City of Towers_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [30]
“It’s better than nothing. Do it. Then we’ve got the matter of your Uncle Jura, and ‘visiting the wind.’ What was that?”
Lei shrugged. “I don’t know.” She glanced over at the darkwood staff, which was leaning against a corner of the room. “That staff is magical, but so far I haven’t been able to discern its function. Unless it’s cursed.”
“Not something we should rule out,” Jode said.
Lei continued. “It seems unlikely Jura would give away a powerful item as part of a fool’s errand. Even if it was cursed, what would be his motive for giving it to us?”
“I don’t know,” Jode said, studying a fingernail. “Perhaps he thinks getting rid of you will buy him favor in the house? Maybe he’s trapped a banshee in the staff, and at the stroke of midnight it will kill us all with its horrible wail.”
Lei just stared at him.
“Yeah, that seems likely,” Daine said.
“Look,” Lei said, “I don’t know if I trust Jura. He’s not the man I knew. But I … I don’t think he’d try to harm me. Whatever’s happened, we’re still family. I think this could help us.”
Daine scowled. “We should check it out quickly, then. What do you know about Malleon’s Gate?”
“One of the most dangerous districts in Sharn—at least for humans. Most of the goblins and their kin live there, and I’ve heard that stranger creatures have been drifting east from Droaam.”
“It’s not likely that Uncle Jura is sending us into a bad neighborhood to be slaughtered and killed?”
“Daine …” Lei sighed. “I trust him.” She considered a moment, then added, “Well, more or less.”
“You fought an army of Darguul raiders at Sennan Rath, Captain,” Pierce said calmly. “This can hardly be as dangerous of a situation.”
“Spoken like a man who still has all of his weapons.” Daine shot a glance at Jode, who at least had the grace to look embarrassed. “But you’re right. Still, it sounds like we should stay together for this. Afterwards we’ll split up to investigate Daggerwatch and Hareth’s Folly, and meet back here for dinner with Lord Teral.”
The others nodded.
“Very well,” Daine said, as Jode gathered the papers and Lei picked up the staff. “Let’s go talk to the wind.”
High Walls, the newfound home of the Cyran refugees in Sharn, was a depressing ghetto. For decades, the government of Sharn had worried only about maintaining the gates and the guards and not about the comfort of those trapped behind the walls. Poverty, fear, and uncertainty were a part of everyday life.
Compared to Malleon’s Gate, it was paradise.
When human settlers first came to Khorvaire, they found the remains of a great goblin empire—a civilization shattered long ago and left to ruin. Hobgoblins and bugbears lurked in the mountains and harsh lands, while goblins remained in the ruins of their ancient cities. But the humans of Sarlona were determined to claim this new land as their own. When Malleon the Reaver landed on the shores of the Dagger River, he enslaved the local goblins and forced them to work on his fortress city—a city that would be destroyed in the War of the Mark. Six hundred years later, King Galifar began work on the new city of Sharn, and he promised freedom to all goblins who would serve him as soldiers and laborers. But few human inhabitants of the city ever accepted the goblins as true equals, and racial violence was an everyday occurrence. Eventually, most of Sharn’s goblins settled in a single district, trusting in numbers to provide safety and shelter. But safety and prosperity were two different things.
While Malleon’s Gate had always been a place of poverty and misery, it was only over the last century that it had become truly dangerous. Two new nations had arisen in the wake of the Last War, taking advantage of the chaos and the fragmentation of the proud army of Galifar. Cyre and Breland had both used goblinoid mercenaries in the war, drawing the cunning hobgoblins and powerful bugbears down from the mountains to augment their armies. Eventually these creatures outnumbered the human soldiers in the eastern front. The hobgoblins ruled Khorvaire long