The Seal of Karga Kul: A Dungeons & Dragons Novel

by Alex Irvine

  “Most of it, yes,” Iriani said. He was rebraiding his hair and pausing every time he finished a braid to take a swallow of distilled liquor from a bottle he’d bought the minute they came through the gate. “When this place was founded, the stories go, all they had to work with was rocks and sand.”

  He turned to Remy. “So. Are you staying with us?”

  Remy blinked. His conversation with Biri-Daar the night before had unsettled him. On the one hand, he felt that of course he would go with them; they had saved his life. On the other, he had an errand to complete.

  On a third hand rested the questions Biri-Daar had raised.

  “No,” he said. “I will buy a horse and go to Toradan. I committed to this errand.”

  “Let him go,” Lucan said.

  Keverel took a swallow of Iriani’s liquor. “Lucan, bury your grudge,” he said. “It is no right act to let a boy go off and die out of an overdeveloped sense of obligation.”

  “I am not a boy,” Remy said. “You didn’t think I was a boy when I fought with you.”

  Iriani laughed. “As a matter of fact, we did. You fought as a boy fights, all arm and no brain. But that’s good. At least you have the strength in your arm. The brain for the fight comes later.”

  “Where are you going to get money for a horse?” Kithri asked, eyes wide and expression so serious that Remy knew he was being mocked. “If you leave now, you aren’t entitled to a share of the spoils.”

  Remy couldn’t quite tell if she was serious about this. “That is the code,” Keverel said. “But surely we could make an allowance given the circumstances.”

  “Ha! The boy who called me a coward is finding his own cowardice,” Lucan said. “At least that’s what it seems like to me.”

  Coming from Lucan, this stung. Remy bit back his first reply and considered the situation anew. “Biri-Daar,” he said. “Do you still think that—?”

  “Yes,” she said. “If you go into the wastes alone, you will not survive to reach Toradan. And if you do, you will not leave Toradan alive. Bahamut has brought us together. Keverel would say Erathis. I believe we should show your box to the Mage Trust at Karga Kul. We can trust them, and their magic is powerful enough to discover what lies inside.”

  “So he draws demon’s eyes and we’re going to invite him along,” Lucan said. “Biri-Daar, one of these days you’re going to take in a stray and get us all killed.”

  “I would sooner die doing the right thing than live an extra day because I failed what I know to be right,” Biri-Daar said. “Remy, I will say it again. The gods have brought us together.”

  Remy’s childhood had not featured much in the way of devotion to gods. His mother was a quiet worshiper of Pelor, in the way that many citizens of Avankil whose recent ancestors had come in from the fields still followed that god of harvests and summer. Her devotion had become perfunctory, a matter of occasional holiday sprigs and leonine sunburst emblems stitched into the hems of the tunics she made. In the Quayside, religions mixed and turned into a kind of hybrid river creed, a constant barrage of hand gestures and muttered oaths, holy symbols and superstitious stories told over tankards of ale. Remy had soaked it all in without ever developing a firm idea of which god he would follow.

  Even so, Biri-Daar’s idea that the gods had brought him together with her party gave Remy pause. He had been on the brink of death, and now he lived, thanks to a dragonborn paladin of Bahamut and the healing magic of the Erathian Keverel. Something greater than Remy was at work here … and he feared that Biri-Daar’s dark assessment of his mission was correct. Why had the demon’s eye been keyed to look for him? What was it he carried?

  Remy was brave but not a fool. He did not want to die as a pawn in another man’s game.

  He looked around. Every race that made a home in the Dragondown was here, selling everything that could be grown, made, or built—by hands or magic.

  “Have an apple,” Iriani said, tossing him one. Remy caught it and bit into it.

  It was beginning to seem as if they were commanding him to come along, and that feeling made Remy resist even though he was starting to think accompanying them to Karga Kul was the best way forward. He didn’t want to be forced into it, though. “I’ll stay with you,” he said, meaning until I figure out what’s going on. “If you can lend me the money for a horse.”

  “No lending necessary,” said Biri-Daar. She was eating what looked like an entire pig’s leg and had a new pair of katars thrust in her belt. “We’ll sell these things off,” she added, jingling the pouch containing the dead gnolls’ trinkets, “and you can buy a horse with your share.”

  First they found a jeweler who would take the ring, armband, and earring. It was simply done, and when Kithri’s bartering skills faltered, the presence of Biri-Daar ensured a fair bargain. Then they wound their way deeper into the market, toward the shadowed older districts where layers of buildings were built upon each other, leaning in to block out the sun as the streets narrowed to alleys that approached the market keep from furtive angles. It was where magic was dealt and the spiretop drakes were as likely to be carrying messages as stealing coins from the counters of market stalls.

  Iriani had done business with a broker of potions and talismans there before. They found him smoking a pipe outside his shop, frowning up as if the shadows of the buildings’ upper stories over his head contained some bit of occult wisdom just beyond his understanding. “Roji,” Iriani greeted him.

  He turned to notice Iriani and winked. “What have you found in your peregrinations across this fine land of ours, my elf friend?”

  On the way there, Biri-Daar had handed off the jawbone and demon’s eye to Iriani. She stood close as the half-elf suggested they go inside and chat. “Not every bit of business needs to take place where everyone can see.”

  “Fine,” Roji said. He knocked his pipe out and pulled back the curtain across his doorway. “But most of you have to stay outside. None of us will be able to breathe if you all come in. The dragonborn is too big, the halfling will steal everything she can see. I don’t like holy men. So the ranger and the boy can come in.”

  Iriani grinned. “It’s settled, then. Remy? Lucan? After you.”

  The three of them followed Roji into his shop. They sat on cushions around a low table. “What do you have?” Roji asked. “And why so worried about who might see? This is Crow Fork. Nothing will happen to you here.”

  “Something might happen to us as soon as we leave,” Iriani said. “We would prefer to be sure.”

  “Sure,” Roji chuckled. “What is sure? Let me see what you’ve brought.”

  He looked over the jawbone, tapping on each of the teeth. “Interesting,” he said. “Not the kind of thing I usually traffic in, but I know what I can do with it. Was that it?”

  “No,” Iriani said. “This piece is a bit different.” He handed Roji the demon’s eye and watched as the merchant figured out what it was.

  With a sharp breath, Roji set it down. “Gods,” he said. “Why didn’t you destroy it?”

  “No way to be sure what would happen,” Lucan said. “We know you can make something out of it, and Iriani said we could trust you not to let it find its way back to the wrong hands.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Around the neck of a cacklefiend a day’s ride east,” Iriani said.

  “And who put it there?”

  “I haven’t tried to find out. You may if you choose. What we want is to get rid of it and make sure it stays gone.” Iriani leaned forward over the table. “Roji, I know you know what to do with things like this.”

  “You also know that whatever I do with it, its builder will know it was I who did it,” Roji said.

  “I have blinded it temporarily,” Iriani said. “Act quickly and escape consequence. That’s your way in any case, is it not?”

  Roji didn’t look inclined to laugh. “What gives you the right to ask this of me?”

  “No right. But you can turn it
into a mirror, can’t you?”

  A mirror? Remy didn’t know what he meant. He had very little idea of what the conversation was about. Why didn’t they just sell what they had to sell and get out of this cramped little space with its shelves of skulls and beakers, its racks of wands and staves imbued with various enchantments …

  “A mirror,” Roji repeated. “That might be useful.” Thinking it over, he said, “I’ll take it. But you might as well know that this isn’t the only eye looking for him.” He nodded in Remy’s direction.

  A cold knot formed in Remy’s stomach. “How—”

  “Hush,” Roji said. “It’s there for anyone to see. You’ve got something that people want, and some of its magic has bled onto you. Anyone on this street would be able to see it. Iriani, this one is going to cause you trouble.”

  “I believe that opinion has been expressed,” Lucan said coolly. “But it appears to be of no concern to those whose opinions matter.”

  “There is much about his errand that we do not yet understand. Even so, Biri-Daar and Keverel feel—and I agree—that something beyond chance was at work when we ran across the boy in the wastes.” Iriani looked at Remy. “Show him what you carry,” he said.

  Instinctively Remy shook his head. “No.”

  “I’m not saying give it to him, Remy. Show it to him. He’ll tell us something we need to know.”

  “You can count on that,” Roji said. “Even though you ought to be paying me both for taking the demon’s eye and looking at whatever the boy has. Now come, boy. Show it.”

  Remy placed the box on the table but kept his hands close to it. Roji leaned over it and looked closely at the sigils on the lid. He waved a hand over it, his fingers making the familiar sign of a magic-detecting spell. “We already know it’s magic,” Lucan said.

  “I know what you say you know,” Roji said without looking at him. “I’m trying to figure out what you don’t know you don’t know, if you know what I mean.… Ah. Remy, do me a favor and touch the box.”

  Remy did. “Why?”

  “One of the sigils on it, unless I’m mistaken, is an alarm. Whenever the box leaves your possession, someone somewhere knows about it.” He made another pass over the box and the sigils glowed a soft red. “That one there,” Iriani said, pointing at a corner of the box.

  “I know,” Roji said. “This box has a powerful maker, to invoke her.”

  “Invoke who?” Remy asked.

  Roji and Iriani looked at each other. Then Iriani glanced over at Remy. “Tiamat,” he said. “I had thought so before, but now am sure. We will need to tell Biri-Daar of this.” Iriani rapped his knuckles on the table, the old elf invocation of good luck. “Remy, Lucan, I think Roji and I should finish our transaction in private.”

  Five minutes after Lucan and Remy rejoined the rest of the group in the magicians’ alley, Iriani emerged and led them back toward the main gate. Remy had not said a word the entire time. Tiamat? How would the Dragon Queen be involved? What had Philomen gotten him into? When they were clear of the magicians’ alley and out under the sun again, Iriani said, “That went about as well as could be expected. Roji is going to destroy the eye and create something from it.”

  He tapped Remy on the shoulder. “He also told me that young Remy here is a target for some kind of attention from the Abyss. And that some of the sigils on the box lid are invocations of Tiamat. But you knew that already, didn’t you, Biri-Daar?”

  “I suspected, yes,” Biri-Daar said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Remy asked.

  “I will echo Remy’s question. From all of us,” Kithri said.

  “There are many signs that mean one thing at one time and place and another when the time and place are different,” Biri-Daar said. “I suspected but was not certain. Now that Roji has confirmed what I suspected, I am thinking that our path is clear.”

  Iriani looked thoughtful. “I am thinking that his original errand and ours might be related. Does anyone concur?”

  “I am thinking that young Remy ought to stay here and work for his bread while we go off and finish what we have started,” Lucan growled.

  “You have made this clear,” said Biri-Daar, in a tone that closed down that angle of conversation. “And now we have decided that Remy must come with us because if we let him go and his errand comes into conflict with ours, we will be fortunate if we have a chance to correct that error.”

  “We have decided?” Remy asked. “I haven’t decided anything.” The group looked back at him. No one spoke. “You make me sound a bit like a prisoner,” Remy said, meaning it to come out as a joke but realizing as he said it that it hadn’t.

  “You are a bit like a prisoner,” Kithri said before anyone else could say it in a more diplomatic way. “But we’re giving you a full share and letting you buy a horse, so you’ve got it better than most prisoners. Might as well enjoy it.”

  The main stable of Crow Fork Market was built against the southwest corner of the wall and ran for more than a hundred yards along the inside of the western wall. The corner end of the building housed travelers’ horses and the opposite end horses for sale. In between were the main sliding doors, through which the potential buyer of a horse entered into a tack and grooming area. At the back of it was a large drain that caught Remy’s attention.

  “We’re in the middle of the desert. Where does the drain go?” he asked.

  The stabler introduced himself as Wylegh. “There’s an underground river,” he said. “Where it comes out, no man knows. Or at least I don’t. But the council has paid for sewers to be cut down to the caves where it flows. One of them runs from the main keep under here and on to those caves.”

  “Natural sciences are so interesting,” Iriani said with a roll of his eyes. “Shall we get on with the horse-trading now?”

  “Agreed. Although we can all do with a bit less sarcasm,” Biri-Daar said. The horse merchant waddled back down the row of stalls, stopping at a barred door that marked the farthest end of the building from the corner of the wall. Shafts of light came down through narrow skylights, doing little to brighten the gloom in that part of the stable.

  “Pick one you’d like to have a look at and we’ll take it out in the yard,” he said, tapping on the door. A soft scraping noise came from back near the front entrance and the merchant chuckled. “They’re restless today.”

  Lucan and Iriani exchanged a glance. Remy caught it. Something elf, he thought. What were they noticing? Iriani touched the corner of his eye and looked back the way they’d come. Lucan dropped a hand to the hilt of his sword. Remy paused until they caught up with him. “What?” he asked.

  Both of them shook their heads. “Not sure yet,” Iriani said quietly. “But something here is not as it seems.”

  “Remy!” called Biri-Daar. “There are two here that aren’t outrageously overpriced and might survive a week on the road. I’ll let you choose which one.”

  Remy headed deeper into the shadowed interior of the stable. “I don’t know much about horses,” he said.

  “Then bring the elves. You can trust them.”

  “Elves?” Lucan said. “There’s only one elf here.”

  “You’re both elves as far as I’m concerned,” Biri-Daar said. “Especially in the way you bicker over nothing. Come look at these two horses.”

  It was just at the last moment, when the grate was completely off the stable drain, that Kithri noticed. “Lucan!” she cried out.

  But the hobgoblins who had levered the drain cover off and were pouring up into the stable weren’t after Lucan. They fanned out into an arc with Remy at its center. He drew his sword and waited for one of them to make the first move. They came up so fast out of the drain that at first none of the party noticed that not all of them were hobgoblins; then Iriani reached out a hand and balled it into a fist. “Back to hell, imp,” he said.

  In the second rank of advancing creatures, the farthest on the left went up in a pillar of flame. Horses all through th
e stable reared and shrieked.

  “No fire!” screamed the stabler. “No fire, you’ll burn us all!”

  Biri-Daar turned and with the flat of her sword leveled him. He crumpled under a tack bench. “Betrayer. You deserve to burn,” she said, and with the return swing of the sword cut down the closest of the hobgoblins.

  There were so many of them it was hard to keep track in the darkness until one or more was already attacking; they moved in groups, blending into a collective impression of pitted blades, bared fangs, and eye-watering stench. Remy got a stable door at his back and found Kithri next to him. “Worse than the sewers they come out of,” she said, wrinkling her nose. Remy barked a short surprised laugh. Then he struck where she did, hoping the halfling could see what he couldn’t.

  Iriani solved part of the light problem by blasting a torso-sized hole through the roof and letting sunlight in. The hobgoblins skirted the light, pressing their attacks from the shadows. Keverel contributed to the stable’s illumination by pronouncing the name of his god, which created a glow around the imps that flanked the hobgoblins, keeping out of the way until they could strike with the advantage of surprise.

  One such glow appeared just above and behind Remy’s head. He ducked instinctively and the imp’s tail stinger stabbed past his ear into the stable door.

  Kithri was nearly as fast as the imp. In the split second it took the tiny devil to release its stinger from the wood, she cut its tail off and with a second stroke pinned it to the doorframe by its hand. The imp shrieked and vanished, but its invisibility was no protection with the twin streams of ichor running from its hand and the stump of its tail. Remy finished it and pivoted around to deflect a spear thrust from a hobgoblin. His return stroke sent it spinning away, to meet the head of Keverel’s mace. In the light the hobgoblins were not so bold. They attacked, but cautiously, as if content to keep the party where they were, pinned in the stable.