The guard nodded sagely and stood aside of the entranceway, but he gave me a suspicious look as we stepped forward. “Come through, and bring your companions,” he said to Veronica, then he glared hard at me. “Just remember that we tolerate no thieving in this town.”
I bristled, and nearly talked back to the guard, but Veronica nudged me sharply.
“Your clothes,” she hissed. I glanced down at myself. Ah. That was why the guard had looked askance at me. My farmer’s tunic and trousers were much the worse for wear. If I’d approached on my own, I probably wouldn’t have got in at all, but Amelia and Veronica were both dressed well, and I was clearly with them. I chuckled to myself as I realized the guard probably thought I was their servant or even their slave!
That would give Jacques a laugh if we managed to find him. The thought of my old friend made me smile to myself, and my frustration at the guard vanished.
As we passed under the entrance, I looked up at the bones sticking down like sharp teeth. The giant skull of something that looked like a gigantic buck hung from the wall, its antlers filling the blank area above the gates. I shuddered slightly.
“How have they managed to kill so many monsters?” I asked as we passed out of hearing of the guard.
“This area has relied on the trade in Beast Cores and monster parts for many years. What you’re seeing here is the result of generations of work.”
“Slave work, I guess?”
She nodded grimly.
We walked down a wide, paved road toward the center of the town. On either side were a mixture of huts and tents, all crammed together and crowded up against the walls of larger buildings.
The tents were made of bones and skins. Some of the skins had horns or spines sticking out from them. The colors were often bright, some a scarlet or yellow like a canary bird. Their garish quality reminded me of what one might see on poisonous reptiles or spiders. Others were bright blue or purple, the sort of color birds might use to attract a mate. Others were black, the deep sort of black that sucked in all light, and repelled my eyes, as if the tent were a hole in the earth, leading to some other realm.
The bones supporting the tents were long femurs, sharp tusks, sometimes huge vertebrae. The huts were made of bone as well. Long straight bones from forearms or legs had been planed to fit together smoothly, joined by what I assumed was mortar, but could well be some sort of product mixed from bone marrow, or monster intestines. Hairy, scaly, or spiney hides were stretched over these frames to make the walls and roofs.
The buildings were like nothing I’d ever seen, however. The variety of furs, skins, and bones I saw in use here was enough to make me think we’d seen only a tiny fraction of the monsters in the world. Over the last two days, we’d only seen three types of monsters: bears, boars, and a lightning drake. Judging by what we saw here, there must have been hundreds of different types of monsters in the surrounding mountains.
“In years gone by,” Veronica said, “the numbers of monsters around Brightwater were much lower.”
“More monsters have appeared of late?” Amelia asked, and I was reminded of the quest she’d received from the Librarians.
“Yes,” Veronica replied, “but it isn’t just the strange happenings around the mines that have caused their numbers to increase recently. Some time ago, this land was inhabited by brave folk who could handle the monster population quite well.”
“But that’s changed in recent years?”
“Sadly so. Back when there were fewer monsters, it was easier to kill even higher-level ones. But the folk have also changed. They have begun to rely more on hunting in the mines, rather than in the wild, and they became less tough and hardy.”
I looked around. The few people I could see looked normal enough, though they were dressed in rough skins and furs rather than linens or cured leather. Nobody was looking at us; I guessed that outlandish-looking travelers were not uncommon in this trading town.
Veronica continued. “That’s not to say the current inhabitants lack courage; they just spend too much time searching for it at the bottom of a barrel. They’ve been forced to hire some mercenaries to cull their numbers. Mercenaries like me.”
“You never did explain how a Mage like yourself came to be a mercenary. . .” Amelia said.
Come to think of it, I was also interested in Veronica’s answer.
But instead of answering the question, Veronica turned and started to make her way further down the road. I looked at Amelia and shrugged, and together we followed Veronica.
The road we were walking on opened out onto a wide square in the middle of the town. The square was surrounded in a ring by taller and wider houses than those we’d passed previously. These appeared to be shops, with living quarters on the upper floors. They had signs on the fronts, advertising a smithy here, a jeweler there, and various other types of crafters and merchants. To our right was a tall building with a high wooden steeple rising from it.
Directly across from us was a building twice as high as the others, with a sign displaying a handful of coins.
“I assume that building is for trading?” I asked.
“That’s right,” said Veronica. “That’s where I’ll be taking my Beast Cores later to trade in for currency. It’s also where all the records of major transactions in the town are kept. It’s the closest thing they have to any kind of royal oversight in this town. They submit nominal tribute and taxes to the royal officials whenever one of them bothers to show up here, and they keep a suite of official rooms for when Arcanists from Astros decide to visit.”
“I wonder why the royal officials don’t come more
