Many of the roofs had been tall and conical-a field of spherical stone to match the imposing towers. But the shapes had become tumbling and crooked. There were no doors on the older structures, only archways outlined in brick.
Ashok passed close enough to one of the shops to see strange carvings embedded in the bricks. He hesitated, tracing a finger in one that was roughly shaped like a bird. Latent heat brushed his fingertips, and a slight electrical shock. He took his hand away, surprised.
“Are you lost, friend?” a voice called.
Ashok looked down to see a diminutive woman step from the shop. She had bright hair stacked in thick braids on top of her head. Her angular face made her blue and white and black eyes look enormous, but they were friendly and curious as they met his.
“Come in,” she beckoned him, when Ashok didn’t reply. She spoke the shadar-kai tongue as well as if she’d been born one of the race.
Curious, Ashok followed her into the shop, which was dimly lit by candles in sconces scattered about the room. Tables covered in red and black cloths filled the floor space, and on them were racks of bottles and quills, stacks of blank parchment, wax, and seals. Ashok smelled the scent of thick ink deeply sunk into the place.
“Sit down,” the woman said, guiding him with a hand at the back of his thigh to a human-fitted chair near the counter. She didn’t seem the least intimidated by his size. “I would have invited you in sooner, but I must admit I was surprised to see you standing out there,” she said.
“Why?” Ashok asked.
The woman looked at him strangely. The corners of her eyes crinkled in amusement. “It’s just I don’t get many shadar-kai visitors here,” she said. “My clients are mostly human, dwarf, or halfling, like me.”
Ashok picked up one of the blank parchment sheets. “What is it you do here?” he asked.
“Messages,” the woman said. “We transcribe them, and a courier delivers them. The shadar-kai don’t often communicate beyond the city.” She added quickly, “That’s not to say I’m denying you, not at all. If you need to send a message …”
Ashok shook his head. “I saw the runes on your doorway,” he replied. “I was curious.”
“Ah, yes,” the woman said, smiling. “I’ve had visitors come to study them, seeking to learn Ikemmu’s history.” She gave him a quizzical look. “Are you interested in such things?”
“I don’t know,” Ashok said. He traced a fingertip across the smooth parchment stacked on the counter.
“Stop, stop!” the woman cried, uttering a startled oath in a language he didn’t recognize. She took his hand in her small one. The blood had almost dried, but the cuts on his knuckles were ugly and inflamed. “You’ve hurt yourself,” she said.
Ashok had acknowledged the continuing sting, but he hadn’t noticed the blood streaks soaking through the parchment sheets. “Forgive me,” he said.
She waved a hand. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Excuse me.” She went through another archway to an adjoining room off the shop. When she returned, she held a roll of bandages.
Ashok reached down to take them from her, but she unrolled the strips herself and wound them over his knuckles. She tied a knot beneath his fingers.
“Done,” she said.
“My thanks,” Ashok said, flexing his fingers around the bandages, making sure he could still maneuver a chain. With regret, he watched the woman remove the blood-soaked parchment sheets and put them behind the counter.
Suddenly, he remembered the soiled bandages with his blood marks on them. He could feel them; they hadn’t been lost in his escape attempt.
“What do you want for it?” he said.
The woman was rolling up the extra bandages. “What did you say?” she asked.
“The parchment,” Ashok said. “Will you trade for the parchment, quill, and ink-including what was damaged?” He spoke without thinking. He had nothing to trade her.
The woman looked at him with the same curious expression she’d used earlier. “Are you new to Ikemmu?” she asked.
He worked his jaw. It was so easy for them to see he was an outsider. “Yes,” he replied.
“Ah, I thought so,” the woman said as she held out her small hand for him to clasp. “In that case, welcome. My name is Darnae. May I know you?”
“Ashok,” Ashok said. He took the small hand in three of his fingers, marveling at her softness, like a child but with hard calluses where the quill had worn her skin.
“Well, Ashok,” Darnae said, smiling. “You may select whatever of my wares you wish. You owe me no coin.”
“Why not?” he asked, on his guard again.
“You’re in training, yes?” she replied. “You came to fight?”
To fight. That was true enough. “Yes,” he said.
“Ikemmu provides for its soldiers,” Darnae explained. “Whatever their needs, we fulfill them. A small price, most of us feel, for the security we enjoy in the city, and the opportunity to trade with so many other races, so many worlds.”
Ashok nodded, but he was remembering the confrontation between Skagi and Gaina. “I have heard … the shadar-kai here can’t do certain things for themselves,” he said.
“Yes,” Darnae agreed. “But not for lack of skill,” she added quickly, looking uncomfortable. “We understand that, as warriors, your first concern is defending Ikemmu. In a trade city such as this … How do I say it? There are many races here with a variety of needs. And there is daily drudgery, mundane tasks created when so many choose to live side by side. These things the shadar-kai were not made to do. You would fade. So the other races fill those roles.” She picked up a stack of parchment sheets, a bottle of ink, and a quill. She started to slide them into a brown leather case, but Ashok waved her off.
“There’s no need,” he said. “I’ll carry them.”
“As you wish,” she replied, handing him the items. “Do you know how to use them?” she asked tentatively.
“I know enough,” Ashok said. “How did the other races come to trade here?”
“Ikemmu is uniquely situated in the Shadowdark,” Darnae said. “We are at a crossroads between the planes. The shadar-kai protect the passage and allow outlanders to establish permanent businesses within the city. Few enclaves are so fortunate, so Ikemmu has grown and prospered.”
Ashok nodded, thinking how his own enclave would never open itself up to outsiders.
“My thanks,” he said. He stood and walked to the archway. Darnae stayed behind the counter, watching him. He paused between the candlelight and the shadows. “Has anyone ever found out what the markings mean?” he said, reaching out to skim the air over the runes. He felt the hovering electrical charge, just out of reach.
“No,” Darnae said. “But they all agree something terrible happened here, long ago.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ashok took Darnae’s parchment and found an abandoned stone building near the outskirts of the market. He could hear the babble of voices in the distance, but no one came near the half-collapsed structure. The roof had sagged, forcing him to stoop when he went inside. He found a darkened corner with enough light filtering through the gaps in the stone to allow him to see clearly.
He laid the parchment out on the ground, un-stoppered the ink bottle, and took the quill awkwardly in his hand.
It would have been easier to write with his fingers, but Ashok didn’t want the stains to betray him. He worked slowly, and he ruined several of the parchment sheets; but Darnae had been generous with her gift. By the fifth sheet, he’d managed a rough sketch of the four towers, the bridges and lower city, and the wall. He copied the number of guards he’d seen on the wall from the soiled bandages to the parchment, and added notes on placement written in his own almost unintelligible shorthand.
He made other notes and observances on how often the bells tolled and their names. He listed the ranks of shadar-kai soldiers and wrote a complete physical description of Uwan.
They maintain a constant physic
al and magical presence on the wall, he wrote. No knowing if the towers themselves are magicallyprotected, but it makes sense that they would be, to protect the tall structures from siege equipment and anything that might come through their outer portal.
He paused in his writing, wondering what his father would make of the information. His sire would never be able to mount an offensive against such a force, Ashok thought, but maybe the presence, the mere threat.…
It might be enough to draw the enclave’s attention away from its infighting, at least for a time. A threat from without could cause them to band together and emerge from hiding. There would be no more useless waste.
Ashok waited for the ink to dry and tucked the parchment in the pouch inside his armor. He hid the quill and ink among the ruins for use later. He left the building, picked out Tower Makthar in the distance, and started walking roughly in that direction. He did not want Skagi, Jamet and the others to know he had been wandering alone. Let them think he was content to train with the other recruits. If they thought he was tamed, it would draw their attention away from him.
When he got past Tower Pyton, the stone buildings thinned out into empty dirt streets choked with stone debris. Near the base of the canyon wall, Ashok glimpsed another fence made of iron, like the one encircling Tower Athanon, but higher. A handful of low stone buildings squatted nearby. Thin black smoke rose from two of them.
Beyond the buildings, Ashok saw a yawning cave mouth set into the canyon wall. He slowed his pace. He smelled fire, metal, and animal fur all wrapped up in a stinging reek that made his eyes water. Cautiously, he approached the iron fence, his hands gripping the bars.
Then he heard it.
Faintly, so it only sent a shiver of apprehension up his spine, then gradually the sound-a hollow, terrible scream-drew closer. Ashok waited, watching the cave mouth with a kind of giddy dread.
When the nightmare appeared like a blazing torch at the mouth of the cave, Ashok caught his breath.
A shadar-kai woman brought it out, its face covered by a hood and secured with chains so it couldn’t bite her. She’d wrapped a stiff cloth around her head and ears to dull the scream, but Ashok could see that it still affected her. She took sluggish steps, stumbled often, and jerked the nightmare’s head each time the scream rang out until it finally fell quiet.
They reached the fence, which contained an open pasture of sorts, with dead, singed grass all around. The woman opened a gate, removed the nightmare’s hood, and released the chain to let the beast run in relative freedom around the paddock.
As soon as it was clear of the woman, the nightmare immediately charged the fence, slamming its body against the iron. Ashok felt the bars rattle under his hands.
When it was clear the fence wasn’t going to give in that spot, the nightmare cantered back and charged again, searching for a weakness in the fence it could exploit. Its headlong rush brought it only a few feet away from where Ashok stood, close enough that he could smell the burning hair scent of the nightmare’s mane. Its steamy breath heated the air.
“Well met, again,” Ashok murmured. “You’re no happier here than you were in the cage, are you?”
The nightmare saw him and snorted, its red eyes so dark they were almost black. It strode up to where Ashok stood and slammed its head into the bars in front of his face.
Ashok leaped back, the nightmare’s bloody breath in his mouth, the burnt hair scent all around him. The change in the air temperature was a palpable thing. He began to sweat, as if he were standing in the middle of a bonfire.
“I think he likes you,” said a teasing voice from across the paddock.
Ashok met the gaze of the shadar-kai woman. “He’s beautiful,” Ashok said.
The woman shook her head. “He won’t be tamed, no matter what Uwan wants,” she said. “He tries to kill anyone who comes near him, and when someone does get close enough … Well, there are the dreams.”
Ashok approached the fence again. The nightmare backed away and regarded him with his steely crimson gaze. Unable to dislodge him from the fence, the beast blew a steamy, impatient breath and pranced in place, threatening with his burning body.
Ashok smiled grimly. “You don’t scare me,” he said.
The female shadar-kai came to stand beside Ashok. “I’m Olra,” she said, offering him her hand.
Ashok clasped it briefly. “Where did they capture him?” he asked.
“Out on the plains,” Olra said. “He’d been in a fight with something bigger than him-got cut up bad enough that the caravan was able to get him in a cage while he was unconscious. Otherwise they’d never have been able to take him. He’s too wild, even for his kind.”
Ashok looked at the nightmare, the eyes burning with red hatred. He understood the feeling.
“What did you mean when you said ‘there are the dreams’?” Ashok asked.
“The nightmare sends them,” Olra said. “It’s the scream that does it. Works into your mind somehow and roots out what you’re most afraid of. After a few days, even a shadar-kai can’t stand the horror.” She nodded to the nightmare. “He makes them think they’re fading.”
“He knows it too,” Ashok said. “Look at him.”
The nightmare paced back and forth before the fence. Flame roared down his mane and fetlocks, scarring the ground an oily black as the beast took one stride after another across the paddock. He marks his territory and dares anyone to invade, Ashok thought.
“Are you all right?” Olra asked abruptly. She was looking at how Ashok’s arm dangled at an awkward angle.
“I was on my way to Tower Makthar for healing,” Ashok said. Taking one last look at the magnificent beast, Ashok stepped away from the fence.
Olra was looking at him curiously. Looking at her face, Ashok realized how heavily scarred she was.
Puckered flesh from burns, and a web-work of claw slashes decorated her collarbone. The marks were not self-inflicted, that much was evident. Her left cheek looked like it had been bitten and healed slightly off-center, giving her face an asymmetrical appearance.
“You’re the one everyone’s talking about,” Olra said. “Uwan’s ghost.”
“A ghost?” Ashok said. “Why do they call me that?”
“Because no one knows who you are or where you came from. You came to us a prisoner, yet you walk among us as if you were an ally. But no one questions it,” Olra said. “If Uwan has a reason for you being here, that’s enough.”
“You trust your leader that much?” Ashok said. “What if he’s wrong?”
“Uwan is never wrong,” Olra said.
The simple confidence in her voice kept Ashok from uttering the retort he wanted to. He changed the subject. “Will you break the nightmare yourself?” he asked.
“I’ll try,” she said.
“More scars,” Ashok murmured.
“These?” Olra said as she held up her hands, which were covered with slowly healing blisters. “All were earned for Ikemmu,” she said, with pride in her voice. “The beasts we train will either defend the city, or we’ll sell them to the other races, which brings us coin. There is honor in both. There are also these.” She bared her left arm for Ashok. From shoulder to wrist, the beasts of the Shadowfell stared back at Ashok in tattoos. Shadow hounds and ravens, nightmares and serpents-one picture blended into the next.
“Are these the creatures you’ve broken?” Ashok asked.
Olra nodded. “They’re all a part of me. I own them, and they own me,” she said, indicating her scars.
Ashok nodded. He could think of nothing to say.
“You’d better go on, get your shoulder looked at,” Olra said. She walked away from him along the fence, her hand trailing against the bars. The nightmare measured her progress, but he didn’t attack the fence again.
“Aren’t you afraid of him?” Ashok called after her. “Afraid of fading?”
Olra stopped and turned to look at him. “Of course,” she said. “I had a predecessor, head of the
Camborrs, just like I am now. How do you suppose he died?”
Behind the fence, the nightmare breathed and stamped the ground black.
Ashok went to the temple to accept Tempus’s healing, but he couldn’t shake the image of the nightmare from his thoughts. Maybe he’d been doomed from the moment he heard the beast’s scream, for when he’d been healed, Ashok found himself walking back to the Camborr pen. He spent time watching all the creatures as they were brought out: the shadow hounds, the jaguars, the serpents-any beast the caravan could capture.
But the nightmare was a creature apart from them all.
Ashok stood at the fence while Olra put the horse-it wasn’t right to call him that, Ashok thought, the name was demeaning-through his paces from a distance with a long whip. She never actually struck the creature; she couldn’t, unless her whip was iron-tipped. The flimsy leather end would burn to cinders if it got too near the nightmare’s flaring mane.
“It’s not going well,” Olra said when she saw Ashok. “No one’s going to be able to ride him. He sets fire to the ground whenever anyone comes near him, so we peck at him from behind the fence. It’s all we can do.”
The nightmare reared, biting at the whip that snapped near his face. Olra tried to jerk it free, but the nightmare yanked it out of her hands. Cursing, Olra backed away as the beast came at the fence and banged against the bars.
Olra dusted off her hands and went to stand beside Ashok. “He enjoys it,” she said, “knowing he’s the one in control. It’s all sport for him.”
Ashok shook his head. “It only makes the imprisonment bearable,” he said.
Olra blew out a sigh. “Well, whatever it is, it’s going to get him killed,” she said.
“What?” Ashok said. It came out sharper than he’d intended.
“What else would I do?” Olra said disgustedly. “The shadar-kai can’t use him, because of the nightmares. His screams would throw them off balance in a battle. I told you he was too wild, even for his kind. That’s what I’ll tell Uwan too.”
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