Despite the rain, there was a crowd standing before a series of stone and steel cages that rimmed a bog that likely once had been a park. There were children at the front of the crowd, and they were ooohing and aahing at the creatures inside the cages.
“New acquisitions,” Ragh said. “Sable’s agents have not yet looked them over. The choicest will be taken directly to the dragon in Shrentak. Others will go to an arena deep in the swamp. A few will be kept on display here for the people to enjoy.”
“How…?” Dhamon let the question hang.
“Trappers bring them here. It is a lucrative way to earn a living.”
Dhamon stared at some of the better dressed men toward the front of the crowd. They were muscular and armed with swords and spears. He suspected they were the trappers who captured the beasts. One of them was using a spear to poke a mud-brown lizard the size of a cow. It had a dozen legs ending in cloven hooves and a wide body that could easily swallow an alligator. The man was trying to get it to perform for the audience. Finally it began to roar and hiss, sending a gob of spit between the bars and into the face of a wide-eyed girl. She shrieked and scurried away. Another creature looked like a big, black bear, but its head was that of an eagle, with white and sand-colored feathers that fanned back from a massive beak and fluttered about its broad shoulders. It looked sad, sitting in its cage, staring back at the people. Next to it was a huge owl, a magnificent animal nearly twenty feet from its claws to the top of its head. It was crowded in the cage, not able to stand fully upright, and one of its wings was injured. The feathers were crusted with dried blood. With unblinking eyes it took in the audience.
“A darken owl,” the sivak pronounced. “Many years ago I flew with them in the Qualinesti Forest. Keenly intelligent, they are. The men who captured this must have been very skilled. They will be well rewarded by Sable’s agents.”
The other cages contained even more fantastic beasts. There was a thanoi, a walrus-man from far to the south. He was a stocky brute with long tusks and a mix of thick skin and fur that made him unbearably hot in this climate. A young man near the front was wagering with a girl that the beast was so uncomfortable it would die before nightfall.
There was a bulky, round-shouldered hairy creature that looked like a cross between a man and an ape. It smelled like a mix of dung and rotting wood. Near it were three man-sized frogs that stood on their hind legs and chattered in a strange, throaty language. One balled its fist and shook it at a passing spawn.
Dhamon stopped near an especially large cage, and shouldered his way to the front. The two creatures crammed inside were easily the size of small dragons.
“Manticores,” Maldred breathed.
“Aye. I wonder how trappers managed to catch them?”
“It was tough,” said a barrel-chested man an arm’s length away. “Our gamble nearly cost us our lives.” There was considerable pride on his face as he gestured at the manticores.
“Me and my mates caught their cubs, probably while they were off hunting. This pair didn’t put up much fight when they came back and we threatened to kill the cubs. In the end they practically let us drug ’ em with the last of Reng’s magic powder.”
“Where are the cubs?” Maldred asked.
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Sold ’ em this morning for a very good turn o’ coin. Ain’t gonna be able to sell these adults for a good price until they heal up some. Time’s on our side, though. Word is Sable’s agents aren’t here right now. We’re gonna clean up on these beauties.”
The manticores would have been impressive were it not for the great chains around their legs and the myriad of wounds in their sides. Their bodies were that of huge lions, though they were easily the size of bull elephants. From their wide shoulders sprouted massive leathery wings shaped like a bat’s. The cage confined them, however, and their wings were crushed against their sides. Foot-long spikes ran in a ridge from their shoulderblades to the tip of their long tails. Most amazing were their heads, vaguely human in shape but with thick manes of hair and wild-looking beards. Their eyes looked overly small for their features and rolled this way and that, staring at the crowd. The smaller one made a mewling sound. Dhamon met its gaze. The creature repeated the sound, and Dhamon heard the very human word “please” in it.
“I’ve seen enough,” Dhamon said, edging away from the audience and heading along a side street filled with mud puddles. Maldred and the sivak lagged a few yards behind. “I kept company once with a Kagonesti who would have paled at that sight,” Dhamon muttered. “She would have vowed to free every one of those creatures and punish the men who collected them. No doubt the black dragon, too.”
“Fortunately she is not here with us,” the sivak said. “She would die trying.”
Dhamon didn’t reply.
The dwarf’s directions to the old woman’s tower yielded nothing. They found a street with tents and poorly built wooden homes. After another hour of searching Dhamon considered giving up, but Maldred was determined to look longer.
The rain had become a drizzle by noon, everything so thoroughly soaked that there was a sameness to each turn of the muddy walkway. Dark, ramshackle buildings sheltered tents on the verge of collapsing from the water. The ways were thronged by downtrodden slaves and optimistic “information brokers.”
“Perhaps this is the one.” Maldred nodded to one of the more-intact towers around which a trio of sivak draconians and a dozen spawn clustered. But after two hours, there was no sign of any other activity, and not a soul entered the place, and so they moved on.
“This could take days, you realize,” Ragh offered. “Weeks. If this healer truly exits.”
“No,” Dhamon said. “I’m not going to spend that long here. I hate this place.”
“Perhaps the healer hated the place, too, and left,” Ragh ventured. By late afternoon the rain had stopped, just about the time they discovered a building that met the dwarf’s description of the mad sage’s home. It was several streets back from where he said it would be and shielded by piles of rubble heaped up high on either side of it. They were certain they must have passed by it several times earlier. Perhaps they had not noticed it because of the rain and gloom and because it didn’t look like a tower.
The structure was, at best, three stories tall. It was blackened like the other structures around it, but in places the trim gleamed silver and bronze. There was a great gaping doorway with stony fingers pointing down from the arch, looking like an open jaws of a massive, toothy beast. It was dark beyond the arched entrance, save for a sporadic flickering of what might have been firelight.
“Perhaps this is the one,” the sivak tried. “The dwarf said it had the mouth of a dragon.”
“Perhaps it is.” Dhamon and Maldred stepped into the shadows of a spire across the street. Maldred yawned, and Dhamon noticed the ash-gray circles beneath his eyes.
“You’re tired.”
“Very.” The big man yawned wider. He glanced down the street to his right at what was obviously an inn. A large wagon pulled by a pair of sorry-looking and over-taxed mules was out in front, and huge barrels were being unloaded from the wagon. The man who had driven it up was trying to repair a wheel that was cracking. Maldred watched him.
“I really don’t want to spend the night in this town, Dhamon. I don’t think I would get any sleep. But we could get a room there. Better than being out on the street in this gods-forsaken hole, I suspect. Or better than curling up in a tree in the swamp. Sun’s setting, and…”