Dennis McKiernan: City of Jade

“Of course.”

Binkton stepped ’round the tree to see the Pysk and fox. “How did you know it was-?”

“Vex told me.”

“Ah. . yes.”

“Where’s Pipper?”

Binkton waved off to the right. “The other side of the path. Somewhere yon.”

“I’ll find him.-Or, rather, Vex will,” said Lissa.

“To tell him what?” asked Binkton. “For that matter, why are you here instead of out there?” He gestured upslope toward the hills.

“I came back to say the way ahead is clear. No one lurks in the col, though there be Troll scat and other Ruptish dung and filth. The stench is quite strong, especially to Vex. And the city lies a bit beyond.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Not in the city. Just to within sight of it. Vex seems uneasy, but just why she cannot tell me. Whatever it is, it’s not Spaunen.”

“Well, then, if there’s nothing ahead in the way of Rucks and such, is there any need for stealth?”

“Not until you reach the city, and mayhap not even then.”

“What do you intend to do, Liss?”

“Find Pipper and tell him what I told you, then report back to the warband. Where are they, by the bye?”

Binkton gestured behind and growled, “About three hundred bloody paces back along the trace.”

“All right, then. I’ll see Pipper and then report to Aravan.”

“Tell Pip to meet me in the path. We’ll go on ahead to the city.”

Lissa frowned and started to say something, but Binkton said, “We’ll be all right.” And so she and Vex darted off toward the opposite side of the overgrown trail, while Binkton followed more slowly. When he reached the weedy way, he waited.

Some long moments later, Pipper appeared, uphill of where Binkton stood. Binkton trudged up to Pipper, and then together they went east through the dimness under the swaying forest canopy, a swirling wind below, a glum sky high above.

“And Binkton and Pipper?”

“They went on ahead, Captain,” said Lissa. “The trail is clear of Rupt: no ambushes, no squads, or lone assassins. I think it safe, though Vex senses something ominous about the city, yet what it might be she cannot say.”

“Sniff strange smell?” asked Nikolai.

“The fact the city be dead?” asked Wilfard, one of the cargo chiefs.

Lissa frowned and shook her head. “No. It’s more like the time we went ashore at that set of islands ringing ’round the blue hole. Vex just seems uneasy.”

Aravan turned to Brekk. “Remain alert, Armsmaster.”

Brekk grunted an assent.

Aravan then glanced at Aylis.

“My ‹sight› is invoked,” she said, without being asked.

“Then let us catch up to our wandering Waerlinga,” said Aravan.

“Would you have me try to overtake them ere they reach the city, Captain? Vex is quite swift.”

Aravan shook his head. “I deem they have enough caution to be the scouts they fancy themselves to be.”

With Pipper whistling snatches of a merry melody and singing a few words between, he and Binkton strolled out from under the jungle canopy to come to the edge of a forsaken place. Pipper’s tune came to an abrupt stop, and only the groan of the wind broke the stillness.

“Whoa,” said Binkton. “Would you look at that.”

Spread out before them lay the ruins of an abandoned city, with some buildings yet standing while others lay in shambles. Cracked pave made up the streets winding among dwellings and establishments and a temple or two, and all of the structures were made of stones of various hues. Vines twined among the rock and cascaded down the sides of walls, the leaves fluttering in the moaning wind as of green waterfalls tumbling. Here and there trees had taken hold and throughout the long eras had become huge, their massive roots snaking across the streets and diving into the earth, to fracture and tilt the pavement upward, splitting the stone with an inexorable, steadily increasing pressure as the trees had grown.

“Hoy, there,” said Pipper, pointing.

Dwarfing the other structures, in the near distance ahead in what appeared to be the city center stood five towers: a central one hemmed in by four.

“The middle one looks like Lady Aylis’s statuette,” said Binkton.

“Other way about,” said Pipper.

“What now?” asked Binkton.

“It’s the other way about,” said Pipper. “Lady Aylis’s statuette looks like the tower.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“No, Bink, you said it just backwards.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

Bickering, in among the ruins they went, heading for the towers, while dark sky roiled above and the wind keened across stone and over walls and ’round corners, wailing as would a thousand ghosts lost in the cracks of time.

“Jade,” said Brekk. “This stone, all of it is jade.”

Aravan and Aylis, along with Lissa and the warband and sailors, had reached the edge of the ruins.

“The entire city is jade?” asked Lissa, even as she leaned forward and ran a hand along Vex’s neck, trying to soothe the vixen, who yet indicated that they should leave, even though she didn’t know why.

“At least this part of it is,” replied Brekk.

“But not all green,” objected Nikolai.

“Jade comes in many colors,” said Aylis. “Green, yellow, white, grey, black, orange, and even in pale violet.”

Brekk nodded his agreement.

“Speak of green,” said Nikolai, pointing.

“The tower,” breathed Lissa.

“I suspect that’s where we will find Binkton and Pipper,” said Aravan. He looked at Lissa and said, “Take point.”

As the Pysk and reluctant fox trotted ahead, Brekk gestured left and right, and Dwarves moved to flanking positions, and all set out, war hammers, crossbows, bows, or falchions in hand, though Aravan bore a spear.

With the moaning wind whipping his shoulder-length hair about his face, “It has no door,” said Pipper, as he and Binkton finished circling the midmost tower, central to four others close-set in a square, there in the heart of the city plaza.

“No doors, Pip? You noticed, eh?” said Binkton. Then he grinned and added, “Well spotted, bucco.”

Pipper looked up at the smooth, virtually seamless stone. “Wull, then, how does anyone ever get inside?”

“Mayhap they weren’t meant to,” said Binkton.

Pipper stroked his fingers across the pale green, almost translucent surface. “I don’t even think our climbing gear will be of any use.”

“I told you it would just be extra weight,” said Binkton smugly.

Pipper looked at an adjacent tower. “That one has a door.-Say, maybe there’s a secret passage from that to this.”

Binkton sighed and said, “Let’s just wait for-Oh, here comes Liss now.”

“There you are,” said Lissa. “I don’t think the captain is very pleased that you didn’t wait.”

“Oops,” said Pipper, glancing at Binkton.

“Well, that’s all water under the bridge now,” said Binkton. He looked back in the direction Lissa had come. “Where is the captain?”

“He and the others are on their way,” said Lissa, gesturing hindward.

Vex whined.

Lissa petted the fox along the neck. “It’ll be all right, Vex.”

“What’s the matter with her?” asked Pipper.

“As I told you back along the trail,” replied Lissa, “there’s something about the city that seems to bother her.”

“Perhaps she scents something we cannot smell,” said Pipper.

“No, it’s not an odor,” said Lissa. “But something else that she cannot make me understand.”

Pipper looked about as if seeking hidden foes, and Binkton said, “Perhaps it’s this blasted wind, shrieking among the stone as it is. That or the darkness in the middle of the day. I mean, we’re in for a storm, and Vex knows it.”