Chương 149: Mirathra

The caravan ground to a halt at the foot of a squat stone outpost that straddled the road. The Dominion's banner of a golden fist over a crimson field snapped in the wind atop a tall metal pole, and a line of legionaries stood watch at the gatehouse. Cal counted six on the road and another four atop the wall, none of whom looked particularly pleased to be there. Eris dismounted from her wagon and walked forward with a leather satchel pressed against her ribs.

She met a Legion officer in front of the gatehouse, a tall woman with attentive eyes who looked at the satchel before she looked at Eris. The officer flipped through the documents Eris handed her, lips moving silently. She paused on one page. Then another. Eris said something Cal couldn't catch, and the officer managed a tight near-smile. A wax stamp came out. The officer pressed it down, twisted, and lifted it away, signaling for them to move forward.

The caravan groaned back into motion, and Cal walked under a manufactured tunnel for the first time in this life. On the other side of the toll building, the road broadened into a paved artery and the city welcomed them with open arms. For nearly two hours they crawled inward through the outer layers of Mirathra. Cal had been in crowds before. Pushed through packed city blocks on Earth where sidewalks and streetlights imposed a grid-like order on the chaos. This was something else entirely.

Here, the street was a contested channel where wagons, handcarts, and pedestrians vied for every inch. Deadfall on its busiest market day was an easy stroll next to this hodgepodge of movement that flowed without rhyme or reason. Stout dwarves moved in tight clusters, their beards braided into elaborate ropes threaded with metal wires, shoulders set in a way that parted the crowd around them effortlessly. Elves wove through the press without slowing, finding the gaps before they closed.

He saw a green-skinned Mycari with a quiver across her back and a light-skinned elf in dark robes, reminiscent of the Halmi twins. Two children with needle-tipped ears and purple-black skin chased each other through a forest of legs. There were humans of all sizes, colors, and shapes, and a smattering of other races he was unfamiliar with. Christoph leaned down from the bench.

"Look at the building foundations there, Cal. That's Kar'angorin white granite. Quarried and fit by dwarven stonemasons. You can scrape a knife along the seam and it won't catch." The stonework buildings climbed multiple stories on either side of the avenue as unified walls of white and gray, all capped with the city's stunning yellow tile. The architecture repeated in a rigid design, with structures sharing walls and rooflines in a way that spoke of a central plan, despite the sprawl.

It made Deadfall's haphazard timber and woven roots seem utterly improvised by contrast. They passed a road crew working a cracked section of pavement. Six men in identical roughspun tunics swung mattocks in a cadence that was almost musical, breaking out old stone in chunks. Cal caught the glowing magical brand seared directly into the skin of one man's forehead and noticed the other five wore the mark too.

"Void-bound," Christoph said, noticing Cal's look.

"I don't believe you have much of their kind in Deadfall outside of the Dominion's inner walls. An efficient use of labor, truth be told. The empire does not waste a sentenced man on a cell when the streets need mending." Cal said nothing. While he appreciated the idea of criminals being used for labor to pay for their crimes… something about the forced magical coercion still rubbed him the wrong way. The blocks shifted as they pressed deeper.

The cramped tenements with their laundry lines strung between windows gave way to cleaner buildings set back from the street behind low stone walls. The drabber tunics on passersby were replaced by colorfully dyed wools, then by tunics with embroidered cuffs, then by the occasional silken sleeve trailing past as some Gilded merchant or minor functionary swept toward an appointment.

"Hey," Cal said, "why does it feel like things are getting nicer the closer we move to the center?"

"Ha! Because they are, my boy!" Christoph adjusted himself on the bench and looked down.

"Proximity to the gate is the measure of all things in Mirathra, and indeed, in most cities with a rune gate. The Imperator's reach travels through that arch, and so does coin and reputation. The closer your address, the more of that current touches your door." The gate itself had been visible from the moment they cleared the outer wall.

For the entire two-hour crawl inward it had loomed over the rooftops as a colossal column of absence, a vertical wound in the morning sky that no amount of distance seemed to diminish. Cal kept catching himself staring at it, then forcing his eyes back down to the street. Eventually the road began to curve. They were still a long way from the central plaza, but the avenue they followed bent gently around the central axis of the city, and the angle of their approach shifted.

What had been a slab of black finally settled itself into shape. It was an arch. A steep, towering arch of that same light-eating black material, set into a vast rectangular plinth that Cal couldn't see the full extent of through the intervening buildings. He'd read about the material in one of the journals Selara had tucked into her void ring for him.

"The substance is called voidstone, which is a wonderfully evocative name for a material no living scholar can identify, locate, quarry, or reproduce. We know all of three things about it. It drinks light. It cannot be marked, scratched, or broken by any tool or magic yet devised. And it forms the entirety of every rune gate on Veraxus. Beyond that, our collective expertise amounts to a confident shrug. The gates predate any civilization in the recorded history of the world.

They predate the recorded history itself. The Mythren'dir, by all accounts, came nearest to understanding them. One notes with some interest that the Mythren'dir are no longer with us to share their findings. A brief word, then, on our Eternal Emperor's throne. The chair is hewn from the heart of a black dragon, a creature whose flesh happens to share voidstone's light-eating quality to the untrained eye. The court poets would have us believe this is a fated cosmic alignment.

I would suggest it is the architectural equivalent of a man buying a cloak in the same color as a king's and hoping no one notices the difference in construction. Crude, and effective on the credulous. Likely the closest any Caelverax will ever come to the real thing." Cal had appreciated the author's dry contempt, especially as he thought about the kind of bastard the emperor must be to slave-brand his own flesh and blood. He noticed the arch framed something as he continued to travel around it.

From his angle next to the moving wagon, only a sliver showed, but the sliver was wrong. The sky beyond it was the wrong color. He squinted, leaning forward. The morning light over Mirathra was the gold of Aurum and the red edge of Cinder mingling toward highsun. Through the arch, the light was harder and greyer, with jagged shapes rising into the different sky. They were snow-capped mountains that didn't exist anywhere in this forest-cleared hill country.

"Whoa..." Cal muttered.

"That works both ways, right? Would someone standing on the other side see over here?"

"Indeed." Christoph turned to the gate.

"Kar'angor lies on the other end. A dwarven holdfast carved into the spine of the Mor'gorum Range. If those buildings weren't in our way you could see the mountains plain as day from this very road. Furthermore, the gate works on both sides, in both locations, regardless of what end you're on. We're circling to the north, but if you were on the south side of our gate you'd see out of the north end of the dwarven gate. We're currently seeing through the north side of ours, and out of the south end of theirs.

If you were to step through, you'd continue your journey in the direction you were seeing." Cal stared at the sliver of foreign sky. The part of him that had spent a previous life arguing with engineers about server uptime and hardware tolerances kept trying to reject what he was seeing. That is a stable wormhole the size of a skyscraper. The energy required to hold that open should be… I don't even have a unit for what it should be.

He'd read about the gates in Selara's books and knew the lore of how Caelverax I had taken them by force, and yet none of that information had prepared him for the simple act of seeing one. A bird flew through the arch. From his angle, it vanished into the white sky and didn't come back.

"Holy mackerel," he breathed. Corinne, walking beside him, gripped his sleeve without looking away from the gate.

"I know, right? Isn't this fun!" The merchant depot lay another half-hour past the gate's first reveal, tucked into a vast paved yard ringed with warehouses and inspection stations. The noise here had a different character than the street, filled with the bellowing of teamsters calling out cargo and bay numbers. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Eris brought her wagons to rest in a slot along the southern wall, and the entire caravan climbed down at once. Mahina jumped from her bench and went immediately to her lead garron, hands working along its neck. Cal had only a few minutes to himself before Eris and Steinar approached him together. She produced a purse from inside her coat. It was heavier than the one the grateful merchant had pressed on him, the leather sagging visibly under the weight of coin.

"Master Valorn. Your agreed upon payout for the bandit equipment." She held it out two-handed.

"I have added a little bonus on top of that, in light of what you did for everyone on the road. Without your intervention, this caravan would not have reached Mirathra. I would not have reached Mirathra. So, thank you." Cal accepted the purse.

"I was just doing my job."

"Indeed, and that is why I would like to extend an offer of a permanent position. Full salary plus a percentage on cargo value, with a personal stipend negotiated against your continued availability for our seasonal runs. You are worth a considerable investment, yes?" He didn't have to think long.

"I'm honored, Mistress Westbrook. Truly. But I have other obligations in Mirathra that I have to see through first. I can't commit to a route schedule right now."

"I assumed as much." She sighed, smiling.

"I am a businesswoman, not a fool. When and if your obligations resolve themselves, my agent in this city is a man named Vellan Korr, of Korr Logistics. He will know your name."

"Thank you. I'll remember it." She nodded once, satisfied, and stepped back for Steinar.

"Watch yer coin-purse, lad. But more than that, watch yer back. The beasts on the road… ya can see 'em comin'. The ones here wear nicer clothes and are harder to spot." He clapped Cal on the shoulder and walked away. Eris was already three steps behind him, calling orders to a clerk. Cal turned to find Mahina standing right behind him. He hadn't heard her approach. For a dwarf in traveling boots, she was unsettlingly quiet when she wanted to be.

She stared up at him, dark eyes intent and focused in a way she rarely was with people, as she pressed two objects into his hand. A folded letter, sealed with grey wax, and a small metal token stamped on one face. He looked down at the token. The image was a crossed pickaxe and garron pressed into the dark metal. It was the symbol burned into the side of the wooden crates filling the back of her wagon.

"Find Gorthund," she said.

"Huh? Mahina what—" She was already walking back toward her team. He turned the letter over. The script on the front, written in a neat hand, was a series of angular characters he recognized but couldn't read. Dwarven, almost certainly. He tucked both items into his belt pouch with the intent to stow them away more permanently later. What a strange woman. Christoph hailed a carriage from a stand at the depot's eastern boundary: a sleek black two-horse rig with brass fittings and a driver in red.

Cal had to bend low to step into the cabin, and the interior was upholstered in a deep brown cloth that smelled faintly of polishing oil.

"It is perhaps another forty minutes to the inn," Christoph said, settling himself opposite.

"Let us proceed in comfort." The cabin rocked into motion and the city slid past the small window in a stream of stone and color. Corinne stuck her face out of the nearby window between the two men.

"Uncle Christoph, what's that one?" She pointed at a large structure with tall doors sheathed in polished silver.

"It's huge!" Christoph followed her gesture without leaning forward.

"That, my dear, is a branch of the Franklin Exchange. One of the financial behemoths of the empire, where fortunes are made and lost. They handle all major currency conversions—even platinum and jade imperials—and serve as the official marketplace for spirit and essence stones. All of the Dominion's true wealth flows through those doors." She kept up a running commentary after that. Cal half-listened and half-watched the city slide past.

The Original Hearthsong Inn rose on the corner of a broad avenue roughly halfway between the northern boundary of the city and the northside of the gate plaza. Their carriage came to a halt before its front steps. The building was five stories of white stone with grey accents on a foundation of those massive dwarven blocks Christoph had pointed out hours ago. Only here, that layer made up two full stories rather than just the street-level.

The yellow tile roof caught the light of both suns and threw it back, broken only by the chimneys and the gable windows of the upper floors. A broad-shouldered man in dark green livery stood by the main entrance. He glanced from the carriage to the people stepping out, his professional composure giving way to a polite smile of recognition.

"Master Christoph! Welcome home!" He pulled the door open for them with a respectful bow, and they walked into the roar of the common room. Cal had thought the Deadfall inn was busy at peak hours, but this… this was something else. The lunch rush was a maelstrom of plates and conversation and motion, with well over a hundred patrons packed into an interior space that soared three stories above his head. There were galleries on the upper floors lined with more tables and a serving staff hurrying among them.

The bar ran the entire length of one wall, manned by four bartenders working in concert. It smelled just as good as Gareth's inn, though. Corinne released a contented sigh beside him, barely audible over the din." Home." A human woman with iron-streaked brown hair bustling across the common room froze mid-stride. Cal watched her cycle through multiple expressions in under a second as she stared their way, then she thrust the tray she had carried at a passing server and crossed the floor at a near-run.

"Corinne!" Cal could see Gareth in her face the way he could see Gareth in Corinne's. The woman who must be Sashi Hearthsong caught her granddaughter in a hug that lifted Corinne onto her toes.

"My girl, my girl! You're finally here! Why didn't anyone send word you were so close?"

"We wanted to surprise you, Grandmuhmah," Corinne mumbled into her shoulder, laughing weakly.

"Surprise!" They held each other for a long moment, swaying slightly in the middle of the busy floor. A few of the staff glanced over smiling, before they kept moving. Sashi finally drew back and framed Corinne's head between both palms, studying her.

"You've sure grown. Look at you, just, look at you." She glanced past Corinne to Christoph, visibly pulling herself together.

"Christoph. Thank the suns. Everything turned out alright, then?"

"Yes, Sashi. All is well. The issue at Deadfall has been resolved, and this is just a long overdue visit for my adventuresome grandniece."

"Oh good! When I saw you I'd feared the worst, and part of me was afraid she was being rushed away for safety. I'm so glad it's all taken care of. We can always depend on you, Christoph." Sashi turned back to her granddaughter and glanced between her and Cal.

"And who is your friend here?"

"Ah, this is Cal! He's my oldest friend from home and wanted to visit the city with us!"

"Well, a pleasure to meet you, young Cal. Welcome to the Hearthsong Inn."

"A pleasure ma'am," Cal said.

"Thanks for having me."

"Yes, yes. Any friend of Corinne's is a friend of ours." She turned around, looking back through the common room.

"I'll have someone get rooms prepared and we can—""But Grandma!" Corinne caught her grandmother's wrist gently and turned her back around.

"It's the lunch rush, you know? Let me help, and then we can spend some proper time together afterwards." Sashi opened her mouth to argue but quickly closed it, looking around at the floor.

"Bless you, child. Yes. Yes, alright." Corinne was already moving off. She snagged a clean apron from a hook beside the host stand, looped it over her head, and tied the strings in two quick pulls without looking down. Then she turned and caught Cal's arm above the elbow.

"Come on, you. Let's go say hi to Grandpa Borin."

"Cor—""Come on!" Sashi laughed as she fell in beside them with Christoph bringing up the rear, and they proceeded through the kitchen doors into a different kind of chaos. Heat hit Cal first, the humid heat of a working kitchen running at full capacity. Then the noise: the clatter of pans, the metronome chop of knives on boards, the bark of cooks calling orders and the answering shouts of confirmation.

A line of six prep stations ran along the near wall, with four ovens roaring on the far side and an enormous central island holding what looked like an entire small farm's worth of mise en place. A huge Mycari stood at the head of the central island with sleeves rolled to the elbow, his thick arms corded with the muscle of decades of labor. He was as tall as Gareth and broader through the chest, his iron-grey hair cropped close and his beard trimmed in a neat wedge.

He looked up as the doors swung open, eyeing the intrusion, and Cal had an instant to note the annoyed scrutiny before it transformed." RINNY!" The roar shook the pots hanging above the island and caused a brief pause in the workings of the entire operation. Borin Hearthsong dropped the cleaver in his hand and crossed the kitchen quick as a cat. Corinne squeaked, and her grandfather swept her off the floor in a bear-hug that engulfed the young woman.

He spun once, set her down, held her at arm's length, looked her over, then hugged her again for good measure.

"My Rinny. My little Rinny. Why didn't anyone tell me—""Surprise," Corinne wheezed. Borin released her and turned to Christoph. He dropped his voice to something rougher and more private.

"Brother."

"Borin."

"You brought her back safe."

"Naturally." Borin held out a hand and Christoph took it, the two elves clasping forearms for a beat before letting go. Sashi stepped in beside her husband and laid a hand on Christoph's arm. Then Borin turned to Cal and the head chef's bushy brows drew down together as he frowned.

"And who is this, then? My granddaughter is too young to be dating."

"Grandpa!" Corinne gasped as she swatted his arm.

"It's not like that!" Cal straightened slightly and ignored their antics.

"My name is Cal Valorn, sir. Corinne and I are old friends, and I'm well acquainted with your son and daughter-in-law. It's a pleasure to meet you and see where the Hearthsong Inn started."

"Valorn, is it?"

"Yes, sir." Borin looked back at Cal in dubious appraisal, while Cal let [Spiritual Perception] touch lightly on the man's aura. Peak D, easy, and unsurprisingly he's aligned to the body triad. The Hearthsong Patriarch turned away and bellowed across the kitchen." MARETH! Where in the hells is Mareth? I'm off the line and the rush is yours, I have family to—""Don't be silly, Grandpa," Corinne called across the kitchen cheerfully. Something about her tone had gooseflesh prickling on the back of Cal's neck.

Oh, I've got a baaad feeling about this.

"We are here to help! Aren't we, kitchen boy?" Two small hands hit him squarely between the shoulder blades and shoved. He stumbled half a step forward into the open space beside the central island, with Corinne grinning widely and entirely without mercy behind him.

"Cal's an expert known all across Deadfall for his excellence with a blade! Aren't you, Cal?" Borin looked between his smiling granddaughter and Cal, the dubious appraisal in his eye giving way to a predatory gleam.

"Valorn, was it? We'll see if you can live up to that name with a knife in your hand." Cal could only sigh in defeat. Crumb.