Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [5]
There were other ways into the city, ways that didn’t involve visiting the west gate on the opposite side of the town. A three-foot-wide breach lurked behind rubble a mere thousand paces to the north. Molin would have preferred the gate, for obvious reasons, but he knew the path to the breach and had used it only a few months back to trap a smuggler who’d overreached herself.
Ever the master and merchant of knowledge, Molin would give Atredan the opportunity to lead him to the breach, to see if the younger man knew the path. The youth gave no indication he knew the path—though surely he knew that Sanctuary’s walls were not a solid, impenetrable ring. He tugged continuously on the rope, setting up a din within the tower.
At length, a small, firelit opening appeared in the wall.
“‘S’locked,” the guard said in the coarse Ilsigi dialect that passed for Sanctuary’s common language, a dialect almost everyone referred to as Wrigglie.
Molin’s native language was the pure, elegant, and nuanced Rankene of the Imperial court at its height. He spoke a handful of other languages as well, but he dreamt, sometimes, in Wrigglie, and suffered a headache every time. Wrigglie was a rapid-flowing speech, punctuated with silences—as though invisible hands had suddenly squeezed the speaker’s throat. At its root, it was the language of the Ilsig Kingdom some two hundred years earlier, but it had matured—or rotted—far from that root.
“We know it’s locked, pork-sucker,” Atredan countered, demonstrating a grasp of Wrigglie street insults, if not diplomacy. “Open it and let us in.”
“‘S’locked until sunrise. Come back at sunrise.”
“We’re here now, and we have affairs at the palace. The palace, do you hear that, pork-sucker? Open the damned gate.”
The nameless guard and the cadet heir exchanged insults until Molin hissed, in Rankene, “Flatter him, for mercy’s sake, or we’ll be standing out here until the sun has indeed risen.”
“Flatter him?” Atredan exploded, also in Rankene. “The man is stinking drunk! Flatter him yourself, Lord Torchholder. I don’t stoop that low.”
“Lord Torch?” the guard inquired. More of Sanctuary’s swarthy natives understood Rankene than could—or would—speak it, and, anyway, names remained the same, regardless of language.
Molin stepped into the torchlight beside Atredan. “It is I,” he confessed.
“Come with another army, eh?” The guard laughed heartily at his own joke. His breath was sour enough to light a fire at four paces.
Molin Torchholder had never intended to become heroically famous in Sanctuary. He had never intended to save the city from itself, either. But he’d done both when he’d led a hundred mounted Irrune warriors through a conveniently unlocked gate and put an end to the Dyareelan reign of religious terror. In gratitude, every unwashed survivor counted Molin Torchholder among his closest friends.
On occasion, gratitude could be useful. “No army, this time,” Molin said with better Ilsigi pronunciation and grammar than the guard had used. “I’ve been out lighting bonfires at Land’s End, and now I just want to sleep in my own bed.”
“Bonfires, eh? You could’ve done your lighting right here, Lord Torch, never mind them folk at Land’s End. Them Irrunes, they been lighting fires since they got here yesterday.” The guard whistled through absent teeth. “Burggit’s done pulled everyone in close, leavin’ me here by my lonesome with orders not to budge the gate ’til sunup. ’Git’s not taking chances the Dragon’ll light something wrong. Only thing worse’n a loose fire is a dead Dragon, eh?” Once again, the guard rewarded his humor with aromatic laughter.
Crude as the analysis was, it was also correct. “Good man, you say you know who I am. If the Dragon’s setting Sanctuary ablaze, I need to get to the palace. Unbar the gate for me and my companion.”
“‘Taint just the Dragon, Lord Torch. All them Irrune been setting fires, same as if they been riding Lord Serripines’ tail. ’Git had the name for it, but it’s passed clean from my ears.”
Silently Molin berated himself for growing old and