Cor slept late into the morning, a habit that seemed to be forming in the last week or so. On the other hand, he was certain that he had not dealt with this much hardship ever in his life. He immediately fished Rena’s journal out of his tunic and laid the tunic out to dry in the sun. Between the cotton tunic and the leather scrolls he had wrapped around the journal, he was pleased to find that the tome seemed perfectly dry and undamaged. He breakfasted and flipped through the journal while waiting for the sun’s warmth to dry his tunic.
Rena had lived three hundred years and was Lord Dahken of Sanctum for nearly two hundred years. She died before The Cleansing. She apparently started keeping her journal during her teenaged years, at which point she came to Sanctum and went through a training and education regimen similar to Cor’s. Rena wrote her entries with almost obsessive detail, recording nearly every blow in combat and describing sunrises in poetic prose. As he scanned the pages, Cor found she even recorded her sexual encounters with exceptional detail, evoking feelings that Cor simply wasn’t sure how to handle.
It was just before Rena became Lord Dahken that she had found Soulmourn in a bizarre and ancient edifice. The building seemed to be made of steel with accents of precious metals; one side was wide open to the elements, ancient shattered glass littering the area. Though known, the building was avoided by the Westerners of the day and ignored by the Loszians. The sword called to her blood, just as it had called to his, and she found the strange building easily; Rena even had drawn a rough map showing its location. It was the map that bothered Cor significantly; based on other landmarks, he was certain the building he sought was in the southern portion of the World’s Spine.
Cor closed the volume; deciding it was time to get moving, he collected the stallion from where it grazed nearby. He gathered his belongings and slipped the journal into a heavy sack, which he hung from the saddle. His tunic was mostly dry, and he pulled it over his head, followed by the hooded cloak he had purchased. It was going to be a hot day, but Cor intended to go into the town of Hager a few miles to the north. He did not want to announce who he was to every soul in the street.
Before Cor turned north, he walked the horse to Sanctum; yesterday, in his exhaustion he noted that something about it looked odd. Today, it was plainly obvious that the tower had come down from the fire. No doubt, it was supported largely by the wood spiral stairs that wound upwards inside of it. The fire likely had spread into the tower, and there was nothing else to hold it up. When Cor reached the gate, the total devastation astounded him, and he stood staring in disbelief. The tower had indeed come down, and the huge mass of stone and masonry crashed down with such force that it punched through the keep’s floor into the cave below. The catacomb’s ceiling gave way, and the entire keep had collapsed into its depths. Only a few of the smaller out buildings survived, and Cor had no interest in testing the strength of the ground within the walls. Sanctum was gone, a smoking hole in the ground as the remnants of the fire still burned within. All of the recorded history, the treasure and the remains of Dahken before him were gone.
Cor turned his horse north; he was going to the town of Hager. The Loszians had arrived at Sanctum through normal means of transit. The necromancer may have vanished in a flash of light, but he and his servants hadn’t arrived that way. If they had simply used magic to transport into Sanctum instantaneously, they would have arrived before Jonn and his soldiers. This meant that the Loszian had discovered Cor’s location at the same time as Aquis’ queen. That indicated a spy in Queen Erella’s palace, though why that should concern him, Cor was uncertain.
Hager was a small port, and being the immediately nearby settlement, it followed that the Loszian had come by sea through that town. Of course, a Loszian necromancer would not exactly be welcome in Aquis, so Cor needed to find a captain who would have been willing to smuggle the four men. The intrigue of it all made Cor’s head hurt; after all, he wanted nothing to do with any of them, outside of killing the Loszian.
Hager was little different from the town Cor had visited a few days ago, at least on the surface, and he kept his hood drawn about him, which drew less attention than his deathly pallor would have. It stood to reason that the Loszians would have wasted no time seeking him at Sanctum, so they must have arrived on a ship just the previous day. It took only one inquiry, which he paid well for, with a local merchant to find out two ships had arrived. The first, a galley from Tigol arrived at dawn, while the other ported in the afternoon. By that point, Cor was already in battle with the Loszians, so he set out for the docks in search of the foreign galley, which took minimal effort.
About a dozen men, sailors by the look of their calloused hands and bare feet, unloaded several wagons, carrying sacks, crates and barrels up a gangplank and disappeared below the ship’s deck. Another man stood on deck shouting orders while talking to a man who appeared to be a Western merchant. He handed the merchant a small, but heavy sack and with their business concluded, he followed the merchant down the gangplank to oversee the final cargo. The ship’s captain was dressed in silk finery, and he had no shortage of gold jewelry about his body. Clearly, business was good.
“Sir, you are the captain of this vessel?” Cor asked, raising his voice as he approached. The captain turned to face him.
“I am Soko. We leave today for the north coast of Tigol if you are seeking passage,” the man replied.
“No Captain Soko, I seek information.”
“I deal in goods, not information. Look elsewhere,” Soko said turning his back to Cor. He resumed his conversation with the merchant.
“I believe,” Cor said loudly, “you have the information I need, sir. I’m looking for a ship that arrived early yesterday and carried four Loszians.” The captain’s head turned quite suddenly, shooting Cor a sidelong glance, and the merchant was clearly uncomfortable with this news.
“My friend,” he said to the merchant, “my men will finish this work, and they will bring the wagon back to you. Allow me to see if I can point our hooded friend here to the correct vessel. Perhaps you would like to discuss this matter aboard ship?”
Cor watched the merchant rush away before answering, “I’d rather stay in the open. Enough people have tried to kill me in the last week for my taste.”
“Certainly, you do not think I’m to blame for this?” asked the captain, genuinely incredulous.
“I believe you smuggled four men into this port, three who appeared as Westerners and a fourth who was a Loszian.”
“It would mean death for a Loszian to enter Aquis, and anyone bringing him would at least lose the right to trade here. I certainly have done no such thing,” Soko replied with a little more drama than Cor felt was necessary.
“Perhaps,” said Cor, lowering his voice nearly to a whisper, “you merely provided transport to four men who paid you fairly for their passage. You had no need to know their business here or where they hailed from.”
Cor jingled his fingers in a small pouch at his belt and dropped two blank gold coins on the dock. The captain bent over and picked up one of the coins; he attempted to bend or break the coin in his hands and satisfied as to its composition, Soko picked up the other and placed them both in his own pouch.
“I did provide transport to four … pilgrims,” Soko said the word with emphasis, “wishing to journey through Aquis visiting its temples. They purchased passage from Sarrap on the northern coast of Tigol. They were quiet and stayed to themselves the entire voyage, praying no doubt.”
“No doubt. Do you know where they came from? They were not from Sarrap.”
“No they weren’t, and I do not know. I have work to do, if you have what you need,” said Soko eyeing his sailors, who were beginning to idle.
“Thank you Captain Soko,” Cor said, dropping two more gold coins at the man’s feet. “But perhaps in the future, you’ll look into your passengers a bit more before taking their gold.” Cor turned and rode away from the docks.
/> Cor needed a map of modern Aquis, which he purchased from another merchant before leaving Hager. He wanted to compare it against the rough map Rena had drawn about one thousand years ago, but he knew that finding the hall buried in the mountains would be a wild stroke of luck at the least. Cor rode from Hager, continuing north for several miles to make certain he wasn’t followed. He then turned east and rode throughout the day before stopping at sunset. By the light of a small cooking fire, Cor compared the larger modern map to the hand drawn map in Rena’s journal. He was certain that the hall lay in the southern part of the World’s Spine, near the Western kingdom of Roka. Worh, the capital of Roka and a huge port city, lay just over a thousand miles to the east, on the southern coast of the West. Cor could only estimate that the place he sought was perhaps two hundred miles or so from Worh, into the mountains to the northeast of the city.
He would ride to Worh and carefully ask around; surely, there would be mountaineers there who could guide him up into the mountains, and Cor doubted that would be looked on oddly. No doubt, prospectors, adventurers and other treasure seekers went into those mountains all the time. Hopefully, once he was closer, Cor would feel his blood calling him to the fetish. The more he envisioned the thing, the more he knew he needed it. Cor used the water in one of his water skins to put out the fire for the night. There was a freshwater stream nearby, which in fact his horse was drinking from, that he would use to refill it in the morning.
20.