He stroked the emerald pommel of his resonance blade, scabbard in its sheath and held between his legs. He couldn’t sit with it on the bench. He glanced back at Smiles driving the following wagon and saw the other guard no longer slouched.
“You know how to fight?” Ōbhin asked Miguil.
“Surely you jest,” Miguil said. “I mean, I brawled as a boy, but . . .” He glanced at the sword. “Weren’t you hired for a reason? You killed the bloodfire.”
“We’ll see.”
Ōbhin’s stomach tensed as they neared the gate. Now the carriage seemed to float on a river of humanity, a boat drawn almost as much by the current flowing through the yellow-painted arch of Patient Gate as by the two horses pulling it along. A squad of city guards—wearing tabards of blue and green with the white stag over padded gambesons—stood out front, staves and binders dangling on heavy belts, their eyes hard as they watched the flow of humanity.
All the guards had blue tied to their arms.
The clatter of the carriage echoed as they passed through the thick curtain wall before emerging into the older city. The buildings on the other side, though modest, were made of stout stone and not cheap brick or wood framing wattle and daub. They had a sense of permanence, existing far longer than Ōbhin’s short lifespan. First floors were dominated by shops and businesses, signs out front declaring what goods or services could be found inside. Many upper windows had sheets hanging out to dry or other clothes, well-made linens and leathers.
Rising over the buildings to his left thrust a massive, gray tower. Ōbhin had never been inside Kash’s walls before. Bandits had little need to go farther than the slums. The scale of the spire shocked him. It loomed above, a mighty finger of ash thrust into the sky. He couldn’t look away.
“The Pillar,” Miguil said. “Everyone gapes at it when they first come.”
Ōbhin nodded. “There is no structure that tall in Qoth.”
Miguil swelled. “We have talented architects. It was raised a thousand years or more ago. It used to be the home of the kings of Lothon before the Palace of Lights was built. The Pillar on the Lord’s Isle in the center channel of the Ustern. From the top, they say, you can see all the world spread out. Or, at least, the Arngelsh Isles.”
Ōbhin could almost believe that.
Another tower, shorter but almost as arresting, soon came into view. Seven colors spiraled up it. Red, blue, yellow, green, purple, white, and orange. It looked almost twisted as it glinted in the morning sunlight.
“And that one?” Ōbhin asked. “More of your famed Lothonian architecture?”
“Elohm built the Rainbow Belfry,” Miguil said, something like awe in his voice. “It rises over the Temple of the Seven Colours. They constructed the temple around the tower. No mortar holds the belfry together and the outside is as smooth as glass. You can’t even see the joints between the different blocks of the exterior. It’s not painted, either. Those stones are that color. When Lothil Boat-Breaker brought our people here, they found it.”
“An artifact from before the Shattering?” Ōbhin muttered, remembering the red-stained woods where he’d met Dualayn and Avena. He’d fought Ni’mod in the shade of a spike of ruby thrusting two or three stories out of the forest floor.
“Like I said, Elohm made it,” Miguil said. “It chimes the hour, the entire structure ringing across the city. You can often hear it at the manor house.”
Ōbhin frowned. He did recall hearing a chime from time to time. A deep and distant reverberation humming through the air. “A mechanism?”
“It does it on its own. A miracle created by Elohm. We’ll see it. We’ll pass St. Jettay’s Square that lies before the Temple. It’s where the high refractor will give his homily.”
Artifacts from before the Shattering abounded the world. Every country had their legends, their own beliefs of them. It was said in his homeland that the tip of Purity’s peak, one of the seven volcanoes that ringed Gunya, was a solid Diamond that reflected the truth of any man who reached its summit. Everyone who attempted never returned, save one man. It was said seeing who they truly were, all their lies and self-deceptions stripped away, broke their hearts. Only Qotherin had survived. His reward, knowledge of the gemstones in the mountains, was a way to give wealth to the poor goat herders eking an existence in the Vobreth Mountains.
A growing tide of shouts built as they approached the Rainbow Belfry. The Greens and Whites flooded across a square. Anger quivered in the air. Outrage. Men and a few women were packed into the confines before a majestic building with soaring columns and friezes of religious events. Some of the pilgrims had children riding on shoulders, boys with their own slender armbands or girls with ribbons of green or white entwined in their braids.
The size of the square reminded Ōbhin of the Sands of Truth in Gunya. A vast arena surrounded by walls of dull gray. The Rainbow Belfry thrust out of the heart of the Temple of the Seven Colours. The front of the church faced the crowd, its grand doors, painted all seven hues, sealed shut. Above thrust a balcony overlooking the square. The plaza narrowed like a funnel towards that overlook, the crowd aimed at where the high refractor would speak. On the walls above, members of the city guards, armed with bows, patrolled, a paltry force against the thousands upon thousands packing the square.
“Your king’s policies do not appear popular,” noted Ōbhin.
“It takes much to get High Refractor Joudaroi to denounce the actions
