Taking Flight

Kelder nodded, turning his whole attention back to Irith. The whole thing made sense, so far, except for one little detail.

“That was more than two hundred years ago, though,” he said. “They must have sold it all off long ago!”

“Well, of course they did, silly!” Irith agreed. “But they bought other stuff, or made it, and they’re all still buying and selling. And since this was the biggest cache of magical supplies in the entire World for so long, it’s still where magicians come to buy and sell, a lot of the time. Not just magicians, either. And the people here make things, too — they make glass here better than anywhere else, better even than Ethshar of the Sands. There are miners who bring in jewels from the desert to sell here, too. Let’s see...” She paused to think.

Kelder waited.

“Well, glass,” she said, “I said that. And sorcerers’ stuff, and supplies for wizards except you can get most of those in Ethshar just as well now, and medicines, I think — some of them — and perfumes, they make wonderful perfumes here, and there are dyes — all kinds of stuff.” She shrugged. “It used to be nicer, actually. Business has dropped off a lot since I first came here.”

“They must be expensive,” Kelder said. “I mean, it’s a long way to come, all the way out here.” He remembered another unexplained detail, and asked, “So where did all the buyers come from, anyway? We didn’t see anywhere near this many people on the way...”

“It’s the off season,” Irith said. “It’s much more crowded than this sometimes!”

Kelder looked about at what must have been several hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people.

“A lot of people don’t come by the highway,” Irith continued. “The wizards fly, or use some other kind of magic to get here. People from all over the eastern Small Kingdoms come overland to Dhwerra and get the highway from there, and they would all have gotten here hours ago, so we wouldn’t have seen them on the road. And there are other ways, magical ways, I think — I’ve heard stories about tunnels under the desert.”

“Oh,” Kelder said. “But what do they all eat? Where do they stay?”

“Oh, there are places to stay,” Irith said. “Inns for the customers, tenements for the natives. And they get their food by magic, mostly.”

While this discussion had been taking place, Asha had rather blearily wandered over toward a nearby merchant’s stall.

“Oooh!” she exclaimed, distracting Kelder and Irith. “Look!”

The two looked.

Asha had lifted the velvet cover from a glass sculpture of a dragon; the creature sparkled vivid gold in the yellow lamp-light. Its jaws were open in silent rage, crystal fangs glittering; it stood crouching on three taloned feet, the fourth raised to strike, claws outstretched. Its tail wound gracefully to a needle-sharp point, and its wings, like sheets of ice, swept up and back, ready to bear it instantly aloft.

Kelder found himself drawn to it.

Irith looked, but called, “It’s getting late, and I’m really hungry; can we get some dinner now? And find somewhere to sleep?”

Kelder and Asha stared at the glass dragon.

“Kelder?” Irith called. “Come on, let’s get something to eat!”

Kelder reluctantly tore himself away. “Did you see this thing, Irith?” he called.

She shrugged. “Not that one,” she said, “but I’ve seen others. I’ve been here before, Kelder, lots of times. You can make lots of nice things out of glass.”

“Nice things” seemed a rather inadequate description, to Kelder — he thought the dragon was quite spectacular. He didn’t argue, though.

He did hesitate.

“It will still be there after we eat,” Irith pointed out, and Kelder tore himself away.

“Come on, Asha,” he called. “Let’s get dinner.”

The little girl hesitated, as Kelder had. He reached out and took her hand and led her away.

Following Irith’s lead they headed out of the square to the northwest, pushing their way through the wall of traders under the first ring of columns.

Once they had pierced that veil, Kelder suddenly saw what Irith had meant about the off season and a decline in business.

The arcades and merchants’ stalls still continued as far as Kelder could make out, but now he could see that many of them were empty. Some of the merchants who were there were sitting alone and ignored, without a patron in sight.

And many of them did not look at all prosperous; Kelder could see men and women who were dirty and unkempt and tired. Some were slouched against pillars, or curled up on the ground asleep, not even pretending to look for customers any more. All this had been hidden by the crowd in the central square.

It struck him as odd that so many people should be clustered there, rather than spread more evenly throughout the market; he said as much to Irith.

She shrugged. “Well, the galleries around the square are where those new caravans are — probably a lot of the people doing the buying are really the merchants from these other places.” She waved a hand at the largely- vacant inner arcades.

“I didn’t see the...” Kelder began, and then he stopped.

He had been about to say that the caravan they had followed should be there somewhere, if new caravans were what attracted customers, but before he could finish the sentence he spotted something.

Far off to the right, to the northeast of the market, he could see a face impossibly high up, almost brushing against the stone arch overhead, torchlight from below lighting it unpleasantly. And it was only a face, with no body below.

He blinked, and realized that he was looking at a head on a pike — a fairly fresh head. That presumably meant that the caravan they wanted was right there; in fact, the head he was looking at might well be Abden’s. Asha’s brother.

He chewed on his lower lip for a second or two, considering.

His stomach growled, deciding him; he wouldn’t point the caravan out just yet. Being Asha’s champion could wait a little.

“You didn’t see what?” Irith asked.

“Nothing,” he lied. “Do you know someplace good to get something to eat?”

“Of course,” she said. “This way.”

She pointed ahead, down a colonnade lined with crates and barrels. A table a few paces away displayed tall green bottles — wine, Kelder assumed. At least some of the barrels were presumably full of spirits, as well — this particular arcade would seem to specialize in strong drink. He glanced down at Asha, remembering what she had said about her father.

She was staring ahead rather fixedly, not at the bottles or barrels, but at a man who lay sprawled against a pillar.

Kelder grimaced, and looked ahead.

That first drunk was not the last; others were sitting or lying here and there along the arcade. In fact, there were about as many drunks as there were vintners.

Annoyed, Kelder wondered why the merchants didn’t shoo these sorry specimens away. He quickly reconsidered, however, when he realized that there were no sober customers in sight — why should the sellers chase away the only people who were actually buying, at the moment?

He sighed. The World was not the pleasant place he would have wished for, had he been offered the job of creating it.

“Come on,” Irith said, taking his hand.

Asha had been holding the other hand, so Kelder found himself being dragged along as the central link in a three-part chain. Irith pulled vigorously — she must be very hungry indeed, he thought. Asha was too tired to move as quickly as Irith wanted, and was slowed further by shying away from an old man who lay mumbling in their path. She whimpered.