"Look at those walls," Sire Neen said. "Our spies told of these, but it was hard to credit them. On one hand they spoke of the Auldek being a military power that no longer fears anyone-neither in the Other Lands nor among the Lothan Aklun-but they swore they built massive walls to hide them from the sea. I think I understand it better now, having listened to the Numrek howls."
"They'd be howling right now," another leagueman added, "if they weren't so ecstatic about seeing Ushen Brae again."
"It may simply be that the Auldek fear the ocean, fear it so much they believe they must hide behind a wall to be safe from it. Isn't that strange?" Sire Neen waited a moment and then turned to Dariel. "All right, Prince, hold your tongue. Keep your eyes open, though. There's going to be plenty to see. But what of you, Rialus? You've barely said a word all day."
Rialus was surprised Neen had noticed. No, he had not spoken for some time. He almost felt his own mouth as stuffed as the prince's, filled with awed questions that bulged his cheeks as much as a mouthful of stones would have. Actually, it was the fact that he had so many questions that kept him quiet. The things his eyes took in, the words he heard bantered about by Sire Neen and the others, the long history of things he had believed to be and had expected always would be and was now being told were no longer all struck him dumb.
Sire Neen waved his fingers toward him, almost flirtatiously. "Say something. Speak. Speak."
"I–I-" Rialus stammered. "I don't know where to begin."
"I'm not surprised. There is nothing harder for a mediocre mind to understand than the fact that the world is ever vulnerable to great change. People like you-and the prince here-believe that the world is. Just is. Some things are. There is an order, you believe, a pattern to things that you never imagine can be changed. You only ever see portions of the way things are. You are like a soldier on a battlefield. You see what is before you. You choose right or left and try desperately to stay alive. That's you, yes? You'll forever be surprised when you realize you have no control over your fate. But the league stands atop a high ridge. We look down and see the entirety of it. With such a view, the world is so much easier to navigate. And to reshape. There are risks, yes. Surprises, surely, but-Look, we've reached our destination!"
The structures that marked the shoreline were but a stone's throw away, the distance narrowing. For a moment, the leagueman's eyes scanned the dock and the heights of bare wall above it. He looked every bit as transfixed by the sight as Rialus felt.
"The league is bold," Sire Neen said, musingly, "and to the bold goes the world, all its riches, all the power. This will be a fine day."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dariel kept trying to decide what to do. He kept trying to take control, to act, to assert himself, to say something; but he also kept learning he could do nothing. He could not speak with his mouth stuffed, assert himself with his hands and legs bound, act with the Ishtat guards shouldering him on all sides, or take control while Sire Neen so completely held the reins. He had not felt this powerless since boyhood, since the day his guardian had abandoned him in a broken-down shack in Senival, since that horrible time when everything he knew of the world had been stripped from him. This felt the same.
The barge floated up to a slot in a stone abutment. It slipped into place as if a part of it, like a puzzle piece. Dariel was jostled by the Ishtat, tugged into motion. He tripped on his ankle chains and would have fallen if the guards at his elbow had not held him upright. He tried to spit the bit out of his mouth, to push it with his tongue. He would have yelled for the guards to stop, just pause a moment and let him take in the world. Do him that kindness, at least. Glancing back, he noticed that Calrach and the other Numrek lingered on the barge, staring up at the walls looking stunned.
They were off the barge and trudging toward a gate in the wall. A contingent of others met them, but Dariel was not near enough to make them out in detail. Nor did he have much time to try.
Soon they were all in motion, walking through the gate and into the city. They marched down wide stone-paved thoroughfares, painted in different shades of green and blue. Stout buildings lined them. They were only two or three stories tall, but they were heavy looking, thick, with rounded contours and painted varying shades of red and orange and maroon. Here and there massive statues stood in the street, forms thirty or so feet in height, in postures of combat, rage, triumph. They were strangely familiar looking, although also totally bizarre. They mixed human and animal forms: a bear's head on a man's body; a standing lizard with two muscled, human arms; a bulbous-eyed frog thing that stood on two legs with its chest inflated; a horned, vaguely feminine form twisted into an acrobatic posture, bent over backward in a sensuous shape trapped in stone.
Dariel was not the only one staring at the statues. Many an Ishtat Inspectorate soldier stared gape mouthed at them. Only the leaguemen managed to seem unimpressed. They walked with their chins raised, faces calm, gestures as languorous as their pace allowed. Occasionally, they spoke to one another in voices meant to be overheard, meant to assure the group that they were in control.
"See this new place with open eyes," Sire Neen advised. "Open eyes but not fearful ones. It takes bold men to act boldly-and to receive the rewards. We come as partners to the Auldek. They will be pleased." Dariel, despite his hatred of the man, found himself hungry to believe him.
Beneath the statues, the streets were as clean swept as any place in the high palace of Acacia, tidier by far than those of other cities like Alecia. And this city-Dariel realized he did not even know its name-was alive with inhabitants engaged in all manner of work. For a time he only partially glimpsed them. There were those tall figures among them, but most were a more normal size, a mixed population like that in any trade-based city. He wanted to see faces, to make eye contact, and to see if he might convey a message to someone, anyone who might help him; but he was surrounded by the Ishtat soldiers and they moved too swiftly.
It was not until they had turned onto a narrower street that he got a true glimpse of this city's residents. His gaze came to rest on a shirtless man's back. He was heavily muscled, bulges that quivered as he heaved sacks into the back of a cart. The first strange thing about him was the uniformly dark gray of his skin. A greater shock came when the man turned to watch the passing strangers. Dariel drew back in horror, momentarily jerking his Ishtat handlers to a halt. The man's face was barely a man's face at all. Instead of eyebrows he had knobby ridges. Long black whiskers ran along his jawline, so stiff and straight they were like metal pins driven into the bone. Worse than that were the golden tusks that protruded from his jaw, just beside the corners of his mouth. They were thick and curved like a boar's. The man betrayed no indication that he considered himself a horror. In fact, his eyes fixed on Dariel's and studied him as if he were the oddity.
Perhaps Dariel was, for the next few minutes of stumbling progress through the streets brought one bizarre person after another: a woman whose face, neck, and arms were patterned like a leopard's coat; two boys with jet-black faces and white whiskers jutting from their cheeks; a man whose arms and legs were striped like a zebra's, though his face was that of a normal man, perhaps of Candovian origins. Another man seemed to have a snake coiled around one arm, starting at his palm and wrapping around the forearm, bicep, shoulder, up his neck until the head came to rest on his cheek, its tongue flicking out toward his eye. Dariel was near enough to see that the serpent was an elaborate tattoo. Dariel's eyes shot around to take in others. Again and again, he found more strange patterns and accoutrements. Every human person was tattooed, pierced, or altered. He had seen some odd bodily decorations in his time as a Sea Island brigand, but nothing like this.