Edge of Destiny

by J. Robert King

  Anything that had once lived on the steppes was now battered to death or buried alive.

  And this storm would be pummeling Hoelbrak as well.

  A week later, when Eir, Garm, Snaff, and Zojja straggled into Hoelbrak, they found a city buried in snow. Many roofs had collapsed, and most lanes were impassable. And in the main lane, opened by the work of hundreds of hands and shovels, stood an imposing figure.

  The snow-mantled man strode toward Eir and her friends. Light washed across him, showing an old, battle-scarred face wreathed in silver hair. The norn’s blue eyes, though, shone with the fire of a young man.

  “Knut Whitebear!” Eir gasped, dropping to her knee.

  “Rise, daughter of snow.”

  Eir did, a chill running down her back. No one had called her daughter since her own father had died. It was as if he stood before her once again, disappointed.

  Knut Whitebear brushed snow from his pelts. His eyes were grave and kindly. “You are so strong, so determined,” he said, lifting his hand to straighten the tangled hair that fell to her shoulder, “it is hard to remember that you are just a child.”

  “I am not a child!” Eir replied.

  “Oh? You march a pair of windup toys through my town. You tell everyone that they will kill the Dragonspawn, only to bring upon us a millennial storm that buries us alive?”

  “We almost did it,” Eir said. “We were so close. We were in the inner sanctum.”

  Knut’s face stiffened. “This storm was worse than the icebrood. It has killed more—”

  “What are you telling me?” Eir asked.

  “The doors of my lodge are closed to you,” he said simply.

  “What?”

  “You and your wolf and your companions.”

  Tears rolled down her face. “How long?”

  “Until you can return with real warriors, not clockwork toys.”

  “We got further—”

  “You failed,” Knut said plainly, “and we have paid the price.”

  “But I will succeed. I will stop him! I’ll bring better warriors.”

  Knut did not answer, but only turned to leave.

  Snaff looked down at his feet. “Where are we supposed to find warriors?”

  “We’ll go where they gather,” Eir said with a bleak smile. “We’ll go to Lion’s Arch.”

  PART II

  SLAYING MONSTERS

  LION’S ARCH

  Names?” growled the Lion’s Arch gate guard—a norn holding a quill the size of an arrow.

  “Logan Thackeray of Kryta, and this is Rytlock Brimstone of the Blood Legion, and Caithe, one of the Firstborn of the sylvari.”

  If the guard was impressed, he showed no sign, scrawling the names in a gigantic book on a stand. “What’s your reason for visiting Lion’s Arch?”

  Rytlock muttered, “Just looking for an asura gate.”

  “Where to?”

  “The Black Citadel.”

  The norn snorted, then wrote, En route to the Black Citadel.

  “Not us,” Logan said, pointing between himself and Caithe.

  The guard looked at them. “What are you here for?”

  “I’m a scout,” Logan said.

  “What kind? Seraph?”

  “Um, no. My brother’s in the Seraph, but I’m, well . . . freelance. Work for merchant caravans.”

  “I see,” the norn said, arching an eyebrow and writing, Unemployed. “And what about the sylvari?”

  “I joined them,” Caithe said.

  “Would you just let us in?” Rytlock pressed.

  The norn glared at him. “What about the sylvari? Why does she want to enter Lion’s Arch?”

  Caithe’s eyebrows rose thoughtfully. “Is it interesting?”

  “What?”

  “The city. Is it interesting?”

  The guard scowled. “Of course.”

  “Then put that down,” Caithe replied.

  The norn wrote, Not applicable, snatched up a wooden stamp, and pounded it down on the entry. “In you go! Just don’t break anything.”

  Logan, Rytlock, and Caithe shuffled into the vaulted city gate, passing beneath an iron portcullis that dripped rusty water down their backs.

  “Why did he think I was ‘not applicable’?” Caithe wondered.

  “Ha!” Rytlock barked, but then frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  The vault above them echoed with the clatter and tumult of the city ahead. As the three stepped out of the entryway, they caught their first real glimpse of Lion’s Arch.

  “Wow,” said Rytlock.

  The city was huge and a hodgepodge. To the left gleamed a wide bay full of great galleons. Their masts and rigging made a patchwork of the sky. A water gate guarded the entrance to this sheltered harbor, and pennants flew all down the docks. The docks teemed with longshoremen hauling skids from ships to warehouses. These warehouses themselves were former galleons, overturned on land. Many of the city’s other buildings were also fashioned of ships washed ashore by the great flood. More than a few vessels had even been upturned to become strange towers, jutting skyward.

  “A market!” Caithe noted eagerly.

  Logan and Rytlock turned to see a manifold market spread beneath billowing blue sails. Stalls and tents crowded against each other, forming narrow lanes that thronged with people.

  “They say everything’s for sale in Lion’s Arch,” Logan noted.

  Rytlock laughed. “Everything and everyone.”

  “Let’s see,” said Caithe, striding into the marketplace.

  “Wait,” Rytlock called, “we’re looking for an asura gate!” But already the sylvari was approaching one of the outer stalls.

  Within it, an ancient-looking asura sat surrounded by buckets into which he flung bits of a machine he was dismantling. Each bucket was marked with a coin amount—1g, 2g, 3g. Without looking up, the asura said, “What sort of mechanism are you building?”

  Caithe’s brow furrowed. “I’m not building a mechanism.”

  “Then you’re blocking my light.”

  “What sort of mechanism are you building?”

  He looked up, eyes annoyed under linty brows. “Something that had no right getting built in the first place.”

  “What was it?”

  “A washing machine.”

  “Sounds helpful.”

  “Would’ve been if I had dirty friends like yours,” the asura noted as Rytlock and Logan strode up. “Not that they would’ve used it. Nobody did.”

  “Why not?”

  The asura sighed. “You wore it over your body, like a yoke. It washed the clothes while you walked in them—sprayed them, sudsed them, wrenched them, rinsed them.” He pantomimed the machine squirting and snatching at his clothes. “People didn’t like it. Got them wet.”

  “You should’ve called it a shower washer. People like getting wet in the shower.”

  The asura’s hands stopped on the device. His face went pale, and he glanced regretfully at the buckets all around him.

  Rytlock butted in. “Where’s the nearest asura gate?”

  “It was a problem with marketing, not design,” the asura said despondently. “A shower washer!”

  “Excuse me—the nearest gate?”

  The asura scowled. “Did Master Drup put you up to this? Is he taunting me again?”

  “Come on,” Logan said to Caithe, taking her arm and leading her away.

  The three companions strolled onward through the wonderland of strange goods—silken scarves, pewter chalices, clockwork toys, rundlets and hogsheads of ale, sheaves of spice, parchment, linens, fish, nails. Every needful thing and needless thing piled on tabletops beneath the luffing blue canvas. Here was a cart selling sausages and there a booth filled with blades. A stall selling ice cream stood beside a stall selling torture implements. And these varied wares were hawked by a varied group of merchants—humans and sylvari, charr and norn, asura and ogre.

  “Why aren’t they killing each ot
her?” Rytlock wondered sourly.

  “That’s Lion’s Arch for you. Live and let live,” replied Logan. “Just don’t mention the E-word.”

  “What E-word?”

  “The place I was leading a caravan to. The place you wish didn’t exist.”

  Rytlock hawked and spit. “That E-word.”

  “I don’t feel well,” Caithe murmured, leaning against Logan.

  He caught her. “You look white.”

  “That’s her color.”

  “All except your neck. There are little black lines—”

  “I’m fine,” Caithe interrupted, straightening. “Just a little out of breath.”

  Logan guided her to a half-wall out of the traffic of the main road and helped her sit. “Here. Just take a moment.”

  Caithe nodded, staring emptily ahead.

  “What is it?” Rytlock rumbled.

  Caithe shook her head weakly. “All these lives—all intersecting.”

  “Just ignore them,” Logan advised. “You can be alone in a big city. Loneliest place in the world.”

  “That young man there.” Caithe pointed to a teenage boy leaning sullenly beside a set of wooden stairs.

  “Yeah? What about him?” Rytlock asked.

  “He’s trying to get up the courage to go upstairs and knock on the door and see if the girl is home.”

  The man and the charr looked at the nondescript kid, long hair veiling his eyes. Rytlock said, “How could you possibly know that?”

  Caithe stared at them, amazed. “Don’t you see the rose behind him?”

  As she pointed it out, the flower seemed obvious.

  “Good luck to him,” Logan said.

  “He needs more than luck. Look in the window.” Caithe pointed to the head of the stairs, where a curtain waved in the breeze.

  Rytlock stared. “So what? A curtain.”

  “See the hand on the sill beneath the curtain? The young man’s hand?”

  “What about it?”

  “Why would a curtain be drawn at this time of day? And why would a young man be sitting beside it, watching another young man in the street?”

  Rytlock’s jaw dropped. “Seriously? Is this what you do? You watch, put things together, figure them out?”

  “That man in the marketplace,” Caithe said, nodding toward a swaggering fellow in a red greatcoat and black boots, “he’s pretending to be a pirate for fear that he will be robbed, and the man beside him in the sackcloth shirt is pretending not to be a pirate so that he can pick his pocket.”

  “How could you possibly—,” Rytlock began, but broke off as the man in sackcloth slid his hand, branded with the pirate’s P, into the other man’s waistcoat. “Impressive.”

  “This could be good,” Logan said. “This could be very good.”

  “This could be bad,” Caithe echoed. “Very bad.”

  “What?” her comrades chorused, but Caithe was gone.

  “Where did she—?” Rytlock began.

  Logan pointed. “Up there!” She was about a block ahead of them, her lithe figure slipping easily through the jostling throng. Logan strode out after her, dodging through the steady flow of traffic. “Excuse me. Pardon me. Look out!”

  Rytlock followed, his scowl clearing the way—that is, until another charr approached. The two locked eyes and traded fuming expressions as they marched into each other. They crashed like a pair of bulls, horns clacking and shoulders shoving.

  “Out of my way,” Rytlock thundered, hurling the other charr aside.

  The other staggered a moment, dug his claws in, and drew a sword. “Says who?”

  Sohothin leaped up, and Rytlock smiled. “Says he.”

  The fool eyed the epic blade, clamped his teeth together, and swung his own sword.

  Sohothin cracked through the fool’s weapon, cutting it in half and dropping the tip in the dirt.

  The attacker stared down at his suddenly short sword, turned, and ran.

  Rytlock humphed. He now had an open lane, especially since Sohothin still flamed in his grip. He strode down the vacated street between buildings fashioned of boats, heading toward a large circular theater in timber and plaster. Judging from the roar of the crowd, a show was going on within—a show that had drawn Caithe and Logan. Striding up to them, Rytlock sheathed his sword and said, “What is it?”

  Caithe turned to him, eyes wide. “An atrocity.”

  “Bearbaiting,” Logan said ruefully.

  “Bear what?” Rytlock craned to peer through the archway into the triple-decked theater within.

  A circling throng surrounded a patch of sand where a grizzly bear stood on its hind legs. A spiked collar was cinched around its neck, and a chain bound it to a stout post. Within its black coat ran rivulets of blood.

  The same blood painted a spiked mace in the hand of a muscular brute. The man wore a grimacing grin and breathed excitedly as he circled just outside the reach of the bear’s claws. “Want this? Want this?” the man asked, swiping the mace at the creature.

  The bear roared and batted the weapon away. The crowd, their enthusiasm strengthened by the rows of bottles along the walls, roared back.

  The man spun about, swinging the mace in a full arc and bringing it back to smash the bear’s face. Spikes pierced the muzzle and cracked fangs. The bear reeled back, blood spraying from its jowls. A mad cheer rang from the crowd as the beast staggered against the post and almost fell.

  But it didn’t fall. Someone was holding it up with slender arms.

  “I will stand with you, brother,” Caithe said.

  The crowd’s bloodthirsty cheer faltered.

  At the back of the crowd, Rytlock wondered, “How’d she get up there?”

  “She’s going to get herself killed,” Logan said, pressing forward.

  The bear could have bitten her throat or torn out her stomach, but it didn’t. It seemed to know by touch that she was a friend.

  The man with the mace thought otherwise. “Get away! I paid for five licks, and I’ll get them.”

  “Yes, you will,” Caithe replied, drawing her white stiletto and spinning it before her.

  The man eyed the dagger and then his gory mace. He cocked a grin. “Seems you got a problem with reach, girl.” He swung the mace at her head.

  Caithe ducked, the spiked ball scraping along her shoulder. Lunging, she rammed her dagger into the man’s hand and split his middle finger from his ring finger. Blood gushed, and the mace tumbled to the sand.

  The man staggered back, cradling his bleeding hand. “She stabbed me! Get her!”

  Six of the man’s mates leaped over the half-wall that kept back the crowd. Swords rose from scabbards and cudgels from belts. The men grinned, and the crowd cheered.

  Until Logan and Rytlock stepped up beside their friend.

  Caithe smiled. “You love bears?”

  Rytlock scowled. “I hate bullies.”

  “I thought you hated sylvari.”

  “I hate bullies more.”

  Logan muttered, “There’s six of them and three of us.”

  “Hardly fair,” Rytlock agreed, “for them.”

  One of the thugs snapped a whip, which lashed around Rytlock’s neck. He reared back, yanked the man off his feet and into the air, and head-butted him. The man crumpled in a heap at the charr’s feet.

  “Now there’s five.”

  A thug swung his sword at Logan. He bashed the blade down, stepped on the end, and smashed his hammer into the man’s shoulder. The thug staggered sideways into one of his comrades. Both men spilled to the ground.

  Meanwhile, Caithe deftly danced away from a morning star. The man who wielded it shrieked in frustration and swung at her face. Caithe dodged back and jabbed her dagger into the morning star’s chains, fouling them. She wrenched the weapon from the man’s hand and grabbed his throat. “You’ll be getting sleepy,” she warned as he went limp in her grip. She dropped him to the ground.

  Beside the man fell two smoldering clubs, shorn off by So
hothin. The men who had held them moments before turned to run, but Rytlock kicked one into the other, and they crashed together to the ground.

  “Anyone else?” the charr roared. “We got licks for all of you!”

  The crowd stared back in terrified silence.

  “Well, then, how about this?” Rytlock rammed Sohothin into the chain that bound the bear to the pole. Twisting, the charr shattered the chain, and the tormented grizzly was loose.

  The onetime bravado of the crowd melted to terror. Screaming, they climbed over each other to get out the gate. The bear charged along the back of the crowd, snapping at them.

  “We have to make sure he gets out of the city alive,” Caithe said.

  Rytlock’s jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “What’s a grizzly going to do in a city?”

  Rytlock watched the bear swipe at screaming spectators. “He knows exactly what to do.”

  “He’s our responsibility, now,” Caithe said.

  The charr’s claws slashed that idea from the air. “I’m not responsible for anybody but myself. I’m going to find a gate to the Black Citadel.”

  Logan blocked his path. “About that gate—”

  “What!” Rytlock roared.

  “You can go through it, but you can’t take Rurik’s sword with you.”

  “Here we go,” Rytlock said. Sohothin ripped through the air before Logan. “Just try to stop me.”

  Logan flung out his hands, and a blue ball of energy deflected the blade. Wreathed in flame, the legendary blade swung back behind Rytlock. Logan smiled tightly. “We’ll see who stops whom.”

  Caithe shook her head, stepping back.

  Rytlock spread his arms and let Sohothin blaze above him. “We fight to the death after all!”

  Logan stood his ground. “I don’t want to kill you. I don’t even want to hurt you. But, you can’t take that sword with you.”

  “It’s my sword!”

  “It’s Rurik’s sword! A human sword! You stole it from us just like you stole Ascalon.”