No one said a word as he slipped out. They all watched as he inched nervously to the horses. He picked the one closest to the middle of the bunch and saddled it. When he was gone, all that remained was the deep silence of a cold winter’s night.
CHAPTER 17
The party had stopped again. Since they’d left the library, their progress through the ancient city had been tedious, as Royce was pausing frequently. Sometimes he forced them to wait for what felt like hours as he scouted ahead-the rest of them sitting among the rubble. This time, he had left them in the middle of what appeared to be an alley with tall buildings towering on either side. Arista sighed and leaned against one wall. Someone ahead of her had stepped on a piece of fabric, the boot print revealing the faded colors of blue and green. She bent down and picked a small flag from under a thick coating of dust and dirt. This one was a handheld version, the sort people waved at celebrations. Looking up, she spotted a window, and hanging from that was an old and
faded banner that read FESTIVIOUS FOUNDEREIONUS!
“What does that say?” she asked Myron, but she was certain she already knew.
“ ‘Happy Founder’s Day,’ ” the monk replied.
Next to where she found the flag, she noticed a small object. Reaching out, she found a copper pin in the shape of the letter P. Now more than ever she wished she could remember the dream from the night before, but the more she tried to recall, the more it slipped away.
Royce returned, waving them forward, and then he led them in a circle back to the boulevard. Here they began to see skeletons. They were in groups of twos and threes, lying crumpled to the ground as if they had died right where they stood. The only way to tell how many there were was by the number of skulls in the piles. As they progressed, the bone count increased. Skeletons lined either side of the road with skull counts of ten deep.
They entered a small square, a portion of which was flooded where the ground was cracked and sank away at a dramatic angle. The same green light that illuminated the sea lit the square and revealed a raised platform on which was a great statue of a man. He stood twenty feet tall, with a strong, youthful physique. A sword was in his right hand and a staff in the other. Arista had seen similar statues several times throughout the city and in each case the head was missing, broken at the neck and shattered.
Royce stopped again.
“Any idea if we are getting close to the palace?” he asked, looking at Myron.
“I only know that it is near the center,” the monk replied.
“The palace is at the end of the Grand Mar,” Arista told them. “That’s what they used to call the boulevard we’re on now. So it is just up ahead.”
“The Grand Mar?” Myron said, more to himself than to her, and then nodded. “The Marchway.”
“What are you babbling about?” Alric asked.
“There was said to be a great avenue in Percepliquis called the Grand Imperial Marchway, so called as it was often the site of parades. Ancient descriptions declared it to have been wide enough for twelve soldiers to walk abreast and that it was made up of two lanes divided by a row of trees. Imperial troops would march down the right side to the palace, where the emperor would review them from his balcony, and then they would return down the other side.”
“They were fruit trees,” Arista said. “The trees that grew in the center of the Grand Mar-fruit trees that blossomed in spring. They used to make a fermented drink from the blossoms called… Trembles.”
“How do you know that?” Myron asked.
She looked at him and pretended to be surprised. “I’m a wizardess.”
They paused to have a short meal on the steps of an impressive building off the main boulevard. Stone lions, similar to those that guarded the entrance to the city, sat on either side. A fountain stood in the street at the center of an intersection. The water no longer sprayed and the pool was filled with a black liquid.
“What books have you got there?” Alric asked, seeing Myron sift through his pack and pull out one of the five that Bulard had saved.
“This one is called The Forgotten Race by Dubrion Ash. It deals mostly with the history of the dwarves.”
“What’s that now?” Magnus asked, leaning over to look closer at the pages.
“According to this, mankind is actually native to Calis-isn’t that interesting? And dwarves started in what we know as Delgos. The elves of course are from Erivan, but they quickly occupied Avryn.”
“What about the Ghazel?” Hadrian asked.
“Funny you should ask,” he said, flipping back several pages. “I was just reading about that too. You see, men appeared in Calis during the Urintanyth un Dorin and would have-”
“Huh?” Mauvin asked.
“It means the Great Struggle with the Children of Drome. You see, the dwarves warred with the elves for centuries, nearly six hundred years, in fact, until the fall of Drumindor in 1705-that’s pre-imperial reckoning, of course-about two thousand years before Novron built this city. The dwarves went underground after that. As it turns out, the early human tribes would have failed-perished-if not for the contact they had with the exiled dwarves who traded with them.”
“Aha!” the dwarf said. “And how do they treat us for our kindness now? Ghettos, refusals of citizenship, bans on dwarven guilds, special taxes, persecution-it’s a sad reward.”
“Quiet!” Royce suddenly told everyone, and stood up. He looked left and then right. “Get ready to move,” he said, and leaving the lantern, he climbed down the steps, heading back the way they had come.
“You heard him,” Hadrian said.
“But we just sat down,” Alric complained.
“If Royce says get ready to move, and he has that look on his face, you do what he says if you want to live.”
They gathered their belongings back into their bags. Arista took one more mouthful of salt pork and a swallow of water before stashing the rest in her pack. She was just pulling the straps over her shoulders when Royce reappeared.
“We’re being tracked,” he told them in a whisper.
“How many?” Hadrian asked.
“Five.”
“A hunting party.” Hadrian drew his swords. “Everyone get moving. Royce and I will catch up.”
“But they’re just five,” Arista protested. “Can’t we avoid them?”
“It’s not the five I am worried about,” Hadrian told her. “Now go. Just keep moving up the avenue.”
He and Royce moved back down the road at a trot. She watched them go as a sinking feeling pulled at her stomach. Alric led them forward at a run, past the fountain and on up the Grand Mar.
This part of the city was familiar to her. This road, these buildings-she had seen them before. Gone were the brilliant white alabaster walls and brightly painted doors. Now they were dingy and brown, cracked, fractured, chipped, and like everything else, covered in a layer of dirt. As in the rest of the city, the columned halls stood on misaligned stones.
Alric led them around a massive fallen statue whose head had severed at its neck and lay on its side, its features bashed and broken. They then leapt a fallen column, and as soon as she cleared it, Arista stopped. She knew this pillar; it was the Column of Destone. She turned left and saw the narrow road Ebonydale. That was the way Esrahaddon had gone to meet Jerish and Nevrik. She looked forward down the Mar. She should be able to see the dome, but it was not there. Ahead was only rubble.
“Arista!” She heard Alric calling to her and she ran once more.
Royce and Hadrian paused near the headless statue, where the algae in the water cast an eerie green radiance to the underside of all things. Royce motioned with two spread fingers that a pair were coming up one side of the street and two on the other. While the two pairs were mere shadows to Hadrian, the fifth was quite visible as he loped up the center of the boulevard like an ape hunched over and traveling on three limbs. His massive claws clicked intentionally on the stone as signals to the others. Every few feet he would pause, raise his head, and sniff the air with his hooked, ring-pierced nose. He wore a headdress made from the blackened fin of a tiger shark, a mark of his station-a token he would have obtained alone in the sea with no more than his claws. He was the chief warrior of the hunting party-the largest and meanest-and the others looked to him for direction. They all carried the traditional sachel blades-curved scimitars, narrow at the hilt and wider at the tip, where a half-moon scoop formed a double-edged point. Like all Ghazel, he also carried a small trilon bow with a quiver slung over one shoulder.