Alex Irvine - The seal of Karga Kul

“It couldn’t have come any other way,” Biri-Daar said.

Shouts sounded from ahead of them, and the clash of steel. They ran as best they could over the slippery rocks, coming into a large flattened chamber just as a thrown spear deflected from high on the wall to their right. Remy saw Kithri dodging and feinting between two hobgoblins, their axes striking pieces of the rocks away in showers of sparks. He closed on one of them and ran it through as it raised its axe for another stroke. The axe flew from its hands and struck him on the shoulder, numbing his sword arm. He cried out and the other hobgoblin lunged toward him-then slipped and skidded as Kithri deftly slashed the tendons at the back of its knee. As it hit the ground, she was on it, cutting its throat.

“Where’s Lucan?” Biri-Daar called. Remy worked his sword from the dead hobgoblin with his left hand and hefted it. He wondered how well he would be able to fight. Waves of pain radiated from the point of his shoulder.

“Gone sinister?” Keverel asked, coming up next to him.

Remy didn’t understand the word, but he tapped the sword hilt against his right arm. “I can’t feel it,” he said, although already sensation was returning to his fingers. “But I think I’m all right.”

“Good thing. There might be more ahead.”

Quickly they looked through the room, finding nothing but three other dead hobgoblins. The others had gone ahead in pursuit of Lucan. Remy and Keverel followed, and a short distance ahead found the rest of the party gathered around yet another dead hobgoblin. “A commander,” Biri-Daar said as they approached. “See the brands on its cheek.”

In the dim light Remy could see what looked like simple runes on the dead hobgoblin’s skin, the pale scar standing out against the bristly hair that covered most of the creature’s cheeks and jaw. “I hate to say it, but Zegur might be right,” Iriani said. “If there’s a commander down here, one of the local warlords is planning something.”

Feeling was returning to Remy’s arm, and a bone-deep ache settled into his shoulder where the head of the axe had struck. He worked his fingers to get the blood moving and limber up the arm again. He thought he’d be able to use it if more of the hobgoblins appeared. In another half-hour, they emerged in a slot canyon in the wastes. Once a river had flowed there, but its sole remnant was a ribbon of sand on the canyon floor, churned by the booted feet of hobgoblins and their beasts and littered by their garbage.

“Now we know,” Lucan said after they had looked around to make sure they weren’t walking into yet another ambush. “Who’s going to report back to our charming host, Zegur?”

“I’ll go,” Kithri said. “It wasn’t so bad after all.”

They climbed out of the canyon and got their bearings. Crow Fork Market was away to the southwest. “We are not far from the road to the Bridge of Iban Ja,” Biri-Daar said. “Remy and I will go toward the road. Everyone else return to Crow Fork Market quickly. Report to Zegur, but do not wait; if he will not see you right away, give the report to one of his secretaries. Gather the horses and supplies. Meet us before sundown.”

“At least we won’t have to hurry,” Lucan grumbled.

“Come on, Lucan,” Keverel said after a brief whispered consultation with Biri-Daar. “We have spent enough time as it is, and time is dear.”

Leaving Biri-Daar and Remy, the rest of the party wound their way back down into the canyon and disappeared into the caves. “Let us walk,” Biri-Daar said to Remy. “They will be back sooner than we think. The road is this way.”

They walked west through the wastes, almost immediately drawing the attention of carrion birds that drafted in sweeping arcs above them. “You would think they knew something,” Remy said.

“Carrion-eaters are forever optimistic,” Biri-Daar said. “And why not? Creatures are always dying.”

After that they walked in silence until they reached the road. It cut north and south, as straight as its makers could lay the stones. Remy and Biri-Daar found shade and sat where they could see the road and any approaching traveler could see them. After a while, Remy gave voice to the question that had been rattling around in his head since the canyon. “Why did you want me to stay?”

“You have a decision to make,” Biri-Daar said. “And I imagined you would want to ask another few questions before making it.”

“Here’s my first question: You could have refused Zegur, but you didn’t. Why not?”

“Because despite his base motives, what he said was true. I could not leave Crow Fork without putting right what problems our presence had caused.”

“Even though it delayed your…” Remy thought about how to continue. “What is it you’re doing in Karga Kul, anyway?”

“Saving the city from being overrun by demons.” Biri-Daar spoke matter-of-factly.

“Demons?” Remy repeated. “Then why are we worried about hobgoblins?”

“Bahamut demands much of his followers,” Biri-Daar said. “My pledge to him, and to the Knights of Kul, is not conditional. Crow Fork Market in its way is as important as any of the cities and settlements in the Dragondown. Each of them is a pocket of light striving against the darkness that pervades this world. I would be abandoning my oaths and all that I believe if I did not do my part to ensure its survival.”

She saw the look on his face and smiled-an unsettling expression on a dragonborn. “That might be too abstract. Put another way, how do you know the demons and hobgoblins aren’t working together? Remember the demon’s eye, and the imps we killed in the stable. Everything is connected here, Remy. And you are connected to it as well, because of what you carry.”

“What do you think it is?”

Biri-Daar shrugged. “I have no idea. But if demons are after it, I would very much like to know, and I do not think it would be wise to let it-or you-wander off into the wastes. That is why I think it’s important that you come to Karga Kul and let the Mage Trust examine it. When the rest of our party arrives, you must make your final decision. I will say no more about it.”

She was true to her word, not speaking for the next two hours. Remy turned every possibility over in his mind, weighing his obligation against everything he had seen and learned since leaving Avankil. He was being hunted. Now he believed that. The sun tracked across the sky, and Biri-Daar silently offered him a drink of water. Remy thought of the Dragondown, the marvels that might await him if he went to Karga Kul-and the wrath of the vizier, who would certainly kill him if he did not go to Toradan.

Unless the vizier had been trying to kill him all along.

I could just leave the box in the sand, he thought at one point. Bury it, or throw it into a canyon. Let someone else find it. Let the hobgoblins have it.

But Biri-Daar’s resolute devotion to her code gave him pause. Could he really do that, not knowing what the box contained?

In the end, when the four riding figures appeared in the distance leading two other horses, Remy realized that he knew two things. One was that Philomen had put his life in danger. The other was that Biri-Daar and the rest of them had saved it.

“North or south?” Biri-Daar asked him when they had met the rest of the party and all six of them were in the saddle and waiting on the road.

Remy took a deep breath. “North,” he said.

They rode north on a road sometimes covered by sweeping drifts of sand. Remy looked over his shoulder, riding second to last with only Keverel behind him. The road seemed endless in both directions, and he felt as if he was leaving behind something of his former self the farther he rode into the unknown reaches of the Dragondown Coast. The world was his to take.