Death Comes To All (Book 1) (17 page)

As
Tara woke Malik for his watch Roland lay his head on his pack, this
time staying closer to the fire than he had on previous nights, just
in case that massive, unseen snake decided to return for another
visit. His mind swam with all of the information he had learned in
just that one night.

What
might I learn tomorrow,
he wondered.

It
was the last thing to enter his mind before he fell into a deep
sleep, troubled with thoughts of giant serpents chasing him through
dreams.

Chapter
Seven

Two
days later the three companions reached the walls of the port city.
The day was winding down toward night, though the sky was still
bright. The group had left the road behind over a mile before they
would have intersected the main road, which would have led directly
to the city gates. That road was patrolled by guards, and as they
were not planning on using the main gate, Malik thought it best that
they avoid it, and the men that would be guarding it, altogether.

So
instead they pressed into the thick, swampy forest, away from prying
eyes. The woodland was so thick Roland could barely see ten feet in
front of him. After the first few minutes he stopped paying
attention.

There
isn’t much point to it when I can’t see anything,
he
thought.

He
kept his eyes at his feet, trying not to stumble on the uneven
ground, where tangled roots and unseen holes threatened to throw him
to the ground with every step.

At
least if I fall it can’t make me much uglier.

So
thick was the growth that he never saw the wall at all until he was
right in front of it. He nearly ran into Malik, who had stopped at
the barrier, waiting for them to catch up to him. Roland was amazed
at seeing the whitewash stone wall that rose out of the ground before
them, extending at least fifteen feet high. Had it been painted
green, or even left the original color of the stone, he might have
thought that the wall had been grown instead of built, but the pale
white paint, peeling in some places, left too startling a contrast to
the forest green for it to be anything other than man-made.

It
appeared that someone in the city had tried to hack away at the thick
vegetation that surrounded it, but mother nature pushed back,
reclaiming the land as quickly as they cut it away. Because of this
trees and bushes grew thick right up against the walls, even cracking
the stone between the mortar in places and growing right through.

What
they were looking for he had no idea, but as usual Malik seemed to
have something in mind, winding his way through the impenetrable
seeming brush as if it wasn't there at all. Tara seemed likewise
unencumbered by the growth, drifting through it as smoothly as water
flowing in a gentle river. Roland could only wish that he had such
ability moving through the underbrush. He forced his way through
loudly, stomping down the vegetation when it proved to dense to push
passed.

"You
do realize that we're trying to sneak in without being noticed,
right?" Tara asked him sarcastically. "You're loud enough
that a deaf drunk would know you were coming. Try walking softly and
sliding between the bushes. Like this." She punctuated her
statement by showing him how she moved through the foliage,
exaggerating each of her movements so that she could see what she was
doing.

Roland
tried to copy her motion, but he was easily twice her size, and
didn’t have the smooth, feline grace of the feral woman. He
looked humorously cumbersome by comparison. Finally, with quite a bit
of effort, he managed to damper the sound of his movements somewhat,
though he was still quite a bit louder than either of his two
companions.

Tara
chuckled softly at his efforts, but kindly refrained from further
comment.

Perhaps
she thinks I'm not doing too bad for my first try,
he thought
hopefully.

He
tried not to think about the possibility that he was just so clumsy
that his companions didn't have the heart to tell him how bad he
really was.

Trick
flew down from his invisible path above them, circling an area
somewhere ahead several times before coming down to land softly on
Malik's shoulder. The sapphire scales of his hide glistened where
stray rays of sunlight managed to peek through the canopy just above
the top of the wall beside them.

It’s
still easily two hours before sundown,
Roland realized.
Very
soon the sun would pass down lower than the wall itself, and once it
did it would become considerably more difficult to see if they didn't
make it through beforehand.

"Trick
is circling above part of the wall ahead of us," Malik informed
them. "That should be the place that the smuggler was talking
about. Anyone who wants to come and go in the city without being seen
will want to keep that a secret from the inside. From this side it's
so hard to get to that it doesn't need to be disguised. I'll go in
first and make sure that the city guard isn't watching this hole yet.
I'll signal you if it's safe to follow."

Only
a few minutes later they came to the place that Trick was indicating.
A thick vine had grown into the wall itself, cracking the mortar and
knocking out several large pieces of stone. On one side of the vine
enough of the wall had crumbled that a man might squeeze through.
Malik slid passed into the depression, just barely fitting. Roland
watched him disappear, wondering how he was supposed to follow once
the signal was given. He was quite a bit larger than Malik was.

After
a few seconds had gone by a low, sharp whistle came from the other
side. Still wondering how he was going to get passed, Roland looked
up to see Trick peeking his head over the wall inquisitively.

It
seems Trick is wondering what’s keeping us.
Roland
chuckled. He might not know what Trick was trying to say most of the
time, but on this occasion it was fairly obvious.

"You
should go first," Tara told him. "It's wider closer to the
top. I'll help boost you up so that you can get through. I won't have
any trouble getting in, so I'll be right behind you."

After
tossing their packs over the wall to Malik, Roland pulled himself up
as high as he could go. He quickly discovering that Tara was right.
The gap was just a little wider near the top of the wall.

He
pushed and wiggled his way into the gap. For a moment he was certain
he would be stuck. A brief vision of being captured by the wall
itself, never being able to leave it, to slowly die of thirst,
entered his mind.

With
a final heave he shoved himself further. He heard a loud crack as he
burst through to the other side, making it through only by taking a
part of the stone wall along with him. As he dusted himself off Tara
simply walked right through the gap, now nearly two feet wider than
it had been before.

"Here,
help me put this back into place," Malik ordered. Together they
pulled a long rusted sheet of metal against the wall, almost but not
quite completely covering the opening. Malik chuckled softly under
his breath. It took Roland a moment to realize that his companion's
amusement came from the knowledge that at one time the slab of metal
had been used to cover the gap entirely, but it was unfortunately too
small to do so now.

"Tara,
why don't you head over to the Inn and get us a room for the next two
nights. If we stay longer than that we'll pay for more days when we
need to. Roland and I will head over to the client now. It's not too
late yet, so we might as well get our business done and over with.
We'll see you in an hour or so. Roland, come with me. I'm assuming
that you'll come along to see the client like we had talked about?"

Roland
nodded, and the two men headed off into the city. This was only the
second port city Roland had ever been in. He quickly realized that
this city was nothing like Port Dayton had been. Dayton had been more
like an open market, with merchants hawking their wares along the
sides of the streets or under canvas tents. This city, on the other
hand, was tightly packed with buildings of every shape, size, and
condition imaginable.

Most
of the buildings appeared to be in a severe state of disrepair,
abandoned sometime in the distant past and left to fall into ruin,
occupied only by the animals left to run wild through the city or
desperate men with no other place to go.

Men
who would live here would be little more than animals themselves,
Roland thought.

From
what he could see there wasn't any trade merchants anywhere. This was
nothing like what he had been expecting.

"What
happened here?" he asked Malik.

"This
is the old city, what's left of the city that existed here before the
Mage War," Malik explained. "Most of the cities tore down
the old buildings when they started to fall apart. This city built
entirely new structures west of the old buildings, so many of these
old ones are still standing, as you can see. Homeless vagrants will
sometimes come here in bad weather. The mage that runs this city
believes that since they come here it keeps them off of the main
streets and away from more civilized people. It's just an excuse not
to help the poor if you ask me. Those beggars that wander into the
main thoroughfares are aggressively discouraged by the city guard,
just like in most of the ports. As long as they stay here and away
from everyone else the guard leaves them alone, most of the time
anyway."

"You
don't seem to like the mages much," Roland observed. "I can
understand why you want to avoid the guard, but what have the mages
done?"

"Nothing,"
Malik spat. "That's the problem. With the power they possess
they could make this world so much better than it is. Better for
everybody. You've already seen how plentiful food is. Just walk down
any of the old roads, and you can pick all the food you would need.
Enough to feed every beggar and nobleman in every city. You don't
find that on the main roads though. The mages have had every fruit
tree cut down and every turnip uprooted. The only ones left are the
ones that their guards haven't found. They don't want to help people,
they want to stay in power. They keep supplies low and the demand
high, then they put an excessively high tax on everything. All the
power they control depends on keeping everyone else weaker than they
are."

"You
make them sound like monsters. Surely there has to be a few good men
among the mages."

"They
are monsters," Malik replied in a low, harsh voice. "Never
forget that Roland. I once heard a story about a noble mage, a man
named named Fallon Goldstone, that tried to change how things are. He
tried to help the people in his land instead of just suppressing
them. The other mages met secretly, and in the dead of night they
summoned a dragon to burn down Goldstone's house, with him and his
family still inside. Afterward they took the land that Goldstone had
controlled and enslaved its people. That's the sort of justice you
can expect from the mages. They won't risk their power, and are even
willing to kill their own to keep it. The few mages that aren't like
that have to hide themselves, or else the rest of the mages will wipe
them out, just like they did to Goldstone."

"So
they killed the entire family? Could any of them have survived?"

"Goldstone
had two children, and boy and a girl, and some believe that
Goldstone's last act was a spell that spirited his children away. No
one knows what might have happened to them afterward. They were never
seen or heard from again. Most would say that they had died in that
fire, rumors aside. Not much survives dragonfire. The mages didn't
know enough about the children to scry for them, so there wasn't any
way to know for sure. It hardly mattered. They knew that Goldstone
was dead, and that was their only real goal. Those children, if they
really survived, wouldn't be able to do anything about what happened
to their parents."

“
Why
wouldn't the great mages have been able to scry for them?”
Roland asked. “I thought they could find anyone with the magic
they possess.”

“
Even
the strongest search spell has to have a viable target,” Malik
explained. “They would have to use something that the target
owned that the spell can latch on to. After the dragonfire burned out
Goldstone's home there wasn't anything left to fuel the spell. There
wasn't any way for the mages to find them. Most would guess that they
died in that fire along with everyone else. The dragonfire would have
burned everything to ash, even the bones. There could have been a
hundred people in that building and no one would have had any way of
knowing.”

"Did
all that really happen?"

Malik
nodded. "That was about thirty years ago, but the story is true,
for the most part anyway. No one really knows the details save the
men who committed the crime, and they certainly won't talk. That
Goldstone had once lived, and that his family was killed by a mage
summoned dragon, that much I know is true. In fact he used to be the
mage in control of this port and everything south of here, half way
to Miani. As to the rest, I couldn't say if it was true or not
really.

"That's
just one example in a long line of atrocities committed by the mages.
People might think that I'm an evil person; they might even be right,
considering what I do for a living, but my crimes don't begin to
compare with what those mages have done."