Someone had carved away at the rock with a chisel, smooth, beautiful work that didn’t match the style of the city. Curious, I looked at the rest of the scene. A long story had been carved down the street, filled with figures engaged in combat. Eight people, four men and four women, gathered around a glowing crystal that threw off rays of light. Another eight figures, the same figures, followed, but each one was holding a symbol: a skull, a coin, a sword, cloth, an orb, a wheel, a stream, a leaf, and a star. I stepped farther down the street and traced out more patterns: the eight figures fighting monsters with the heads of bulls or hands like talons, creatures with serpent tails instead of legs and tentacles instead of arms. Then another scene, where just one of the eight, the one with the star symbol, left the battle escorted by a ninth person. Another ring of eight people followed, each one carrying a crystal, this time with the star-symbol man at their center. The ninth man was there too, only he held a sword. The next image showed the ninth man plunging that sword through the man with the star symbol.
The next scene … I swallowed as I traced it. The man with the star symbol was gone, nothing left of him but a silhouette carved into the stone, a negative outline with angry chiseled lines radiating out. No sign of the nine men and women who had been there, just nine undulating shapes, each crawling away in a different direction. There were eight shattered pieces of crystal, and a single, twisted sword. After that, images of people dying, demons everywhere, fire raining down from the skies.
This wasn’t a story with a happy ending.
“Who carved these?” I asked, touching the images. I looked around. It wasn’t chance I’d found these scenes, because they were replayed on every stone surface along the thoroughfare. Again and again, as if generations had spent their energy recording a single, horrible event.
The boom of drums echoed through the city.
“I’ve heard the morgage who live in the Blight view this city as sacred,” Tyentso said. “You need to hide, and you need to do it right now.”
I heard footsteps, approaching fast.
I flattened myself against the wall and began repeating my invocation of invisibility. A second later, a dozen male morgage warriors jogged down the avenue. They were giant men, easily the largest I had ever seen, and their inhuman nature was evident. Their skin was a mottle of yellow, brown, and black, and their noses ended in tendrils above each nostril. These fell down the sides of their mouths in a way that—from a distance—might be mistaken for mustaches. Their eyes were quicksilver without iris or sclera. And, of course, they had the famous spikes on their lower arms. Poisonous spikes, as Roarin back at the Shattered Veil had taken great joy in demonstrating back in the day. Not all half-breeds had them. He’d been so proud.
These weren’t half-breeds though. They were full-blooded morgage, the same warriors who had terrorized the dominion of Khorvesh. Quur only became the military power the world fears today due to the urgent need to put them down.
The morgage are the only force who still regularly invades Quur.
They trotted down the street, heads swinging from side to side as they looked around.
They were hunting.
I was confident they wouldn’t be able to see me, but then those nose tentacles twitched. They stopped. The tentacles twitched again.
One of them bent over near the spot where I had vomited up my breakfast.
“Run,” Tyentso whispered to me.
I swallowed and stayed where I was. “If I run,” I thought back, “they’ll find me for sure.”
There was commotion, talking. None of it was in a language I understood, but the quality of their voices sounded like something Khaemezra might call family.
“Then I suggest prayer, Scamp,” Tyentso said.
I’d heard worse ideas. Taja might even answer. I kept my spell playing in the back of my mind but I didn’t know if I had to pray out loud for it to work. Would Taja hear my thoughts? I wasn’t sure. I thought about her, and rescue, as hard as I could without breaking the spell.
Nothing happened.
Another figure strode down the main street. The warriors scattered to make room. This figure was smaller, dressed in a yellow robe decorated with tiger stripes. One of the warriors called out and pointed to the mess I’d left on the streets.
“Laaka,” Tyentso whispered. “That’s a woman.”
“Yeah?” I didn’t understand. Yes, it was a woman. I couldn’t see what she looked like under the robe, but from the scale I could assume either a woman or a child. “So?”
I felt her exasperation. “Have you ever seen a morgage female before? Ever? I knew a professor back at the Academy who was convinced the morgage have no women and reproduced through some sort of asexual budding. Given how the morgage seem to hate our women, I thought they must keep their own prisoners, locked away somewhere.”
“She’s not a prisoner. She’s giving orders.”
Indeed, while Tyentso spoke, the newcomer flipped back the hood of her robe. Underneath was a morgage woman, probably of middle years. She had the same eyes, the same tentacle nose as her brethren, but her skin was black. That is, except for a stripe of silver scales that ran down one side of her face. It began at hair that wasn’t the iridescent ribbons I’d seen on the goddess Thaena, but sharp spikes. The men bowed their heads to her in respect, while one of them gestured, clearly indicating they wanted her help finding the trespasser.
I slipped my vision past the First Veil. “Ty, she’s a sorceress.”
“Oh, of course she is. We need a distraction,” she said.
As if on cue, a dragon flew overhead.
The morgage reaction was immediate. They were not happy to have that sort of visitor, for which I couldn’t blame them: I wasn’t thrilled myself. My first thought was disbelief that the Old Man had followed us so quickly. Then I realized that this dragon was the wrong color—a rainbow of metallic shimmer overlaying white, as if someone had spilled oil on top of marble.
Not the Old Man.
The morgage shouted, pointed, and began running, clearly intending to organize a defense.
“Now!” Tyentso yelled in my head.
I ran.
I heard shouts behind me immediately. I didn’t think they could see me, but sound or smell or some other quality gave me away. I pulled a dagger out of my belt as I dashed, slashing back behind me as I heard footsteps slamming down in chase. I dodged to the side as one of the morgage came crashing through the space where I’d been a second before. I slashed across again, this time making contact along his back as he passed. He roared. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’d done much more than confirm my presence and make him mad. I certainly hadn’t slowed him down.
“If you feel like helping, be my guest!”
Tyentso snapped, “Are you going to freak out on me this time?”
“No!” I hope not …
Easily five more morgage were in pursuit. I shuddered as Tyentso took over my body again. In some ways, she made the situation worse. In any event, I stopped being invisible. The morgage screamed in triumph as they saw a target. The Stone of Shackles around my neck turned to ice.
Tyentso chanted something long and unpronounceable, but I felt my mind shift as she cast her spell, felt what she did. It was a more effective magic lesson in under two seconds than I’d ever had before in my entire life.
The closest morgage fell back with his hand to his neck, eyes bulging, and gasping for air. Tyentso had pulled all the moisture from his lungs, and without that lubricant, his air passages were sticking to each other, closing—effectively giving him an asthma attack. One of his fellows stopped to help him while the others advanced toward us, if more cautiously.
Then I felt an agony of fire pierce through my leg. One of the morgage had thrown a spear right through my right thigh, pinning me to the ground. My own momentum pulled against the wound before I could stop myself, making it worse. There was blood everywhere, all of it mine.