The Ring of Winter - James Lowder [74]
"This is like the maze in King Azoun's gardens," Artus noted.
"The whole residential area is a labyrinth," Rayburton said. "You'd never have found your way out alone."
Artus mopped the sweat from his brow. "The mazes of Ubtao, eh?"
For the first time, Rayburton seemed impressed with the young explorer. "Precisely!" He scanned the ground around the nearest home's back door. "Here. Look at this."
Someone had drawn a maze in a patch of sand scattered around the stoop. The pattern started simply enough, but near one corner it grew quite complicated.
"Let's see… the child who drew this must be, oh-" Rayburton rubbed his chin "-eight or nine, I'd say."
"How can you tell that?"
The admiration fled Rayburton's face. "The complexity, of course. Every child learns a simple maze that represents his life. It grows more and more complicated as the years go on. When a Tabaxi dies, he must draw the completed maze for Ubtao. That's how they gain admittance to the afterworld." He stepped around the swatch of sand. "If they fail the test, they come back as ghosts or ghouls or the other dark things to hunt the jungle at night. Needless to say, the Tabaxi practice all the time-in the evenings, usually, after they finish working and the children are let out of school."
"All the children go to school?" Artus asked, a bit taken aback.
Rayburton cocked an eyebrow. "Why not? All children need to learn, don't they?"
"Well, yes," Artus sputtered. "It's just that, in Cormyr, the churches charge a lot to share their knowledge, so only the rich can take advantage of it. Everyone else either becomes a craftsman's apprentice, marries well, joins the army, or ends up a cutpurse."
"So your parents were wealthy?" Rayburton said casually, though there was disdain hidden just below the surface of the question. "That would account for the crest on your tunic, I suppose."
Artus hopped sideways to avoid a large, complicated maze sprawling across the alley. "The crest belongs to the man who gave me the tunic," he said curtly. "I'm no nobleman. Far from it."
"No need to explain yourself to me," Rayburton noted. "I was rich. My father was a lord, as was his father and his father. Gods, we Rayburtons were around when the first elves were driven out of the Cormyrian woods to make way for human settlers." He looked over at Artus and pursed his lips. "Right before I left Suzail for Chult, I did some detailed genealogy work for my sister. Needless to say… how to put this… my ancestors turned out to be pretty loathsome all the way around, once you got to know them. I've never had much respect for titled families since."
The tension Artus had begun to feel eased at that statement. "Then you would have loved my family. My father was a well-intentioned highwayman. He was quite a good one, too, stealing from the rich and all that. He put me through school that way.
"One day he robbed a caravan belonging to the church of Oghma. He was so impressed with the loremasters, how polite and knowledgeable they seemed, that he used the money he stole from them to enroll me in their school." The explorer frowned. "Somehow, I've always suspected my teachers knew that."
"Your guilt was probably written all over your face," Rayburton observed sagely.
At last they reached the main thoroughfare. At first it appeared to Artus to be like the Promenade in Suzail. The wide street was quickly filling with people, dark-skinned like Ibn and Inyanga back at Port Castigliar. Some pushed carts laden with tools or clothes or food. Others carried their burdens or struggled with children too small for school. The sound of wagon wheels clattering over the cobbles mixed with the chatter of men and women.
When Artus looked more carefully, though, he saw that there was an order to the movement that never showed itself on the streets of Suzail. The people filed past in happy groups, all heading for side streets into the