Return of the Paladin

by Layton Green

  “It might be best if I ordered for the group,” Skara said. “Something to pique the mind and provide stamina for the journey?”

  Will and Mateo closed their menus at once, relieved. Yasmina kept flipping through the pages with interest, and Will remembered she was a tea aficionado back home.

  “I’d like to try Alchemist’s Morning Enlightenment,” she said slowly. Skara rolled her eyes but honored the request when the hostess returned to take their order.

  “These prices range from a single groat to incredible amounts,” Yasmina said, still browsing the menu. “What sort of tea costs five hundred platinum?”

  “Master Kuang is a genius,” Skara said. “He carries every varietal found on Urfe, but he’s also a chayigong, a brewer who infuses low-level magic into his tea. Duels in the docks have been won or lost according to who could afford the most expensive potions.”

  “So he’s a tea brewing majitsu?” Will said.

  “I suppose, of a sort. There are many types of gongs, each focusing on a different discipline.”

  “Cool.”

  “I thought mages were unwelcome in Praha,” Mateo said.

  “Exceptions are made,” Skara said, giving Dalen a sidelong glance. “Especially for those who keep to themselves and provide a community benefit.”

  When the tea arrived, Will blew on the light brown beverage to cool it, then took an exploratory sip. It was packed with flavor, cinnamon and ginger and an herb he couldn’t identify. Following Skara’s lead, he found that hovering over the cup and inhaling the steam hastened the stimulatory effect.

  After a spell of silent contemplation, feeling calmer and more alert, Will planted his elbows on the table. “What’s the plan, Skara? I’d like to know what we’re getting into.”

  The adventuress regarded him in silence as she took another sip. “I made some inquiries last night, while you slept.”

  “That was fast.”

  She exchanged a glance with her companion. “Those inquiries are why we’re sitting at this table.”

  “Rumor is,” Bartu said, in a quiet but commanding voice, “a certain legendary sword has returned to Urfe, wielded by a fair-haired warrior of gypsy blood.”

  A moment of tense silence encased the group. Will’s hand tightened at his side, and he saw Mateo’s good hand slip beneath the table. Yasmina had not moved but her eyes were alert, settling on Skara with a watchful gaze. Dalen had his face buried in his tea, but Will could tell by the clench of his jaw that he was paying attention.

  Bartu noticed the change in atmosphere and gave a thin smile. “If we wished you harm, we would have never left the Nilometer.”

  “Unless this hypothetical sword does exist,” Will said evenly, “and you need us to open the door for you before you try to take it.”

  “Why not use this sword ourselves?”

  “I can think of a number of reasons. Maybe there’s a guardian on the other side you need our help with, or a trap waiting for us. Maybe you don’t wish to kill us at the Nilometer. Or maybe, and rightly so, you worry such a sword would not respond to your command.”

  “It is sentient, then?”

  Will locked eyes with the warrior, returning his cold smile. Let them stay in the dark about the mysteries of Zariduke.

  “Bah,” Skara said, smacking a palm on the table. “Enough jostling by the Alpha males. What’s yours is yours, Will Blackwood. Mercenary I may be, but I’m no thief or murderess.”

  “Assuming you would win that battle,” Will said, taking another sip of tea. His blood was still hot from the exchange, and he wanted them both to know where he stood.

  Skara’s gaze rested on Dalen before flicking to Yasmina and then Mateo, as if assessing their strengths. “Maybe it would ease your minds to know that, even were I disreputable enough to break our bargain, I would think twice before crossing a companion of Mala’s. I know her well enough to understand she does not lightly allow others to invoke her name. My point in bringing this up was to say I’m satisfied you’ve represented the truth, and I’m ready to proceed.

  Will did not like them knowing about his sword. While Skara might fear Mala’s wrath, his deadly muse was a world away. Yet they had little choice in the matter, if they wanted to find out who stole the Coffer. When Will glanced at his friends for support, Yasmina gave him a brief, barely perceptible tip of her head. Whether the wilder had some way of knowing if Skara was telling the truth, he didn’t know. But it gave him some comfort.

  “Let’s move forward,” he said, looking Skara in the eye.

  After a curt nod, the adventuress took out a scroll from her canvas pack and unrolled it in the center of the table. The square of parchment with serrated edges contained a rough sketch of the city. “Because of my interest in cataloguing the creatures of Urfe, the legend of the Nephili has intrigued me for some time.” She gently smoothed the surface of the map, as if lost in a memory. “This was my father’s, and his father’s before him. I come from one of the few families native to Praha.”

  “We’ve noticed a lack of children,” Yasmina said.

  “A number of small communities exist, in isolated pockets of the city far from the center. I cannot say,” the corners of her lips turned upwards, “that my childhood was an easy one. In any event, long ago, in the year after my father was murdered, my grandfather bequeathed me the old journal of an explorer he had found, dated just before the turn of the last century. As you may know, the Volta river makes a sharp turn in the middle of Praha, cutting back on itself and almost enclosing the Old Town. A sheer, high bluff—which I suspect was formed long ago by some mage or power of the Nephili—rises up from the river to protect the Old Town, and is impossible to climb. A perpetual darkness encases the plateau, seething with strange magical energies that have thwarted all attempts to circumvent the Wailing Wall atop the bluff and reach the top through the air. The only known way to reach the Old City is via an ancient staircase cut into the bluff, and accessed through the Agora.”

  “What’s your plan?” Will asked.

  “I know it’s possible because I’ve reached the bluff and heard the wailing of the Skinwalkers. I’ve never ventured further because the journal claims that certain death lies atop that bluff.” She leaned forward, her eyes intense. “Unless, that is, one carries the Sephyr Wafer.”

  “How? Why?”

  “The journal doesn’t say. But the statistics of those who have gone before—and never returned—bear the truth of the tale. That was without the wafer, mind you. I admit my curiosity has almost propelled me forward before on many an occasion.” She exchanged another glance with Bartu, one that hinted at a clandestine journey and shared danger.

  “Where exactly is this storehouse you mentioned?” Will asked.

  She pointed to a section of the city just within the boundaries of the map, along the northern course of the river. The closest points of interest were Pilgoth’s Pillars and something called the Charred Monolith. “The temple is located in one of the most inaccessible parts of the city. Lucky for you, I’ve charted a path over the years.”

  “Lucky for you,” Will said, “we have a way to open the door.”

  She chuckled as she rolled up the map, her eyes gleaming with anticipation. “I’ll need to purchase an item for the journey, and hire a barge for the day. With any luck we’ll reach the Old Town by nightfall.”

  “Is it smart to go at night?” Will asked.

  “If we manage to procure the wafer, I’d rather not delay. Its strange properties might affect us in some way, or call out to those we’d rather not meet. Besides, does it matter at what hour we visit a place that knows not the light of day?”

  Before leaving the Pagoda, Skara disappeared for a few minutes before returning with a box the size of a paperback book, wrapped in silky paper embossed with a dragon-themed design. Will assumed it was from the Pagoda. She placed the box in her backpack without a word.

  Outside, Skara led them to another section of the docks, this one cr
owded and garbage-strewn and full of menacing characters that looked ready to slit their throats at a moment’s notice. Halfway down a seedy alley lined with taverns brimming with patrons despite the early hour, Skara approached a low-slung warehouse with shouts emanating from inside. Bartu held open the rickety wooden door as Skara ushered everyone into a packed interior filled with unwashed men and women smelling of booze and tobacco. They were gathered around a commotion in the center. As Skara and Bartu pushed through the crowd, the patrons either scurried aside at once or took a long look at the party and thought better of standing their ground.

  Will gawked when he saw why the crowd had gathered. In the center of the warehouse, a space was cleared around two combatants fighting inside a rectangular arena the size of a small living room, outlined by a two-foot high brick partition.

  And the gladiators were giant spiders.

  They were not as huge as the nightmares Will had seen in the Fifth Protectorate swamp or in the forest outside Leonidus’s keep, but were large enough to cause him to shudder. One of the arachnids was midnight blue, and one was green with furry red streaks. Each had a body as thick as a cantaloupe and spindly legs that carried them swiftly back and forth, clacking and probing, looking for a chance to sink its fangs into its opponent.

  Skara indicated for Will and the others to wait with Bartu, then disappeared into the crowd along the edge of the arena. Unable to look away, Will and the others watched in disturbed fascination as the green battle spider managed to flip its opponent onto its back, then bit into the soft abdomen. The blue spider spasmed and lay still, causing the crowd to roar in response. Coins exchanged hands in a flurry of activity.

  During the commotion, Skara returned with a heavyset black woman dressed in a coarse woolen shirt and pantaloons with flared bottoms, her hair kept in short ringlets around her face that obscured her eyes. A swarm of tattoos covered her neck and the backs of her hands.

  After they returned outside, Skara introduced the woman as Barge Master Meru.

  “Good timing ye had,” Meru said, in a lilted accent that Will could barely understand. She opened her palms and grinned, revealing two missing teeth in an otherwise perfect set. “De spiders picked me clean as that they always do you see.”

  Skara rolled her eyes. “Have ye ever won at the Kumo House?”

  “Me smile every day is me winning, Skara-dee.” Meru cackled and then unleashed a fast-spoken soliloquy incomprehensible to Will. She’s managed to thwart my magical armband, he mused.

  After a heated bout of negotiation, Skara and Meru settled on a fee for her services that seemed to include silver florins and a future line of credit at the Kumo House, as well as at the barge master’s favorite tavern.

  A light drizzle began as they walked a few blocks east to the river. Meru’s boat was long and flat-bottomed, with a cluster of seats near the prow and a three-story pilothouse made of weathered gray wood that took up the bulk of the middle. Everything from animal skulls to fishing rods to kitchen pots hung from pegs attached to the outside of the pilothouse.

  After shooing them into the cluster of seats near the prow, where a canvas tarp provided protection from the elements, Meru disappeared into the pilothouse. Soon a low purring arose, followed by the sound of water churning beneath the boat. Startled, Will and Yasmina exchanged a glance as they walked the perimeter.

  “Skara,” he called out, after seeing no sign of a mechanical engine, “does this boat have a motor?”

  “A what?”

  “How does it run?”

  “Magic, I suppose.”

  “Are there any other boats that sound like this?”

  After she answered in the negative, disinterested, Bartu scanned the horizon and said, “I’ve heard of mechanized boats that prowl the waters in the far northern seas. Never seen one myself, but I’d like to.”

  Startled by the possibility of crude technology, Will doubted that Meru had an engine beneath the boat, and suspected a former occupant had ensorcelled the boat to move on its own. He had no idea how this was done, or how long the spell would last, but the concept fascinated him. Or maybe the entire boat was a magical artifact crafted by some long-dead mage who had once navigated the waters of Urfe.

  As the ungainly boat left the docks and chugged down the river, tunneling into the depths of the massive city, Yasmina moved to stand next to Will, joining him as he gazed at the far shore, bonded by unspoken memories of their home world. He knew the sound of the boat, whether magical or not, had affected her in the same way. Will ached at the thought of life back home, his friends and family and all the little pleasures he would never find on Urfe.

  Such things he desperately missed, though if given the choice, he no longer knew which world he would choose.

  At the moment it was irrelevant. What mattered was staying alive, finding the Coffer thief, and doing everything in his power to bring his brothers together again, alive and safe.

  “I’ll say this,” Bartu continued, making conversation as he watched the river with trepidation. “Meru’s more than she appears. No one knows the river better, and some say she’s taken this rickety old vessel across the four oceans.”

  “What are you looking out for?” Will asked. “Are we in some danger?”

  “Peril aplenty awaits those who ply the Volta. Pirates, river monsters, flying menaces from above, bandits who take aim at boats from ashore.”

  “Shouldn’t we take more precautions?” Will asked, seeing no sign of weapons or defensive bulwarks on the boat. A long ripple in the water not ten feet away, a sign of some sinuous form beneath the water, caused him to lean away from the railing. “Especially since we’re the only boat on the water.”

  A huge splash, coming near the ripple Will had seen, caused him to leap backwards. Noticing that Bartu and Skara didn’t seem concerned, and were in fact regarding him with amusement, gave Will the confidence to peer over the side and watch as an oval mouth lined with fangs reached up to swallow the bloody contents of a bag floating atop the water. He looked up and saw Meru watching the scene from an open window atop the pilothouse. After the disturbance on the water ceased, she disappeared again.

  “If she didn’t gamble all her coin away,” Bartu said, “Meru would be a rich woman. As long as I’ve known her, she’s only been boarded once, and let’s just say it did not go well for the trespassers. There’s far more than junk inside that shack of a pilothouse she calls home.”

  While curious, Will’s speculations on the barge master drifted away as he stood at the bow and watched Praha unfold before him. The cityscape was like a dark angel with wings spread wide, a vast sweep of plague-blackened towers and buildings. Every hundred yards or so they would pass beneath a curved bridge that arced high above the river, flanked by spires and carved with elaborate murals. The clouds were so pregnant with moisture it felt like twilight, though every now and then an orange light would flare in one of the buildings, the only sign of habitation since they had left the docks. Whenever a breeze sifted the clouds, Will would strain to catch a glimpse of countryside in the distance, but never saw beyond the endless horizon of diseased stone.

  Whatever resources or cloaking devices Meru had at her disposal, no other river monsters appeared, nor did thieves or pirates accost them on the journey. An hour later, the boat drifted into a marina with a secure dock and boats slips at regular intervals. Once the vessel came to rest, Skara led the way onto the boardwalk. Meru never appeared, and Will assumed she was staying with the boat.

  The boardwalk opened onto a grandiose plaza that ran for two hundred yards along the bank of the river, backed by a collection of domed palaces suspended high above the street with pillars, buttresses, and other architectural supports that formed an intricate pattern of their own. The decrepit state of the buildings failed to disguise their former grandeur.

  The city was eerily quiet, the smell of old stone mingling with the fetid reek of the river. Skara and Bartu waved for everyone to follow, moving swiftly t
hrough the courtyard with weapons drawn and heads cocked for unfamiliar sounds. Once they passed beneath the linked undersides of the palaces, they saw that all the buildings in the district were suspended above ground level, though none as large or as grand as the ones facing the river. Delving deeper, they encountered a network of smaller and flimsier buildings at street level built among the curving support structures. It was as if two cities existed here, one on top of the other.

  Skara trod a quarter mile down a wide boulevard and down two side streets before stopping to huddle everyone together. “The door to the storehouse is not far, but the city is a maze around here, with danger at every turn. Make sure we stay together. Never stray to investigate an unseen sound, not even for a moment.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Dalen muttered.

  Mateo had his urumi sword in hand. “What sort of danger?”

  “Though the streets seem deserted, appearances are deceiving. There are denizens lurking that . . . are quite devious. Visitors are few and far between, forcing them to adopt clever tactics.”

  “By visitors you mean prey?” Will said. “Speak plainly, Skara. What’s in here?”

  She shushed him with a finger, and lowered her voice. “This was once the home of the menagerist’s guild, before the mobs ran them off. Several of their ilk still remain.”

  “Lovely,” Will muttered.

  “I’ve been here a score of times to map the place, and only twice ran afoul of trouble. With any luck, we’ll find the storehouse, retrieve what we came for, and be off before sunset.”

  Dalen shuddered within his cloak. “Lucka, let’s make sure that happens.”

  “This way,” Skara said. “Hurry, now.”

  Yasmina’s face was grim when Will glanced over to see how she was faring. Her eyes betrayed his own thoughts: what is there to do but carry on?

  As Skara had said, this part of the city was extremely convoluted. Streets and alleys intertwined in no apparent pattern, and often the road would rise without warning, turning into an aerial walkway or bridge that spanned a low building or empty canal. At times, Skara would squeeze everyone into an irregular gap between buildings, or drop down from a bridge onto a hidden connector.