Blood Loss: The Chronicle of Rael (5 page)

5.

Rael sits at a table in a large smoky room, pouring over a large leather bound tome.  He’s careful to make sure the beads of sweat on his forehead do not drop onto the text.  He would not risk damage to it for anything, for then the sage may not lend him any other books or scrolls.  While he reads, he does not even keep water nearby to slake his thirst for fear of ruining the ink on the pages.  Heat permeates everything in the room, partially because it simply drifts into the inn’s main room from the kitchens.  It also seems to Rael that Tigol is just a hot place.  Of course, he has never been to anywhere in Tigol except this small city – a place called Somi.

Demon had led them on the most circuitous and fantastic of routes, as he was always sure that some priest, lawgiver or ranger was always on their heels.  It took him almost two months of crisscrossing across the Shining West, avoiding all contact with people if at all possible, before he finally marched to the southern coast.  Another month or so later, they bought passage on a narrow Tigolean ship and landed in Somi.

Rael thought that, if they were in fact being followed, it would be only a matter of time before Demon was caught.  After all, everyone would notice the young man with deathly gray skin and his companion – a hulking brute clad in steel with a skull mask and a giant sword.  About a year since fleeing Sanctum, Rael admits that his fears were unfounded, because no one seems to notice them at all. 

They’re just two more strangers in a city full of strangers.  Even on their first day in Somi, Rael saw a wider array of different peoples than he had seen his entire life.  Mostly, there were small statured, yellow skinned Tigoleans with their almond shaped eyes, but he also saw a few Westerners.  He saw his first Loszian – a frighteningly tall creature wearing dark robes with no hair – and an equally tall bronze skinned man called a Shet, whom he learned came from the southern regions of Tigol.  He even saw a few men whose skin was as black as the volcanic rock that some vendors fashioned into jewelry, their skin a great shock against their bright white teeth.  At some point, Demon had described his people from Dulkur in such a way.  In such a place, Rael and Demon simply vanished into the crowd.

Rael hasn’t seen a city before, but Somi does not look anything like the great Western cities he has heard about.  Some of the buildings are crude wooden constructs and some are made of granite, while most seem to be built out of bricks of orange-brown stone that he assumes to be common in the area.  The streets are unpaved, simply dirt packed by the hundreds of feet that walk them every day.  Sometimes, the wind blows and kicks up clouds of dust that move through the streets like a choking fume.  There seems to be no reason to the city’s layout, except that many of the wealthier merchants maintain warehouses near the docks.

It was there that Demon found work so that he did not risk depleting their decreasing coin.  Demon’s imposing size and obvious stature as a warrior made him an easy choice for a merchant requiring protection for his wares.  Rael wonders if Demon provides other services for the merchant as well, but he knows better than to ask the details of the arrangement.  While Demon works, Rael spends most of his time reading.

When they arrived in Somi, the first thing Demon did was find them a place to stay at the cheapest inn he could find.  The food seems decent, but Rael discovered in the first two days that it is better to drink ale or wine than the rancid milk or foul smelling water that was available.  The main room is kept more or less clean, except for the constant hazy smoke that clouds it, but the innkeeper pays no mind to the rooms he rents out.  Rael and Demon spent the first three hours in their meager accommodations trying to wash away the smell of vomit and urine, not to mention drown as many fleas as possible.

In the weeks after porting in Somi, Rael had taken to walking the city streets.  He started with the well-travelled areas, generally avoiding the cramped alleys or places that looked generally unsavory.  He looked at the wares of every vendor, though he had no money to buy anything.  Once, Demon had given him a few silver coins, and Rael returned to the inn with no money, though he hadn’t spent it.  Still, Rael generally went unmolested.  Either the people of Somi had no interest in him, or the longsword on his hip presented him as a young man not to be trifled with.

It was exploring the streets of Somi that Rael found the supplier of the various tomes, books and scrolls that he reads while Demon is about his business.  He happened across a wooden stand in one of the city’s many makeshift bazaars.  It had a roof made of animal furs that had been slathered with some sort of oily wax to cause water to run right off of them.  An odd, old Tigolean woman sat on a tall stool, overseeing her wares – a wide array of different pens, coal pencils and inks.  Rael looked over her offering several times while she sat and watched with a most disapproving glare.  He started to pick up a vial of ink that was the deepest of red, and she slapped his hand away from it, speaking in angry sounding Tigolean.

“I do not understand,” Rael stated.

“No touch!  Ink made from cord blood of Shet chief son.  Very expensive.  Very powerful,” she replied in Western, though her tone was no less angry.

“Do you have ink?  Normal ink?” he asked.

“Of course!  Normal ink easy.”

That night, Rael quietly swiped a few gold coins from the sacks Demon kept hidden in the corner of their room.  The old woman was surprised to see him return the next day and actually purchase a few vials of ink.  He began to negotiate as he had seen buyers do with vendors all across Somi, and she replied only by saying, “You not know how much ink cost!  Ink expensive!  You pay my price!”  Unable to read Tigolean, he had no idea what her price actually was, but when it was over, it seemed to Rael that he was again copperless.

He continued to visit her stand day after day to see what new form of ink or pen she had, though he rarely purchased anything, and after a while the old woman took an interest in him.  When he showed up, she would volunteer with pride to show him any new wares, and they became friends or at least friendly.  One day, she pulled aside a large ragged curtain to reveal a dark doorway into the building behind her stand.  Rael then understood that her real business was not ink, pen and parchment but books and scrolls.  She allowed him to carefully thumbs his way through the various tomes and read as he liked, if he could and if he stayed inside.  Over time, she began to teach him the Tigolean dialect written and spoken in Somi and even allowed him to take tomes back to the inn.

It was one of these, a history of northern Tigol that Rael reads now while keeping an eye on the door, the servants and the whores.  The latter of these had taken him by surprise when they first visited the inn.  He’d heard of such women from Demon’s mouth on many occasions, and from what Rael can tell, Demon is rather fond of them.  Rael has spent a fair number of nights asleep at a table in the common room, or curled up outside their door and Demon made all sorts of noises that generally threatened to shake the inn down.  Rael handled the women-of-ill-repute’s advances with self-conscious silence and shyness, something they considered humorous.

One heads his way now – a woman named Sevye.  Like all of the younger Tigolean women, Sevye is exotic to Rael’s Western eye, with her creamy yellow skin and almond shaped eyes.  She has traits common to young women of her race – a small and lithe figure, black hair and small breasts, barely concealed by some sort of silk brassiere.  Her sheer, loose fitting and easily accessed skirt sways back and forth as she approaches, and Rael cannot help but notice that it is slit right up the middle to her…

“What do you read tonight, Master Rael?” Sevye asks, sitting in an empty chair at his table.  Sevye speaks several languages, including Western.  Rael has heard from several of the inn-dwellers that she has a skilled tongue.

Rael smiles at her interest and replies, “A history of northern Tigol.”

“Is this one written also by this Chronicler of yours?”

“I am not sure, but I promise you the Chronicler is real,” he replies, looking up at her face.  She’s much closer to him than he realized, and the perfumed scent of her hair assaults his nostrils.  He thinks about kissing her.  After all she’s right there with her dark brown, almost black eyes, but the fear of doing it wrong banishes the idea.

A mailed fist thumps heavily down onto the tabletop as Demon’s giant form falls into a chair opposite Rael’s.  The construct complains a bit under his weight, but it somehow manages to hold the huge mass of steel, bone and flesh.  So absorbed in Sevye, Rael had not noticed the Dahken’s entrance.  He sighs inwardly at the interruption, and he swears a momentary look of disgust flashes across the whore’s face before she assumes her customary demeanor.  A servant brings a flagon of poor ale to the table, as they always know to have it ready for Demon.

“My feet betray me,” Demon grumbles.  “I chased a thief for over two hours.  By the time I caught him, I was feeling a bit harsh.”

“Shall we pass on training this evening then?” Rael asks.

“Why not?  There’s nothing else for me to teach you that you won’t learn on your own.”

“I like to hone my skills,” Rael replied.

Demon pulls his skull helm from his head and drops it on the floor where his arms hang.  He looks over the scene before him, and a grin comes to his face – a truly frightening sight to one who has not seen it before for his deformities.  “I see you keep company with the greatest whore in Somi.  Perhaps you have finally chosen to partake in the other of my two joys in life?  Tell me whore, does he woo you with sweet words from that moldy book of his?  Because I know a much easier, faster way.”

Sevye wrinkles her nose with a grimace and says, “Wash away the stink of steel and sweat and maybe we could discuss business.”

She leans in and places a soft kiss on Rael’s cheek before standing from the table.  Rael watches wistfully as she swishes her way between tables and chairs, repaying the occasional bawdy look or comment with a smile.  He sighs and looks back down at his reading, but he finds that he cannot concentrate with Demon’s quiet chuckling across the table.  He looks up to see the older Dahken wears a vicious looking grin.

“The whelp is in love with a whore,” Demon rumbles quietly, still chuckling.  “Do not think she has any interest in you.  It is only coin she is after.  She’s no different than any other merchant.  It’s just her cunt she sells instead of grain.”

Rael slams the tome shut angrily, drawing looks from some of the inn’s patrons, and he stands from his chair.  He wants to say something; he opens his mouth for a moment and then closes it again.  He tucks the heavy, leather bound tome under his right arm and stalks away to the wide doorway that leads to the accommodations.  Demon fills the room behind him with laughter.

Rael unlocks the room with a cheap copper key that he is fairly certain will unlock every other room in the inn and quickly closes the door behind him.  He doesn’t bother locking it again as he knows that Demon will be there soon, and he lights a half dozen candles.  The giant Dahken will likely drink until he can only stagger down the hall before he decides to sleep.  The room is small, perhaps only ten feet in either dimension.  Rael sits on his foul smelling straw filled mattress, placing the book beside him, and pulls his soft leather boots off one at a time.  It surprises him when Demon’s massively armored form squeezes through the door, skull faced helm in hand.

Demon unbuckles the leather strap across his chest and gently leans his great sword in the corner next to his own mattress.  He stares at Rael, who avoids his gaze, as he slowly removes his plate armor and sets it with care on the floor.  The soft linen undergarments he wears to protect his skin are soiled, soaked with sweat and stained with rust.  Demon again begins to chuckle softly, and Rael looks up to see the unsettling grin on the malformed face.

“Would you like me to buy the whore for you?” Demon asks with a leer.  Seeing that Rael has no intent to respond, he continues, “You know, there’s nothing like the feel of a virgin, and you’d probably prefer that for your first time.  Then again, I’m sure Sevye would be close.  I understand she prefers to use her mouth.”

“Be silent!” Rael snaps.  Seeing Demon’s grin widen he adds, “I am trying to read.”

“You’re a poor liar,” Demon says, pointing to the closed book next to Rael.  He sits on his own bed, which creaks angrily under his weight, and then leans back against the wall to gaze into the distance.  “I remember my first love as a boy.  I was stupid to think that such a fine creature would have one such as me.  She spurned me, but I came back.  Eventually, her father and half his village drove me into the jungles.  Oh, I had her eventually.  A few years later I returned and slaughtered most of them until they ran from me into the jungles.  She begged me to spare her life and the life of her child.  I’d killed her husband already.  I allowed her to pleasure me, but that wasn’t enough.  I dashed her infant’s head against some rocks, and then I raped her every way I could think of next to his corpse.  In the end, I couldn’t stand to look at her, so I pounded her head in with my bare hands.

“You’re smart, boy,” Demon concludes, pulling his eyes back to Rael’s horrified face.  “You picked a whore to fall in love with.  She’ll love anyone for the right amount of silver.”

“By the gods, I hate you,” Rael whispers.

Demon explodes into raucous laughter, and Rael winces with the loudness of it in their small room.  He suddenly turns to reach behind is bed where he keeps his stash of coins liberated from Sanctum, and just as quickly, Demon stands and bolts from the room.  Rael simply stares after him in confusion.  He sits and watches the open door, listening to the sounds of the main room beyond.