M. Mathias: Through the Wildwood

Orphas told him, through the lode crystals that crowned the staves all wizards of the Royal Order possessed, that Aldine was the most likely to be truthful. Orphas had also conveyed his suspicions on Coll’s influence and the possibility of his being a servant of the dark. After carefully observing Coll and casting a few subtle spells of revealing, Quazar had confirmed his colleague’s suspicion. Coll was a Darkean. He had little in the way of power, but was as ambitious and evil-hearted as any Quazar had ever come across.

Duke Martin was under the influence of something greater than Coll, though. The two of them had been speaking of the Blood Stone’s power and how to obtain it before the commander had come into the room. The coldness of the way the two men had spoken, and the utter lack of compassion for the lives of those who serve them in their dark bidding, had held Quazar to the peephole. Quazar could tell that Coll was trying to use the duke’s ripe emotion, the shame of his wife’s escapades, to tempt him further down the path of pain and hate. The imminent death of his daughter, and the collapse of his plan to worm his way into the high nobility by marrying off Gallarael, had him seething to regain control of the world around him. What Coll couldn’t see was that there was already a deep emptiness in the duke’s heart. Duke Martin had crossed the point of no return long, long ago. Quazar considered that it might actually be Coll who was being led, not the other way around.

“… can’t believe he so rudely fell asleep like that,” Coll commented softly as he and the duke exited the sitting room.

“The dungeon is available for us to visit, is it not?” the duke asked the guard assigned to him. The man nodded with no change of expression that Quazar could see. “Good. I think I need a word or two with that thieving whore.”

Quazar fidgeted as Commander Aldine’s shadow guard peeked into the room. When the door to the sitting room finally closed, the wizard let out a sigh of relief. With a flourish of his hand and a spoken word, he disappeared from the cubby behind the wall and reappeared in the sitting room. He wasted no time starting what needed to be done. He just feared it was being done too late to save the commander from death.

They rolled through another gate, this one set into a wall so hidden by the structures built off of its face that it was barely discernible for what it was. The farmsteads and dirt-packed roads had become more frequent and gave way to stable yards, inns, and eventually a shabby, cobbled mercantile district. The glowing windows of the one- and two-story dwellings cast beams of steady yellow lantern light, making it hard for Vanx to see into the shadows. But it didn’t matter. This was where the poor and less fortunate lived, those who toiled for what little coin they had. The hawkers sold plums and apples that Vanx knew were on the verge of rotting. The tavern sold ale so watered that it barely had a scent at all, and the whores, he was certain, were dirty and pocked with sores.

Just as Vanx expected, the world on the other side of the city gate wasn’t much different. People wore plain, roughspun garments just like the farmhands and plowmen at the city’s fringes. But there were others wearing imitation finery, the stuff the wealthier classes expected their servants to wear. Sweat-stained doublets belted over ill-fitting hose. Gowns with hems that were tattered and frayed. There was an occasional well-dressed merchant or land owner conversing with the more respectable whores on lamp-lit corners.

The buildings here were more closely packed. The streets were cobbled and clean and nearly closed in overhead by the jutting balconies on the third and fourth levels.

A well-lit balcony full of lace-pressed cleavage and multi-colored locks held women who giggled and called down to the guardsmen of the escort. Vanx saw that their faces were painted gaudily. These were the whores who didn’t walk the street. A few of the men called back promises, some in lewd detail, of what they would do later when they were free of duty. The other people on the streets averted their eyes and ignored the group as they passed. Their reaction, or lack of it, caused Vanx to wonder if carts full of people in chains were a common sight here.

The road wound around a bend and the old Dyntalla Stronghold rose up before them. The dwellings and the spaces between them became wrought-iron fences with evenly spaced lantern-topped brick posts, probably the homes of minor nobility and the wealthier of the area’s families.

The mercantile district here was free of hawkers. Uniformed men were posted so that one was always within sight. The fineries worn here were not imitation. The tavern rooms boasted minstrels and dancing, and by the smells and sounds spilling forth from their doors, they were serving more wine than ale.

The stronghold itself loomed up before them, looking like so many of Parydon’s castles, all blocky and square at the lower levels, but surrounded by steeply pitched tile roofs and copper-sheeted tower peaks. It wasn’t gloriously illuminated like the palaces Vanx had seen on the Isle of Parydon, but then again this wasn’t another castle down the lane competing for vanity among its rivals. In Dyntalla, there was only one castle, and its iron-bound gates cranked open loudly for them like some hungry, mechanical maw.

The smell of the ocean was strong. The sea breeze was rushing steadily inland. Even as they were taken down into the dungeon, the scent of brine found Vanx’s nose.

Vanx ate ravenously from a dirty wooden platter full of cheese and stale bread. He washed it down with tepid, but clean, water. After that, his chains were removed and he was led to a plain stone room barely four paces long and half as wide. A torch held in the jailor’s hand revealed a semi-clean floor with a dark, dry stain in the middle of it that might have been old blood. Then the door banged closed and a latch was set. The torchlight was reduced to two beams: one that spread through a head-high peep hole, the other a thin, wide, plank-like beam just below waist level.

“Two bells after,” the jailor grumbled. “Rest until then.”

Vanx hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but slumber found him as soon as he settled against the wall. It was a sound, dreamless sleep. Then he was rudely awakened by the loud rasping of his door’s lock being slammed open.

The same torch-bearing man came into the cell.

“Follow me,” the man grunted a chuckle before turning and stalking off.

Vanx was relieved to see Quazar standing with both Darbon and Matty at a rough-hewn archway. They began to descend down a wide, well-worn stairwell that took them, to Vanx’s best estimate, about fifty feet below the level of the streets. They stopped at a landing.

The torch-bearing dungeon guard left them and went back up the stairs. Quazar cast a bright white orb into existence. As they hurried to follow the wizard down a wide tunnel, Vanx wondered how much farther down those stairs went. Neither the torchlight nor the wizard’s bright orb was able to penetrate the depths. The tunnel they were traversing twisted and turned its way through the rock into which it had been hewn. Occasionally, brackish water puddled on the floor for them to splash through. White streaks of salt and mineral deposits marked where seawater trickled in through the crevices. Vanx had the unnerving feeling that they were moving under the sea. He didn’t like the thought and fought to keep his worry at bay. Luckily his concern disappeared when Quazar led them into an open cavern.