Chapter 6
The Locator
The journey to Deepcross was a short one. Unit seven had managed it in less than a day. The broken dragon stood as a constant silhouette in the clear blue skies, drawing them in. They had left the shore far behind but the dragon had dominated the skies of Chaelena as long as Liraz had been on the island of Lethos. He had often wondered how large the dragon had been when it was alive. The length of the dragon was said to cover entire cities, its teeth larger than the slowest ships in the Fell Guard. Each spike on its back could easily house a town square.
But against all this, the thing that was more daunting was the expression the beast had worn as it had died. It had been terrified. The dragon, larger than any living thing, had been terrified when it had died. He could not imagine a force that would have scared this dragon. A mighty monster. And now it stood, dead. The hardened skin had been cut in places and showed the insides of the dragon. Liraz had seen bones poking out inside the Chealen halls at Deepcross. The open mouth of the beast glowed red as if the fire still burned inside. But he now knew what that fire was. The fire did not belong to the dragon anymore. It came from burning wood inside the dragon, a setup that the Fell Guard had created as a warning signal for attacks on the island. The setup had been really magnificent. Not only was the fire visible in the entirety of Chaelena, but parts of Ilythyrra and Lethonia could see it.
Every new recruit of the Fell Guard had been to Deepcross at some point. The only exception had been Gwen. She had been born on Lethos and had grown in the shadow of the broken dragon.
Deepcross marked the beginning of civilization on Lethos. The death of Chaelen – the dragon – had originally brought about chaos. Inhabitants of the island worshipped the dragon. They had also feared it.
The fortified city employed the Fell Guard. Although most of the Guard was stationed along the shore, their primary headquarters was at Deepcross. The highest ranking officers of the Fell Guard had retreated to Deepcross and their elite guard had followed. Lord Casraegar’s had a dwelling in the city.
Deepcross was overwhelming, in that it had a larger presence than Shiraz. A lot of open area in Shiraz had been a port of some kind, with actual land lined with merchant shops, porters, vendor stalls and wine shops. Without the ports in Deepcross, the stacked structures rose over each other, separated only by streets between them. Inside the walls, Liraz could see the familiar elevation as the city rose to its center. A lone structure stood tall above all others in the middle, barely visible from the outside walls. The city lord’s quarters – home of House Fell.
A large group of people had gathered on the outside the walls. Street vendors with their stalls erected by cloth and lined up with wooden tables, soldiers every few feet trying to keep the peace in the marketplace, beggars and the general public. The attire at Deepcross was a simple one. The Fell Guard soldiers wore the shades of sea blue of course, and had a minimal armor on. But the people dressed in singular colors of a large variety. Being around the army, Liraz had been used to seeing blue all around. Men of the city wore different shades of white and grey – the dull colors – while the women were dressed in every color Liraz could think of.
A vendor caught Liraz by his uniform and tugged on it. Liraz politely refused the wine and kept walking. Ruce and Druin walked behind him. Liraz had conceded to their constant need of keeping a close eye on him. Curiously enough, the two brothers never failed to follow a direct order. But when it came to their captain, they would defy any order, including his own, to protect him. He sighed. They protect me from dangers that don’t exist.
Tyra and Aloisius were behind them. Tyra had previously been part of a Naval guard. She had requested a transfer to the army at Chealena. Tall for her thin stature, she walked at pace with Aloisius, the butcher. The two were from Enaren, a town near Cuheg city. They had the same tan skin, with flowing long brown hair. Liraz had heard of the great libraries of Cuheg city, but he had been surprised to learn the value that was given to education in the country of blah_blah_blah. Every citizen was allowed to learn as much as they wanted to learn in their chosen profession. It was not just the libraries. Every child was expected to be under the tutelage of learned scholars and professionals in their chosen field.
Aloisius had a great knowledge about animals and hunting. Additionally, he had spent years studying surgery. On more than one occasion, he had stitched up injuries of his fellow unit members. Although he kept to himself and talked very little, he was close to Tyra.
Tyra, on the other hand, had great social skills. She had friends in almost every unit forming an intricate web of information. She knew how to compliment someone, get them to agree to her way of thinking, and influence their decisions. Most of the Fell Guard stuck to the units they had been assigned to, but Tyra had managed not only to transfer from the Naval crews to the land army, but also to be assigned to Unit Seven. When asked, she had told Liraz that it was because of the rumors of his generosity. But he knew the real reason had been Aloisius. Liraz had tried to bring up the subject again, but had been told off by both of them.
The rest of the unit either occupied the four carts or walked behind them. As they entered the open gates, Liraz nodded to the guards stationed at both ends. He waited by the gates for others to join them. Aloisius and Tyra stopped to salute him before continuing into the city. The plan had been laid out for the day. Liraz had told them that their time during the day was their own. But all had to meet at the other end of the city at dusk. The place where they could enter Chaelen, the supposed prison that was feared all across the world.
More and more soldiers of Unit Seven stepped out of the carts as they arrived. Gwen arrived in the first cart with Odenne, a stout man with a neatly trimmed orange beard. Holard was in the same cart. He waved at Liraz through the slide door that earned him a shocked expression from the gate guards. Liraz hid his smile at their horror. Disciplined members of the Fell Guard did not wave at their captains.
As the complete crew arrived, Liraz kept a count of all thirty one members, including the cartographer, Klare. She was in the last cart. He cursed as she approached him with a determined look on her. He had promised her protection during her exploration so he had to spare someone for her. Melori and Mais stepped out of the wagon, behind Klare.
“Captain, I believe this is where I take your leave,” Klare said. Melori stood beside her while Mais unloaded the crates that Klare required. She traveled with a lot of drawing tools.
“Melori will stay with you,” Liraz said. “You will be safe inside the city, but I don’t want you snooping around alone.”
Klare raised his eyebrow at him. Nevertheless, she nodded to Melori and picked up one of the smaller crates. Melori picked up the charts beside them and followed Klare.
“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure she stays out of trouble,” Melori wispered to Liraz as she passed him. When Liraz had told the crew that the cartographer, Klare, would be joining them in their travels, Melori had volunteered to accompany the woman when others had groaned. The members of Unit Seven liked to stick together and had spent more than a year together earning each other’s trust. They, however, did not see Klare as part of the crew. Liraz harbored a tightly-knit band of friends that had closed itself to the outside. He felt part of the blame belonged to the lack of battles in the last year. When in battle, the units had worked together with each other and members between units had bonded. When they trained, units worked against each other which alienated them from other crews of the Fell Guard. Klare was not from another crew, for that they tolerated her. Some of them, like Melori and Mais, had even tried talking to her. Melori, with her knack of taking up tasks that the others wouldn’t, had volunteered to help Liraz with Klare’s protection.
Liraz smiled at her. “I know. Only, I am certain she is trouble.”
“I heard that.”
Klare glared at him and Melori laughed. She then dragged Klare out of sight as Liraz struggled to put on an apologetic expression.
Liraz waited till the carts were pulled into the stables by the gates. Since it was the only way out of Deepcross, they would be returning to the Gates in two days.
Ruce and Druin waited for him by the stable entrance.
“C’mon, I could use a drink.”
* * *
Klare tried to slow her pace to walk beside Melori. The members of Unit Seven were polite, but they were not a friendly bunch. They had no doubt heard about her talk with Liraz to join their expedition. And now, most of them ignored her. She had spent the entire time on the road engrossed in her books, or at least she had pretended to. Melori and Mais had tried talking to her, but she had found it hard to lay a common ground with them. Nevertheless, they had continued to keep her company in her cart throughout the journey from the shores.
The general air of excitement had been intoxicating. The Fell Guard had rarely allowed any unit from the main army to leave the shores. Previously, a state of constant alert was expected from the units. In fact, when the war was ongoing, at least one member had been expected to stay up during the nights – to be on call to alert the entire unit in case of surprise strikes by the enemy.
Despite the slow pace, Melori stayed behind Klare. Like an escort. Klare sighed.
“You can walk with me, you know,” she said.
Melori made a sound halfway between a giggle and a cough. Klare turned around and looked at her innocent expression.
“Something amusing?”
“No,” said Melori. She had a high pitched voice, that sounded almost sing-song. The smug expression bothered Klare more than she let on. Liraz had annoyed her when she had tried to reason with him and now he had her under the supervision of a baby-sitter.
They had entered the city through the Southern gates. Klare had made her way out of the city marketplace to the west of Deepcross. The blocks of buildings three stories high stretched in all directions, with thin alleyways snaking their way between them. They had spent more than an hour walking West, the resurgicle had been directing her in the North-West direction since they had entered the city.
The resurgicle was a device Klare had encountered about a year ago. An initial version of it had been adopted by the healers and surgeons. It measured the beat of a rhythm. For surgeons, that meant measuring rhythmic breathing of the sick or measuring the number of beats of the heart per minute – the pulse. For a horologist, the primary function of a resurgicle had been tweaked to measure seconds in a minute, and minutes in an hour. More advanced refinements to the device had created the reminiscale (pronounced reminscle.) that measured time scales smaller than a second. Klare had been amazed by the device for years.
As a cartographer, she used the resurgicle like her mentors did – as a way to detect the directions. The rhythmic beat a magnetic field produced had to be calibrated at different locations to detect and point the device to true North. Over her years of travel in Lethos, Klare had, not once, calibrated the settings. The island had a small enough area to detect similar magnetic field beats across the entire nation. She presumed that someone traveling to Ad-Karadere or Nelne in the South would find real use of the devide in navigation.
She followed the thumps of the resurgicle to the North West of the city with Melori behind her. During the past year, she had broken and rebuilt the small tool so many times that at one point it had stopped working completely. It had taken her many a sleepless nights, but at last she had heard the thumping again. Unfortunately, it had not matched the magnetic frequency. She had tried to use it to detect a heartbeat, but the resugicle had started detecting beats even when kept idle. The device detected the strange beats at regular intervals throughout the day. The beats had started recurring every hour, coming from the direction of Deepcross, beating with the same frequency for over three months. Klare had taken to wearing the device around her neck, checking the time when a beat occurred. The source of the beat had been in a North-East direction from her every time. Somewhere near Deepcross as seen from her Fell Guard’s quarters near the shore. It could have been beyond Deepcross or closer than the city, but the beat had changed direction as soon as she had entered the city. Now it was coming from North-West. The source was either inside the city or further West. Somewhere between Deepcross and her quarters in Fell Guard, she surmised.
Klare had grown excited inside her cart. As soon as they had started their journey, the frequency of the beat had improved. It had been a slight change, but Klare had caught it. Instead of the regular hour, the thumping had come every fifty-two minutes. It had continued the same trait till they had reached Deepcross. Now, she felt the beat had slowed down to the hour. As they reached the third hour of the walk in the same direction, Klare saw the West city gates and sighed. They were almost at the edge of the city again. From South to West, the hourly beat of the resurgicle had led her, with no end in sight.
A thump came from the East. She gasped as the devide picked up the familary yet strange beat. The source was now to the East. She must have crossed it in the previous hour when there had been no beat. The source was definitely in Deepcross. Somewhere between the street she stood on, and the street she had crossed in the past hour.
“I give up,” Melori groaned. “We’ve been walking for hours.”
“Just a few more minutes.” Klare said, holding up a hand up at Melori. “I need another hour to narrow it down.”
The girl visibly scowled. Klare hesitated. They had been walking since the minute they had entered the gates. Melori had given up her own time for Klare, and they had not eaten in hours. It was time she showed a semblance of appreciation to Unit Seven for letting her accompany them. Besides, it could be hours before she could completely pin down on the location of the source.
“Alright, we can stop for today,” she said. Melori grinned at her. How easy a gesture. A smile. Klare returned it.
“Let me show you what fun looks like,” Melori said. She turned and walked back the way they had come. The girl was younger than Klare by a few years, and had a pleasant sing-song voice. A voice that hit the ear with such high notes that they jolted you out of a reverie. A Melody. The name was Nelnian, but not quite. The rah sound had its roots in Ad-Karadere. Klare guessed that Melori had parents of different nationality, one from North and one in South. The Nelnians were a proud nation, their history written in lengthy poems that had been passed down for generations. All the women in their culture knew them. Melori’s mother would know them and, Klare guessed correctly as she heard the girl humming to a poem, so would Melori.
“Can we eat something and get a drink? Or did Liraz order you not to get me drunk?”
“Captain Liraz didn’t order anything,” Melori said, eyeing Klare. “Except that we are to be at the entrance to the dragon carcass by nightfall.”
“You do know the Dragon is worshipped on this island,” Klare demanded.
“I do!,” Melori said from in front of her. “I just wanted to know if you cared.”
“Could you tell if I do?”
Melori glanced at her. “Not really. You are a tough one to figure out. Just like the Captain. When I volunteered to be your bodyguard, he thought I was kidding.”
Klare stopped in her tracks.
“You… volunteered? Bodyguard?!”
Melori laughed. She led Klare to a large single-story building. Someone had retched right on the threshold of the large wooden door. Klare covered her nose as they entered. Most of Unit Seven was inside. The smell of vomit was replaced with a strong scent of wine. Klare saw men and woman laughing and dancing beside a small number of tables set in a corner. There were smaller chambers that lined the far end of the larger open space. Holard, the big lug, was in one of them. He was talking to a another large man who was not in Fell Guard uniform.
Klare saw others from Unit Seven seated at the long table by the barkeep. Gwen and Keia sat next to Odenne who drank deeply from a large mug. They laughed at him as he spilled half the drink down his front. There was another man from unit seven that Klare did not recognize.
Liraz sat a table in one of the chambers with the two men that always shadowed him. The two of them had not spoken a word in the time that Klare had met and known them. Ruce and Druin, the soldiers. Liraz was drinking from a small cup as she chatted with the girl that served them drinks. He did seem to know something other than barking orders.
Melori nudged Klare from the left.
“Stop glaring at the Captain. I cannot guard you from unit seven if they saw you.”
“Haha,” Klare said as Melori grinned.
Yet another member of unit seven that Klare did not know by name handed Melori two drinks. It was red wine. A woman’s drink. Klare accepted her glass as Melori clinked hers against it. She drained the glass in one go.
“You really volunteered?”
Melori sighed before answering her. “Yes.”
“Why?,” Klare asked before she could stop herself.
“Sometimes people are just nice.”
Klare laughed at that. That was why Melori had asked to look after the cartographer? She could not believe it. It had to be something else.
“Fine, sometimes people owe their Captain for causing other trouble,” Melori admitted. “Look, Captain Liraz has done much for us. I was in a different unit before. I know how other Fell Guard captains treat us recruits. You will see that others in this crew are of the same opinion. Stop being hard on the captain.”
Klare glanced at Liraz. She had heard of him being a generous captain before, but Melori’s was the first testimony she’d heard.
“Mingle,” said Melori. “You’ll find that time will fly by.”
With that the girl drifted to one of the tables nearby, picking up another drink. Klare took a sip as Gwen raised her own glass from the table at her. Klare nodded to her. Another friend. She smiled at the ease.
A tall man, Nikor, asked her to judge a game of darts between him and Keia. Klare agreed eagerly, having never seen the game. It was simple. The two contestants threw darts at a circular board that had scores written on them. The center was marked with the largest number, as expected, and lower numbers surrounded it as one moved away to the circumference. Each player had three darts to throw from a distance. The one with the highest score won. Nikor won two games in a row as Keia cursed. She, however, thanked Klare as she made her way back to the barkeep.
Nikor then called out for another challenge. Holard called him out. Gwen had been timidly watching the game from her chair since the beginning. Klare made her the judge in the second game. The small girl hopped her way across to them in glee. With an approving nod from Melori, Klare took her leave from the dart game and walked to the Captain’s table.
A faint pop.
The resurgicle thumped faintly against her heart. It was so faint that she had been certain she imagined it. But, the steady beat was there. Almost as faint as her own heartbeat. She had almost missed it. A second heartbeat against her own chest.
“This is how the other half lives, yada_yada_yada,” Liraz said, arms stretched to indicate the entire room. He looked directly at her as he took a sip from his cup.
Klare narrowed her eyes at him. The thump was rapidly becoming more heartbeat-like as she stepped closer to his table. A human. The source was a human. She had been tracking the captain all these days.
It was almost close to an hour since she had heard the unnatural beat.
She sat opposite Liraz at the table.
“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” Liraz said again. “A game of darts with Nikor on the first day, that’s bold.”
Klare forced herself to snap out of the revelation and answer him.
“Yes, captain,” she said. “I mean… they needed a judge.”
“You know,” he said to her, “Melori seems to think you can be less annoying when you want to. How did you manage that?”
She scowled at him and he laughed. Unit Seven managed to cover every peak and trough of her emotional abilities. There were members like Gwen and Nikor, who she got along with. Others like Melori tested made her question her patience. Liraz was on the other end of the small spectrum. He made her blood boil.
“It was easy, captain,” she said. “I observed how you treat your crew, and did the complete opposite.”
Liraz burst out laughing at that and a few others joined him. Klare had not realized that more members of the crew had moved closer to the captain’s table and overheard her retort. Even Ruce had a faint smile on his face.
“A fighter. Good,” said Liraz. “Drink. And welcome to Unit Seven.”
The others cheered and returned to their conversations. Liraz stood up, but Klare pulled him back to his seat. Ruce and Druin stirred behind him, but she ignored them.
“Stay absolutely still, Captain. Just for a minute.”
As soon as she said the words, the device thumped against her skin. The most intense beat she had felt from the resurgicle. It thumped a second time, reaffirming that Liraz, indeed, was the source of her search. She let his hand go and downed her glass in one long gulp.
the Broken Dragon 