A subtle reminder that I would know who he was and would perhaps speak of him to his queen. He had not sheathed his weapon and he did not look daunted by my request. “I am General Rapskal, leader of the Kelsingra Militia. Gather your things. I will take you to my rulers.”
I glanced back at the dragon and his keeper. The Elderling said something to him and then hastened away. The dragon apparently decided we were not interesting. He turned and lumbered off in a different direction. In the distance, I heard a crow caw.
And so we loaded up with our heavy packs once more. I saw no sign of the butterfly cloak and what it concealed, and I took care not to look for it. I had heard Spark speak when we arrived; perhaps that meant she was not in too poor a condition. Realizing one makeshift pack seemed to be missing, I gave a quick glance round, hoping it was under the cloak and not lost to the Skill-passage. Ah, well: Its absence allowed me to be mostly unencumbered and properly aristocratic as we were marched through Kelsingra.
It was a strange experience for me. I raised my Skill-walls and still the city spoke to me of a sunny winter day from its youth. A huddle of human merchants hastened past me, traders from some far city perhaps. They stayed close together and walked swiftly, glancing all about them as they passed us. A youth with a heavy line of scales on his brow and lizard-like wattles along his jaw swept the walkway outside a shop where meat hung on hooks over smoky fires. A girl with a basket on her arm passed us at a trot. Interspersed among these mundane forms, the ghosts of Elderlings strode and laughed and haggled with one another. I wondered if it was my Skill that made them seem so real. A sudden fistfight broke out between two of them and I instinctively moved away from it. “So. You can see them,” Rapskal observed. He did not slow for the ancient altercation, and I did not reply to him.
I wondered how Lant and Per perceived it, and wondered even more if the city whispered to the human guardsmen who walked ahead of, beside, and behind us. With a waft of smell and wind, a green-and-silver dragon passed over us, climbing steadily into the sky. I caught not his thoughts exactly, but his intent. He went to the hunt and for one peculiar moment I longed to hunt with him.
The day was cold and the wind off the unseen river had that wet bite to it that cuts through a man. General Rapskal did not slow his pace for weary travelers with heavy loads. Even so, I had time to notice that the city was sparsely populated. Some streets seemed to have inhabited structures, and the next would show signs of long desertion and disrepair. From my journey on the Skill-road, I knew that anything wrought from Skill-worked stone retained its shape and purpose far longer than any ordinary work of man. The wind might carry debris and scatter dust on the wide streets, but no errant seed had found a crack to take root in, no straggling vine struggled to tear down even the quake-cracked walls. This city had recalled for deserted generations that it was a city, and as if to mock its paltry number of inhabitants it seemed to better remember its distant past as a center of Elderling culture. I took note of all I saw and contrasted it with what Chade and King Dutiful believed of Kelsingra. Unless we were on the edges of a much more populous center, Kelsingra and the Dragon Traders were presenting a far more prosperous face to the world than they truly could muster.
As I had surmised, we were walked to the base of the map-tower and then up those wide steps. The central stairs had been scaled for a dragon’s stride, as were the tall doors at the top. I dreaded such a climb, but they took us to the human-scaled steps to one side. There, at least, folk were coming and going, some in robes as gaudy as the Fool’s tent and the general’s garb, and some in more prosaic leather and wool. A carpenter passed us, followed by his journeyman and three apprentices, all laden with their tools. I took in the grand art that graced the walls and then General Rapskal and his guards were escorting us into a vast and echoing space.