Exile's Return (11 page)

The leader of the three was a powerful-looking, middle-aged man, with a shocking streak of gray hair through an otherwise black mane he wore to his shoulders. He had a robe of the same cut as the others, but in black rather than brown. “Step away from Master Anshu, please,” he instructed.

Kaspar and the others did so and the black-robed monk took one step forward and began an incantation, waving his hands in a complex pattern in the air. The other two monks lowered their heads as if in prayer.

Kaspar heard and saw nothing unusual, but suddenly the hair on his arms and neck stood on end! He turned to look at the wagon and saw a pulsing light surrounding it. The horses started to whinny in their stalls and become agitated, and Kaspar and the others took another step backward.

Then the light was gone and the two brown-robed monks hurried forward to attend to Master Anshu. The black-robed monk moved purposefully past the others and jumped into the wagon bed. He took a long look down at the figure in the coffin, then he put the lid back in place. He took the hammer out of the toolbox and with deft blows had it quickly fastened shut.

The old monk was beginning to revive. He came to stand before Kaspar and the others. Without preamble, he said, “That thing must be taken from here tomorrow.”

He turned to walk away but Kaspar cried, “Wait a moment, please!”

The monk stopped.

Kaspar said, “Master Anshu said the armor was wrong. Is it cursed?”

“Our master is correct. The thing in the coffin is not cursed, but it is wrong. You must take it from here quickly.”

“Can you help us?”

“No,” said the black-robed monk. “I am Yongu, and the safety of the temple is my concern. That thing must be taken from here and the longer you tarry, the more harm will come.”

“Where should we go?” asked Flynn.

Yongu said, “I do not know, but if you linger, innocent people will be harmed.”

“Why the rush?” asked Kaspar.

“Because the thing in the coffin grows impatient. It wishes to be somewhere.”

Kaspar looked at the others, then said, “But where?”

Master Anshu said weakly, “It will tell you where to go.”

“How?” asked Flynn.

“If you go the wrong way, you will die. As long as you live, you’re heading in the right direction. Now, forgive us, but we can help you no more.” He raised himself to his feet, took two steps, then stopped and said, “But one thing I can tell you. Turn your steps westward.”

The monks left, and Kaspar said, “Westward?”

Kenner shook his head. “But we need to go south, then sail northeast.”

Kaspar shook his head. “Apparently not.” He walked back toward the inn. “We leave at dawn, my friends.”

Kaspar turned away at the door of the inn and Flynn said, “Where are you going?”

“To see if I can find a map,” answered Kaspar. “I need to see what is west of here.”

Without another comment, Flynn and Kenner went inside the inn, and Kaspar set out in search of a map.

Kaspar’s brow furrowed.

He, Kenner, and Flynn sat at the table in the common room of the Four Blessings Inn, concentrating on the three maps Kaspar had contrived to purchase after the monks had left.

While he had been finding map merchants, Flynn and Kenner had returned to the temple to try to prize whatever additional information from the monks about what was “wrong” with the armor, but they came back with nothing. The monks would not speak to them. Flynn was convinced that they should not move on in the morning, to force the monks to return and speed them on their way.

“How reliable are these, I wonder?” Kaspar asked.

The stout innkeeper approached their table with three fresh cups of ale. “Planning your next journey?” he inquired.

“If we can depend on these,” said Kaspar.

The innkeeper looked over their shoulder then reached out and removed the top map. “You can burn this one. I recognize it; it’s a copy of a copy of a very old, inaccurate map.”

“How do you know?” Kenner asked.

“Used to be a merchant-trader—like yourselves—before I settled down here. Reached an age where I was tired of thrashing bandits and dodging raiders. Let me go see what I’ve got locked away in my trunk. I can show you a couple of things.”

He returned a few minutes later with an old map, drawn on rolled-up leather. “This I bought from a trader up in Ralapinti, when I first started out. I had one wagon, a mule, a sword which I’d won in a card game, and a bunch of junk to sell.”

He unrolled it. Unlike the maps they had, this one displayed the entire continent of Novindus. As well as the original ink, there were additional notes and drawing, which Kaspar assumed the innkeeper had made. “See here.” The innkeeper indicated their location, in Shamsha. “From here to here,” he said, moving his finger in a line, “all three maps are pretty accurate, but after that…”

“We need to go west,” said Kaspar.

“Well, there are two ways to do it. You can head back up north for a few days and you’ll find a road heading west. It’s not a bad way to travel if you’re not in a hurry. You wind through the foothills of the Mountains of the Sea—lots of passes and some decent game if you’re hunting along the way.” He paused, tapping his finger on his chin. “I think it took me a month or so the last time I took that route. Of course, that was thirty years ago.

“Most people would just head south to the City of the Serpent River and then catch a ship to Maharta.”

“Why Maharta?”

The innkeeper sat down, uninvited. He pointed to the map. “If you head straight west from here, you end up just about in the middle of the Great Temple Market Square.” He scratched his chin. “From there, if you keep going west, there’s not a lot you’d want to mess with.

“I take you for outlanders. You speak well enough, but I’ve never heard accents like yours. Where are you from?”

“Across the Green Sea,” said Kaspar.

“Ha!” The innkeeper slapped his hand on the table. “I’ve heard tales of traders from across the sea showing up from time to time. Tell you what, after I finish supper and take care of my other customers, let’s sit and talk. If you’re going west, there are some things you need to know if you want to stay alive. And I’m curious about your homeland.” He stood up. “I don’t miss the dangers, but I do miss the excitement.”

He departed and left the three men puzzling over the new maps.

It was late when the innkeeper returned. “Name’s Bek, which is short for Bekamostana.”

“I can see why they call you Bek,” said Flynn. He introduced himself and his companions.

“Now, tell me what you need to know.”

Kaspar said, “We were told to go west, so I guess that means Maharta.”

Bek said, “‘Queen City of the River’ they call her. Once the most prosperous, beautiful, wonderful city…well, we used to say in the world, but that was before we learned about those places across the sea. Anyway, the old Raj, in my grandfather’s time, well, he did right by his people. It’s not the biggest city—that’s the City of the Serpent River—but it’s the richest. At least it was at one time.”

“What happened?”

“The Emerald Queen is what happened,” said Bek. “No one talks much about it, because everyone knows what happened; our parents taught us.” He stroked his chin. “She came out of somewhere up in the north of the Westlands.”

“Westlands?” asked Kenner, looking at the map.

Bek put his hand over two-thirds of the map of Novindus. “Here are the Westlands,” then he covered both sides, “and in the middle lay the Riverlands, and to the east—”

Flynn finished, “Are the Eastlands.”

“You catch on,” said Bek with a grin. “Time was, you could travel either the Serpent River or the Vedra River almost all the way without much difficulty. Oh, there were a few bandits, according to my grandfather, but back then the City of the Serpent River controlled most of the land around the river all the way up to the Hotlands.

“The Vedra is lined with city-states, each with their own territories, but apart from a border skirmish now and then, it’s pretty peaceful. It’s when you get away from the rivers that things start to get nasty.” He indicated the area west of Maharta. “That’s the Plain of Djams. It’s all grasslands. Don’t go there.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons. Nothing worth trading for, and it’s inhabited by these really murderous little bastards, about four foot tall. No one can speak their language and they kill all trespassers. They usually stay away from the river so there are still farms on the west bank, but go more than a day’s ride from the river and you’re likely to end up with some poisoned darts in you. Can’t see them coming. No one even really knows what they look like.

“After that, you reach the Pillars of Heaven.”

“What are they?” asked Kenner.

Bek’s finger pointed to a range of mountains. “Ratn’gary Mountains. Biggest mountains down here. About three days up from Ratn’gary Gulf. Legend has it you’ll find two things there: the Necropolis—the City of the Dead Gods, where all the gods who perished in the Chaos Wars wait—and high above, the Pillars of Heaven—two mountains so tall no man has ever seen their peaks. And on top of those peaks is the Pavilion of the Gods, where the living gods reside.

“It’s all legend, of course. No man living has ever tried to go there.”

The three men exchanged glances and after a moment of silence Bek asked, “So, what is this expedition then?”

“We were told to go west,” said Flynn. “That’s all.”

“Who told you?”

“The monks you sent me to see last night,” said Kaspar.

Bek rubbed his chin. “Well, seems to me you don’t ignore those sorts of suggestions. I mean, you needed some advice and got it. But you’d think they would be a little more specific than just ‘go west,’ wouldn’t you?”

Kaspar wrestled with the idea of telling Bek about the cargo they had in their wagon, but decided the old innkeeper was unlikely to have any additional insights. He stood up. “Well, we’re off at first light. We’re going to offload our cargo and take a boat down to the City of the Serpent River—it sounds like a better choice than going over the mountains by wagon.”

Bek said, “Takes about the same amount of time if you include all the loading and offloading, securing passage and the like, but in the end you’ll have a better chance of getting there intact.”

“Is it safe to assume the clan war is over?” asked Kenner.

“Never safe to assume anything about the clans down there, but most of the bloodshed is over for the time being, according to what I hear. Just make sure you bribe all the right people when going from one clan district to another. My advice would be: as soon as you get off the boat, go right at the first big boulevard. I can’t recall its name, but you won’t miss it. There are maybe half a dozen little alleys, then this one big street running north and south. You’ll want to go straight on, ’cause that’s where everyone else will be going. That would take you to the great northern market square, and all the good inns. But if you turn right, you’ll stay in the Eagle Clan’s area of control. They hold everything along the river, down to the docks. If you bribe a guard or two, you’ll have no trouble. Find an inn at the docks and wait until a ship’s bound for Maharta. Shouldn’t have to wait more than a day or two as most of the sea trade from the City puts in at Maharta before heading down the coast to Chatisthan and Ispar.”

“Thanks,” said Kaspar. “You’ve been very helpful.” He handed back the map.

“No, keep it,” said Bek. “I’ve got no use for it now. My daughter married a miller up in Rolonda village—nice enough lad but I don’t care much for my in-laws—and my son’s in the Raj’s army, so I don’t think they’ll be needing a trader’s map any time soon.”

“Thank you very much,” said Kaspar.

As Kenner and Flynn started up the stairs to their room, Kaspar said, “One last question. You said that if we went straight west from here, we’d end up in the…”

“Great Temple Market Square,” finished Bek. “That’s a truth.”

“Is that significant?”

The innkeeper was silent for a moment, as if considering the question. “Maybe. A hundred years back Maharta was the trading center for the entire continent. Everything going up or down river—from all the coastal cities, from Serpent River up to the distant Sulth—would pass through there. So the old Raj’s ancestors built the great square so that merchants and travelers would have a place for their temples. Must be at least a hundred of them. If the monks said to go west, then maybe that’s as good a place to start looking for what you seek. I’ve heard there are sects so small they’ve only got two temples in the world, one in their home town and another in Maharta!” He laughed. “Even if the city’s not what it used to be, it’s still worth a look.”

“Thanks,” said Kaspar, standing up. He rolled up the map. “And thanks for this.”

“Don’t mention it. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Kaspar slowly walked up the stairs. By nature he was a man to make decisions and he hated uncertainty. But now he found himself in a unique situation; he knew he was compelled to finish this business with Kenner and Flynn before he could think of returning home. But he hated not knowing what he was doing. Hell, he thought, he wasn’t even sure about where he was going.

He reached the top of the stairs and entered the room.

The coffin was hoisted in a cargo net and then lowered slowly into the hold of the ship. Kenner and Flynn carried the chest aboard, while Kaspar finished selling the wagon and horses. They didn’t need the extra gold—they had enough riches in the chest to keep them comfortable for the rest of their lives—but Kaspar was determined to play the role of trader and not bring suspicion on them.

Bek’s advice had been sound. They had turned south at the corner where Bek had told them to, and were stopped only twice by warriors wearing the mark of the Eagle Clan on their tabards.

The bribes they made were not even masked, but simply the price of doing business. The second guard had even given them a token, a wooden coin with an eagle on it, that he instructed them to show to any other guards who might question them. Kaspar complained that the first guards hadn’t offered them such, and was greeted by a laugh and the observation that the bribe obviously hadn’t been generous enough.

Kaspar mounted the gangplank and followed Kenner and Flynn to the little cabin they would share. It was barely large enough for the two sets of bunks, one above the other. They put the chest on one of the lower bunks and Kaspar settled into the other.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“About what?” asked Flynn.

“About what the old monk said, that if we make the wrong choice, we die.”

Kenner climbed into an upper bunk and lay down. “Seems a tough way of letting us know. Three wrong moves and that thing in the hold is left sitting somewhere with no one to move it.”

“I think it would find someone to move it somehow,” Flynn observed.

“Anyway,” continued Kaspar, “I was also thinking about something Bek said, how there was a road to Maharta a couple of days north of the city. We must have passed it. Maybe McGoin died because we didn’t take that road.”

Kenner lay on his side with his head resting on one hand. “I don’t know. I sometimes think that if we weren’t caught up in the middle of this we’d be a lot more terrified.”

Flynn pulled himself up onto his bunk. “Nothing special about it. Kaspar, you’ve been a soldier, right?”

“Right.”

“Sooner or later you just get used to the blood, right?”

Kaspar was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Yes. It becomes…commonplace.”

“That’s it, then,” Flynn continued. “We’ve just got used to the madness.”

Kaspar lay back in his bunk, content to wait for the call for the midday meal. He thought about what Flynn had just said and decided he was right: you did get used to the madness if you lived with it long enough.

But a troubling thought occurred to him then: he had been living with madness long before he had come here and encountered these men.