Douglas Niles - Lord of the Rose

The street was bustling with foot traffic-mostly human, though a few dwarves were swaggering about, and a whole gaggle of kender were playing some kind of game in an empty lot between two storefronts. There were only a few riders, all of them knights, visible above the heads of the pedestrians. Here and there a freight wagon or oxcart nudged through the crowd.

A hundred paces from the gate the two riders came to a large livery stable, and here they turned into the yard. They arranged to have their horses fed and tended-a steel piece for each animal insured care for the next seven days. They rummaged through their saddlebags to remove a few items. They left bedrolls, cooking gear, and heavy clothing behind, but took their coinpurses, a spare cloak for each, and a selection of weapons.

The long-bladed knives they wore at their belts. Reluctantly Dram wrapped his battle-axe in a bedroll and left it with his saddlebag. The warrior took his long sword and wrapped the whole thing, scabbard to hilt, in a blanket. He lashed the bundle to his back as inconspicuously as possible. He wouldn’t be able to sit down without unstrapping the sword, but it would serve. His twin crossbows he fastened again to his belt, relying on the long drape of his cape to conceal the contraband weapons.

“We’d better not run into any knights,” said Dram, as they emerged onto the sunny street again.

“Won’t encounter too many of ’em in the gnome ghetto. Here, this way.”

The swordsman led his dwarven companion along a winding series of side streets, avoiding the main avenues and, surprisingly enough, making better time than they would have on the more crowded main streets. The gnome ghetto was located in the lower quarter of Caergoth, where the ancient city clung to the banks of the Garnet River. The streets were unpaved there, and recent rains had turned them into a morass of slick mud, deep ruts, and overflowing gutters. The human warrior said they should seek lodging near the squalid gnome neighborhood but not within, and Dram was more than content to go along with this plan.

“The places around the square or below the fortress will be all packed to the rafters with knights,” the man explained.

“We won’t be here very long, will we?” Dram asked hopefully.

The warrior smiled sardonically. “Are we ever any place for very long? C’mon, let’s go find this Brillissander Firesplasher.”

“What if Cornellus was telling the truth, and Firesplasher is dead?”

“Fine by me, but then I’d like to find out exactly how he died.”

An ashen haze blanketed the horizon as the sun dropped behind the city wall, casting not so much distinct shadows as a spreading murk that seemed to darken under the eaves of the great buildings, and to shroud the narrow alleys and walkways between the wooden buildings that made up the greater part of the city.

Even along the main avenue there remained evidence of war. The Dark Knights had taken the city during the War of Souls, and the Solamnics had recaptured it several months later. The edifice of a great marble building, which the man knew had been the meeting hall of the city’s neophyte parliament in decades past, was gashed and cracked by dragon breath. Several huge columns lay where they had toppled, and weeds sprouted through cracks in the wide steps.

In the lower part of town, they passed a whole block that had burned to ashes during the battle. The blackened shells of several large inns and houses remained like gravestones, jutting from a dark expanse of crumbled stone, charred timber, and debris.

But most of the city was thriving.

They finally secured rooms at a bustling travelers’ inn close to the waterfront. The landlord charged exorbitant prices but pledged easy access to the duke’s palace, the great marketplace, the silver and stoneworkers’ districts, even the riverside stockyards that-the proprietor was quick to point out-were generally downwind of the inn, and may all the gods curse the unseasonal breeze that was currently filling the city air with the odiferous perfume of those vast, muddy corrals!

“Keep in mind, Honored Travelers,” finished the fellow, a rat-faced little man who leaned uncomfortably close to them and spewed bad breath as he talked. “If there be anything else ye be wishing for, such as entertainment of the female persuasion, ye just be letting me know.” He winked at Dram. “We can even fix ye up with a little dwarf-maid, if that be yer natural preference.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dram allowed, turning and hastening after the warrior, who was already crossing the crowded common room. They took the stairs to their rented room and found it to be reasonably private, with a shutter over the single window in a small parlor, which adjoined two windowless bedrooms.

After taking turns in a hot bath, the travelers shared a meal of beef stew and crusty bread. The human washed his down with a bottle of vinegar-tinged wine, while Dram drank three large bottles of ale. Finally, the pair lit the lantern in the parlor and laid the shard of marble on the sturdy, rough-hewn table.

The letters, BRILLISS, were clearly inscribed in one corner of the shard, and the stone had been broken in such a way as to suggest that the word had continued on the missing surface.

“Brillissander Firesplasher. That’s the name Cornellus gave us,” the swordsman said.

“Yep. That was it. Should we get started looking for him?”

“Don’t see that we have any other option.”

“We could wait until morning,” Dram said wearily.

His companion shook his head. “If we head out in an hour or two, we’ll stand a better chance of a lot of the gnomes being asleep. I prefer to take my gnomes-and my kender and gully dwarves, for that matter-by surprise, whenever possible.”

The dwarf took a small lantern along as they departed the inn, and this proved wise, as the few burning streetlights in this part of Caergoth were confined to the wide avenues around the palace and treasury. As soon as they started down the narrow lanes leading toward the riverbank they found themselves surrounded by darkness.

Dram touched a match to his lamp and held it so that they could avoid the overturned barrels, sleeping drunks-human, invariably-and other refuse that seemed to be scattered haphazardly in the muddy, winding way. They passed an inn that was raucous with the sounds of fiddle music and loud conversation. The doors burst open and a big man staggered out. He glared at the two, his eyes small and bloodshot in the midst of a flowing black beard and a mass of dark hair. With a belligerent sneer he raised his fists until, a moment later, his eyes glassed over and he collapsed, facedown, on the ground.

“Nice place,” muttered the dwarf, carefully stepping around the fellow. “Let’s keep it in mind for a drink afterward.”

The dwarf’s companion wasn’t listening. Instead, he was trying to remember his way around this part of the city.

“Down here,” he decided at the next intersection. For two blocks they walked close to the battered facades of two-story wooden houses, on streets that were slippery with mud and worse.

The road began to change. The mud became clean, white stones. The wetness vanished through grates. Several buildings here were made of stone, with rows of windows reaching three or four stories. Some doorways were tall enough for a man, but many were barely four feet high, with eaves hanging so low that the tall warrior would have to duck his head just to stand next to the house.

“If this is a ghetto, I like it better than the neighborhood we’re staying in,” the dwarf said sourly.

Lanterns bobbed here and there as individuals, mostly gnomes, bustled back and forth along the well-kept road. The warrior stepped in front of one of the lantern-carrying gnomes, a youngish-looking male with a short beard and a distracted expression. He was busy talking to himself, an earnest discussion in which he sounded as if he was trying very vigorously to press his point of view.