by Anders, Lou
“Force and authority?” laughed Desstra. “If that’s what you were aiming for, I’d say you missed.” Several other elves chuckled at this. Tanthal swatted the bat’s neck in irritation.
“Sometimes a soft touch works best,” Desstra continued. “You should think of it like setting traps. Or mixing poisons. Maybe when we get to Castlebriar, I’ll show you what I mean.”
Karn left the wyvern hidden in the woods. They had arrived during the night, when their descent wouldn’t be noticed. He had worried that his lack of camping gear would make a night in the forest uncomfortable, but he needn’t have been concerned. After his time in the wilderness of Ymiria, this mild southern climate was nothing. And if there were any wild animals in the forests, the presence of an enormous, cranky reptile that hissed loudly when it snored certainly kept them away.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told the wyvern, which snorted indifferently and went back to sleep.
Nelenia. Araland, Ungland, Saisland—all had zipped by as he traveled halfway across the continent to Nelenia. He saw towns, villages, castles, mountains, lakes, rivers, roads. Even though he’d grown up hungry for stories and maps of other places, nothing could really prepare him for the sheer scale of the lands.
Now the city of Castlebriar was before him. And what a sight it was! Ancient Gordion walls still surrounded the city on all sides except for the docks, but nearly half the population had spilled out into dwellings beyond these walls. He followed a road now—a real road, not the dirt paths of Norrøngard. It was stone-paved and flanked by footpaths and drainage ditches. Karn marveled that something as simple as a nice road could make him feel out of his depth.
Ahead loomed an ancient bridge, complete with guard towers on both ends. He saw a lumber mill on the opposite bank. To his right were row upon row of half-timbered houses, white plaster visible between the exposed framing. It was nothing like the longhouses and wattle-and-daub cabins of Bense. Karn felt rustic and unsophisticated, a barbarian boy from the edge of the world. A long, long way from home.
There was a line at the city gates, where two guards stood, questioning each traveler before letting him or her in.
After a short but smelly wait behind a flatulent donkey, it was his turn. The guards looked at him expectantly.
“Um,” said Karn. “My name is Karn Korlundsson. I’m here to find—”
“Look, boy,” replied one of the guards. “We don’t speak Norrønian. You want to be understood, you talk Nelenian or Common.”
Karn blinked at the man. He understood everything perfectly. So why couldn’t the man understand him? He tried again.
“My name is Karn Korlundsson.” Karn’s words died in his throat.
“That’s better,” said the guard. “Go on.”
But Karn was trying to stare down at his own mouth. He ran his tongue around the inside of his teeth and stretched out his lips.
“I think there is something wrong with this one,” said the second guard.
Listening carefully to his own words, Karn spoke again.
“My. Name. Is. Karn. Korlundsson,” he said, drawing out each word to listen to the sound. He was speaking Common. And speaking it very well. Karn grinned. Sticking his head in a dragon’s mouth had been a terrifying experience, but what a result! He was fascinated by Orm’s gift of tongues. He wondered how many languages he could speak.
“My name is Karn Korlundsson,” he said again, this time in Nelenian.
“So you keep saying,” said the first guard.
“Turn him away,” said the second guard. “He seems touched in the head.”
“What? Wait!” said Karn, snapping out of it. “I’m sorry, really. I was just getting my bearings. I need to come into the city. Really, I do.”
“Yeah, well,” said the first guard, “everybody needs to come into the city. What are you bringing that the city needs?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your business here, boy. What is it? If you are a merchant, where are your wares?”
“I’m not a merchant. I’m a farmer, actually, but I’m here to find a friend. Her name is Thianna Frostborn. Dark-haired, olive-skinned, she’s quite tall.” Karn held a hand up over his head to indicate Thianna’s height. Guard number two whistled, but guard number one wasn’t impressed.
“Not a merchant, then. Just a vagabond.”
“I told you, I’ve come to meet someone.”
“Frosty the giant girl, right. Well, if you’re a businessman, you won’t object to us doing a little business.” He held his palm out.
The second guard snorted.
“He means the entrance toll, son. It’ll be three copper pieces, then.”
Karn nodded and dug in his satchel for Nyra’s coin pouch. He didn’t have Nelenian money, but the guards didn’t seem to object to the Aralish coinage he handed over.
“Hold up, boy,” said the second guard, placing a hand on Karn’s chest as he made to walk past. “You can’t carry that pigsticker around.”
“What?”
“Your sword, son,” said the second guard. “You’ll have to wrap it. We’ll seal the bindings in wax. Commoners are forbidden from wearing swords openly inside the city.”
Karn really didn’t like the idea of tying up Whitestorm. Then the wording the guards used struck him.
“Wait,” he said. “Commoners?”
“Yes. Only nobles can carry in public.”
He considered this. Norrøngard didn’t have nobles the way these southern lands did. Just jarls and everybody else. And haulds, farmers whose family had possessed a farm for six generations or more, like his father. And hadn’t Karn himself been conducting the trading this past week in Bense? That made him a hauld in training, a kind of noble.
“I’m no commoner,” he said.
The guards both snorted at this. He realized that his woolen shirt and trousers were rough by Nelenian fashion standards. His muddy boots certainly didn’t help. He was just a crazy barbarian with no business in the big city, alone and friendless with a dragon-touched magic sword that wouldn’t do him any good if it was tied up and sealed with wax.
“I’m not a commoner,” he said again, standing as tall as he could and puffing up his chest. He reminded himself that city guards were nothing compared to draug and dragons. “I am Karn hauld Korlundsson, seventh generation of Korlundr’s Farm. Do you two even know what a hauld is?”
“Of course we know what a howled, a hauled, a whatever that thing you said is,” stammered the first guard.
“Then you understand why I can carry a sword.” Karn glared.
“Um…,” floundered the first guard. “Yes, sir.”
“We didn’t mean no offense,” said the second guard.
“If that’s all, then?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Have a good day, sir,” said the first guard. “And welcome to Castlebriar.”
Karn smiled as he stepped through the iron portcullis of the city gates. He glanced back at the crowd of farmers waiting to enter the city. Surely plenty of their farms had been in their families for years. The guards obviously didn’t know what a hauld was, and a good thing too.
—
“Close your trap, son. Flies will get in.”
Karn realized he’d been standing and staring. Castlebriar was houses, temples, stores, and businesses crammed up against one another, many of them several stories tall. Paved streets. Bustling crowds everywhere. Street vendors. Performers. Criers. Beggars. And unlike Bense, where aside from the occasional dwarf everyone was a Norrønur, quite a few of the passersby weren’t human.
“Wood elves,” he said to himself. It was his first-ever glimpse of the forest-dwelling race. Unlike the pale, reclusive dark elves of home, the wood elves’ flesh ranged from the golden color of oak to the dark brown of walnut to the near black of ebony. They were slender, graceful creatures dressed in greens and browns and reds. Woodland colors. “They’re all so…beautiful.”
“Eh, to some, maybe,
” grumbled the speaker at his side. Karn glanced over…and down.
The being beside him looked a little bit like a dwarf. But it wasn’t as broad and barrel-chested as dwarves tended to be, and it had pointed ears like a tiny elf.
“Your mouth’s hanging open again, son,” the creature said.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that…pardon me, but are you a dwarf?”
“A dwarf? No. I’m a gnome. Don’t you know the difference?”
“Gnomes,” said Karn. “I’ve heard of you. I didn’t mean to offend—to assume…We only have dwarves back home.”
The gnome sighed.
“I suppose it’s an easy mistake, if you’re not from around here. Look, gnomes dig in the dirt. Dwarves in the rock. They like jewels and we like flowers. There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, but it’s a good rule of thumb if you get stuck.”
At that point, a crier came up and seized Karn’s sleeve.
“Looking for lodgings, young master?” the crier asked. “Wulver’s Catch has clean rooms, polite service, excellent seafood. No vermin under the bed.”
“Thank you, I’m not sure—” Karn replied, pulling his arm away and waving off a second crier who was moving in. “I just want to get my bearings. I’m looking for a friend, actually, more than a room.”
That gave him an idea. “But I should try to figure out where she might have stayed.”
“A friend, eh?” said the gnome. “Well, the Lazy Fisherman is probably too rough a place for anyone sensible. Is your friend an elf?”
“No.”
“That probably rules out Windy Willows. Wulver’s Catch is nice if you don’t mind the limited menu. Fish, fish, and more fish.”
“Where would you stay?”
“Well, the Stane is clean and nice. You’d get the most for your money there, really, if you don’t mind the walk.”
“No, not where would I stay. Where would you stay?”
“Me? Well, I’d stay at Fosco’s Folly, but it’s not really built for big people. Fosco caters to the wee folk and others of short stature. Your friend is a dwarf or a mousekin, is she?”
“No, um, she’s actually quite tall. About—” Karn held his hand up over his head to indicate Thianna’s size.
The gnome whistled.
“Well, she certainly wouldn’t be comfortable at Fosco’s. A big girl like that wouldn’t find it at all pleasant.”
“You’d think that,” said Karn, “and for anybody else you’d be right. But then you don’t know Thianna. Fosco’s it is. What direction is it?”
—
Direction was hard to come by. Desstra knelt before the statue of Malos Underfoot, patron of dark elves. A single forlorn candle burned at the statue’s base. It looked lonely and sad.
She had been delighted to find the shrine to the five sacred elders just inside Castlebriar’s east gate. Tanthal, impatient to rendezvous with their contacts and be about their mission, waited on the street outside. Didn’t he want the ancestor’s blessings? He probably didn’t think he needed it. Too perfect to need any advice. She was glad to be free of him, if only for a moment.
Around her, local elves and travelers paid homage to the other four aspects of her people—Light, Sea, Mountains, and Forests. Not surprisingly, the statue of Nasthia Greenmother was getting the lion’s share of the attention. Desstra hoped that the neglected dark elf ancestor would appreciate her attention and grant her guidance. She slipped a coin out of her pocket and placed it beside the sputtering candle. Images of poisons, traps, and various dirty tricks bubbled up in her mind. But real and useful wisdom was slow in coming.
First to a Castle in the Briars,
Where ends all of life’s desires.
At least they had the city right, but what did that second line mean? The end of life’s desires? For her it meant becoming a member of the Underhand—all she had ever wanted. To do that, she’d have to complete the mission. Completing the mission wasn’t the only challenge she faced either. Managing Tanthal was going to be tricky. He might threaten her with the prize of graduation, but was he smart enough to realize he needed her if they were to succeed?
Karn had arrived in Castlebriar just ahead of them. The guards at the gate had confirmed it. Intelligence reports said he was fond of games, which might give him an advantage in unlocking the riddle of the poem and finding the horn before she or Tanthal did. And despite his accent and his dress, he’d blend in better than she would. She needed a way to keep tabs on him without tipping her own hand.
She looked up at the statue of Malos. Blue veins in the semitranslucent marble looked like actual blood vessels in pale flesh. She looked at her own pallid wrist. What was beautiful in the twilight looked sickly in the sunshine. Moreover, her milky skin marked her as a cavern dweller. An outsider. Dark elves were rare aboveground, rarer this far from home. She was already drawing looks, even here at the shrine to the Five with no one about but other elves.
Desstra studied her surroundings, her eyes lingering on the statue of Nasthia Greenmother. It had been worked in a lustrous golden brass. If only Desstra were a wood elf—no one would question where she went or what she did.
“Sorry,” she said, picking up the coin from Malos’s pedestal. She walked over to the statue of Nasthia and added her offering to a large pile. “But I should give credit where credit is due.”
—
“Ow,” hollered Karn as he bumped his head on the lintel.
“You need to watch it there, kid.”
Karn grumbled—the advice was a little too late to be of use—and straightened slowly and carefully. Fosco’s Folly lay in the north side of the city, where merchant estates blended with the old money of Castlebriar. Sure enough, it specialized in catering to short customers.
He took in the common room. Well-made but undersized tables and chairs were scattered about, where half a dozen customers sat dining and drinking. Karn saw gnomes, dwarves (he was learning to tell the difference), and several creatures who looked like nothing so much as large rodents dressed up in Nelenian fashion. He averted his eyes before he offended anyone by staring.
“You’re the innkeeper? Fosco?” he asked the gnome who had spoken when he entered.
“Fosco Pertfingers,” the owner replied. He was a stout old fellow with a heavily wrinkled face. “You sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable somewhere else?” he asked, not unkindly.
“I’m sure I would,” replied Karn. “But I’m not looking for a room. Actually, I’m looking for a friend who came to Castlebriar before me. I think she may have stayed here.”
“She’s wee folk, then, is she?” asked Fosco.
“No,” said Karn, shaking his head. “She’s quite the opposite of wee.” He pointed up at the ceiling.
Fosco’s eyes lit up.
“Young Miss Thi,” he said. “Yes, she did stay here. Your name Corn?”
“Karn.”
“Karn, right. You’re that Norrønian boy she told me about.”
“She’s here!” said Karn, excitement coursing through him.
Fosco’s face clouded. “She rented a room, but I haven’t seen her in a while.”
Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Could I see it?” Karn asked. “The room, I mean.”
“What for?”
“I need to find her. Maybe there’s a clue to where she went.”
“No harm in it, I suppose. To tell the truth, I’m a little worried about her. Not that I stick my nose into my customers’ business, mind you.”
The old gnome led Karn to a staircase at the back, where they ascended to the second floor.
“Ow,” cried Karn as he smacked painfully into an exposed timber beam.
“You might want to watch your head,” said Fosco unhelpfully.
“You think?” snorted Karn. But despite the sore forehead, he couldn’t help but feel glad at his progress. He had guessed correctly that the low ceilings and short clientele would make Thianna feel more comfortabl
e after growing up as the littlest giant.
“Here we are,” said Fosco, opening a door to a small but clean room with a short table and chair, a nightstand, and a very short bed. There was a flower arrangement on the nightstand, next to a small gold-colored statue of some kind.
“This is where she stayed?” Karn asked. Fosco nodded.
“The ceiling’s just a little higher than most of my other rooms,” explained the innkeeper. “On account of the slope in my roof. Figured she’d need more head room.”
Karn looked at the bed, way too small for someone of Thianna’s size. He saw that the bedsheets were tightly tucked in, far too neat to be Thianna’s handwork.
“Did she sleep on the floor?” he asked.
The gnome shrugged.
The room had its own washroom, just a cast-iron tub and a bucket in a large closet, but Karn peered inside. The bathtub had a chunk of melting ice floating in chill water.
“This is where she slept,” he said in triumph. Thianna had clearly been using her magic to freeze the water in the tub, so that she could sleep on a block of ice just as she had back home. “You can take the girl out of Ymiria,” he said, “but you can’t take the Ymiria out of the girl.” He turned to Fosco. “I’d like to rent this room, if I could.” He had to stay somewhere. The bed might be too small for him, but as he was alone in a strange city, the notion that Thianna had been in the same place recently would be comforting.
“That will be five silver scepters a day,” said Fosco. Karn nodded. He didn’t have scepters, but he was sure he could work out the equivalent from Nyra’s coin purse. He sat on the edge of the small bed to count out the amount. His eyes fell on the statue. It was of a woman seated on a throne, a lion reclined beside her like a tame cat.
