Great buildings of rose or white stone, tarnished by age and curtained in debris, had lost none of their beauty. What immediately captured Hadrian’s attention was how tall they were. Pillars and arches soared hundreds of feet in the air, supporting marvelously decorated entablatures and pediments. Great domes of burnished bronze and stone-crowned buildings with diameters in excess of a hundred feet were far larger than anything he had ever seen before. Colonnades supporting a row of arches ran for hundreds of yards as mere decoration, standing out before load-bearing walls. Statues of unknown men were exquisitely sculpted such that they might move at any minute. They adorned silent fountains, pedestals, and building facades.
The grandeur of the city was stunning, as was its rattled state. Each building, each pillar, each stone appeared to have dropped from some great height. Blocks of stone lay askew and shifted out of place. Some teetered beyond imagination, loose, twisted, and misaligned so that it looked as if the weight of a sparrow would topple a structure of a thousand tons. The devastation was not even or predictable. Some buildings missed whole walls. Most no longer had roofs, while others revealed the shift of only a few stones. Despite the disarray, other aspects of the city were astonishingly preserved. A seller’s market stood untouched; brooms remained standing, stacked on display. A pot stall exhibited several perfect clay urns, their brilliant ceramic glazes of red and yellow dimmed only by a coat of fine dust. On the left side of the street, in front of a disheveled four-story residence, lay three skeletons, their clothes still on them but rotted nearly to dust.
“What happened to this place?” Gaunt asked.
“No one knows exactly,” Myron replied, “although there have been many theories. Theodor Brindle asserted that it was the wrath of Maribor for the murder of his blood. Deco Amos the Stout found evidence that it was destroyed by the Cenzar, in particular the wizard Esrahaddon. Professor Edmund Hall, whose trail we are on, believed it was a natural catastrophe. After crossing the salty sea and seeing the state of the city, he concluded in his journal that the ancient city sat upon a cavern of salt, which was dissolved with a sudden influx of water, thus causing the city above to collapse. There are several other more dubious explanations, such as demons, and even one rumor concerning the bitterness of dwarves and how they pulled it down out of spite.”
“Bah!” Magnus scoffed. “Humans always blame dwarves. A baby goes missing and it was a dwarf that stole it. A princess runs off with a second son of a king and it was a dwarf who lured her to a deep prison. And when they find her with the prince—lo, she was rescued!”
“A king is stabbed in the back in his own chapel, and a princess’s tower is turned into a death trap,” Royce called back to them. “Friends are betrayed and trapped in a prison—yes, I can see your surprise. Where do they get such ideas?”
“Damn his elven ears,” Magnus said.
“What?” Gaunt asked, shocked. “Royce is an elf?”
“No, he’s not,” Alric said. He looked back over his shoulder. “Is he?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Arista replied.
“Royce?”
The bobbing light halted. “I don’t see how this is the time or place for discussing my lineage.”
“Gaunt brought it up. I was just asking. You don’t look elven.”
“That’s because I am a mir. I’m only part elven, and since I never met my parents, I can’t tell you any more than that.”
“You’re part elven?” Myron said. “How wonderful for you. I don’t think I’ve ever met an elf. Although I have met you, so perhaps I have met others and don’t know it. Still, it is quite exciting, isn’t it?”
“Is this going to be an issue?” Royce asked the king. “Are you planning on questioning my allegiance?”
“No, no, I wasn’t,” Alric said. “You’ve always been a loyal servant—”
Hadrian started walking forward, wondering if he had returned Royce’s dagger too soon.
“Servant? Loyal?” Royce asked, his voice growing lower and softer.
Never a good sign, Hadrian thought. “Royce, we need to keep moving, right?”
“Absolutely,” he said, staring directly at Alric.
“What did I say?” the king asked after Royce resumed his advance. “I was merely—”
“Stop,” Hadrian told him. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but just stop. He can still hear you and you’ll only make matters worse.”
Alric appeared as if he would speak again, but then scowled and moved on. Arista offered her brother a sympathetic look as she passed him.
They continued in silence, following the light. On occasion Royce whispered for them to wait, and they sat in silence, tense and worried. Hadrian kept his hands on the pommels of his swords, watching and listening. Then Royce would return and off they would go once more.