Cain’s back ached terribly, his skin felt slick with a layer of filth, and his tunic had begun to smell decidedly foul. The bedbugs had given him an itchy rash. Mikulov and Leah didn’t look much better. They wouldn’t make the best first impression, although he doubted there would be many here to impress.
In that he was dead wrong, for even before they entered the docks, they encountered at least a dozen others going the same way, men and women and children. They all walked without speaking, their faces somber, clothes hanging on their thin frames. The crowd grew larger and more animated as they approached the water and entered a wooden walkway that spanned several large floating platforms. The platforms were lined with leaning huts made of wood and straw, most of them abandoned, some perhaps inhabited by squatters who had long since left the scene, their meager possessions rolled up and tucked into corners. The remains of cooking fires sent wisps of smoke into the air, and the smell of the mudflats combined with charred wood.
A man was speaking loudly to a group of twenty to thirty people on the largest platform. He was tall and well built, gray-haired, wearing the clothes of a nobleman, made of fine silk, although they looked slightly dirty and worn. He stood on a makeshift stage built of packing crates, the ruins of a larger receiving building behind him.
“We are not prisoners here,” the man was saying, looking around the crowd. “And we are not helpless. Kurast is our city, not theirs!”
Many of the people held makeshift weapons, hammers, iron bars, clubs with nails sticking out of the ends. A few voices murmured in agreement, while others shook their heads. “Forget the pirates,” a woman’s voice shouted. “What about the feeders?”
The crowd began to jostle each other as people pushed toward the front. The man made a calming gesture with his hands and waited for quiet. “They attack those in the jungles and swamps, picking off the weak and the sick,” he said. “As long as we remain here, we are perfectly safe.”
“Not true!” another man, closer to the front, shouted. “They are inside Lower Kurast now. They bring the dreams. And people have seen them. Last night, one was spotted just two streets from my home!”
More voices shouted in anger and fear. This time, when the man raised his hands, the people gathered did not quiet down to listen. Cain felt the atmosphere getting quickly out of hand.
“Get me to the front,” he said to Mikulov. The monk shouldered into the nearest group and opened up a pathway. The people seemed to part before him like magic, stepping aside as they turned and saw him coming. As they made their way forward, whispers went through the crowd. Even the man who had been speaking stopped to watch them come. When they spotted Cain, people seemed to shrink away from him, fear in their eyes.
“Are you Hyland?” Cain asked as they reached the stage.
The man nodded. “What’s the meaning of this interruption?” he said. “We have important business here.”
“My name is Deckard Cain, and I was told by a man named Kulloom that you could help me. But perhaps I may be of some help to all of you.” He turned to face the crowd, pulling the Horadric spellbook out of his sack and holding it up for them to see. “I am a scholar from Tristram, and have studied the ways of the Horadrim.”
The reaction was swift. At the word Horadrim, the people gasped and backed away from him, pushing each other to create more space. “A feeder, in disguise!” someone shouted.
“No, he’s the Dark One himself,” another cried out. A woman screamed, and suddenly there was bedlam as everyone began knocking over and trampling each other to get away. The man on the platform tried to ask them to remain calm, but his voice was lost in the din. Two of the largest men ran forward, murder in their eyes, fists raised; before Cain could move, Mikulov was there, stepping smoothly in front of him and Leah, taking one man’s legs out with a kick at the knee and putting another flat on his back with a blow to the jaw.
It was over in seconds. The two men lay moaning on the boards of the dock while the rest of the crowd had disappeared.
Cain looked up at Hyland. “Perhaps we should speak in private,” he said.
“Forgive my people,” Hyland said. He poured a glass one quarter full of grog from a shelf and handed it to Cain. “They are frightened. The days are dark indeed, and nightmares plague us all.”
The four of them had retreated to the receiving building, where Hyland had set up a makeshift office. It was dangerous there, he had said, but as self-declared mayor of Kurast, it was his duty to make a showing and not cower before the thieves who had overrun their city.
The two men who had tried to attack Cain were stationed outside the office as guards, still rubbing the bruises they had received from Mikulov’s blows. Cain suspected their injuries were more to their pride than anything else. If so, Mikulov had pulled his punches.
“Kulloom sent you to me, did he?” Hyland said. “An old trade partner of mine, although I wouldn’t exactly call him a friend. He didn’t like it when I took control of Kurast and chose other business opportunities over his own.”
Cain produced the Horadric book once again from his rucksack. “He spoke highly enough of you. He told me you might be able to help me find the people who made this.”
Hyland took the book and studied it for a moment, turning it over in his hands and opening its pages. “It was likely made by a man who used to reside here in Kurast,” he said. “A group of young scholars came here looking for someone who could reproduce some ancient literature, and found Garreth Rau, a scholar and litterateur, one of the finest bookmakers in all of the world. He was impressed with the great works these scholars had brought him, amazed by their potential. Eventually he joined this fledgling order and left Kurast.”
“Where can I find this man?”
Hyland handed the book back, wiping his hands on his robe as if he had touched something foul. “They say he was killed by the Dark One, a powerful sorcerer who has turned the very nature of magic against itself, twisted it into a path to evil.”
The Dark One. That name again. Cain took a taste of the grog. It did not sit well in his already-churning stomach. “The people called me that earlier. I can assure you, I am no dark sorcerer. Why did they run from me?”
Hyland swirled the drink in his own glass, then drained it and poured another one. “Because to them, you are the enemy.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Our city does not take kindly to the Horadrim,” Hyland said. “The citizens of Kurast fear them. Some say evil has corrupted man’s greatest assets, darkening even the Horadrim.”
“That’s not possible,” Cain said. “The order has always stood for justice and light. It was the most basic tenet of their way, a directive handed to them directly from the archangel Tyrael himself. If there are any true Horadrim left in Sanctuary, they wouldn’t be engaged in demonic magic. “
“So you say. But those young scholars who came to Rau brought Horadric texts with them and spoke of the order as if it were their own. The people believe that these texts, and the magic they contained, brought the Dark One here.”
A chill reached deep into Cain’s bones. He remembered Kulloom’s warning back in Caldeum about the group of Horadrim led by a dark sorcerer: You must do something. You must find these men and stop them . . .
Hyland sat down on one of several old chairs, and motioned for the others to do the same. Cain remained standing, Mikulov and Leah at his side. “You’re offended,” Hyland said. “I can’t help what my people believe. But perhaps they are right. What do you know of these matters? You’re just an old man. Things in the world have changed, and not for the better.”