mules and horses that were prevalent along the main road. With the end of the rain the mist began to dissipate, and Kestrel became aware for the first time of the full view of the ring of mountains that came virtually to the edge of the water and the town. They were imposing, tall mountains. They looked stony, with cliffs and steep rock slide areas interspersed among the evergreen trees. They were the Water Mountains, a large, impenetrable chain of mountains that separated the lands of the North Sea from the lands of the Inland Seas. They were the home to yetis and gnomes and miners and outlaws, an area as unknown to the elves of the Eastern Forest as the lands of the humans.
Kestrel continued to walk along the side of the road, and soon passed the house of the doxies again, but drew no sales pitch as he walked modestly along on his own feet instead of an expensive horse. Looking down side streets he saw similar establishments too, he now realized.
As he passed by one large, nondescript building, there was a loud and sustained roar of delight from inside, and several men came flowing out of the wide double doors, happy and flourishing cash in their hands. Curious, Kestrel turned towards the building and started to enter, only to be stopped at the door by a pair of bulky men. “No weapons allowed,” one of the men told him.
“What’s in there?” Kestrel asked.
The two men grinned at each other.
“Dreams,” one said. “Hope,” the other said.
“Suckers,” they both laughed.
“It’s gambling!” said the first who had spoken to him. “Did you just arrive in town fresh from your mother’s apron?”
“I’ve never been around it, I guess,” Kestrel answered, abashed.
“Well, if you leave your weapons here, we’ll let you in. Then you can probably leave your money here too,” the guard grinned at Kestrel’s naivete.
“
He turned his head to look around, but saw no one.
“Are you going in? If so, put your weapons in the locker; if not, move out of the way,” the second guard spoke to Kestrel.
Unnerved, Kestrel stepped over to the row of open lockers, and placed his weapons within one of the empty ones. “Goddess, was that you?” he asked silently, but there was no answer.
Cautiously, Kestrel entered the doors of the gambling hall. “Save some money for breakfast, tomorrow,” one of the guards advised as he passed them.
The hall was much larger than he would have guessed from the outside, as it seemed to stretch for a city block or more. It was dim and noisy and smelled of alcohol. Men, and a few women, stood or sat around various tables, focusing on the activities before them. Some laughed and talked, but most were silent, and a few looked desperate or anguished.
Were these people the ones the goddess wanted Kestrel to save, he wondered. There was no evidence that they needed his help, but the goddess had sent him in. He walked around the room, occasionally looking at the tables, trying to understand the games, failing to see the appeal. By the time he reached the far end of the game room he had concluded that there was no obvious need for his help for anyone in the building. Yet he knew the goddess would not have spoken without reason, if he really had heard her voice.
He stood against the wall, and watched as a door opened, and a pair of workers began to limp across the room, carrying a large platter of food to serve to the customers. Kestrel idly examined the tray, wondering what kind of food was eaten in the hall, when his attention was dramatically drawn to the limping workers who carried the trays — they were elves!
The two men were elves, each wore chains between their legs, and each was missing most of a foot. They looked thin, haggard, and scarred extensively — scars on their faces, their arms, their shoulders and backs that were visible through rents in their clothes. He recollected Silvan’s bleak report that elves in the battle against the human fire-starters had been captured and turned into slaves. Here were two of them, somehow transported all the way from the western border of the forest to this lawless corner of Estone.
Kestrel blanched at the thought. He understood now — the voice he had heard had been the elven goddess Kere, not the human Kai. She was an elven goddess, commanding him to set these elven slaves free. He needed to find a way to do it, and then he could transport them back to Firheng and return them to their own people, to freedom and their families, away from captivity. He could even give them a dose of healing water to fix the injured feet and the scarred bodies they had suffered.
Carefully, Kestrel began to walk towards the elves, to study them closely, to possibly talk to them, to figure out how best to set them free. He was only steps along his route when a man stepped in his way, blocking his access to the slaves.
“I’m sorry, that food is reserved for our paying customers, the ones who are in the gambling hall to gamble,” the man said forthrightly. “We don’t serve food to people who just stand against the wall.”
Kestrel was taken by surprise; he hadn’t realized he was under observation.
“This is all new to me, and I want to take it in before I try anything,” he told the gambling hall manager. “I won’t eat any of your food. I just want to watch and think for a while.”
“That’s fine,” the manager said, “for a while. But sooner or later, if you don’t plan to do any gambling, we’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“Understood,” Kestrel acknowledged, and he turned away from the manager and the food. He went to stand beside a table of gamblers who were on the path the slaves would have to take to return to their entry door, where he planned to wait for their empty-handed return.
“Are you going to play?” a man asked Kestrel.
“What?” Kestrel was taken by surprise. He looked at the man, standing at the table, holding a cup in his hands. There were others at the table watching too.
“If you’re going to stand at the table, you need to put your money down,” the gambler said. “I’m getting ready to toss, and I’m hot! Put some money down on me,” he nodded to the table below, an intricate checkerboard of colors, shapes and numbers.
Embarrassed, Kestrel reached for his purse. He didn’t have a lot of money with him, but he’d spent nothing so far. Other than the caps on his staff, he had no other planned expenditures. He pulled out the first unseen coin his fingers grasped in his purse, and looked at the numerous small piles of coins atop squares on the left side of the table. In bewilderment he placed his coin on an empty square next to the others.
“An optimist, eh?” the man with the cup in his hand commented. He shook the cup, his hands holding the open end closed, then flung his hand away as he threw its contents down on the table.
Kestrel looked up to see that the slaves were hobbling around, distributing food from their platter to a pair of tables on the other side of the hall. He looked back down, and saw that there were five small wooden cubes on the table.
“You lucky son of a doxy!” the cupholder shouted to Kestrel. “You got the purple!”
Kestrel felt someone pound his back in congratulations, and a tall stack of coins was pushed towards him. He examined the cubes on the table again, and saw that all five had a purple surface facing upward.
“Here,” the cupholder pressed the leather container towards him, as the others at the table stared at Kestrel with smiles. “You’re so lucky, you throw the squares!”
“I don’t really know the rules,” Kestrel protested.
“You don’t have to know anything; you just have to be lucky!” the only woman at the table screeched at him as her partner draped his arm possessively over her shoulder.
“What do I do?” Kestrel asked as the other man released the leather cup, leaving it in Kestrel’s possession.
“Pick up the squares, pick your bet, let everyone else pick their bet, then throw them,” the former explained.
Kestrel looked at the silent man who wore a vest, the one who had pushed the coins towards him. The man nodded discretely, and Kestrel reached for the wooden cubes. He glanced over at the working slaves, who seemed to still be occupied with their duties, then took a pair of coins from his pile and put them on two different squares.
