings that weren’t pressed next to each other. He’d just explained that we stood in the middle of the guildhalls of the various guilds in Gaan, when I sensed something unusual inside the building in front of us. It was only a tickle at the back of my brain, and if I hadn’t been so intent on sensing everything around me, I’d never have felt it. Something I—or Marielain—made was inside the building. I stopped at the ornate front doors. The feeling was too faint to be certain, but I thought I knew what it was. I pushed one of the heavy doors open.

  “Prince Jakalain?”

  “Wait out here,” I told Falan. “I’m going to check something.”

  The heavy wood and bonze door cut off his protests as it swung shut behind me. I stood in an open hall. Statues of stern looking Anubeans filled the surrounding niches, banners hung from a high, vaulted ceiling, and carvings of possibly fanciful creatures, inlaid with precious metals and gems, covered the stone walls in a garish display of opulence. It was an entrance designed to impress visitors, and even though I was concentrating on other things, it did make an impression.

  “What is your business here?”

  A voice drew my attention back down from the ceiling. An Anubean, dressed in long, gold-embroidered royal blue robes, stood in front of me, giving a canine scowl.

  “I’m looking for something,” I said. “It’s up there.”

  I pointed to the second floor landing at the far end of the hall. Staircases ran along the sides of the room, leading to the railed landing.

  “Unless you have an appointment, you must leave,” he said.

  “Not until I check on something.”

  The man was so surprised when I pushed past for the left-hand stairs that he took a moment to chase after me.

  “If you don’t stop, I’ll call for the guards,” he shouted.

  He reached out to restrain me, but then changed his mind and drew the hand back. I continued up to the landing. Hallways led off on either side, but I took one in the middle that cut deeper into the building. My senses led me to a door at the end of the hall. I hardly noticed the wealth displayed in the niches along either side as I walked. The man from the entrance chased after me for half the length of that long hallway before giving up his protests and turning back. I suspected he was calling the guards.

  Once I reached the door, I was certain of what I’d felt. I tried the door handle, found it to be unlocked, and let myself inside.

  Three more Anubeans waited on the other side. They squatted around a low table, drinking and smoking from a water pipe that sat in the middle. Tubes ran from the tall blown-glass pipe and sickly sweet, pink smoke hung heavy in the air. The sword that Marhrl had died for lay on the table beside the pipe, along with a row of triangular gold bars.

  “Then we have a deal–” one man was saying as I burst into the room.

  My entrance interrupted whatever else he’d meant to say. The three men stood, looking surprised or angry.

  “Who let you in here?” another man asked.

  A puff of pink smoke escaped with the question. He wore robes similar to those worn by the guy at the front door, but fancier and in crimson. He also had spotted gold and brown fur. The only other Anubean I’d seen with that colouration was the merchant at the stall next to Marhrl’s.

  “I let myself in,” I said. “That sword is stolen property. Where did you get it?”

  I’d suffered stomach churning guilt for the past week over the death of Marhrl, and I knew that my alerting him to the authenticity of the sword had led to both the riot and his death.

  “Do you know who I am?” the man answered with a question of his own.

  “A murderer and a thief?” I suggested.

  I heard padded feet running down the hallway behind me, along with growls and shouting.

  The man smiled, “Your visit to my offices will be a short one.”

  Without proof, it’d be
my word against theirs, and I was both foreign and fae. I thickened the air behind me and shot across the room, snatching the sword from the table as I passed. I also knocked the pipe over with a loud crash and a spray of water and shattered glass. The men were so startled that none moved to stop me. On the upside, I’d retrieved the evidence. On the downside, I was cornered with the doorman and four city guards filling the only exit.

  “Arrest him!” shouted the man I’d interrupted.

  “Arrest him,” I shouted back.

  The guards didn’t hesitate, and I soon found myself confronted by a half circle of spear tips.

  “On second thought, just kill him,” the man in the crimson robes said.

  “Yes, your eminence,” a guard with a silver earing said. “You heard him lads.”

  Four spears came for me at once, but I was expecting it. Although outnumbered, I was bigger than my opponents. My first instinct was to unsheathe the sword. The room was full of people now, and the sword would prove handier in the confined space than the spears the guards carried. I was torn between wanting to make up for my mistake, by getting justice and or revenge for Marhrl, and wanting to make a run for it.

  Falan decided for me.

  “Prince Jakalain,” he shouted from the doorway.

  Falan threw something into the middle of the room. As I watched it tumble end over end through the air, I thought it might be a fancy lantern. The way it exploded in a fireball as it shattered on the tabletop solidified that guess.

  I grabbed the nearest spear with my steel hand, pulled hard to the side, and leapt between two startled guardsmen. Thick black smoke had filled much of the room, and I drove forward using my memory more than my eyesight. Someone grabbed my robes, but I knocked the hand away with the sheathed blade. Then I was out, standing in the clear hallway next to a terrified-looking Falan. I grabbed his shoulder and pushed him into motion.

  “Run,” I shouted.

  He ran.

  We sprinted back down the main hallway followed by coughing and shouting. It appeared I was the only person in the room with the foresight to take a breath before the lantern exploded. The front lobby was milling with guards by the time we got to the landing, so we took one of the side hallways, as they raced up the stairs. An open window waited at the end of the hallway. It was only one story up, and I dropped lightly to the street.