The Sable City

by M. Edward McNally

Zeb followed Amatesu out to a raised porch, overlooking the intersection around the big willow tree and across from the mound of ash and blackened wood that had been the Dead Possum Inn. The adventurers had emptied out of the vicinity for with Vod’Adia now Open everyone was on the south side of Camp Town getting ready to enter soon or else studying the black city through the thinned-out mist. The only people around were a dozen or so Jobians, mostly armored acolytes, and a score of Shugak hobgoblins and bullywugs. The leaders of both groups seemed to be having some sort of confab under the tree, though at the moment they had withdrawn into two separate huddles and were speaking among themselves with their heads together.

  Someone socked Zeb in the arm as he blinked in the daylight, and he stumbled to the side. Uriako Shikashe was reclined in a wooden chair on two legs, leaning back against the front wall of the inn beside the door. He had his helmet off and his face around his eyes was red, as though he had gotten a sunburn through his visor. His armor was burned and hacked in many places but still intact, as was its wearer. Shikashe gave Zeb a nod and a very short smile that made Zeb blink at him.

  “Good morning, Zebulon,” a light voice said in Zantish behind Zeb. He swallowed hard before turning around.

  He only knew Nesha-tari at a glance by her sapphire blue eyes. Someone had brought their packs here from the Shugak barracks and Nesha-tari was reclined supinely atop them on the porch by the rail, in a square of open sunlight. Her cloak was beneath her head as a pillow, hands laced behind her head, and her dirty, bare feet were crossed at the ankles. She wore clean cloth trousers and a billowy linen shirt of a Zantish cut, and as she was stretched out comfortably her torso seemed slightly long for her legs, giving her body a lithe, lanky look. Though she did seem a bit shorter than Zeb had previously thought. Gone too was the magnificent mane of rich red hair that had reached the middle of her back in Zeb’s mind eye. Nesha-tari had hair of a tawny brown, shoulder length just as Amatesu had said.

  The greatest difference was however her face, for while Nesha-tari was by no means a bad-looking woman she bore only a faint resemblance, apart from the eyes, to the way in which Zeb had seen her before. Her face was more rounded and her features fuller, with skin of a supple tan color that befitted a Zantish woman, though it was without the softness of a privileged life spent indoors. Nesha-tari had faint scratches on one cheek, and while she looked as though she had at least splashed water on her face recently there were still smudges of gray ash at her temples and on her neck. Altogether, the countenance of Nesha-tari Hrilamae looked more like a face that someone actually walked around in rather than like a perfect painting hanging in a gallery.

  She smiled languidly at Zeb with her blue eyes half-lidded, looking like the cat who’d gotten the canary. Zeb’s spine felt cold and he shuddered.

  “I was sure you would have gotten killed,” she said through even, white teeth.

  “Last time I saw you, weren’t you on fire?” Zeb asked. Nesha-tari shrugged on her back, which had an effect on her body that was not totally lost on Zeb, even though he no longer felt any of the unnatural pull toward her that had dominated his thinking for more than a month.

  Nesha-tari took a hand from beneath her head and waved at Amatesu.

  “Have her tell you what the whole matter is here, and then tell me.”

  Amatesu got the gist of that without Zeb having to explain, and the shukenja filled him in on what was happening. The Miilarkian girl Tilda had come outside and she listened with her large, warm eyes wide. Zeb was very aware of the Islander standing beside him, even as he relayed Amatesu’s words into Zantish.

  The Shugak and the Jobians had arrived here last night as the battle was ending and the inn was burning down to the ground. The former had driven the onlookers well away to fight the fire while the Jobians had gathered up the dead and injured. The Ayzant priest had died in the inn and his Destroyers were all slain but three or four of their accomplices, men in the armor of Codian Legionnaires and accompanied by a mage, had escaped and taken as prisoner a Duchess from Daul. The Shugak had gotten word that the men had shown up at the palisade gate shortly after Vod’Adia had Opened, bearing a fully paid-for and very expensive license to enter the city at any time. Their party had been waved through despite the fact that most of the men were injured, and the woman had been unconscious.

  The Jobians, led by a priestess named Paveline, were furious. All morning they had been demanding that the Shugak organize a band to chase down the kidnappers in Vod‘Adia. The Shugak were having none of it. They told the humans to fork over some large coin if they wanted to go chasing into the Sable City themselves. This in turn had started a heated debate among the Jobians.

  When Zeb brought Nesha-tari up to speed, the woman just shrugged and settled comfortably back on her bed of packs and bedrolls. Tilda however marched off the porch for the circle of Jobians, calling out to one as Brother Heggenauer. Zeb recognized the tall blonde fellow if only by the battered state of his armor and shield as the one who had been fighting beside the old man against the legionnaires and Destroyers last night.

  Nesha-tari curled onto one side and gave a contented sigh. She plainly had no more than a faint curiosity in the drama playing out around her. Zeb looked to Amatesu.

  “What happens now?”

  The shukenja shook her head. “Our employment with Madame Nesha-tari ended with the death of the Fire Priest, and we were paid in full back in Ayzantu. You will have to work out your own terms with the Madame yourself.”

  Amatesu turned to Shikashe and spoke in Ashinese. After a thoughtful moment, the samurai gave her a nod. Amatesu left the porch and followed Tilda over to the cluster of armored Jobians. Nesha-tari had closed her eyes and appeared to be napping, and Zeb did not really want to wake her to ask if he was going to be paid anything for services rendered. Not right now. He joined Amatesu, who stood listening as Tilda spoke with Heggenauer and a middle-aged woman in the blue robe of a ranking Jobian priestess, worn over a chain mail coat and coif.

  “I am sorry,” Heggenauer was saying to the agitated Islander, whose dark eyes were if anything even wider now. “His body was taken to our temple, with all honors due a knight of the Hearth.”

  “The old guy?” Zeb asked, and the blonde priest looked at him with a frown. Zeb wondered just how bad he looked at the moment. The priestess who must have been Sister Paveline, spoke.

  “The Order of the Hearth, though Daulic, follows the triadism of the Home. Jobe is first among the three gods to whom they pay homage. This knight was our friend, though we knew him not. Not like the renegade scum.”

  Zeb thought Paveline had meant him for a moment, but the priestess’s kindly eyes glared most unkindly at two dead legionnaires laying splayed out past the tree. One dented tower shield lay across both their faces, but the corpses were otherwise untended.

  Tilda swallowed hard before she spoke, and kept all but a slight quaver out of her voice.

  “The Duchess was under my protection as much as Sir Towsan’s. I have to go after her.”

  “She was in my charge as well when she was taken,” Brother Heggenauer said. The young man was grim and determined, looking far more like a knight than a priest.

  “Brother Kendall,” Paveline said gently. “I can not allow any of our church to enter that evil place. Not even you. It is beyond the scope of our purpose here.”

  Heggenauer’s blue eyes blazed and his jaw came up. “Sister, the Duchess was in our care.”

  Paveline shook her head softly. “She was not, Brother. You just happened to be with her. We pledged her no service, and took no oath.”

  “But the men who arranged all this were Ayonites,” Heggenauer held out a large mace toward the ruins of the Dead Possum Inn. “Is it not the duty of those who follow the Builder to oppose the agents of Destruction, wherever they may be found?”

  “The Ayonites are all dead,” Paveline said. “Praise be to Jobe. And thanks to these people.”

  The priestess looked toward Z
eb and Amatesu, and included Shikashe and Nesha-tari on the porch. Zeb cleared his throat and Amatesu gave a brief bow.

  “Are you people willing to enter Vod’Adia to retrieve the Duchess?” Heggenauer asked. Amatesu said perhaps, but Zeb blanched and sputtered.

  “Me? No, sorry, but I don’t even know who we are talking about. I may not have a lot to live for, but a little is enough for me. I want no part of that place.“

  The young Miilarkian woman gave Zeb a sideways look, and her eyes were not warm at the moment.

  “I am sorry,” Zeb said, specifically to her. “Really though, why would any of you go in there to chase somebody down? There is no way out, correct? Why not just wait until the fellows come out?”

  “They are not going to come out. Not the same way they went in.”

  Zeb, and everyone else, turned to the porch. John Deskata had called out from where he was listening at the railing. He stepped briskly down the stairs and approached.

  “The legionnaires have a book, and now they have a mage.” Deskata stopped and looked around at everyone, even the Shugak. The hobgoblins had ugly, snaggle-toothed frowns on their faces, and the long tongues of the wugs darted rapidly in and out of their wide mouths. Deskata let out a long breath.

  “With those two things, they believe they can open a portal in the center of Vod’Adia. A portal they can use to take them anywhere in the world.”