The City of Towers: The Dreaming Dark - Book I (3 page)

Though the sun was still buried behind the clouds, it was just past dawn when they broke camp and headed back toward the Old Road, the path that connected the great cities of Breland. They’d chosen to sleep in a clearing well away from the road so Pierce could watch for enemies. But a tangle of the King’s Woods lay between the travelers and the road, and it was there that trouble struck.

From behind a tree stepped a man out—a rangy, pock-faced Brelander wearing the patched leather tunic of a Brelish soldier. Perhaps he was a deserter or a retiree with nowhere to go, but Daine thought it just as likely the man had torn his ill-fitting armor from the corpse of its true owner. A gray woolen cloak shielded him from the rain, and he waved a wooden cudgel in their general direction.

“Ho there, travelers!” the man called, his voice a gravelly rasp.

Daine stepped to the front of the group, signaling the others to halt.

“Morgalan’s the name. By your dress, I take you to be strangers in our lovely land. Mourners, are you?”

“Mourners?” asked Daine.

“Refuse from what’s left of Cyre. They’re calling it the Mournland now, on account of there being nothing for you lot to do but mourn for what you lost.”

“If you’ve got a point, make it quick.” Daine’s hand went to his sword, but he held his temper in check. This was far from the first time they’d been harassed, and Daine smelled a trap.

“I have a bit of a nose for the energies of the arcane, and I can see that there’s more to the young lady’s backpack than meets the eye. I’ll be taking that, along with any coin you might have on you.”

“Four to one, by my count. Not odds in your favor.” Daine scratched the back of his neck, using the opportunity to make a few swift gestures to his companions with the tips of his fingers.

“Things are rarely what they seem.” A crossbow bolt flew from the trees and struck the ground near Daine’s feet.

“True,” Daine said, but he was already in motion, charging at the highwayman, drawing his sword and dagger as he ran.

From the corner of his eye, Daine saw Pierce raise his enormous longbow and send two blue-feathered arrows back along the path of the crossbow bolt. There was a cry from the woods and the sound of a man falling from the trees.

Two men and a woman, all three dressed in tattered leathers and armed with hatchets, burst out of the woods to Daine’s left. He slowed his charge long enough to be sure the others had them.

Lei was waiting for them. She hurled a small stone in their direction. It burst with a blinding flare of golden radiance. As the bandits threw up their hands to shield their eyes, Pierce was already loosing more arrows. Within seconds, all three lay stretched out on the ground.

Morgalan met Daine’s charge head-on. With a furious cry and a blow of his cudgel, he knocked Daine’s blade from his
hand. But the sword was the lesser threat. Daine’s dagger was Cannith-forged from adamantine and could slice through steel with ease. Daine ducked beneath the bandit’s next blow, and with one swift stroke he cut the cudgel in two, leaving Morgalan with a bare stump of wood.

Dropping the ruined remnant of his club and stepping back, the bandit made an intricate gesture with his left hand while muttering words in a language Daine had never heard. Daine felt the touch of enchantment, and for a moment it was difficult to focus.

Morgalan … Morgalan … why were they fighting, after all? Surely this was a misunderstanding. His friend Morgalan needed his help, needed his assistance against these three brutes …

Daine had dealt with sorcerers before, and Saerath had occasionally tried a charm when he’d been ordered to dig latrines. Gritting his teeth, Daine shook his way free of the intrusive thoughts and drove his dagger into the shoulder of the bandit.

Morgalan gasped and the mystical pressure faded. Daine grabbed the man by his neck with his free hand, yanked the dagger free, and threw Morgalan into the mud. He leaned down, his foot on the bandit’s neck and his blade at his throat.

“Listen to me, Brelander,” he growled. “I’ve been fighting your kind for six years. Every instinct I’ve got says I should slit your throat and leave you bleeding in the dirt.” He struck the pale man across the face with the pommel of his dagger, slamming his face into the mud. “But the war’s over, and I am a stranger in your land. Don’t give me a reason to start fighting again.”

Daine stood up, deliberately cutting Morgalan’s purse from his belt. He tossed the leather pouch to Lei and picked up his fallen sword. Across the way, Jode was tending to the wounds of the bandits Pierce had feathered, while the warforged kept the injured ruffians covered with his massive bow.

“Leave them be, Jode,” Daine called. “We’ve got other business in this ‘lovely land.’”

There was little conversation following the attack, and they eventually joined the stream of travelers on the Old Road to Sharn. Jode rode on Pierce’s shoulders, singing an occasional song in the liquid tongue of his distant homeland. Daine brought up the rear, watching Jode and wondering. After all the years they’d spent together, the many battles they’d been through, Jode was still an enigma to him. The halfling had come from the distant Talenta Plains, a barren land said to be home to huge lizards. The glittering dragonmark of Healing was spread across his bald head as plain as day, but Jode had never acknowledged any ties to House Jorasco, and he did not wear the signet ring of a dragonmark heir. He was always ready with a cheerful story or a song, but his own past was a mystery. Daine had never pushed him. He had pain enough in his own past, and if Jode had secrets, it wasn’t Daine’s place to steal them.

Midday the clouds cleared, and there it lay before them—Sharn, the City of Towers. Even at this distance, the towers stretched up to the sky—dozens of shining spires, each bristling with minarets and turrets. The Old Road passed through flat farmlands, and over the course of the day it seemed less as if they were moving and more as if the towers themselves were growing, rising up higher and higher with every passing hour. Slowly details emerged. Daine noticed that a few of the smaller towers seemed to be floating in the air, unconnected to the main columns. Tiny dots moved to and fro—boats and other vessels darting through the air. As the sun sank beneath the horizon, the lights of the city became visible, twinkling like stars.

“House Cannith lit the city, you know,” Lei said. “Casalon d’Cannith perfected cold fire almost seven hundred years ago. The impact on Galifar was truly remarkable. In many ways it set the stage for—”

“I thought the elves developed cold fire thousands of years ago,” Daine said.

Lei scowled. “Yes, well … Cannith brought it to Khorvaire.”

Daine smiled, though Lei did not see it. The elves of Aerenal had been working with magic for more than three times the length of recorded human history, and Daine had once met an Aerenal ambassador who was over seven hundred years old. It was only natural that elven skills would exceed those of the younger race, but it was one of the only ways to derail Lei’s effusive monologues about the virtues of her house.

“How do they keep the towers from falling?” asked Pierce.

It was as much as he had said in the last week. The warforged warrior, never talkative in the best of times, had become positively taciturn in recent months. Daine was hardly surprised; Pierce had been built to defend Cyre, and now the country was destroyed, the war over. What purpose did Pierce serve in this broken world? So far he’d continued to follow Daine’s orders. But how long would this loyalty last?

“There are places in the world where arcane energies behave in an unusual manner,” Lei said. “Many sages believe that this is the result of other worlds touching this one. So a place touched by Dolurrh is filled with despair, while Lamannia causes vegetation to bloom. Along these cliffs, spells of air and flight are empowered. The enchantments that support these towers could not be performed in most places. The city itself is drawn to the sky. You’ll see flying boats and similar things—all the result of the magic of this place.”

“So if they’re all supported by magic … what happens should the spells unravel?” Daine’s mind flashed back to the stormship tumbling from the sky after Saerath disrupted its bindings.

“Well … actually, I believe that towers have fallen in the past. During the war. Presumed sabotage, though it was never proven.”

“And I imagine your beloved lives in one of the highest towers?”

“Yes.” Daine didn’t turn to look, but he could hear the frown in her voice.

“Wonderful.”

As the sun slipped below the cliffs, the Old Road came to the tower called Tavick’s Landing, then ran beneath a vast bronze statue of Queen Wroann ir’Wyrnarn, her sword raised in defiance of the laws of Galifar. Black-cloaked guards manned a dozen separate gates, listening to the tales of merchants, travelers, and peasants. The traditions of a century of war were still in effect, and no one entered Sharn without passing the Guardians of the Gate.

The gate to which Daine and his companions came was manned by a burly dwarf whose beard resembled a patch of black thorns. “You don’t look like you’re from these parts,” he growled. He studied Pierce and then fixed on Daine’s rank insignia. “Mourners, are you? Serves you right, you ask me.” He nodded up toward the statue of Wroann, the queen whose rebellion had started the Last War. “Stand against Breland, and see what it gets you.”

Jode stepped forward before Daine could speak. “I see that little escapes your keen eyes, sergeant. I take it you’ve encountered Mourners before, hmm?”

The dwarf studied him carefully. Jode’s dragonmark was spread across the top of his head—and a dragonmark usually meant power and wealth.

“That’s right. High Walls is lousy with ’em. Used to be where they kept traitors. Some would say it still is.”

Again, Jode interjected before Daine could speak. “Well, it’s a simple mistake to make, but ours is no simple tale, sir. Yes, Lord Daine wears the dress of a Cyran soldier, but there is far more here than meets the eye. Allow me to introduce the Lady Lei, heir to the Mark of Making.”

Lei curtsied and extended her hand, revealing her Cannith signet ring. The dwarf examined the ring closely.

“Lady Lei is betrothed to Lord Hadran d’Cannith, whose name I certainly hope you recognize. As any child could tell you, House Cannith had its seat of power in the confines of Cyre, and after the disaster, Lord Hadran wished to ensure the safety of his beloved. Thus he hired the three of us—Lord Daine, a master swordsman trained by the Blademark of House Deneith; Pierce, a stalwart warforged warrior handcrafted by
my lady’s parents to ensure the safety of their only daughter; and myself, Jode d’Jorasco, a healer without equal.”

Minutes passed as Jode wove his tale, describing the great dangers the trio had faced in their hunt for the lost Cannith heir. The dwarf stood spellbound as Jode recounted the battle with the warped warforged and the living darkness. A blackcloaked woman wearing the badge of a captain came over and rapped him on the side of the head, snapping him out of the daze. “Horas! Process this lot and move on! You’re holding up the line!”

The dwarf blinked and shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “Uh, yes … yes. Sorry. Just … make a mark here on the ledger and you can be on your way. I trust you’re not bringing dangerous materials into the city? Pyrotechnics, dragon’s blood, dreamlily?”

“I do have three warforged in my pack,” Lei said. “Is that a problem?” Jode sighed.

“In your … May I see them, please, Lady d’Cannith?”

Lei took off her pack and unfolded the funnel-shaped cloth cone at the top. “Pierce, do you mind?”

A murmur ran through the waiting crowd as the massive warforged warrior crawled into the tiny backpack. A moment later he emerged, dragging the battered body of a small warforged scout.

“All three are inert,” Lei explained. “I haven’t had time to see if they can be restored, but we found them during our travels, and I wanted to return them to the house.”

“I … see.” Clearly Cannith heirs transporting damaged warforged were not a part of this guard’s daily routine. “You … you can go about your business, my lady. Enjoy your visit to Sharn.”