Hungry Heart - Book #3 - Ch. 16 (Patreon)

Chapter One / Chapter Two / Chapter Three / Chapter Four / Chapter Five / Chapter Six / Chapter Seven / Chapter Eight / Chapter Nine / Chapter Ten / Chapter Eleven / Chapter Twelve / Chapter Thirteen / Chapter Fourteen / Chapter Fifteen 

Chapter Sixteen – The Dregs of Scercendusa

Toru ran in front of them and stopped at the top of the hill, breathless and filled with excitement. They had smelled the scent of smoke and seen a dark fog rising in the distance for a while now. “What is it?” Duril called from behind. “What are you seeing, Toru?”

For a few moments, he remained silent, unable to explain what lay in front of his eyes. Right above the ground, as far as his eyes could see, holes dug in the dirt appeared to be responsible for steam rising everywhere, blocking the view of what lay behind the strange field. Between the holes, Toru noticed, tiny shacks with sloped roofs spattered the soot-coated land. From the openings in the ground, people dark and small like ants as they seemed at that distance, emerged in lines, performed a task difficult to observe, and returned in the same orderly fashion to the gaps from which they came.

His companions finally reached him, and just like him, stood in stunned silence.

“Is this Scercendusa?” Toru asked, wondering briefly whether they had somehow taken the wrong turn during their journey and ended up at a different destination than the desired one.

“It must be,” Claw replied, although Toru could tell from his hesitant voice that he wasn’t sure that was the truth, either. “The largest road leads here.”

“Everyone we met along the way said the same thing,” Duril added. “It would be unfathomable to think that we’re not where we are supposed to be.”

Toru let his eyes roam over the vast land stretching in front of their eyes. “It looks nothing like Shearah told us. Where is the magnificent city?”

“Over there,” Varg replied and stretched out his right arm, pointing at something upward and in the distance.

Only then, Toru saw it. Above the ash and dark fog, as if it emerged from a pit dug inside the ground, but floating in mid-air, rose a citadel with white walls, peppered in places with small dark eyes.

“Cannon mouths,” Claw said, as if he could read Toru’s mind. “The city must prevail.”

“The city must prevail,” Duril repeated slowly. “Is that their credo?”

“Just as good, it could be,” Claw replied.

“But if the city is over there,” Toru intervened, “what is all this?” He gestured at the ant tribe at their feet.

“How about we ask?” Varg suggested and patted his shoulder.

Toru nodded and followed without another word. How could the citadel keep its walls so white while there was so much soot down here? Maybe the wind carried it all away from it, and that meant that Scercendusa must have had its location chosen by a blessed hand.

Not so blessed seemed to be the ants toiling all over the place. Whatever it was that they did, it looked like hard work.

***

Duril sensed the tension coiling in the shoulders of his companions, and he also felt a burden weighing him down, as they descended the slope. From the top of the hill, all they could see was the teeming people hard at work, but now, as they approached, they could make out individual faces. No one looked up or seemed bothered by the strangers walking among them. Probably, many people came to Scercendusa and crossed this soot-filled place, so their presence was neither surprising, nor unwanted.

He took his time to examine the locals. They all wore clothes of a hard to describe color. They could have been gray or white at one point, but the slag caught on the fabric turned everything into dark ash. If one didn’t look closely enough, they might think that the people were one with the land through which they drudged.

One thing surprised him at a closer look. Some of the human shapes marching from the pits in the ground, balancing on their shoulders baskets filled with dark matter, looked very small. Duril recoiled a bit when he realized that they were children, some as young as five years old if his assumptions were correct.

A stout woman with her face completely obscured by the dark powder that covered everything stopped in front of them. She gave them a long look, then she spoke, “Why are you passing through here?” Her voice was raspy, as if her lungs were stuffed with the dust floating in the air.

They all stopped. “Where should we pass through?” Toru asked.

The young tigershifter crossed his arms. Duril touched him lightly. “A good day to you, kind people,” he said and tipped the brim of an imaginary hat. “We’re trying to get to Scercendusa.”

She dropped the burden on her shoulders and stretched her back. Her face twisted in slight pain but then smoothed out in relief as Duril could clearly hear the bones in her spine popping. “You should go round.” She gestured to emphasize her words. “Is this your first time traveling here?”

“Yes,” Duril confirmed, hoping that none of his companions minded that he had snatched the role of group leader on this particular occasion.

The woman nodded thoughtfully. “No one told you how to get there?”

In all truth, they had been a bit too excited at being so close to ask for additional directions. “No,” he confirmed.

“You can go through there, or there,” the woman said and gestured with her arm to the left and to the right in large arcs. “You don’t go through right here.”

“But the city is just over there,” Toru said and pointed at the citadel rising in the distance, above the dark haze.

The woman didn’t even bother to turn and look. Her face looked like she was wearing a dark mask, but one growing from her own face, never able to slip. “That’s where it is, yes,” she agreed. “But going through here would only take you to the base of the wall. You can’t go through into the city there.”

Her manner of speech was slow, like she wasn’t used to speaking so many words.

“We could climb the walls,” Toru affirmed with pride.

The woman’s soot mask cracked a bit, showing the still light skin underneath. It took Duril a few moments to realize that she was smiling. Her teeth were blackened, too; she lived on that soot, it seemed, and it had already become a part of her. “Are you good at falling, too, then?” she asked and let out a hoarse laugh.

“Why do you ask that?” Toru demanded to know.

“The guards marching on the walls,” she pointed behind her without turning, “they’ll push you off with their spears if you get that far. Can you imagine how it feels to have all of your bones cracked in many places?”

Toru recoiled a bit, as the woman leaned in. “Not very good,” he said.

“Right. Although no one has ever survived a fall like that long enough to say how it did feel,” she said.

She was smiling again, a shrewd, slightly manic smile.

“We were wondering why we were the only ones trying to pass through here,” Duril offered to return the conversation to the real point of interest. “So, we should just go around?”

“How long will it take us if we do as you say?” Toru asked.

“Take you where?” the woman inquired. She stretched her back again and craned her neck, making it pop with a frightening sound.

“To Scercendusa,” Toru said slowly.

It didn’t take a mind reader or even someone who knew Toru to realize that the young tigershifter considered the woman a bit not all there.

“The lines are long and wide,” the woman explained. “On both sides,” she added as she opened her arms in a broad gesture. “They lead to the gates.”

“There are lines to get into the city?” This time, it was Varg’s turn to ask a question.

“Yes. What did you think? That you were the only ones who want to get in there?” She made a small motion with her chin over her shoulder, while her eyes remained trained on them. Then she let out the same raspy laugh as before.

“How long will we have to wait?” Toru asked.

“That depends on how many others are waiting,” the woman replied. “I’ve heard of people waiting for up to one week to enter. But no one has waited less than three days, as far as I know.”

“Are there any other ways to get into Scercendusa?” Varg asked.

Duril wanted to intervene and say that a week wasn’t that long, seeing how far they had traveled, but Varg was right to ask. After all, they had an important quest to pursue.

“That depends,” the woman echoed her own words from before. “Are you, perhaps, a group of wealthy merchants?” She stared them down, hands on her hips, and smiled. The obvious answer was painted all over her soot covered face. She already knew they were nothing like that.

Toru, in the pureness of his heart, took the question at face value. “No, we are not merchants.”

“Then are you, perhaps, lords and kings from a distant realm?” she continued.

“No, we are not that, either.”

The woman laughed in their faces. “Then, you’ll wait in line. This is the fate of those who are neither wealthy merchants, nor highborn. Still, you’re a head over us,” she said, and her smile faltered, “the dregs of Scercendusa.”

“How are you the dregs?” Toru asked. “What are you doing here?”

The woman slightly kicked the bucket she had dropped earlier from her shoulders with the tip of one toe. Her shoe was scuffed and repaired in so many places that it was impossible to tell any longer what shape it was supposed to have.

“What does it look like? We fuel the fire,” she replied.

“What fire? With what?”

No one could stop Toru from asking his questions once he was bent on finding answers. Also, no one wanted to, and Duril could tell that Varg and Claw were just as interested in understanding what that place was.

“The fire that keeps burning,” the woman replied. “That makes the homes of Scercendusa warm in winter and burns under their pots while they prepare their four-course meals that will be served on golden plates.” The last words were uttered with a tinge of spite.

“Do they have four-course meals?” Toru asked, much interested in what went on in the kitchens of Scercendusa.

“The poorest of them must endure that, of course,” the woman replied, slightly vexed. “The highest minds governing the city are thought to dine on twenty different dishes every evening before the bells toll.”

“Twenty?” Toru sounded as aghast at the mention of such great waste as the rest of them. “Do they have really tiny plates, then?”

The woman smacked a gloved hand against Toru’s chest. “I like this one,” she declared.

To say that she wore gloves would have been a stretch. Duril observed the darkened strips of cloth rolled around the woman’s hands. It was difficult to tell her age. While her stature and confidence spoke of someone who should have been around forty, something of her attitude told him that he might be wrong.

“We should introduce ourselves,” he said. “I am Duril from Whitekeep, and I travel with Toru, Varg, and Claw. Except for Claw, we’re all from the same place.”

She examined them with curious eyes and clucked her tongue. “I’ve never heard of a place called Whitekeep. And where is this handsome fellow from?” She had to tip her head back to look at Claw.

“I’m Claw of The Quiet Woods,” the bearshifter said with pride. “And who might you be?”

“Well, I might be,” she said and wiped her hands on the sides of her long dress made from coarse fabric, as if that could help clean them and she seemed to forget that they were covered anyway, “Rosalind of The Dregs.” She even made a small curtsy and grinned through her mask of dark ash.

“Is this place really called that?” Varg asked.

“It’s fitting, don’t you think?” Rosalind replied. “And you should be thankful you’re here, at the outskirts. Hell, I’m thankful for it. You can still breathe some real air.” She lifted her nose and inhaled deeply. “The folks back there,” she gestured behind her, “those who take care of all the waste, they’re a different breed, I’m telling you.”

She was talking animatedly now and seemed pleased to have someone to chat with.

“Rosalind,” a stern voice called from the side. “Get back to work!”

They all turned toward the owner of the voice and saw a man dressed just as drably as Rosalind, with a large basket on his shoulders.

Rosalind sighed and grabbed her basket, hiking it up with ease. Even Toru looked at her in wonder. That thing had to be quite hefty and seeing a woman manipulating it as easily as that was a sight to behold. “Go take your place in line, travelers. And when you taste that juniper berry sauce they’re famous for up there, think of the fire Rosalind of The Dregs keeps fueled for their cooks to make it.”

“Wait,” Toru called after her, but she was truly fast on her feet and probably no longer able to hear them. “She was just talking to us,” he told the man who had interrupted their conversation.

“She must be working,” the man said curtly. “Like I must.”

“We took advantage of your wife’s kindness so that we could learn about how to get into Scercendusa,” Duril explained.

“Rosalind is not my wife,” the man shot at him. “She’s my youngest and laziest.”

He didn’t spare another word and walked away with his weighty basket on his shoulders, his steps heavy on the ground, marked by purpose and determination.

“She’s his daughter?” Toru asked, mirroring Duril’s surprise. “But he doesn’t seem that old. I thought she was an old witch.”

“Good thing you didn’t tell her that,” Varg said. “That girl, I believe, has a bit of a bite in her. Now, we should just go and take our place in line, like Rosalind said, right?”

They all agreed in murmurs. So far, what they saw of Scercendusa didn’t match the excitement they had felt on their road there.

***

“How far does it stretch?” Claw held Toru on his shoulders, and the tigershifter was staring into the distance with a frown on his face, one hand shielding his eyes.

Per Rosalind’s advice, they had left The Dregs behind them. It had taken them little effort to discover one of the long lines of people waiting to gain entrance into Scercendusa. Varg knew that Rosalind must have been slightly optimistic about how long it took folks to get into the magnificent city. Apparently, the beating heart of the world didn’t warm to strangers too quickly.

“As far as my eyes can see,” Toru confirmed what Varg already knew. “It will take us weeks or more,” he added dejectedly. “We’ve barely moved one step since we got here.”

Under other circumstances, Varg would have made a joke about Toru’s impatience, but he didn’t have it in him at the moment. At least, while they were traveling, their bodies were put to good use, and their minds didn’t have the time to turn over the importance of their quest. The people around them seemed resigned with the prospect of spending days in their traveling clothes, just waiting and waiting.

“Do you happen to know how long must we spend here before we’re accepted into the city?” Duril asked a man sitting proudly on his horse, dressed in clothes that signified his position in the world. Apparently, his ringed fingers and the golden thread adorning his coat weren’t enough to put him above the crowd waiting at the gates of Scercendusa.

The man glanced down at Duril with a bored look. “However long it takes,” he said in a voice that matched his expression.

“Have you ever been to Scercendusa before?” Duril asked, untroubled by the man’s unfriendly manners.

“Yes, of course,” the man replied haughtily and turned his head away to let the other know that he wasn’t willing to continue the conversation.

Varg touched Duril’s shoulder slightly. If he managed to get the man to look into his eyes, he could make him spill whatever he knew. “Esteemed duke,” he said in a sugary voice, “if you would care to tell us--”

“Marquis,” the man said and turned his head back. “Marquis Decottieri.”

More like a country squire, by how fake those rings looked from up close, Varg thought, but his goal was achieved. The man looked at him with interest and a pleased smile. Varg held his gaze. “My apologies for mistaking your station,” he said courteously. As he slightly bowed, he didn’t break his hold on the man’s stare. “Could you tell us how long it usually takes to be admitted into the city?”

“Not everyone is admitted into the city,” Decottieri replied. “The guardians don’t let just anyone in,” he added, leering at them from the height of his horse.

“I don’t doubt that you have visited before. That is why we are asking you,” Varg said in the same ingratiating manner, “and not anyone else.”

“Very well,” Decottieri agreed. “What is it that you want to ask me? Oh, how long will it take until we reach the gates? Well, it could be up to three weeks. It appears that all the good-for-nothings of the world have suddenly decided that they deserve to be welcomed into the city.” He enunciated the last word as if there was no other city on the face of Eawirith, except for Scercendusa.

“Three weeks?” Toru shifted from one foot to another. “That’s too long.”

“Yes,” Decottieri said without pulling his eyes away from Varg, “especially if you’re going to be told to go back the way you came. I heard lately that the guardians are enforcing new rules. Unless the business you have inside the city is deemed worthy of its interest and wellbeing, you will be told to go back.”

“What business do you happen to have in Scercendusa, esteemed sir?” Varg asked.

“I have the talents of a scholar,” Decottieri said with emphasis and hooked his thumbs onto his belt. His horse snorted, making him readjust his position and grab the reins fast.

“A scholar,” Varg said with deference. “Scercendusa has the vastest libraries in the whole empire.”

“There is no place that has more books,” Decottieri confirmed. “I am sure they are in need of scholars like they need water.”

“Don’t they have enough water?” Toru intervened. Varg pinched the back of his left hand surreptitiously. The young tigershifter understood the warning and pulled back.

“Scercendusa,” Decottieri declaimed in a nasal voice, “is the only place in the world where water pours from golden faucets in the street. The water here is so sweet that it can fill your belly before you taste one of the hundreds of dishes they are known for.”

“Like the juniper berry sauce?” Toru asked and then threw a guilty look at Varg.

Varg could only observe his companion from the corner of one eye.

“That sauce is for paupers,” Decottieri said. “If you are someone in Scercendusa, you do not eat juniper berry sauce. You eat fish eyes in butter, and creamy fondue wrapped in gold foil.”

Varg was quick to catch Toru’s hand, before the hungry tiger could say anything about not wanting to taste any gold in his food or not being particularly fond of fish eyes, whether in butter or not. It was quite obvious to him that Decottieri was just recounting stories told to him by someone else. And it was rather doubtful that he had ever been in Scercendusa. Everything he had wanted to hear from the country squire, he had gotten already.

“Thank you for granting us your knowledge of Scercendusa,” Varg said and took another slight bow. He blinked, and Decottieri did the same. The pompous country squire seemed slightly confused about why he had stooped so low to talk to a group of travelers in dusty clothes. He turned his face away with an arrogant scoff and didn’t offer a reply.

Toru hovered near Varg’s ear. “I could punch him in the nose just to see,” he said.

Varg bit his lip not to laugh. “To see what?” he whispered back.

“If his blood is as blue as he pretends, or if he’s just a buffoon.”

Varg covered his mouth so that he could laugh at Toru’s suggestion. “I’d say we both know the truth already. Now, let’s talk for a bit, friends.”

Duril and Claw drew close, as well.

“It is quite dreadful to wait, don’t you think?” They all agreed with nods of their heads.

“But what are our choices?” Duril asked. “Through The Dregs, it’s simply not possible. And we don’t want to take the city by storm, do we?”

“We could,” Toru offered.

Of them all, waiting was probably the worst for him to endure. Varg understood the tigershifter. Their quest wasn’t about twiddling their thumbs while waiting to be accepted into a city that might not want them to begin with.

“The city is vaster and grander than anything else we’ve ever seen in our lives,” Varg pointed out. “If we try to cut our way through the guards, it is possible that a lot of people might get hurt in the process. That is not what we want. And do you believe that we would endear ourselves to Ewart Kona if we caused a ruckus in his city? Not only might he not want to see us, but he would probably consider us enemies. No, the path to the heart of the empire, as people call Scercendusa, must be one of diplomatic pursuit.”

“But what is our business in Scercendusa? That ugly man,” Toru said and pointed vaguely in the direction of Decottieri’s horse, “said that we might be forced to go back if the guards judge that our quest is not good enough.”

“Then we should probably get really good at lying,” Varg suggested. “We could always tell the guards that we are in possession of some sensitive information that concerns the wellbeing of the beautiful city he is in charge of.”

“And just as easily, he might order his loyal guardians to torture us until he gets the truth out of us,” Claw said.

“Like we would let ourselves be caught like that,” Toru said with a snort. “And what kind of man gives orders for their guests to be tortured?”

“The kind that rules over a city like no other in the world and might see conspiracies and attempts on his life at every turn,” Duril intervened with an opinion of his own.

“Do we know that’s what the domestikos really is like?” Toru asked a reasonable question.

“We don’t,” Varg confirmed. “Let’s just wait and see for ourselves if we can gain admission to the city just like anyone else.”

***

It hadn’t been three weeks, like that ugly man had said, but after eight days of walking at a snail’s pace to reach the western gates to the city, Toru was willing to swear he would chase his own tail only so that he didn’t succumb to utter boredom. Of course, he couldn’t even shift, and that meant that even chasing his own tail was out of the question.

Their story was, supposedly, simple and direct. Varg had managed to pilfer Decottieri’s so-called recommendations for a scholar’s role at one of Scercendusa’s many libraries. Duril would play the role of a scholar, and they were his trusted guards. While they weren’t dressed according to the healer’s imagined station, they belonged to the retinue of a wealthy family. Duril, the scholar who wanted to be accepted in the city, was the valued progeny of this family, and they had been hard-pressed to accept that their beloved son wanted to seek his fame and fortune at the very heart of the empire.

However, due to how much they cared for him, they had decided to give him three companions that could prove their mettle, should he be discovered for who he truly was. The reason behind their drab clothes was clear, given those circumstances. They pretended to be poor so that no one tried to steal from them, or worse, make away with the precious son of the Decottieri family.

Claw was the malicious force behind their plan. So that the real Decottieri didn’t protest against their theft, he had managed to put some rather peculiar herbs in the man’s dinner, and for several days now, he had been the victim of some rather un-marquis like belching. The man was rather vexed by the whole thing and tried to always maintain his decorum, sitting stiffly in the saddle of his horse, but the more he attempted to avoid letting out any discourteous sounds, the louder his belching later became.

“But what if the guardians know that the Decottieri family is not wealthy whatsoever?” Even Toru had noticed how fake the man’s jewelry was.

“That’s not very worrisome,” Claw replied. “It doesn’t matter if the family is wealthy or not. Actually, if they pretend to be but send their son in such a sorry state,” he pointed at Duril’s dusty clothes, “that only goes to prove that they cannot pretend very well. On the other hand, Decottieri’s certifications appear to be quite solid. With Duril’s talent for letters, I like to believe that our acceptance into the city will be a breeze.”

Toru nodded. They were all so wise, but he could tell that their plan was a bit thin in places. There was a possibility that the guardians wouldn’t believe their story at all; or that they really didn’t need yet another scholar. Most probably, Scercendusa had plenty of them and didn’t need the son of a not so wealthy family to fill an opening.

Whatever the future held, it was right in front of them. He walked behind Duril, with Varg behind him, and then Claw.

From up close, the gates looked immense. The walls he had seen from The Dregs out in the distance were even taller and seemed to kiss the sky. Toru experienced a burning desire to climb them and see how high they went. How would someone sitting on the top of those walls feel? Without a doubt, like someone who owned the world and held it in his pocket. Did the domestikos ever walk along those walls to feel the power of his position and revel in it?

There were at least twenty men dressed in heavy armor at the gate, but Varg whispered something to him about how there might be plenty that they couldn’t see.

Duril presented the papers dutifully. Decottieri had been overcome by a bout of runny bowels, apparently, on the last leg of the wait, so he wasn’t anywhere near where he could shout at the injustice being done to him that very moment. Still, Toru could feel his shoulders tense in anticipation.

“And who are they?” A man in simple dark dress who looked nothing like a guardian and was sitting behind a large wooden desk, asked.

“They are the guards sent with me for my protection,” Duril explained.

“Three guards?”

“They are strong,” Duril hurried to say.

The man looked the healer up and down like there was some vague suspicion forming in his mind that he couldn’t quite place. “They did their duty. They brought you here. Now dismiss them. Anything you need, protection included, will be provided within these walls.”

The man’s words fell on his ears like a hammer. Duril was just as surprised. “But--” he began to argue.

“Next,” the man said and two guardians appeared and pushed them back, while Duril was taken by another and guided toward the other side.

Toru made a movement as if he was about to shout for his lover, and Duril looked over his shoulder. Varg took his arm. “We’ll find another way,” he whispered.

“But Duril--” he mumbled under his breath.

“He can play a scholar’s role without a problem. And look at it this way. We now have someone on the inside.”

Toru didn’t like being separated yet again from Duril, but he understood Varg and his words. He looked up at the high walls. He was starting to dislike the white citadel already. What right had it to swallow his Duril like that? People were flowing toward the gates around them like a tide, getting ready to present their papers and ask to be accepted into the city.

“Did you lose your turn?” An arrogant voice chided them from behind.

They all turned to see Decottieri looking worse for wear and hanging onto the reins of his horse like a lifeless doll. Still, he had it in him to be just as haughty and obnoxious as before.

“We weren’t allowed in,” Varg explained.

“Of course. Not everyone is allowed,” Decottieri commented. “Now, make way for me.”

They stepped out of the way, and Decottieri urged his horse forward through the waves of people heading in the same direction.

Claw hooked his arms over their shoulders and began pushing them to walk away. “My good friends, now is as good a time as any to make ourselves scarce. I would wager the fur on my back that the officials at the gate will have a confusing time with a second Decottieri asking to be allowed into the city within such a short time.”

“Won’t that put Duril in danger?” Toru asked, worry already choking him.

“He was the one with his papers in order. In their place, Decottieri will only find some cabbage leaves, which means that he’s an impostor. If he dares to shout too much, the guardians might choose to throw him in the dungeons, and something tells me he doesn’t have the stomach for it,” Claw said with a grin.

“Make way, dammit,” Decottieri’s voice rose over the crowd.

They turned to see him guiding his horse away and to the side, while holding his belly. Claw had to be right, Toru decided to believe. But still, his heart went to Duril. He was all alone in that big city. What was he thinking right now?

TBC

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