The Questing Game

by James Galloway

  Tarrin stood up and looked at the stunned patrons of the inn. "Anyone else want to try to catch me?" Tarrin asked in a dangerous tone, pointing at them with a bloodstained claw. "No? Good." He reached into his belt pouch and pinched a couple of coins out between the tips of his claws, and lobbed them at the surprised barkeeper. "For the mess," he said politely, then he stalked towards the door. They melted away before him, and stayed as far from him as they could manage.

  He gave it not another thought once he was outside. He vaulted up to the rooftops and was out of sight before the first man could get to the door. On top of the inn's roof, he took out the medallion and held it up. Maybe this time would be lucky. The medallion was pointing due west, a distance of about a longspan.

  Soaring over the street, the Were-cat's profile was visible against the moon for just a second, and then he was gone. Leaving behind him a firestorm of rumor and gossip.

  "By the Cloudspire, boy!" Camara Tal grunted irritably at Dar, putting a hand to her chest in a display of surprise, "would you stop doing that?"

  Dar had literally appeared right in front of her. Intrigued by the Faerie's magical power to turn invisible, Dar had been experimenting with finding a way to do it with Sorcery. What he got as a result wasn't exactly true invisibility, but it was a very close substitute. He simply projected an Illusory image of whatever was behind him. It only worked against those who faced a single direction, but he could move the effect to hide himself from someone looking in a direction other than into the Illusion. The nature of the weave caused whatever was behind him in relation to the onlooker to appear in the Illusion, whether he could see it or not. The result was a wall of Illusory invisibility that, though it only worked in one direction, was still a very formidable magical effect. He was quite proud of his weave, and Dolanna had been impressed by the intricate nuances of the spell's weaving.

  He blushed slightly. "Sorry," he apologized. "I thought you knew I was there."

  "How do you think I'd know?" she asked waspishly as the scaly drake landed on the Arkisian's shoulder. "Did you find it?"

  "No," he sighed. "It was an old mirror, not a book."

  "Well, at least we ruled another one out," she told him evenly, unrolling her map. She marked off the location of the house the young man had just invaded with a curt stroke of a charcoal writing stick. For most of the night, they had crisscrossed large patches of ground, having to travel longspans to reach the next indicated object, and through it all the Amazon had bristled. She was a proud woman, proud and strong, and she took exception to the simple deception they were using to get around. Dar was Arkisian, which meant that he was a cousin to the Arakites. He looked exactly like an average Arakite, and he spoke the language, so it made perfect sense for him to pose as an Arakite, with Camara Tal pretending to be his slave. It had saved them a great deal of trouble, but Camara Tal stiffened every time Dar pretended to command her in front of people they met on the street. "That makes five. This would go faster if we didn't have to travel longspans from place to place. What insanity possessed these people to all live together like this?"

  "They probably don't know anything different," Dar replied sagely. He held up the medallion, watching as it began to glow with a faint reddish light, and tugged him towards the south. "That's right, Turnkey, we're going that way," Dar told the green drake as it looked past the medallion.

  The drake chirped lightly, settling more on his shoulder.

  "I'm surprised," Camara Tal grunted. "I thought only the Selani could make them fawn like that."

  "They like me," Dar smiled, scratching the drake under the chin fondly. "It looks like the next object is a ways off. Looks like we'll be marching some more," he sighed.

  "This will be the last one," Camara Tal said as they started out. "It's well past midnight, and we'll need to get back so we can get some sleep. We don't want to walk into tomorrow's performance sleeping on our feet. That fat circus master will get mad at us."

  "He's not that bad," he protested.

  "You're not the one he tried to get into a couple of well placed thongs," she grunted.

  "Pardon my asking, but why did that bother you?" he asked. "I remember what you said about why you dress the way you do, and you've never seemed all that shy to me. Did that costume bother you that much?"

  "It bothered me that he didn't ask," she replied bluntly. "I still wouldn't have worn it, though. I'll not be paraded around like a love slave."

  "I doubt anyone would have made that mistake," he told her. "They'd probably still dream, though."

  Camara Tal chuckled. "You've been hanging around us too long, kid," she smiled at him. "You talk like a veteran sailor, not a young pup."

  Dar smiled slightly. "I'm Arkisian, Camara Tal," he said. "Our society isn't quite as, inhibited, as the other Western kingdoms."

  "You make me sound like an old maid, kid," she grinned. "Call me Camara. Calling me Camara Tal is the same as if you were saying 'Mistress Camara.' We only call someone by their family name if we don't know them well enough to drop it. I think you know me well enough by now."

  "Well, thanks for the vote of confidence," he said with a faint blush.

  "I'm surprised that you're not as innocent as some of them think you are," she noted with a wink. "All the girls in the circus would strip naked and dance in front of you if you gave them half a reason."

  "I know," he replied simply. "I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so I pretend to not know what they're trying to do. That way nobody gets hurt."

  "Sounds like you've got a girl," she said. "That, or you have more self control than any teenage boy I've ever seen in my life."

  "Not really," he replied with a deep blush. "Just someone I'd like to get to know better."

  "Does this girl have a name?" she pressed, looking down at him.

  "You don't know her, Camara Ta--uh, Camara. She's in the Tower. Her name is--"

  "Tiella," she finished. "The Selani told me about her when she was telling me about what happened before I got here. She helped you out in the Tower."

  "Yes, Tiella. She's a nice girl, but sometimes I worry about her. The Tower's not a very safe place right now."

  "I remember them saying that too," she told him.

  The pair followed the medallion's lead through the streets of Dala Yar Arak, Camara Tal keeping track of where they were as Dar held up the medallion. They continued to talk about little things as they moved, moved past rich nobles and merchants travelling in their litters or carriages, surrounded by their guards, or the trios or groups of off-duty mercenaries or soldiers, past thieves, pickpockets, harlots, and street people who milled about in the night, seeking customers, victims, or food. Just about every Arakite eye wandered over the Amazon's body, and all of them immediately looked to her neck or wrist, where a replica of a slave cuff was resting on her right wrist. More than one man seemed to size them up for what they were carrying, but the Amazon's intimidating size, and the fact that she was a slave that happened to be carrying a sword, dissuaded them. In their eyes, for Dar to trust a slave with a weapon when he carried none of his own was a powerful symbol of where her loyalties lay. The drake as well got a great deal of attention, and Turnkey probably gave the street predators another reason for them to leave the pair alone. For the Arkisian to have both an exotic armed slave and such a unique animal for a pet marked him as a young man of great status, and therefore nobody to be trifled with. Thieves were not fools, or at least the thieves who had lived for any amount of time.

  They seemed to cross an invisible boundary, moving from a maintained street that was well lit into an area where there were only a few lanterns on the street, a street that had some missing cobblestones. The buildings had begun to show signs of decay. They were moving into a poor neighborhood, where the litters and carriages and well-dressed merchants and processions of drunken mercenaries gave way to more street-dwelling homeless and night predators. The streets began to take on a slightly ominous feel, a sense of foreboding
and danger that hadn't existed in the better lit areas, a feeling that danger was just around the next corner. Dar had felt that many times during his travels with the group, and he had never gotten used to it. The others always seemed to be so fearless, it sometimes made him feel a bit out of place, nearly cowardly that he always felt terrified at the things that the others seemed to shrug off out of hand. They were all so much older than him, except for Tarrin, and Tarrin's condition gave him a maturity that Dar couldn't match for another fifty years.

  Being turned Were had aged the young man, aged him dramatically. He was nothing like what he'd been when he'd first met him. Back then, he wasn't mean or vindictive. He was afraid of what he was and what it may cause, but he had been so eager to show friendship, so willing to accept Dar immediately for who and what he was. He'd been looking for friends when nobody wanted anything to do with him. It seemed sad to Dar that now, when he needed friends the most, he wouldn't accept them. What he was had eaten away at the amiable youthful personality that Dar remembered, and replaced it with a bitter shell covering a hard, unforgiving man. And he never smiled anymore, or laughed. That worried him more than anything else.

  Turnkey suddenly began to hiss, and it beat its wings hard enough to muss Dar's short black hair.

  "Something has it spooked," Camara Tal said as they stopped, putting a hand on the falcon-hilt sword that had once been Faalken's.

  "I don't see anything," Dar said quietly as the drake took off from his shoulder, landing on the edge of a flat roof across the street.

  The drake suddenly dove off the roof, the claws on its forepaws leading, and there was a sound of impact just outside the light of the street's lantern. There was a surprised barking sound from beyond the light, and then, to Dar's shock, there was a short blast of fire that emanated from the darkness. It illuminated the drake, flying away, but it also illuminated a trio of dog-like animals that were nearly the size of a small pony. They had fur of utter black, but there was a powerful red glow coming from their eyes, an aura that remained after the light of the fire faded with it.

  Camara Tal swore sulfurously. "Hellhounds!" she snapped, immediately grabbing for the silver amulet around her neck. "Get behind me!" she ordered of her teenage companion.

  "What are those things?" Dar asked nervously as he did what she told him to do.

  "Demonspawn," she replied, then immediately began to chant. Her words were unintelligible, but within them was a power that could not be contained by the sound of a mortal's voice. The medallion in her hand suddenly erupted in a blaze of incandescent light, and it brought light to everything within sight of them. Dar looked in stunned awe as the three dog-like creatures, powerfully muscled and with black teeth, flinched away from the brilliant light, whining and yelping as if in pain, shying away from the pair. Camara Tal held the amulet up higher, and it blazed even more brilliantly when she literally began shouting her mystical words, and that seemed to be more than they could take. The three black-furred animals backed away from the priestess quickly, then turned and fled back down the street.

  "What were those things, Camara? What's going on?" Dar asked fearfully.

  "Hellhounds," she spat, lowering her amulet. "There's not going to be any more hunting tonight, kid. Not until we regroup."

  "What are Hellhounds?"

  "Demonspawn," she answered. "From the Worlds Below, what some call the Hells, the Abyss, or Hades. If they're here, that means there's a Demon somewhere in this city. Not even a Wizard can summon a Hellhound. Only a Demon can."

  "A Demon? I thought Dolanna said that Wizards never summon Demons!"

  "They don't unless they have a deathwish," Camara Tal said, grabbing his hand. "Let's talk about this when we get back to the circus. We're way too vulnerable out here. If those Hellhounds bring back reinforcements, we're dog food. I can repel Hellhounds, but my power is nowhere near enough to repel a Cambion or an Alu without help."

  "But--"

  "Shut up and run!" Camara Tal snapped. "Turnkey, come on, you scaly jackdaw! We're leaving!"

  The sun was beginning to rise to the east. It had been a frustrating night for Tarrin, who sat on the corner of a roof looking down at the street below. Twenty hits on the medallion, and all of them turned up empty. Two days now he had searched, and nothing. He knew that it was going to take time, but he'd secretly been hoping that he'd get lucky right at the start. That kind of luck seemed to be as elusive as the book. Time seemed to be an enemy now, lining up in a formation to oppose him. How long had others had to look for the book before he got to Dala Yar Arak? How long had people like Kravon had to find the book before him?

  Just that name made him snarl. Kravon. The man that had sent Jegojah, who had ordered Jula to capture him. Faalken was dead because of him, and he had turned feral because of him. He wanted to find that man, find him badly. And when he did, he would punish him for everything he had done. And it wouldn't be short. A lingering death with lots of screaming made Tarrin feel very warm inside for some reason. He wanted Kravon to suffer, to feel every bit of the pain and agony he'd experienced at the man's hands. But he was a faceless enemy, nothing more than a name who hid behind servants and hirelings.

  Yawning, Tarrin stretched his arms languidly. He was tired. After so long on the ship, a few days of constant activity had proven to him that even Were-cats needed regular exercise. It felt good to be out and do something, but right now a quiet corner under someone's pallet was exactly what he wanted.

  A young woman on the street below chanced to look up, and she met his eyes for a moment. To his surprise, she screamed hysterically and pointed at him, then turned and fled screaming "It's the monster!"

  That surprised Tarrin. Certainly people would confuse him with a monster, given his appearance, but her reaction seemed to be extreme. And she called him the monster, like it was exactly him to whom she was referring. That didn't seem right. What had provoked that kind of a reaction? After all, he was way up on the roof. He wasn't threatening her, and yet she reacted as if he was about to rip her head off. And he'd never been here before. He was just crossing through the neighborhood, a neighborhood that looked to be just on the good side of poor, judging from the condition of the buildings.

  Crossing to the other side of the roof, where its building faced an alley, Tarrin dropped down to the narrow street easily, avoiding a pile of broken crates stacked up beside what smelled like a butcher's shop. The alley reeked of excrement, rotted meat, and rats mixed with the smell of the wood, dirt, and stone. He absently shapeshifted into his human form, rubbing his hands absently as the nagging ache of holding the form settled into his bones. He was curious about this, and since he didn't have to perform, he had no curfew. If he had, he would have had to return to the circus hours ago. He wanted to find out what that girl was so scared about, and the best way to do that was to talk to some of the locals.

  The neighborhood was a poor one, but it was obviously kept up by its inhabitants. The butcher shop was flanked by a ropemaker on one side, and a candlestick maker on the other. Across the street was what looked to be an inn or tavern. The street had some people on it, people dressed in plain, often homespun robes with poor dyes. The women wore veils to hide their lower faces, which was the custom in Yar Arak, sheer lace or very thin linen that let them breathe and allowed an opaque image of their features to show through them. They all looked at him strangely. With his long blond hair, his green eyes, and his height and strange clothing, he was obviously a stranger. And he wore no slave's collar or cuff, which made him even stranger.

  The inn or tavern would be a good place to start. Such people loved to talk, and Tarrin had a few coins left to buy some conversation if needs be. He crossed the street and entered through the open door, and found himself looking into a cramped tavern with only four tables on the floor, surrounded by booths on the walls, and a plain bar against the right wall. There were still patrons in the establishment, but they were eating breakfast, not drinking ale. There were three servi
ng women, all wearing slave's collars, bringing plates of food out from a door behind the bar to the waiting customers. A short woman wearing no veil stood behind the bar, being aided by a tall, burly man with a slave's cuff as she placed a small cask up on a rack. All the people in the tavern, slave, barkeep, and customer alike, stopped to stare at him when he stepped beyond the doorway. He realized that his outlander appearance was always going to cause that kind of a reaction, so he ignored them and went to the bar.

  "What's served for breakfast, barkeeper?" he asked the woman in Arakite. She was middle aged, with graying black hair and more than a few wrinkles creased into her face, but she was still a rather handsome woman. Her age wasn't an anchor weighing her down, it was a distinguishing characteristic that made her seem wise.

  "I think you're wandering around in the wrong place, stranger," the woman replied easily.

  "They've already tried that, madam," he said calmly. "The survivors learned to leave me alone."

  "By the looks of you, you're Ungardt. That means you can kill without weapons," she surmised.

  He only smiled in reply.

  "That's an impressive accent you have, stranger," she noted. "Not many can speak the true tongue like a native."

  "I was taught by a native," he replied. "Now, what's for breakfast?"

  "Mutton," she replied. "Three silver kangs if you're interested."