Alex Irvine - The seal of Karga Kul

“Yes,” Biri-Daar said. She was trailing a hand in the water to soothe the burns from Gouvou’s flame.

“He spoke of Orcus. Was that bravado, or true?”

“True. Orcus puts his touch on all of the death knights. And every lich as well. The Road-builder and his retinue were given over to the Demon Prince as well. I fear,” Biri-Daar said quietly, as if she meant only Remy to hear, “that we have not seen the last of his actions yet.”

“Philomen is the Demon Prince’s man.”

It was not a question exactly, and when Biri-Daar answered she was expanding on what Remy said. “If you can call him a man,” she said. “He may have become something else.”

In the few minutes of their conversing, the canyon walls had grown lower. “It is one year, almost to the day, since I have seen Karga Kul,” Biri-Daar said. “These riverbanks lower, and the city grows closer. At the moment when the left bank begins to rise, and the right bank grows still flatter-that is the moment when you may look to the horizon and see the towers of Karga Kul. From there they look as if they hang over the waters of the river; but that is only an illusion. As you draw closer, you see first that they are on the left bank, and then, as you come farther down the river, they disappear for miles. Only in the last few bends, as you near the landing below the bluffs, do the towers reappear again. It is a trick of perspective, of the rise and fall of mountains. But it breeds stories.”

This was the longest Remy had ever heard Biri-Daar talk. She was coming home, coming to the end of her quest. And she was bringing him, with his demon-tainted chisel and his uncertain history… I have much to atone for, Remy thought. If not in the true situation of things, then certainly in the eyes of those who have endangered their lives to save mine.

Yet he was not the only one on the boat with something to prove, something to atone for, something to settle and make right. Biri-Daar had her own ghosts. “What did Gouvou mean about legacy?” Remy asked.

As soon as he had said it, Remy realized that it had come across as a match thrown into a hayloft. He lifted a hand and started to add something else, but he never got the chance. “Oh, I think he was clear about that,” came Lucan’s voice. Everyone looked around in surprise that the elf had survived the night and awoken coherent-save Keverel, who shocked Remy by shooting him a look of pure anger. Remy hadn’t seen the cleric that furious in any of their encounters with the minions of Orcus. “I just meant,” Remy began, but he didn’t get to finish.

“Yes, he was,” Biri-Daar said, picking up from where Lucan had left off. Looking at the contours of scale and color on her face, Remy realized that he had learned to read the expressions of dragonborn on this journey-one more thing he had never expected to know, or thought could be known, or thought about at all. “He did not tell us anything that we did not know already. Since the battle at Iban Ja’s bridge, Bahamut and Tiamat have been at war for the souls of the Order of the Knights of Kul. Ever since, in each generation, some of the Knights of Kul have been corrupted. And we no longer know who to trust.”

Vokoun’s boat beached with a crunch of sand against its keel and a last rush of water swirling around its bow. They looked across the river, where the main docks of the city bustled with larger ships in from the Gulf. Caravans of mules and camels carried cargoes up the switchbacking road that led to the city’s main gate, far above and out of sight. Other merchants, willing to pay the outrageous fees to avoid that road, loaded their wares straight into a cave. “From there,” Biri-Daar explained, “everything goes up, carried by tamed beasts. Those were once caves. Now they have been carved and worked into a dozen levels of basements and dungeons.”

“The Seal is in there?” Remy asked. “Seems too easy to get to.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen what’s inside,” Obek said.

“The militias of Karga Kul make very sure that nothing goes in through that cave except what has been bought, paid for, taxed, approved, licensed, and inspected,” Paelias said. “Or so I am told. A cousin of mine is a merchant of Feywild herbs. He rages entertainingly about the rules of this city and the Mage Trust.”

“And there are magical entrapments throughout,” Obek added. “Any invader will find the first caves coming down on his head the minute the Mage Trust snaps its fingers.”

What a spectacle it was, Remy thought. The Whitefall, running slow and nearly a mile wide, pouring into the waters of the Gulf to their right. To their left, the canyons that channeled it, all the way upstream beyond the landing and up into the high lakes country where Vokoun and his people came from. Across the river, the zigzag road on the face of the cliffs, rearing high above the water.

And above it all, the towers of Karga Kul.

They came to the front gate via the switchbacking road, which they climbed on foot, sandwiched between a brace of donkeys and a long string of angry camels. It was late in the afternoon before they reached the top of the canyon.

Flanked by forbidding watchtowers, the main gate of Karga Kul stood open. At the foot of its walls sprouted a semipermanent shantytown of itinerant merchants, tinkers, actors, and supplicants to the Mage Trust or one of the city’s other authorities. “The unlucky ones who can’t gain entry,” Keverel said to Remy. “This is why Obek needed to come in with us.” As they approached, some of the shanty dwellers came toward them bearing promises of fabulous wealth, forbidden pleasures, occult knowledge… they focused on Biri-Daar, recognizing her as one of the Knights of Kul.

“Noble paladin! I have lost my letter from the Emperor of Saak-Opole and the Mage Trust will not see me unless I am sponsored!”

Biri-Daar reached out a gauntleted hand to fend off the shouting, gray-headed madman. “There is no emperor in Saak-Opole, is there?” she asked Obek.

He chuckled. “Not these last five hundred years.”

Closer to the gate, traffic was divided into commercial goods and individual entries. Biri-Daar held the blazon of the Knights of Kul high in the air and a functionary at the gate saw it. He waved them forward. “Number in your party.”

“Six.”

The functionary counted. “Number of the six who are citizens of Karga Kul.”

“Two.” Biri-Daar pointed at Keverel and then herself.

“Errand.”

“A report from Biri-Daar of the Knights of Kul to the Mage Trust.”

The functionary looked up at her. He was a stout and soft man, accustomed to a life of quill pens and couches. His sense of professional ethics, Remy could see, was nagging at him. Doubtless he was not supposed to let just anyone in to see the Mage Trust. But, he was likely reasoning, even if he did let them in and they went to the trust, there were further and more formidable barriers. That was the excuse he needed.

“Biri-Daar of the Knights of Kul, you and your friends are welcome here,” the functionary said without a hint of warmth. He wrote on a sheet of heavy paper and handed the paper to Biri-Daar. “As I’m sure you are aware, your entry paper must be with you at all times during your stay.”

“Thank you,” Biri-Daar said, matching the functionary’s tone. Then they were through the gate, the functionary already saying again behind them, “Number in your party…”

The first thing Remy noticed about Karga Kul was that it was clean. He had seen cleanliness before, in his mother’s house and in sections of street and square in Avankil. There, money bought cleanliness and the threat of violence kept it. Here, in Karga Kul, he watched tradesmen pack up their storefront tables at the end of the day and pick up every last scrap of leather or wrapping canvas, every gnawed chicken bone or apple core that the day’s business had deposited in front of them. He had never seen anything like it, and the question that he had eventually found its way to his mouth.