by Travis Kerr
The strangest part was that whatever creature had come by them had apparently done so without anyone in the camp being able to see it, aside from Trick, who must have spotted it at once. Even Tara, who could see in the dark, hadn't been able to find it.
The trail was much closer to the camp than he would have liked. For Trick to have warned them he must have thought it was something dangerous. Otherwise he wouldn't have been concerned.
"Hey Tara, you should come have a look at this."
The feral woman didn't seem happy about setting aside her dinner, but she did so after a moment, without saying so much as a word. Whatever complaints she had would wait until after she had seen whatever he had to show her.
If it’s important enough perhaps she won't voice any complaints at all, he hoped.
She gracefully glided over to he spot on the ground he indicated. She looked down, studying the track thoughtfully.
"Well, at least now we know what Trick was warning us about," She stated after only perhaps a minute.
"I thought the same thing," he replied. "Do you know what could have made a track like this?"
"I know exactly what made this track. This was made by a snake. A very large one in fact, either a python or an anaconda if I had to make a guess, though there might be other species that I'm not familiar with. This one here was at least twenty feet long, probably twenty five, and would have had no trouble at all swallowing one of us whole if we had wandered far enough from the fire.
“It would explain why I hadn't seen it. It was too close to the ground for me to be able to spot in the dark. Still, I should have been able to hear it, considering how close to the camp it had come. They don't make vocalizations like most animals, but you can still usually hear them sliding across the ground. If this ground wasn't so soft right here it might not have left any track at all, and we wouldn't have known what was out here."
Roland had seen plenty of snakes on his father's farm, but the thought of one large enough to eat a man was completely beyond his comprehension. He thought back, trying to remember the largest snake he had ever seen. He vaguely recalled a rattlesnake that his father had caught once and taken to the edge of their land. It's body had been nearly as thick as his father's forearm, and yet if his memory served him it was only a little longer than his father had been tall.
That would make the animal about seven feet long, give or take a little. As a child it had seemed huge. Tara had said that the snake that had passed them had been between twenty and twenty five feet. Roland couldn't imagine a snake that massive.
I wish I could have seen that, he thought, then decided against it. Some things are best left to the imagination.
"It's gone now, I'm sure," Tara assured him. "Otherwise Trick wouldn't have gone back to roosting in the trees. It's not often that you see one this far north, but down in the deeper swamps in the south I've seen snakes even bigger than this one. In the southern continent there are supposed to be anacondas that make this snake look tiny. Over fifty feet long if the stories are to be believed, though I've never seen one that big myself. The biggest one I’ve ever seen was just a little over thirty."
That said, Tara returned to the fire and the meal she had waiting for her. She was just finishing as he returned to her side at the edge of the fire. They still had a few hours left of their watch, so she passed the time teaching him how to listen to the woods around them. He thought he had understood before when she had told him to listen, but now she tested him by picking out small sounds made by insects, birds, and other nocturnal dwellers in the darkness around them. He realized quickly that it would take much longer than he would have thought to learn how to locate things just by their sound. He wasn’t sure if he was ever going to be able to get the hang of it.
It seemed that hardly any time had passed when she abruptly told him it was time to wake Malik, and for the two of them to retire. He hadn't realized that it was so late already.
How Tara had kept track of the time during the night? he wondered.
"Are you sure?" he asked her. It wasn't that he didn't believe her. He just wanted to understand how she knew, so that he could tell time in the middle of the night the same way.
"Absolutely certain," she answered. "See that star there, just at the edge of the horizon? It started almost directly above us when the sun fell, and will pass out of sight in only a few more minutes. That tells me that the first watch is over, and it's time to wake Malik. You mean you don't know how to read the stars?"
Roland shook his head. "My mother understood the star charts, and my father knew a few of them, enough to tell when it was time to start planting and when to harvest, but I never learned them. Had I stayed on the farm I would have."
"Knowing your stars is important if you want to travel at night. It can tell you where you are at, which direction you are going, or what time it is at any moment during the night. I'll talk with Malik tomorrow and you'll be staying up with me on watch from now on. I'll teach you about the stars, how to find and track animals by their sound alone, and a few other things you should know if you're going to stay with us. We'll reach the city in another two days. Once we're in the city you might decide to leave us, I know you're thinking about it still, but until you do we might as well continue teaching you as if you were staying with us indefinitely."
Roland couldn't help but agree. While he wasn't sure what he wanted to do once they had reached the city, there was no reason not to learn as much as he could until then. He only wished he had been doing so right from the beginning, but knew that, for the first few weeks at least, he had been too tired from travel and practicing swordplay once camp was set up to stay awake for a shift on watch.
He marveled for a moment at the change he had undergone in such a short time. It was already half way into the night and, while he was certainly tired, he was not nearly as exhausted now as he would have been at sundown only two weeks before.
As Tara woke Malik for his watch Roland lay his head on his pack, this time staying closer to the fire than he had on previous nights, just in case that massive, unseen snake decided to return for another visit. His mind swam with all of the information he had learned in just that one night.
What might I learn tomorrow, he wondered.
It was the last thing to enter his mind before he fell into a deep sleep, troubled with thoughts of giant serpents chasing him through dreams.
Chapter Seven
Two days later the three companions reached the walls of the port city. The day was winding down toward night, though the sky was still bright. The group had left the road behind over a mile before they would have intersected the main road, which would have led directly to the city gates. That road was patrolled by guards, and as they were not planning on using the main gate, Malik thought it best that they avoid it, and the men that would be guarding it, altogether.
So instead they pressed into the thick, swampy forest, away from prying eyes. The woodland was so thick Roland could barely see ten feet in front of him. After the first few minutes he stopped paying attention.
There isn’t much point to it when I can’t see anything, he thought.
He kept his eyes at his feet, trying not to stumble on the uneven ground, where tangled roots and unseen holes threatened to throw him to the ground with every step.
At least if I fall it can’t make me much uglier.
So thick was the growth that he never saw the wall at all until he was right in front of it. He nearly ran into Malik, who had stopped at the barrier, waiting for them to catch up to him. Roland was amazed at seeing the whitewash stone wall that rose out of the ground before them, extending at least fifteen feet high. Had it been painted green, or even left the original color of the stone, he might have thought that the wall had been grown instead of built, but the pale white paint, peeling in some places, left too startling a contrast to the forest green for it to be anything other than man-made.
It appeared that someone in the city had tried to ha
ck away at the thick vegetation that surrounded it, but mother nature pushed back, reclaiming the land as quickly as they cut it away. Because of this trees and bushes grew thick right up against the walls, even cracking the stone between the mortar in places and growing right through.
What they were looking for he had no idea, but as usual Malik seemed to have something in mind, winding his way through the impenetrable seeming brush as if it wasn't there at all. Tara seemed likewise unencumbered by the growth, drifting through it as smoothly as water flowing in a gentle river. Roland could only wish that he had such ability moving through the underbrush. He forced his way through loudly, stomping down the vegetation when it proved to dense to push passed.
"You do realize that we're trying to sneak in without being noticed, right?" Tara asked him sarcastically. "You're loud enough that a deaf drunk would know you were coming. Try walking softly and sliding between the bushes. Like this." She punctuated her statement by showing him how she moved through the foliage, exaggerating each of her movements so that she could see what she was doing.
Roland tried to copy her motion, but he was easily twice her size, and didn’t have the smooth, feline grace of the feral woman. He looked humorously cumbersome by comparison. Finally, with quite a bit of effort, he managed to damper the sound of his movements somewhat, though he was still quite a bit louder than either of his two companions.
Tara chuckled softly at his efforts, but kindly refrained from further comment.
Perhaps she thinks I'm not doing too bad for my first try, he thought hopefully.
He tried not to think about the possibility that he was just so clumsy that his companions didn't have the heart to tell him how bad he really was.
Trick flew down from his invisible path above them, circling an area somewhere ahead several times before coming down to land softly on Malik's shoulder. The sapphire scales of his hide glistened where stray rays of sunlight managed to peek through the canopy just above the top of the wall beside them.
It’s still easily two hours before sundown, Roland realized. Very soon the sun would pass down lower than the wall itself, and once it did it would become considerably more difficult to see if they didn't make it through beforehand.
"Trick is circling above part of the wall ahead of us," Malik informed them. "That should be the place that the smuggler was talking about. Anyone who wants to come and go in the city without being seen will want to keep that a secret from the inside. From this side it's so hard to get to that it doesn't need to be disguised. I'll go in first and make sure that the city guard isn't watching this hole yet. I'll signal you if it's safe to follow."
Only a few minutes later they came to the place that Trick was indicating. A thick vine had grown into the wall itself, cracking the mortar and knocking out several large pieces of stone. On one side of the vine enough of the wall had crumbled that a man might squeeze through. Malik slid passed into the depression, just barely fitting. Roland watched him disappear, wondering how he was supposed to follow once the signal was given. He was quite a bit larger than Malik was.
After a few seconds had gone by a low, sharp whistle came from the other side. Still wondering how he was going to get passed, Roland looked up to see Trick peeking his head over the wall inquisitively.
It seems Trick is wondering what’s keeping us. Roland chuckled. He might not know what Trick was trying to say most of the time, but on this occasion it was fairly obvious.
"You should go first," Tara told him. "It's wider closer to the top. I'll help boost you up so that you can get through. I won't have any trouble getting in, so I'll be right behind you."
After tossing their packs over the wall to Malik, Roland pulled himself up as high as he could go. He quickly discovering that Tara was right. The gap was just a little wider near the top of the wall.
He pushed and wiggled his way into the gap. For a moment he was certain he would be stuck. A brief vision of being captured by the wall itself, never being able to leave it, to slowly die of thirst, entered his mind.
With a final heave he shoved himself further. He heard a loud crack as he burst through to the other side, making it through only by taking a part of the stone wall along with him. As he dusted himself off Tara simply walked right through the gap, now nearly two feet wider than it had been before.
"Here, help me put this back into place," Malik ordered. Together they pulled a long rusted sheet of metal against the wall, almost but not quite completely covering the opening. Malik chuckled softly under his breath. It took Roland a moment to realize that his companion's amusement came from the knowledge that at one time the slab of metal had been used to cover the gap entirely, but it was unfortunately too small to do so now.
"Tara, why don't you head over to the Inn and get us a room for the next two nights. If we stay longer than that we'll pay for more days when we need to. Roland and I will head over to the client now. It's not too late yet, so we might as well get our business done and over with. We'll see you in an hour or so. Roland, come with me. I'm assuming that you'll come along to see the client like we had talked about?"
Roland nodded, and the two men headed off into the city. This was only the second port city Roland had ever been in. He quickly realized that this city was nothing like Port Dayton had been. Dayton had been more like an open market, with merchants hawking their wares along the sides of the streets or under canvas tents. This city, on the other hand, was tightly packed with buildings of every shape, size, and condition imaginable.
Most of the buildings appeared to be in a severe state of disrepair, abandoned sometime in the distant past and left to fall into ruin, occupied only by the animals left to run wild through the city or desperate men with no other place to go.
Men who would live here would be little more than animals themselves, Roland thought.
From what he could see there wasn't any trade merchants anywhere. This was nothing like what he had been expecting.
"What happened here?" he asked Malik.
"This is the old city, what's left of the city that existed here before the Mage War," Malik explained. "Most of the cities tore down the old buildings when they started to fall apart. This city built entirely new structures west of the old buildings, so many of these old ones are still standing, as you can see. Homeless vagrants will sometimes come here in bad weather. The mage that runs this city believes that since they come here it keeps them off of the main streets and away from more civilized people. It's just an excuse not to help the poor if you ask me. Those beggars that wander into the main thoroughfares are aggressively discouraged by the city guard, just like in most of the ports. As long as they stay here and away from everyone else the guard leaves them alone, most of the time anyway."
"You don't seem to like the mages much," Roland observed. "I can understand why you want to avoid the guard, but what have the mages done?"
"Nothing," Malik spat. "That's the problem. With the power they possess they could make this world so much better than it is. Better for everybody. You've already seen how plentiful food is. Just walk down any of the old roads, and you can pick all the food you would need. Enough to feed every beggar and nobleman in every city. You don't find that on the main roads though. The mages have had every fruit tree cut down and every turnip uprooted. The only ones left are the ones that their guards haven't found. They don't want to help people, they want to stay in power. They keep supplies low and the demand high, then they put an excessively high tax on everything. All the power they control depends on keeping everyone else weaker than they are."
"You make them sound like monsters. Surely there has to be a few good men among the mages."
"They are monsters," Malik replied in a low, harsh voice. "Never forget that Roland. I once heard a story about a noble mage, a man named named Fallon Goldstone, that tried to change how things are. He tried to help the people in his land instead of just suppressing them. The other mages met secretly, and in the dead of night they summoned
a dragon to burn down Goldstone's house, with him and his family still inside. Afterward they took the land that Goldstone had controlled and enslaved its people. That's the sort of justice you can expect from the mages. They won't risk their power, and are even willing to kill their own to keep it. The few mages that aren't like that have to hide themselves, or else the rest of the mages will wipe them out, just like they did to Goldstone."
"So they killed the entire family? Could any of them have survived?"
"Goldstone had two children, and boy and a girl, and some believe that Goldstone's last act was a spell that spirited his children away. No one knows what might have happened to them afterward. They were never seen or heard from again. Most would say that they had died in that fire, rumors aside. Not much survives dragonfire. The mages didn't know enough about the children to scry for them, so there wasn't any way to know for sure. It hardly mattered. They knew that Goldstone was dead, and that was their only real goal. Those children, if they really survived, wouldn't be able to do anything about what happened to their parents."
“Why wouldn't the great mages have been able to scry for them?” Roland asked. “I thought they could find anyone with the magic they possess.”
“Even the strongest search spell has to have a viable target,” Malik explained. “They would have to use something that the target owned that the spell can latch on to. After the dragonfire burned out Goldstone's home there wasn't anything left to fuel the spell. There wasn't any way for the mages to find them. Most would guess that they died in that fire along with everyone else. The dragonfire would have burned everything to ash, even the bones. There could have been a hundred people in that building and no one would have had any way of knowing.”
"Did all that really happen?"
Malik nodded. "That was about thirty years ago, but the story is true, for the most part anyway. No one really knows the details save the men who committed the crime, and they certainly won't talk. That Goldstone had once lived, and that his family was killed by a mage summoned dragon, that much I know is true. In fact he used to be the mage in control of this port and everything south of here, half way to Miani. As to the rest, I couldn't say if it was true or not really.