Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon (9 page)

Both Riona and Killeen were waiting for him at the feet of Uzolan’s Mechanical Orchestra, a frozen explosion of giant hornbells at one end of the festival grounds. It was early, and the orchestra had yet to be activated; its silence left the permanent carnival with an empty, lonely feeling. Bits of excelsior and other
debris littered the pavement, and a few workers, fitted with the heavy leather collars of criminals, swept the remains of the previous celebration into larger piles.

The two women were waiting but not talking. Killeen seemed interested in the construction of the clockwork in the orchestra, while Riona paced, her arms folded. The official representative of the Vigil had regained that hard professional look that she had had the day before. Dougal wondered how well she had slept the previous night, now that she knew for sure that the others were well and truly dead.

“It’s time,” Riona said. “Let’s go.” She was just as sour as she’d been yesterday, a thundercloud on an otherwise clear morning. Killeen, of course, was the sun.

“This should be exciting,” Killeen said. “The idea of a city filled with ghosts is just too intriguing. To my knowledge, no sylvari has ever ventured into Ascalon City. I will be the first of my people to see inside the city’s walls.”

“It’s not that exciting,” said Dougal. “More like terrifying.”

Riona grunted at him.

“Surprised to find me here still?” Dougal asked Riona.

She shook her head. “Thackeray’s people have had an eye on your place all night.”

“And you don’t think I could slip past them if I wanted to?”

She shrugged as if it didn’t make a difference. “You didn’t.”

Dougal arched an eyebrow at her. “And you could
have told Thackeray and his people that we had recovered something from the crypts after all.”

“Captain Logan Thackeray only tolerates me at best,” Riona said. “Telling him you had this gem would only have forced him to toss you in prison again. I need you in Ascalon City.”

Dougal slung his pack over his shoulder. “Then let’s move.”

Dougal turned southward, to the main gates, but Riona instead moved north toward the Ascalonian district. Killeen was left in the middle, unsure which way to go.

Dougal pointed. “Main gate to the city is this way.”

“We aren’t using the main gate,” said Riona. “Time is of the essence. We’re going to use an asura gate.”

Dougal walked back to Riona now, Killeen following and trying not to look like she was listening. “You didn’t say anything about using an asura gate,” he said, trying to keep the worry out of his voice.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of them,” said Riona, smiling slightly.

“Of course not,” said Dougal. “It’s magic. I don’t particularly trust magic. Worse yet, it’s asuran magic. They operate at such a level that even human spellcasters are still lagging in their wake.”

“You
are
afraid,” said Riona, with a tight smile. “You’ve faced a city full of ghosts and gods know what else, and you’re afraid of a magical gate.”

“An
asuran
magical gate,” said Dougal. “There’s a difference. Half the time they are taking it apart and putting it back together. And have you ever had one of
them explain how it works?”

“It is a simple immobile-location dimensional transporter,” said Killeen, “that shortcuts normal reality by bringing together two fixed points with suitable equipment tuned to the same metavibrational aetheric frequency.” Dougal stared at her, and she added, “We have them in the Grove. The asura were one of the first peoples we met when we appeared.”

“You have my sympathy,” said Riona, and led the way into the Ascalonian district.

Divinity’s Reach was waking up. The people who worked for an honest living were shuffling off to their jobs, but laughing children still raced through the streets, darting from doorway to doorway in their carefree games. The Seraph patrolled the streets, alone and in pairs, always on the hunt for innocents to protect and lawbreakers to bring to justice. Merchants’ voices started to sound, hawking everything from apples to armor. Elders stood ready to train students in various specialties. Criers called out announcements from the queen and news from both inside the city and beyond its limits.

They passed through another set of walls, built within the city itself to separate it from the asura gate. Dougal noticed the walls were patrolled by white-armored members of the Seraph, armed with the newer, smooth-bored muskets. The Golem’s Eye in his pocket felt suddenly heavy. They passed within the picket line without being challenged, and Dougal assumed that Riona’s Vigil authority extended to these watchmen as well. And that Captain Logan Thackeray was delighted
to get them out of his queen’s city.

The gate itself was up on a low earth platform against the city’s outer wall, a great stone loop filled with bronze pulsing energy. Even looking at the shifting surface of the gate’s opening made Dougal a little queasy. The area around the gate was filled with wagons and bearers, golem carriers, and a small group of soldiers in dark armor: Ebon Vanguard. Dougal remembered that the Ascalonian district had a hospital for the more badly wounded soldiers from the fortress city of Ebonhawke.

Riona walked past the collected wagons to a smaller group, mostly human, but with a couple asura and their golems mixed in. The asura seemed unfazed by the crackling energy before them, but the humans apparently shared Dougal’s nervousness.

“Aren’t we cutting ahead of people?” said Killeen.

“Those are here to go to Ebonhawke,” said Riona, pointing a chin at the larger group. “They have to tune the gate for the jump around noon. Requires a lot of energy. We’re going to Lion’s Arch.” She looked at two asura arguing in front of a rune-inscribed pillar bristling with crystals and levers.

Dougal knew that the asura gates were used by the diminutive race, and they would never risk their own lives for something that had not been (mostly) tested and safe. The gates were leagues upon leagues apart, yet simply by stepping through the oval archways, they would be at a similar gate in Lion’s Arch. Still, the asura’s continual tendency to modify and meddle with their own work gave him pause.

The two asura in front of the plinth of crystals concluded their heated argument and the older of the two walked over to them. The younger stayed behind, shooting sullen looks at his elder.

“Sorry,” said the older asura, a female. “Training day. My apprentice has his own ideas about the process of tuning two gates into alignment, and I have to beat some sense into him.” She turned toward her sullen apprentice, who immediately brightened, then returned to his black cloud of resentment as soon as the elder’s back was turned. Dougal watched the younger asura eye the arcane runes on the plinth and was concerned that the upstart apprentice would suddenly try to prove his point by changing the settings.

“Papers?” said the asura, and Riona presented a folded letter with a purple seal similar to the one she had presented Logan Thackeray in the jail. The asura reviewed it, grunted, and said, “Are you carrying anything from Orr, the Dragonbrand, or any other territory that has been dominated or altered by the presence of the Elder Dragons?” She recited the question with the complete lack of inflection born of repetition.

“No,” said Riona.

“Are you carrying any items that are illegal in Lion’s Arch or Divinity’s Reach? Are you entering Lion’s Arch with intent to commit any illegal actions or to flee Divinity’s Reach authorities?”

Killeen started to say something, but Dougal quickly said, “No, we are not,” and shot the sylvari a look to indicate that the asura really didn’t want or need to hear about the Golem’s Eye and their recent incarceration.

“Very well,” said the asura, returning the document to Riona, “we should be ready to go in a few moments, if
somebody
”—she turned toward her assistant—“will stop sulking and tune the gate to its correct aetheric frequency.”

The apprentice began to touch the various runes and jutting crystals in order, and the bronze light within the archway turned a deep golden shade. One by one, the various travelers approached the golden glow and disappeared.

Killeen stepped through without pausing. Dougal hesitated and looked at Riona. She made an “After you” motion, and it was clear that she wasn’t going to leave him alone on this side of the gate. Mentally noting the lack of trust in these dragon-haunted days, Dougal stepped through.

It was no more difficult than stepping through the surface of a soap bubble. One moment he was in Divinity’s Reach, the rising sun just cresting the walls ahead of him, the city around him in deep shadow. The next moment he and the others were in bright sunshine, leaving him blinking and raising a hand to protect his eyes. The air itself was different, changing suddenly from the cool, damp morning air to something warmer, fresher, and smelling of salt. The quiet energy of a city awakening was immediately stilled and replaced with the clamor of merchants and townspeople at work.

One moment he was in Divinity’s Reach, and the next moment he was here. Dougal did not want to think about where he was in the space in between.

They stood on another low set of earthworks overlooking the merchant district of Lion’s Arch. Around them, in a slight arch, were other gates, some with golden energies in their arches, some bronze, and some with a purplish hue. Next to them, three more asura were squabbling about performance issues.

Riona ignored them, passing Killeen and leading them down the steps into the Great Bazaar, following the other travelers.

The Lion’s Arch of long ago was gone, its only remaining memory consisting of the battlements that survived the great waves from the Rising of Orr. When Zhaitan, the undead Elder Dragon, brought long-sunken Orr back to the surface, all lands surrounding the Sea of Sorrows were awash in great waves. Lion’s Arch was almost utterly destroyed, and in its place was left a swamp of broken ships, snapped trees, and dead creatures.

Out of that morass, the new Lion’s Arch arose over the past hundred years. The town was re-established by pirates and corsairs looking for a safe haven, and salvage crews reclaiming the flotsam and jetsam that had washed ashore. It soon blossomed into a cosmopolitan trading center.

The city showed its recent origin. Some of the newer buildings were stone, but most of the city was of wood. The original structures were built from the remains of wrecked ships tossed up on the beach, and that architecture so defined the city that even new construction was built along the lines of hulls and keels as opposed to walls and roofs. It was a scratch-built city, a lash-up
made permanent, a temporary site that might yet outshine Divinity’s Reach or the Black Citadel or even the asuran city of Rata Sum.

The people of Lion’s Arch were as motley as its buildings. Before the Rising of Orr, it was a human city, a Krytan city. After the floods uprooted the houses and replaced them with shipwrecks, a transient population took hold, a brotherhood of the coast seeking nothing more than survival in an overturned world. The crews of the surviving pirate ships colonized the wreckage that was Lion’s Arch, and their captains became the first leaders. As a result, Lion’s Arch was ruled by a council of captains, and its morals and legality were always more flexible than in other great cities.

The new population was also more diverse than anything else seen in Tyria. Here you found humans but also equal or greater numbers of norn, asura, and sylvari. The occasional bloated, amphibian hylek or hunched, bucktoothed dredge stalked through the streets. The castoffs of a half-dozen nations and a plethora of societies all gathered here.

And charr. That was the part that concerned Dougal the most. The humans and charr were still at war in Ebonhawke, yet in Lion’s Arch charr and humans lived, if not in harmony, at least within sight of each other without open hostilities. That was something Dougal, who had spent much of his youth hating and fighting the charr, had a hard time understanding.

The term most people used when describing charr was “feline,” but beyond a few basic attributes, they were no kin to any cat Dougal had ever seen. They
were huge, half again as tall as a man, not as massive as a norn but still towering opponents against a single human. Their faces were elongated muzzles, and their jaws were those of carnivores, filled with long teeth. Both males and females had four horns jutting from the sides of their skulls, the males boasting an impressive set and the females a smaller pair on each side, just behind the jawline. Beneath the horns hung two pairs of sensitive ears. The males had huge hunchbacked and maned shoulders, and while the females were more lithe and swift, they were no less deadly.

When Dougal first came to Lion’s Arch, he was stunned by the presence of the charr, including charr dealing with humans and other races. He had a hard time looking at them without thinking of the implacable foes who drove the humans from most of Ascalon and besieged them in Ebonhawke—the creatures responsible for the Searing and the Foefire.

He never dealt with them, preferring a norn or human merchant to a charr one when he could. Even when forced to talk to one, he could feel his skin crawl and the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The charr were legendary for their tempers and their violence, and he was unsure what would set one of them off. And while he was fairly certain they could not smell his fear and unease, the charr were excellent observers, and his reticence to deal with them was obvious. He would never go into the crypts with a charr, or want to be left alone with one.

Now, walking down the stairs into the Lion’s Arch merchant district, he saw charr for the first time in over
a year: none would come to Divinity’s Reach, any more than he would go to their main base, the Black Citadel. Already he felt uncomfortable by their very presence, even though the leonine creatures seemed more at home here than he was.

The Great Bazaar occupied a low spot surrounded by hills near the center of town. Great posts were driven into the hills, and from those posts were strung rope riggings and lines, the entire web covered by sheets of sailcloth dyed blue. From above, the patchwork of sails looked like a choppy ocean, and from below the cooler, sheltered market felt like it was cradled at the bottom of a shallow azure sea.