Malediction (Scars of the Sundering Book 1) (11 page)

"You're
worried they might attack us?"

Delilah
tapped the butt of her staff on the ground. "They'll be sorry if they
do!"

Pancras
frowned and shook his head. "We should try not to antagonize anyone right
now. I think if they see us traveling along the road, just the four of us
taking our time, they may not assume we mean to harm them. After all, if we
really wanted a fight, hiding in the grasses would be smarter. Out here, in the
open? I think we'll be better off."

"I
agree." Edric nodded. "At worst, they'll just ignore us or give us
the cold shoulder. Hopefully."

It was the
"hopefully" that worried Kale. If what Pancras told them about
Almeria was true, they could expect a somewhat tepid welcome, but not a hostile
one. If Pancras was wrong, however, an encounter with a guard patrol might
prove disastrous. His fears were unfounded, however. Over the next few days,
the patrols and traders they came across either ignored them or offered
greetings as they passed.

As road
traffic increased, so did their proximity to Almeria. The plains became hilly
near the city, and as they crested the rise, Almeria, capital of Etrunia came
into view.

Chapter 6

A dark-grey
stone wall surrounded the city, punctuated at regular intervals with towers.
From their vantage on top of the hill, Pancras spotted streets winding through
cramped, half-timbered buildings. Lower walls separated sections of the city,
and at its center stood a gleaming-white, crenelated wall, which surrounded a
multi-spired palace. Outside the main gates stood fenced-off fields, wooden
buildings, and a makeshift marketplace where caravans made camp and sold their
wares without entering the city proper.

Almeria
appeared larger than Pancras remembered it, yet with the passing decades, he
supposed his memory to be faulty. He led Edric and the drak twins down the hill
toward the city. As they approached the main gates, Kale and Delilah gaped at
the stables and trading posts flanking the road. Pancras sniffed the air. All
the familiar stenches of city life hung thick in the breeze and mingled with
the fresh fragrances of harvest crops for sale in the makeshift market ahead.

Most of the
merchants they encountered had little interest in engaging a traveling group of
draks, a minotaur, and a dwarf. One drak proved the exception. "Hey! Hey!
You’ve come far? We don't see your kind here much, unless you're from here. Did
you just leave from another gate and circle around? Hey! You two have stripes!
You must be important!" The drak had scales of sunset orange, a circlet of
tiny horns upon the crown of his head, and wore a simple brown leather jerkin
cinched around his waist with a braided belt.

Pancras held
up a hand to silence the drak. "We're not from here but would appreciate
anything you can tell us about the city."

The drak
grinned, still staring at the striped drak twins. "It's Almeria! Capital
of Etrunia—"

"We
know that much." Pancras gritted his teeth and willed himself to be
patient. "We need lodging for the night, and we'll want to buy mounts that
can carry us to Muncifer before the winter snows fall."

Laughing,
the drak beckoned them to follow him. He led them to a cart overflowing with
textiles. "Lodging, mounts, yes! Get to Muncifer before it snows? Not even
if you cut across the country. You'll be snowed in before you reach Ice
Crown." The highest peak in an eastern-jutting spur of the mountains, the
base of Ice Crown was the halfway point, and a common landmark for
cross-country travelers who preferred the difficult overland route to the
easier circuitous trade road. Pancras knew it would likely be impossible to
arrive in Muncifer before snowfall, but he inquired anyway.

"Can I
interest you in some fine linens? Hand woven tapestries? Bolts of silk or
wool?" The drak showed them each type of material in turn as he circled
his cart.

"This
is really nice." Delilah rubbed a bolt of verdigris silk between her
hands.

Pancras
pulled her away from the cart. "Nothing right now. We've come a long way
and would just like to find an accommodating inn."

The drak
scratched his head, looking around in confusion. "I'm sure there are some,
but I… my memory—the name was on the tip of my tongue…"

Pancras
pursed his lips and snorted. He reached into one of his pockets and fished out
a silver talon. He flipped it through the air toward the drak.

Snatching
the spinning coin from the air, the drak grinned. "Oh yes, now I remember!
The Sleeping Viper is friendly to our sort."

"Oh,
and what sort do you think we are?" Delilah stepped toward the drak,
pushing her snout against his.

He
back-pedaled and raised his hands in submission. "No offense, of course. I
simply meant us draks." He nodded toward Pancras. "And minotaurs.
Most inns will happily accommodate the dwarf, but many people are not
intelligent enough to appreciate what fine qualities we bring as customers, if
you know what I mean."

Pancras put
his hand on Delilah's shoulder and pulled her back. "We understand. Could
you tell us how to get there?"

"Oooh,
the memory's a little faulty there, too. I don't get to that part of town very
often, you see—"

Pancras gave
him another talon. "Funny how silver seems to help."

"Silver's
very pure. It can drive the were- out of a werewolf, you know!" The drak
took the coin and slipped it into his pocket. "Enter through the main
gates, like you were. Then follow the main road until you reach the Commerce
District bath house. You can't miss it. There's a fountain out front and
everything. Almerian Spring Way runs right behind the bath house, so you'll
want to turn there and follow that, it's a really windy street, until it
reaches the Foundry gate. Go through the gate. Then go left and hug the wall
until you find the Broken Tree. You can't miss that either. It really is a
broken tree. There's sort of a courtyard around it, but if you go past the
smithy, the blacksmith, not the armory or the minotaur smith that only makes
axes and swords, about three buildings down is The Assassin's Dagger. Right
next door to that is The Sleeping Viper."

Delilah
narrowed her eyes and glared at the orange drak. "You have memory problems
but you can recite all that so precisely?"

He held up
the silver coin and winked at Delilah. "Silver is a cure all. Say, you
look like a pretty discerning female, if you fancy some company some
time—"

Kale darted
forward and grabbed Delilah's arm, interposing himself between his sister and
the other drak. "She won't. Come on. Let's go, Deli."

Delilah
pulled her arm from Kale's grasp. "I don't need you to protect me,
Kale." She turned her back on the textile merchant and stomped toward the
city gates.

Pancras and
Edric shook their heads and followed her. Pancras grabbed Kale as he passed,
and together they entered Almeria.

* * *

I can't
believe Pancras let that drak scam him out of two talons! He didn't have memory
problems. He just wanted to get paid to help us. The nerve of some people
…
She
scowled as she entered the city, hoping one of the guards would challenge her.
To her disappointment, they didn't even give her a second glance as she strode
past them and under the open portcullis. Regularly spaced holes dotted the
ceiling of the gatehouse, and featured a second open portcullis. Beyond that,
the sprawl of the city beckoned.

Having spent
the majority of her life in Drak-Anor, Delilah’s experience with cities was
limited. In contrast to the buildings mostly carved out of the rock of the mountains
in Ironkrag and Drak-Anor, all the buildings here were free-standing, mostly
with two or three stories and sloped roofs. She stood gawking and started when
she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Come
on, Delilah. Let's try to find this inn." Pancras patted her shoulder and
led them down the street. Men, women, and children packed the streets in front
of them, carrying tightly-wrapped bundles or otherwise going about their daily
business. Towering above the crowd, a few minotaurs were easily visible, but
even they stepped aside when the crowds parted to make way for a city guard on
a horse or a trader's cart.

The din of
thousands of simultaneous conversations seemed to bounce of the walls of the
buildings. Not only did everyone in Almeria seem to speak louder than did the
people of Drak-Anor, there were so many more of them. She was disappointed that
she didn't see any draks, though.

"Come
on, Pancras. Can't you go faster?" Kale bumped into Delilah, grabbing her
arm to keep from falling.

"He
can't strong-arm his way through the crowd, Drak." Edric stopped beside
the twins. "This place is more crowded than Ironkrag. Stinks, too."

Kale looked
around, lifting up Pancras's sleeve to see past him. "How do they clean
the place? Do the golguthrons come out a night?"

Pancras
shook his head and looked back at his three shorter companions. "No
golguthrons here. That's probably why it stinks so much."

A cart
pulled out of the building in front of them, and once it was in the street and
moving, Pancras stepped past it. Delilah noticed the packed-dirt road was now
covered with small cut stones. She couldn't see what held them in place, but
they were worn down and smooth. Adjacent to the buildings, the road was built
up, providing a raised walkway for pedestrians, and at regular intervals large
blocks were spaced across the street and at the same height as the raised
walkways. It wasn't until she observed pedestrians crossing the road atop the
blocks that she understood their purpose. Over many years wagon and cart wheels
wore ruts into the cobbles between the blocks.

Over the din
of the crowds, Delilah heard the sound of splashing water. Just past Pancras,
she saw a marble carving of a nude human woman standing a head above Pancras.
She held an ornate ewer from which spilled water into a pool at the her feet.

"Is
that a fountain? This is the bath house, right?" Delilah tugged at
Pancras's sleeve. The building behind the fountain was part of a sprawling
complex constructed of gleaming-white-and-pink marble. Chimneys atop the red,
tile roof belched out clouds of white smoke.

"I
think so. We need to find the street that runs behind it… There it is!"
Pancras pointed ahead. Words on a sign attached to the building were painted in
script letters, although Delilah was not familiar with the alphabet. The
lexicon she used to learn the common trade language was written in Drak to
teach her how to pronounce words, not to read them.
So that's what it looks
like written. It's more delicate than I imagined.

Almerian
Spring Way ran alongside the bath house before turning behind it and winding
its way through various half-timbered houses. The group passed a few gardens
with sprawling trees that peeked over the tops of the walls that surrounded
them, as well as several specialty shops. Delilah guessed each shop's specialty
from the pictures painted alongside the words on each of their signs. The
candlemaker's sign showed a lit candle, the baker’s sign showed a loaf of
bread, and the butcher's shop showed a haunch of meat. Delilah was certain at
least one of the shops was an apothecary or alchemist. At least that's what she
thought mortar and pestle signified. A trio of draks stood in front of another
shop, arguing about the quality of copper in the pots from the snippets of
conversation she overheard. She tried to establish eye contact, but they took
no notice of the passing strangers.

The street
down which they strode passed through a residential section. Ahead, Delilah
recognized the wall the drak merchant outside the city described. The smoke of
industry rose above the wall from more chimneys than Delilah could count and
formed a nebulous black haze that clung near the highest rooftops.
Edric
will probably feel right at home here.
The ringing clang of hammers on
anvils formed a background cadence to their march along the road. Around one final
bend, Delilah saw that the Foundry Gate was little more than a passage through
the wall with portcullises on either side. She didn't notice any murder holes
above her, but there was also no gatehouse from which guards might defend this
particular entrance.

A minotaur
leaned against the wall next to the passage, cradling a halberd in his arms.
The tunic of the city guard hung over his mail. He straightened his posture as
they approached and moved his halberd to a more defensive position. "Hold
there, what's your business here?"

Pancras
straightened his robes and cleared his throat. He tilted his head in a bow
toward the guard. "We were told The Sleeping Viper was through this gate
in the Foundry district. We were told they would be happy to accommodate us."

The guard
looked them over. "New in town, eh?" He snorted. "You could do
better than The Sleeping Viper. Who told you to go there?"

"A drak
fellow." Edric stepped up to stand next to Pancras.

"Yes,
it was a drak merchant." Pancras looked down at Edric and then back up at
the guard. "I believe he was a mercer, just outside the main city
gate."

"Well,
like I said, you could do better than The Sleeping Viper. You'd have to split
up, though. The Grand Duchess is owned by a minotaur, so you'd be welcome there.
The draks, however"—he shook his head—"she doesn't like them at all.
Across the street The Manticore & Dragon Inn has short beds for the small
folk."

Delilah
shared a look of concern with her brother and then tugged at Pancras's sleeve.
She didn't like the idea of splitting up, not on their first night in a new
city. Pancras looked down at her and shook his head.

"I
think we'd prefer to stay together for now."

The guard
shrugged and leaned back against the wall. "Suit yourself." He
confirmed the drak's directions and bid them good day as they passed under the
Foundry Gate.

* * *

Kale
wrinkled his nose. The air in the Foundry District became fouler and fouler the
farther into it they traveled. It reminded him of the forges back home.
Something else was mixed in with the odor of soot and brimstone, yet it was
something he couldn't identify. A man leaned out the window of the upper story
of the building ahead of them, and Kale saw the source of the other odor.