The Dark Season Saga- the Final Harvest
Page 22
“I know, A’rak,” I said.
“The Chain of Cas watches everything and its devotees are everywhere. Garold, Aidus, Zas ... they show man’s treachery.”
“Did you hear yourself just now? Did you listen to your own words stating the obvious? There is no hope.”
“They trusted you!” he screeched.
“I told you before. I told everyone: I am just a shade longing to part of the night. I didn’t have a clue what to do back then, and I don’t have any clue now. Then I asked, “Do you know what to do? Because if you do, please tell me.” I could hear the hint of desperation creeping into my voice.
His gray eyes stared at me briefly. “There is one who seems to know, but he is too small to be noticed and too silent to be heard.”
“Who?” I asked, and at last, a flare of excitement wisped inside of me.
“Where is your cat?”
***
I climbed the hills of Tamos and phased back to Veil. I searched everywhere for Sherako, but I hadn’t seen him since I left Eredia. I looked up the hill but saw Cresh dancing alone. The duchess did that a lot since my encounter with her. She visited me sometimes on its own accord and simply danced atop the hill nearby.
I raised my eyes to the sky, and there Sherako was, behind a spot in the sky almost covered by the clouds of Veil; the Clouds of the Unknown. I called, but he didn’t answer me. I contacted him telepathically, but he didn’t show any interest in returning to Veil.
I phased back to Talor, following my link to the shadow cat. I found him sitting in mystifying silence atop a mountainous plateau, gazing with unflinching eyes toward the city by the beach below.
There was something not quite right. As I drew closer to Sherako, I started making out a hazy figure beside him, and it seemed to be caressing his shadowy fur.
“Sherako,” I called for my companion. He glanced at me then, with his innocent, animalistic manner, turned his attention back to the city.
When I was just a dozen feet away, that figure got clearer – it was a ghastly reflection of a small sized humanoid in an unseen mist. When I saw the azure colored third eye in the center of his forehead, I remembered. To my utter surprise, I realized it was one of them, one of those I saw a century before in that enormous cavern leagues deep under the skin of Talor… a Weaver. He was the same Weaver who took Taria from this world. He slowly turned to me and then lowered his gaze to the city below.
I looked at the city and the coast, and I could tell by the shape of the shore that we were still in Eredia, somewhere to the west of Erados. I guessed that we were somewhere outside the coastal city of Borg. Colorful Lights and cheerful sounds erupted from the city, announcing that a festival of some sort was being held there.
When I turned back to the Weaver, he was gone.
Cautiously I approached my cat. When I was sure that the Weaver was nowhere near, I knelt beside Sherako.
I was gentle with him, almost fatigued, as I asked, petting him, “What now, Sherako? Haven’t you seen enough of this world? There is nothing for us here.
Silently I sat down atop the hill by Sherako’s side and gazed like him at Borg. “So you want me to go there, is that it?” I asked, expecting no audible consent from my silent life companion.
As I sat with my cat, I thought of A’rak’s words. Maybe there is something in Talor yet to be found , I thought. Maybe, for some insane reason, my cat wants me to listen.
“Okay. Let me see what you seek, Sherako. But only for a glimpse, then after that my friend, to dusk we need to fade.”
***
Before I pulled myself out of Talor for good, I peeked at the path Sherako had pointed out to me. I headed to the coastal city of Borg, which was built on a rocky plateau, a hundred feet or so high in its highest point. The plateau was actually part of the mountain I stood on. The moment I went to that direction, Sherako jumped to my shadow on the ground and dissolved. I descended the western side of the Arcatur Mountain, which bordered the city’s southwestern side, and headed toward the coastal commercial road, walking nearer to the western gates of its docks.
Caravans of different sizes and vastly different styles disappeared between rocky hills few miles to the west where the road slithered. As I approached sea level, I could hear the city’s festivities behind its walls.
Before I reached the dock’s western gate, I noticed another queue parallel to that of the caravans –refugees, victims of the Second Redemption Wars, I guessed. Lined up like cattle in front of the gate, they waited in a merciless queue for what must have been hours and even days. I saw those of all ages and conditions among them –from crying infants to aging elders.
Guarding the gate were not Eredian soldiers but Neligans. I have been a hired sword – or dagger – before, but I never crossed the lines those shameless men did. They were the military arm of the Evinshanost who helped the slavers manage their business properly. The Neligans were the fetching dogs, the hunters that secured their stock of slaves.
When I got close to the gate, I saw the Neligans practicing the Vote of Significance at their leisure, unchecked, permitting into the city only those who could either serve well or pay handsomely. At the barren shore north of the queue, clusters of refugees made temporary residence, having lost any hope of entering the city.
It angered me to see them use the Vote so cruelly. That declaration, which granted selection of a benefit based on an individual’s significance, simply allowed those in power to give the strong what rightfully belonged to the weak.
Survival of the fittest in its most gruesome form.
I remembered the old Brute, and anger smoldered in my heart at the sight of the Neligans’ cruelty.
Meddle in nothing and feel nothing , Nimtha, I kept reminding myself, resenting my own rage. This is not your world anymore .
With what I saw and heard, Garold had secured his clutch on nearly every aspect of the kingdom, aided by the advisor Fenith Half Breed and the nobles of Eredia. The arrival of the Black Princess had strengthened him even further. Since I had been in Eredia last, he seemed to have ordered all Eredian soldiers to remain outside the walls serving with Iden Supremus and replaced those in the cities with Neligans. What I witnessed, I realized, was an unofficial exile of the Eredian soldiers.
I spotted a sulky Eredian officer, probably in his late forties, with broad shoulders and gray ruffled hair, standing in the right gate tower and glaring at the Neligans as they turned away refugees. He touched the emblem of Borg carved on the arm of his armor –a Cantry Gull flapping its wings. Then he turned his eyes away –towards the clouds overshadowing the shore. A black ribbon was tied on his long spear.
Telling by their different shapes and ethnicity, the refugees I saw seemed to hail from different origins –products of the centuries’ long wars across Talor. They were lined up in that endless queue waiting for their turn to receive the blessings of the Pledge of Justice promised by Eredia.
The temporary refugee settlements extended south to the Silver Marshes by the Arcatur Mountain. Each cluster of tents by the marshes held a different flag high to help each person find his kingdom’s people.
By the flag of Tamos, which showed three swords intersecting, a company of not more than thirty or forty riders, was pulling their horses by their reins through the war-wretched refugees. The dozen or so horsemen were led by a woman in Dargos armor, with long, straight black hair and kind blue eyes.
Robyn Day Bringer.
She looked different than the last time I’d seen her, in the Lantern almost a week before. She looked stronger as she walked with her Dargos escort, comforting the Baylanders.
“Robyn Day Bringer!” cried someone at the fringes of the camp. It was an elderly woman shrouded in a white veil. The short, snowy hair beneath the veil betrayed her age, yet her features weren’t clear. She depended on some kind of a walking stick. A little girl with identical short hair walked beside her.
The Dargos knights approached the aging woman menacing
ly. She had called the princess by her name. But the princess waved for them to fall back.
“Yes. Come closer,” Robyn answered. The woman stepped forward, but I noticed the distance she kept between herself and the princess. She kept the young girl at her side. Around them, all eyes were on Robyn, waiting to see what would happen.
“Your father promised those people fairness. Will you fulfill his promise? Will you give them shelter and food? Can you promise them justice?”
Everyone turned to Robyn for an answer.
“No,” she said, astonishing everyone, even me.
“I can’t promise any of that, but I can promise this; I promise that they will be treated exactly like me. We will eat from the same platter, sleep under similar roofs, and together we will endure the illness of the world. As for justice,” she gazed at the girl standing beside the older woman. The girl gave Robyn a shy smile, and Robyn looked at her sincerely as she spoke. “As for justice — I am still searching, and when I find any justice in this world, I will bring it to you.”
Tears glittered in her eyes for a fraction of a second as she looked at the child. She thrust the Eredian flag into the ground, and I was reminded of her great-grandfather, Atmos Niver Darg. The applause and cheering kept on until she tore her eyes off the child and turned to leave. The people were won.
Yet the smile the old woman put on was peculiar as she held her gaze on Robyn.
That was a side of Trador’s daughter that I didn’t quite notice before . Why, Princess? Why there are so few like you around? If I had an ounce of faith left in me after what I had seen, I would have followed that woman.
Before the princess dissolved in the thousands of refugees, the voice of the wintry woman sounded again. “ROBYN DAY BRINGER.”
The princess halted and turned back. The little girl ran to her, holding the flag the princess left behind. Robyn bent a knee to match the girl’s height and gave her a motherly smile. The girl held out the spear with the Eredian flag wrapped around its tip. “Your flag my lady.” I watched as amusement and wonder at the girl’s courage filled the eyes of Robyn’s Dargos followers.
“Thank you, my friend.” The princess replied, still smiling at the child.
The girl looked up at Robyn. “You are not alone princess. We are all behind you.” Then she turned and ran, following the older woman, who by then was almost beyond the fringes of the camp. Leaning on her walking stick, she climbed a rock and disappeared behind a tree.
Robyn watched them go, both vanishing from my sight as well as hers. She unwrapped the flag. Furrowing her eyebrows, she turned to look at the spot where she had planted the spear. At last, she wrapped the flag back around the spear’s tip and secured it on the side of her saddle. She rode her horse to Borg’s western gate followed by the dozen Dargos.
I turned to Sherako, who sat and watched beside me. “So that is what you wanted me to see, the flower blossoming on Trador’s tree? Or is there something else in that city?”
Borg
I had the feeling that it was not just Robyn that Sherako wanted me to see, as I had lurked in the Ibdomad for years and knew her worth.
In the rare technique we called in my profession Shadow Stepping, which was accessible only to few high ranking Genn, I entered the docks. I jumped to the borders of Veil and walked a few steps then phased back to Talor on the other side of the western walls of the docks. I judged that it was relatively safe to use that technique at that moment. Once inside the city, I would use normal ways of travel so as not to draw any attention in Talor or Veil. That type of movement disturbed the delicate balance between the two worlds and the ripple it induced might draw unnecessary awareness.
At the beach, I fished for information from the sailors and merchants traveling to and from the docks, in an attempt to find out which mark Sherako sniffed, which mark he read.
I heard that the prince’s fiancée, Lady Baneca, had gifted the people of Eredia a special event: a poetry and singing contest. One thing the Talorians hadn’t lost yet was their taste for a good verse. Yet coming from Lorken, it just didn’t settle in.
Borg was the main port and the second largest city of the kingdom of Eredia. As I roved across the docks, I saw that the locals were cheerful and energetic despite the strange, mild chill in the air during that time of the year.
I saw artists preparing their acts and memorizing their poems everywhere; at the beach, on the road to the docks, or at the edge of the marshes near the city. Old songs mainly, as the last real poet must have died decades before –no new poems were written anymore.
Contestants and tourists alike were enjoying the city –those who proved their worth to the Neligans– for Borg was gifted with a marvelous location. It was built by the sea, with the famous Emerald Shore at its north on the Eredian Gulf. The Silver Marshes surrounded it from the south, lining the bed of the mountain and infiltrating the city at various locations.
I looked at the beach and saw the green corals which were constantly thrown onto the beach; the reason it was called The Emerald Shore. I recalled the local legend saying that the corals came from a garden beneath the sea. In my opinion, it was just green coral reef.
I saw dozens of ships of various sizes on the Emerald Shore, from small commercial boats to the Cartanian World Destroyers—the biggest sea vessels ever built by mortals. Ships were loading and unloading cargo and crates of various sizes and contents were handled by the dozens.
The fame of Borg’s scrolls and parchments was well-deserved. Governments, poets, mages, and paper-users everywhere sought the city’s scribes relentlessly. A variety of shops and bazaars were scattered across the city, some obviously exotic with expensive merchandise displayed outside of it. I saw beautiful outfits and masterworks weapons and armors. Some rare delicacies were also displayed; colorful fruits from the different lands of Talor and creatures that were hunted to near extinction. Others were nothing more than a cart pulled by a mule coming from long distances to sell some wood and simple clothes.
Yet I didn’t return to Talor to go site-seeing or listen to poetry. From what I heard, a slave exhibition was to be held parallel to the singing contest.
A slave exhibition sponsored by the Chain of Cas in the land of the Dargos.
Now that is interesting .
***
I walked at dusk, as I preferred. I traveled along the road which connected both ends of the Borgian shore; the western gate leading to the Bayland commercial road and the eastern exit. The latter end arced south away from the beach up the plateau, all the way to the city’s eastern inner gate. Another long queue of refugees lined up before the inner gates of Borg, those who had come by sea. Beside me stood the dockyard shops selling weapons, slaves, scrolls, and various ships’ supplies. There were a couple of inns where sailors, mercenaries and pirates took refuge.
Under the bitter gray sky, the deep, murky, waters reminded me of Iskath, the aging underground river. It had served the subterranean city, Verda, for millennia, the city I called my home before I chose Veil over it.
Between the shops lining the hillside on the beach, honeycomb-like openings facing the sea were visible. I knew what those were: windows of the prison cells of the infamous Dungeon of Bore. I turned my head away, trying to shake the image my mind had conjured of its dark interior and unfortunate inhabitants.
Shivering in the wind, a blindfolded monk in tattered clothes stood in front of one of the inns. Upon listening more closely, I realized he was warning people of the storm ahead. To my surprise, he was the same Doomsinger A’tor and myself saw from the Lantern on the day of Garold’s celebration.
For a part of a second, I thought the monk glanced at me. Then, I heard a whisper.
Nimtha. It came right from the holes to the Dungeon of Bore. I mpulsively I turned toward the holes and tried to see through the darkness inside, to no avail.
Turning away from the holes, I stood in the center of the docks and gazed to the west to the far end of the docks. From benea
th my hood, I saw a flock of silver-backed, gray Cantry Gulls, with their gray beaks and black wing tips, flying about. Some of them were already on the rocky hills, chasing the scarce sunrays which shyly shone upon them.
It was well known that those hills were the nesting place for those elegant birds. But what puzzled me was that I couldn’t see any nests. Leisurely, they gazed at the sea and their surroundings as if they had nothing to do.
I roamed the docks for less than an hour, eavesdropping on gatherings and listening to sailors’ tales. One of them was quite bizarre, I heard the disturbed red-haired sailor described his journey to Borg from Kalimda's Maw, the port of Karonis and the homeland of the Neligans.
On his ship traveled a discreet passenger traveling in careless disguise. On their way, their ship took a different course than usual. Rumors spread amongst the passengers and crew that it was that passenger who ordered the ship’s captain to take that course. They sailed directly toward Erados instead of circling the perimeter of the Sea of Rhymes as all sea vessels do.
They found themselves sailing right through the forbidden waters of the Drum, the center of the Sea of Mountain Waves. The ship arrived in Borg two days ago, in the night. The ship had endured a mysterious attack at the fringes of the Drum and only two passengers were onboard when it arrived.
The almost-crazed sailor said that he didn’t take part in the battle that took place on the deck. He didn’t know what attacked them when they entered the Drum. But when he heard the passenger’s door open and detected his slow footsteps outside his hideout, he knew the passenger was leading his way to the assailants. He heard only one word: Oblivate , and the sound of the battle faded abruptly. Then the ship started to move again.