But there had been other things to occupy and educate her mind. The passage through the Straits of Nsin was as mysterious and fogbound as ever, and Tessa was entranced by the towering white cliffs on the southern side of the Straits where the great Guns of Kell still loomed as a reminder of the power of the past. The lights of the Voluspa Beacon, just off the coast of the philosopher’s city, guided them safely into open waters, where they sailed by their charts and instruments until the coastline of the Isle of Gnarra was cited. Tessa very much wanted to see the port of Cybele and the population of necromancers, which she had heard lived there. Varian was amused. She had spoken of Cybele as if wizards and sorcerers teemed in the streets like rats in a tavern alley.
There had also been a brief encounter with a Behistar raider—a small, but fast, frigate which tested the strength of The Courtesan’s cannon. It had been the last engagement for the small black ship.
And now they were putting into port at Ques’ryad. Almost twice the size of any other port on the Aridard, Ques’ryad was a sprawling center of trade, adventure, and cultural exchange. The harbor was filled with ships of every port, flags of every nation cracking in the stiff sea breeze, the docks aswarm with men and exotic cargoes from every corner of the World. Dried meats from the Shudrapur, pelts and furs from trappers north of the Scorpinnian Empire, diamonds from the mines of Kahisma, tapestries and pottery from Asir, musical instruments from Sanda, ironwood from the Kirchou forests, glass sculptures from the Slagland. The riches of the World flowed and swirled like water about the wharves and piers, loaded and unloaded, changed from one ship to the next. Ques’ryad was the nexus, the interchange where all things and all men seemed to eventually converge.
That evening, their first in the port city, Tessa was enthralled with the idea of exploring the town. Varian accompanied her through the winding streets, down the long boulevards, and through the vast parks and gardens. They were surrounded by the spires and obelisks of the city. Temples and museums, monuments and other edifices of great age loomed everywhere. The air was filled with the languages of men of every color and size and belief, almost crackling with the smells of roasted nuts and meats, of flowers, and liquors.
As the midnight hour approached, even Varian felt fatigued, and he begged Tessa the opportunity to visit a tavern for a soft chair and a warming mug of coffee and rum. She smiled and agreed as Varian immediately headed for a favorite roosting place in among the smaller streets, off the beaten pathways of the principal boulevards and commercial routes. On the intersect of two smaller, twisting streets, crowded with shops, was an inn called The White Donzell; it was adorned with a large swinging sign with a painted fresco of one of the beautiful horned creatures beneath the letters.
Inside, there was a large open area where long oak tables had been arranged in orderly rows. The walls were yellowing brick trimmed in brown beams and covered with tapestries and paintings from every country and every age. There was a fine patina of dust and tar from the billowing clouds of burning bac which covered everything, imparting a mellow, lived-in aroma to the place. The floor was covered with sawdust so thick that it was like moss in a shaded forest. There was music—a small ensemble of stringed instruments in a loft above—and, of course, a long bar where three barkeeps were kept eternally busy by hundreds of men and women drinking, laughing, smoking, living.
Varian and Tessa entered, dressed in inconspicuous clothing which tagged them as merchant seamen. No one took more than token interest in their entrance, and they walked uninterrupted to a table next to a large crowd of people who were listening with rapt attention to the tales of a large, loud man dressed in a cloak of silver-gray fur.
“This is a beautiful place!” said Tessa. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Varian looked at her. She was bubbling over with wonder and love—love of, the magic in the world. She was like a child, and he was beginning to like her very much for it.
They spoke of their day in Ques’ryad, occasionally having to half-yell their words over the music, the explosive laughter and banter of the crowd at the next table. It was not long before Varian found himself paying more attention to the rough, slightly high-pitched voice of the old man in the fur than to Tessa and her continuous exclamations about the city.
Rather than be rude, Varian tried to draw her into his sphere of interest. “Look at that fellow,” he said, pointing to the man.
“He is quite a character, isn’t he?” said Tessa, laughing.
The man sat at the far end of the table, wearing his fur cape like a royal cloak. He was surrounded by a semicircle of ardent listeners and it did seam that he was holding a kind of narrator’s court with them. His face was tough and baked by the sun like the wrinkled surface of an almond. His hair the same silver-gray color as his animal-pelt cloak, and his eyes were a fiery blue that seemed to belong to a man much younger than his obvious years. He had a large hawkish nose, bent and beaked and probably broken more than once, above a large full mouth which was unobscured by a carefully trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. He was loud, but he spoke with careful emphasis on just the right words so that he kept the attention of his audience always on the edge. He had the knack of the storyteller and he reveled in it.
By the man’s side was a much smaller and younger man, who listened with rapt attention to everything the old fellow said. Occasionally, the old man would nudge him or
