by Joe Jackson
With the paladins having taken a head start, Kari and Eli flew their griffons with purpose. Kari needed to get to Barcon as soon as possible to try to put an end to the killings, and arriving weeks ahead of schedule would have to impress even Lord Black. When evening fell, Kari and Eli released their mounts to hunt, so that they would get the nutrition they needed under the taxing weight of riders. The griffons possessed incredibly keen eyesight even in darkness, and never had an issue returning to Kari and Eli once their hunger was sated. Charles had explained that the griffons normally hunted horses, but after being trained, they preyed upon different beasts: deer, usually, or plains herbivores. He told Kari and Eli to avoid the farmlands and the livestock therein, and that the creatures would find their own food without eating someone’s property or attacking other mounted travelers. Kari and Eli stayed mainly on the south side of the great river to avoid the farmlands, as directed.
Their path followed the river inland toward the great lake and the swamplands of the czarikk territory, called Mandar-Czar. Eli mentioned over dinner one evening that he had been to Mandar-Czar on a handful of occasions while working for Jason Bosimar and the Demonhunter Order. He explained that he and his companions had rooted out some serilian demons that were harassing the lizardfolk. The half-corlyps said he found the czarikk likeable enough, and told Kari that those of Mandar-Czar were sulrassa czarikk: those of a more reptilian heritage. While bipedal, the sulrassa were a little less humanoid, though they were no less intelligent or personable than their mulrassa cousins. Kari was interested to hear more about what work Eli and his friends had done in Mandar-Czar, but he was fairly tight-lipped about it initially.
On the other hand, it didn’t take much convincing for Kari to get Eli to agree to take her into the heart of Mandar-Czar. Over the previous three years, she’d found that she genuinely missed being among the lizardfolk, and she was looking forward to meeting another tribe of them. She spent a couple of nights asking Eli about the tribe and what they were like, and the half-corlyps was rather blunt about his feelings, as he was with many other things. While he found czarikk strange and thought they smelled funny, he admired their simplicity, honesty, and hospitality. He further told Kari matter-of-factly that he thought the Earl and the other nobles of the southern provinces could take more than a few lessons from the lizardfolk on those things.
“So Jason sent you to help the czarikk?” Kari prodded while they shared a meal, about a day’s journey from the edge of czarikk territory. The plains were quiet in the cool air of the spring night, and even from a distance, Kari and Eli could hear the rush of the river as it sped toward the east coast. They had a small fire going, and the griffons lay curled a short distance from the flames and allowed their trusted riders to lie back against them.
“Not exactly,” Eli said. “It’s a long story, and has to do with our work for Bosimar that I shouldn’t really tell you about. After we’re done in Barcon I can tell you about it, but it’s just going to be a distraction if I tell you now.”
“Eli…what if you don’t survive our trip to Barcon?” Kari asked, and the half-corlyps seemed genuinely surprised that she would be so blunt about the possibility. She could see that he took her words partially as an insult, though another part of him was clearly giving credence to the question. “I don’t mean to be rude, Eli, but if you don’t make it out of there alive, I’ll be in the same position I was before I came to see you. And if I don’t make it out of there, I’m going to need you to promise to go tell Lord Allerius everything you know.”
“Allerius is in charge now? I had wondered what happened after Bosimar was killed,” Eli mused, looking off into the darkness. “I could still hardly believe it when I heard that Jason was dead. I know it’s far from the truth, but the perception has always been that the Avatar of Vengeance is damn-near impossible to kill.”
Kari had heard that one before, though never from any hunter beyond the cadet stage. She gave a noncommittal shrug. “Turik Jalar was the only one to ever die of old age.”
Eli turned his gaze back to her, searching, but he brought the conversation back to the topic at hand. “Allerius was a good hunter; I’m sure he makes a good head for the Order,” he said. He could see that Kari was curious about his interactions with her friend, so he elaborated a little. “A lot of the work we did was based out of or around DarkWind, so we spent a good amount of time on or near the Demonhunter Order’s campus. Allerius was a high-ranked hunter even then, and in the absence of Bosimar, he usually carried out the orders of the head priest – Master Bennet, if I remember correctly.”
Kari nodded but didn’t interrupt, and Eli continued, “Allerius was the one who helped us get reinstated after we had this…falling out with the Order. We had a situation after we dealt with Cyrus Tevor – the bandit lord that was in possession of Turik Jalar’s armor, whether or not he had anything to do with its theft. Some of the members of our group felt that the loot we’d taken from Tevor’s stronghold was ours to do with as we pleased, and that Jalar’s armor was the only thing we had to turn over. The Order…disagreed.” He shifted to bring one knee up toward his chest and laid his hands atop it. “Tevor and his brigands had been preying upon merchant caravans, farmers, adventurers, and unprotected riders for well over a year, at least. The amount of stuff he had in his stronghold was considerable.”
“And the Order felt it belonged to the survivors of the fallen?” Kari prompted.
Eli nodded, and in the set of his eyes, Kari could see that he was agreeing both with her words and the concept behind them. “Yeah. We weren’t the only ones to go in to try to take Tevor down; we had several other mercenary groups with us. Several of them died, others were badly wounded, and our own tracker, Rhiannon, was nearly killed. When we got back to DarkWind, the dead and the wounded were taken to Kaelariel’s temple, and a good amount of the recovered loot was used to pay the priestess there to take care of last rites, burials, and healing the wounded.”
“Kyrie Kyleah?” Kari prompted again.
“That’s the one. Gorgeous woman…,” he started to elaborate, but he stopped as it suddenly dawned on him that Kyrie was Kari’s mother-in-law, and he closed his mouth. He chuckled for a moment and Kari did, too, so he continued, “Anyway, she was not pleased when she found out we’d used ‘stolen’ money to pay her temple. The whole situation just caught fire after that. Some of our companions were arguing that we’d fought and some of us died for that money, but I remember Master Bennet asked if it was the money we’d fought and died for. I’d stayed behind at the inn when all of this happened; I didn’t like being on the demonhunter campus that much given my race, and I had a feeling something bad was going to happen when our companions started spending the money. The Order wanted to know why we didn’t just come straight to them to have the dead and wounded cared for, and their question was echoed by Miss Kyleah. Then the arguments broke out again.”
Eli paused and Kari let out a brief sigh. “The Order’s like that,” she said. “They take good care of their mercenaries, but they also try to take care of the widows, orphans, and survivors when a demon, dragon, or some other kind of evil is terrorizing the people. Since Kaelariel’s church is the same way, yeah…I can see how that got ugly.”
Eli met her stare evenly. “Just so we’re clear: I don’t fight for money. That’s not the reason I started working for the Order, and it wasn’t the reason I went to kill Tevor.”
“I know that,” Kari said.
“Well, suffice it to say that I was pissed when I found out we’d all been banned from working for the Order,” he said. “At first I thought they’d just told our companions to get off the campus while they stewed over the situation, but to find out we were being fired from working for the Order – over gold? There’s easier ways to make a living in this world; if I just wanted to live comfortably, I’d have opened the brothel when I was sixteen instead of thirty-two. All that work we’d done involving Ciceria…like I was supposed to just stop carin
g, stop thinking about it, and leave it in someone else’s hands…over gods-damned gold?”
“Money has a tendency to corrupt people,” Kari commented. “A lot of people come to work for the Order to help, even though they don’t have what it takes to actually join the Order. But just as many come looking for fame and fortune; they usually get weeded out pretty fast. It says a lot about you and your friends that Bosimar put so much trust in you as mercenaries. But still, even the best of us, when we get tempted with a lot of money…it can corrupt us.”
“Not all of us,” Eli returned, and he nodded his head toward Kari. “I doubt money would ever stop you from doing what you do.”
“If it would, I’d have sold this armor a long time ago,” she said. “So how did you end up getting re…reinstated?”
Eli stretched his legs out before him again and sighed. “Danilynn did most of the work to get us back in the Order’s good graces,” he said. “The whole situation looked pretty hopeless at first, but once our companions were kicked off the campus with their loot, well… Danilynn had one of her defining moments.” He paused for a minute, lost in thought, and Kari wondered what held his attention. There was something in his expression she couldn’t quite puzzle out, but soon his eyes met hers again and he continued, “Danilynn pulled me, Jori-an, and Tor aside and told us she was going to take her share of the coin and help the people the Order was planning to. But she didn’t just give the money to the Order or to Kaelariel’s church: she used divinations to get a pretty comprehensive list of victims from Garra Ktarra, and then she started going around offering the money and her regrets to the people. I followed in her plan, and it didn’t take much convincing to get Tor and Jori-an to do the same. They’re followers, but I think they’re both good people; they just need to get prodded. Once she was fully recovered from her injuries, Rhiannon gave her share up to do the same with it.”
Kari smiled warmly but said nothing, and Eli continued, “Allerius heard what we had done, and apparently he spoke to Master Bennet on our behalf. You see, we didn’t know at the time that Allerius, and even Bosimar, answered to Zalkar’s clerics. In fact, a few of our number tried to get Bosimar to strong-arm Master Bennet into reinstating us; that’s when we found out that Master Bennet was Jason’s boss, and not the other way around. They really burned all their bridges, trying to get the two sides to play against each other to our benefit. It was a stupid idea. In the end, all of us who had willingly given up the loot were reinstated, while the others were banned from service to the Order.”
“Makes me wish I’d gotten to know Danilynn better during the War,” Kari mused.
That contemplative look returned to Eli’s features, though he didn’t stray in his thoughts this time. “For a seventeen-year-old girl to do something like that…that’s character,” Eli said.
“What about her sixteen-year-old traveling companion?” Kari asked with a smirk.
The half-corlyps shrugged. “I was about the same age as Danilynn,” he said. “If she hadn’t set the example, I don’t know…I probably would’ve just walked away from the group, maybe with a small share of the money to keep me afloat til I could find other work. To see what Danilynn did…it hadn’t even really occurred to me, and in the years since then, that’s kind of bothered me. It’s something I’ve never forgotten…something I always try to keep in mind.”
“So after you were reinstated, is that when you did all this work with Ciceria?”
“The bulk of it, yes, over time,” Eli answered. “It took a while for everything to come to fruition. You wouldn’t believe how complex her entire scheme turned out to be. I’ll tell you more about it when we reach Mandar-Czar.”
Kari nodded and Eli doused the fire, and they both threw their cloaks over themselves so they could get some rest. They were confident nothing would approach the camp without alerting the griffons, so they decided against keeping watch and simply tried to get a good night’s sleep. Using the soft, furry belly of her griffon as a pillow, and with her cloak to keep her warm, Kari dozed off easily in the cool spring night to the sound of the nearby river.
*****
Kari and Eli arrived in the Great Marsh without incident. While much of the water of the heartlands drained into the Lajere River and ran to the coast, there was a good deal of depressed land where the waters stood and created a freshwater marsh. Contrary to what Kari expected, the marsh was teeming with life. She and Eli led their griffons along what dry ground they could find, and most of the animals scattered in the presence of the predators. Only egrets wading in the deeper pools seemed unconcerned with the passing of the griffons. Kari listened to the sounds of the insects, frogs, and birds that filled the air, amazed with the unique beauty of the land. She’d always imagined marshes to be dreary, dead places, but the land of the czarikk was far from that.
As Eli expected, it wasn’t long before they encountered a czarikk patrol, though it wasn’t a patrol so much as a hunting and gathering party. The lizardfolk watched Kari and Eli curiously from a distance, obviously a little nervous that the two were leading griffons into the marshlands. Eli raised his hand in greeting and Kari called out to them in their own tongue, and it was clear that they were not expecting either thing. Kari motioned for Eli to follow her, and continued to approach the band of lizardfolk, though she kept her pace slow to seem as non-threatening as possible.
When the two drew closer to the lizardfolk, there was a sudden change in the czarikks’ demeanor, and they approached quickly, putting their javelins into the leather straps on their backs or shouldering their bows. The party was made up of both males and females, and Kari got her first good look at the sulrassa up close. Unlike their mulrassa cousins, the sulrassa czarikk stood slightly hunched over, and their thick, heavy tails served to counterbalance their posture on bent legs. They had frilly crests and thicker, heavier scales than their mulrassa counterparts, though their colorations were similar: trending toward deep greens, browns, and tans with pinkish colorations on the chests of the females. Like the mulrassa, they wore no clothes since their reptilian heritage hid their gender, but they did wear leather sheaths, knife straps, and pouches for carrying what food they were able to forage.
Owing to their bent posture, the sulrassa were shorter than their mulrassa cousins; nose-to-tail they were longer, but they were about the same height as Eli. Kari was surprised when the lizardfolk seemed to ignore her and the fact that she had spoken their tongue. Instead, they gathered around Eli and gave him a warm welcome, despite the fact that he didn’t understand their words. Kari translated their words of greeting, and then spoke on Eli’s behalf to the czarikk, who only then took a great interest in the terra-dracon woman who could speak their sibilant tongue. Though their accent was different than that of the Tsalbrin-based mulrassa tribe, Kari was able to understand everything they said: the language was the same despite the vast difference in geographical location.
Kari didn’t need to introduce her companion, who the czarikk apparently remembered well from the work he’d done for Bosimar, so she introduced herself. It was then Eli’s turn to be surprised, for when Kari spoke her name, the eyes of the lizardfolk went wide, and they began bowing before her. The half-corlyps wondered at the display, and watched Kari curiously while she asked the czarikk to not bow before her. She spoke to them for a couple of minutes, and two of them volunteered to lead the visitors to the village, even with the griffons in tow.
“What did you say to them?” Eli asked. “What was with all the bowing?”
“I might’ve forgotten to mention when we were at the Earl’s table,” Kari said, “but Sakkrass…adopted me as his daughter when I met him on Tsalbrin. Apparently, word spreads fast among his people.”
The half-corlyps regarded her with an even stare for several minutes, and Kari wondered what he was thinking. They began to follow the two czarikk back to the village, and the others departed to continue their hunting and foraging. Eli simply said, “You’re just full of surprises.”<
br />
Kari took the comment with a half-smile. Mandar-Czar was a broad village that sat atop the higher ground in the marsh’s center, where the hills stayed somewhat dry and the czarikk had built many wooden homes and animal-skin tents. Sheltered among the trees on the hills, Kari was impressed with the homey feeling of the village, much like she had been with the one on Tsalbrin. This one was a bit different: the homes were built to accommodate the more reptilian forms of the sulrassa, but with the memories Sakkrass had imprinted upon her, Kari still found it a comforting, familiar place. In the cities of her people, Kari knew all too well the importance people put on ownership of land and privacy. Here, though, the czarikk homes were very close together, both figuratively and literally.
Their guides informed everyone who Kari was as they led the pair into the village, and she had to ask them all to not bow before her, just as she’d done to the hunting party. Many of them also recognized Eli, and made it a point to greet him warmly as well. Before the guests passed into the village proper, a couple of czarikk came to take the reins of the griffons from Kari and Eli. To their surprise, the lizardfolk had no issues greeting the beasts; while they didn’t verbally greet the griffons the way Kari had, the griffons responded well to the czarikk. The lizardfolk already knew how to approach and handle the animals with the same sort of respect Charles had instilled in Kari and Eli, and soon Muireann and Dougal were led away without incident.