CHAPTER ONE

When I opened my eyes I saw utter blackness. One cannot really see blackness, so I surmised that either I was blind or it was simply too dark to see. I was lying on my stomach, my arms and legs sprawled clumsily on the floor, or surface, or whatever it was I was on. It was cold and hard and a little damp; my shirt stuck to it as I crawled my way up to my hands and knees, the fabric peeling away a recent scab on my abdomen. The moisture, I thought immediately, must have been my own blood. It was at that point when a rush of panic overcame me, and I asked myself, louder than I should like, where I was, who I was, and how I came to forget these important facts.

Like I said, I thought it was just very dark, but at that point I could just as well have been blind. I was also at that point bleeding, and a particularly nasty case of nausea and vertigo began to set in as well. I felt around on the floor for anything soft I might press into my stomach wound, eventually feeling a piece of coarse fabric. Unfortunately, this fabric seemed to feel like the leg of an occupied pair of pants. I shuffled forward, running my hand up the leg toward the chest; whoever it was, they were also wounded and were barely taking breath.

“C… can you hear… me,” I stammered, shivering as much from shock as from cold. No response. Whoever this was, he was dying, and a lot faster than I was. However, I had even greater concerns, as the sound of my voice seemed to cause something else nearby to stir.

A sound like that of heavy canvas dragged along rough stone came from behind me, accompanied by a dull glow that cast my shadow far into the distance, yet shed insufficient light to reveal the nature of my surroundings. I spun to look, only barely thankful for the fact that I was not blind after all. The glow, faint as it was, came from a circle of light imperceptibly far away. Without any point of reference, it could just as well have been the new moon low in the sky. But then, to my utmost dread, the circle blinked.

I scrambled to my feet, stumbling back clumsily, gazing into this great eye as its owner began to shamble toward me. The glow grew more intense from the eye as the creature spun to face me, its other eye coming to lock onto my panicked face. Within them, pupils, vast and devious, dilated. I fell backward over the dying man on the ground, my tailbone smashing hard against the floor as the head of this great creature rose higher still. Blue glints of reflected light now twinkled from its exposed teeth, its mouth full of them; sharp gnashing blades through which a terrible, thunderous roar now cried out toward me.

I shrank back as the heat of its breath pelted me, stung my eyes and the cut on my belly. I spun to my feet and began to try to run, but in the dark, with the only light dimly following my escape attempt, I soon stumbled over another body. This one, ice cold and in rigor, was not so fortunate as I. I looked back in terror to hear a voice, that of the dying man I encountered earlier, moaning his way to consciousness. The blue-eyed creature turned its attention toward him, whoever he was, and descended toward him. I was petrified, unable to twitch a muscle, as the man woke at the very grisly end of his life. As his last shriek faded, I felt something cold and hard on the ground beside me. It was small, cylindrical, and cool to the touch. Attached to it was the hand of the dead person over whom I had tripped moments ago. A weapon, perhaps? The creature finished its meal as I pried the cylinder from the dead person’s hand. A small series of tubes ran its length, terminating in a small round toggle switch. As the creature closed on me, I got to my feet and flicked the switch, somehow feeling that this was the only way to save my life.

The cylinder gave off a whirring noise, like hundreds of gears spun in unison within its small frame. Then, the chamber was bathed in a brilliant flash of amber light. The creature shrieked as its eyes, so adjusted as they were to the dark, were temporarily blinded by the light emitted by this cylinder. I, too, was stunned, but I was fortunate enough to recover much more efficiently. The light was coming from a segmented blade that now extended from the tube’s end, the blade itself emitting a dazzling amber light and churning with a static hum.

Though brilliant, the blade’s brightness was a relative thing. The chamber was not lit enough to show an exit, and though I could now see the creature’s face, I could not make out the whole of the thing. Credit that largely to the creature’s immensity, but the fact remained that I was in a large chamber with no visible exit armed only with this strange weapon against a terrible monster. The amnesia was a little bonus, though I had doubts that knowing how I wound up in this position, or even who I was, would really help all that much.

The creature finally made the adjustment, swirling its head upward and throwing open its immense jaws. Within its mouth, a vicious maw filled with sword-sharp teeth, I could still make out portions of the creatures last meal. Poor fellow. As it descended upon me, its shadow once again eclipsing nearly all light, I damned it for still being hungry for more, tightened my grip on the sword’s handle, and dove laterally in hopes of avoiding oblivion. I landed awkwardly, rolling over and over until coming back to a knee a short distance from the creature’s head. Instinct, or perhaps training, kicked in, as I rushed to slide the sword’s glowing blade into the side of the monster’s great skull.

It flinched at the last moment, bony thorn-like spikes on its face parrying my sword thrust and causing me to sprawl away. I was more nimble now, again, likely due to some training I had no recollection of, and came into a defensive stance. Unseen in the shadows beside the creature, a massive tail swept out toward me. My twitch reflex forced an impossible cartwheel out of me and, somehow, I found the edge of my blade sliding upward, cutting into the floor and then through the coarse meat of the creature’s tail. It yelped angrily, rearing back in a panicked recoil, repulsed and confused by my sudden counterstrike (yet not nearly so confused as I).

My eyes darted around the chamber, seeking out some hope of escape. The creature’s uproar echoed in such a way that betrayed a distant ceiling and far flung walls. It’s sheer volume must require a substantial set of lungs, I guessed, and that air must be entering the chamber from somewhere. The creature was cowering now, a cat in recoil from the mouse that dared bite back. I made use of the opportunity, striking the edge of the blade on the floor in front of me in a circular slash, great sparks of amber light showered through the dense air of the creature’s dense, labored breaths, and witnessing the mounting panic in its widening eyes, I let out a roar of my own.

Somehow, my voice carried a substantial force, far louder than I should have been able to manage. Also, a force not unlike a solid wind, rushed out from within me, battering the creature into a climax of alarm. It turned tail (half, anyway) and ran from me. From little, wounded, barely conscious me. Whoever “me” was.

“Amnesia,” I said, slumping to my knees and gulping the air laboriously. “What a bloody cliché.”

The blade of the sword was now my only source of light, but with the creature gone (for the moment) I took some time to attend to my belly wound. I sat, legs crossed, and held the sword in one hand, turning the blade to reflect its light most efficiently on my abdomen. The sight was grisly, especially in the exclusive sepia glow of the sword. However, as I peeled back the shredded fabric, I was stunned to see scar tissue suturing the gash as if I had been healing properly for weeks. In the absence of considerable pain or, indeed, any inkling of what was going on, I rose to my feet and asked the most obvious question to immediately spring into my bewildered mind.

“Who the hell am I?”

How cliché.

After an embarrassing amount of time spent silently pondering the answer to that question, I let my eyes drift down to the sword in my hand. Perhaps this weapon, with which my instincts were obviously quite familiar, could shed some light. I was only marginally aware of the audacity of that pun, but I still managed to avoid laughing at my inner monologue’s bad joke. Waking up like the protagonist in a science fiction novel puts one in a strangely foul mood, it seemed.

The handle itself was an unassuming cylindrical shaft, dark bronze in color, with a toggle switch positioned nearest the thumb. The cylinder itself was contoured to fit ones fingers comfortably, its surface smooth but for small hatch-gradated areas, likely designed to increase grip when the blade connects with its target. At the bottom I could feel some sort of symbol etched into the metal, like a die mark, but the only light I had came from the blade at the opposite end, so that mark would have to remain a mystery for the time being.

The blade was fascinating to say the least. From the diamond-shaped pommel at the end of the handle, a series of small V-shaped segments of metal, each as tall as my thumb was long, climbed upward, interlocking with one another until a final, diamond-shaped piece perched snugly at the top. The metal of the blade was a dull black, but the edges of each segment, as well as the outside edge of the complete blade, glowed from within a most dazzling yellow, the brilliance most potent at the core of the blade. The weapon was deceptively light, and based upon the deep slice it put in the floor moments ago, it was devastatingly sharp. A whirring, mechanical noise cooed from within the handle, like the gears of a tiny, clamorous clock. There was a faint vibration as well, one which seemed to intensify as the blade moved through the air.

In examining the weapon, I found myself flipping the handle around, quickly switching hands, even tossing it to balance the bottom of the handle on the tips of my outstretched fingers. I was very familiar with this weapon, or one much like it, whoever I was. I proceeded to swing and stab the weapon into the dark air that utterly and irritatingly caged me, hoping that some swish of the sword, some maneuver I pulled off unfathomably, would fracture my amnesia. Alas. I realized that I had lost track of the direction in which the monster ran. After a brief pause and a deep breath, I smirked, looked to my left, and began to slowly walk leftward.

The floor was covered in a kind of stone-like tile, the grout lines patterned and sloped in such a way as to collect moisture. A drain, and perhaps freedom, might be found where these patterns lead. The sheer quantity of dead bodies, the nature of the fluids flowing through these horrid troughs, made me question whether I wanted to find the drain after all. I paused to ponder the physics of this one feature of the chamber. If indeed these tiles were laid to capture blood, as my instincts so screamed, then walking against the flow would likely lead me to an outer wall and, perhaps, a way out.

I spun in place and held the sword’s tip downward, twisting the blade’s surface to reflect the amber light as if it was a directed lantern. I followed the pattern of the floor tiles, passing fourteen bodies (or portions thereof), coming to an arbitrary conclusion that there were at least fifty dead within a five minute walk of any one tile. After several minutes, a dull reflection of my sword’s light met me from ahead.  It was a wall, alright. As I drew near, I could make out the slightest inward curve to its shape, both horizontally and vertically. This chamber was some sort of massive hollow dome-shape.

In examining the wall, I ran my fingers along its surface, feeling from within the coarse rock a slight vibration. I didn’t know how I knew this, but I found myself saying ‘water,’ as if it should be obvious that what lay beyond unknown depths of rock wall was a rushing river of some sort. My eyes shot around, looking, praying, for any sign or pattern to follow to an escape. Eventually, it was my ears that answered that prayer.

“… thing’s tail got t’self nicked.”

A voice, from somewhere above and beyond view, drew slowly into the chamber. I doused my sword’s blade in haste, the segments dislodging and stacking against one another within the handle, the diamond-shaped tip sealing at the pommel’s edge, I effectively became blind again. It was a temporary nuisance, as from a previously imperceptible catwalk suspended far overhead, a trio of figures emerged from a hidden doorway in the dome’s wall above. One of these figures, a heavily armored man, carried a crude flame lantern hung from a hook-shaped staff.

“The caretaker will be mortified,” the armored man continued. “How could some’n live long enough against a burloq to whack off its bloody tail anyways, that’s what I’m itch’n to know.”

“Oh, indeed, I quite agree, Noul,” replied another man, this one thinner and wearing some sort of a military uniform. Unlike the armored one (Noul, apparently), this man spoke in a polished and deliberate fashion. As they were walking on the catwalk, they drew further from my position and it became harder for me to hear their words. I looked down, the blackness on the floor ahead now quite menacing. To keep pace with them, I had to rely on my memory of where the bodies on the floor lie. To leave them ahead, I might lose whatever clues I could glean as to my position, predicament, and even identity.

I shuffled as quietly as I could manage as they walked overhead into the dome’s center once more. The third figure, a robed woman, paused for a moment as I stepped over a corpse, and I thought perhaps that I had made some noise and been discovered.

“Problem, Mistress?” The thin man stopped his progress and looked back to the robed woman. I froze, held my breath, and prayed deep within.

“The caretaker has problems of greater interest than a wounded burloq, Lord Vhal.”

The robed woman dove over the rail of the catwalk, dropping 12 meters and landing with unheard of grace. Her eyes locked on mine, even in the darkness, and they began to emit a dazzling white light from her pupils.

“Mistress Cziar!” The thin man, Lord Vhal, and Noul began to rush further toward the dome’s center, likely to find a more sane descent than their mistress. Cziar cast her hood back from her face and withdrew from within her robes a pearl-colored sword handle much like my own. She closed the distance between us faster than an eyeblink, her sword’s blade clinking into place and emitting a brilliant white light that created a lasting arc of brilliance in its wake reminiscent of a moth’s wing. I barely got my blade activated in time to put up a clumsy defense, her attack so measured, so impossibly forceful, that I felt like my arm would rip off at the shoulder from the mere impact of her blade against my own. I wheeled backward, hopping over a corpse and retreating. She kicked the corpse back toward me hard enough to batter me into a coma. I instinctually arced my blade in an upward thrust, casting the cadaverous missile in twain. She used the distraction to close the gap once again and this time her blade’s edge found purchase. Though she only barely caught my skin, the pain of the cut was a small hell of its very own.

“BACK OFF,” I screamed, the force of my voice once again manifesting in a tangible rush of solid wind that caught Cziar utterly off her guard. She tumbled back from me like a wad of paper in a typhoon, her head visibly and audibly slapping against the stone floor 20 meters away. Her body went slack. However, her companions had now rejoined her and were rapidly approaching.

“Mistress!” Lord Vhal bellowed nervously before retrieving a weapon from a holster on his left thigh, a pistol. “Noul, get the good lady to safety and call out the alarm. I’ll deal with our noisome menace.”

I somehow knew that letting Noul escape to sound an alarm would be the end of my short-lived escape attempt. With more speed than should be possible, I hurtled over Lord Vhal, his pistol firing an energized slug mere hairsbreadths beneath me, and I found myself behind the heavily-armed Noul. With a flick of my wrist, I brought my blade across the bridge of Noul’s nose, a splash of red accompanied his pained roar. Vhal spun to fire at me again, and again some unexplainable training kicked in.

“STOP,” I howled, causing the very slug exiting his pistol to tremble, altering its path away from me. Noul recovered and retrieved an impressive spiked mace from his back. He was moaning in pain from his severed nose, choking on blood pouring into his throat from within his fractured skull, but he wasn’t giving up without a fight. None of them were, as Mistress Cziar came to and brought herself back up to unsteady feet.

I met Cziar’s eyes and I realized what my only course of action was. As Noul swung his huge mace toward me, I leaned back from its path, spun on my heel and planted a roundhouse kick directly to his face. I felt and heard his skull shatter, and as blood poured from his upturned eyes, I knew that kick had ended his life. Whoever I was, I was a very effective killer of men. Lord Vhal turned his pistol toward me again, but as he fired, I sent another sonic burst out, pushing Cziar in the path of his shot. The energized slug passed through her left eye and out the back of her head. I was nauseated and exhilarated at the same time. Vhal screamed in disbelief, the pistol shook in his hand, and he brought it to bear on his own head. Before he could squeeze the trigger, I threw my sword toward him. The throw was so accurate that the blade lodged itself between the firing pin and the slug chamber. I retrieved Cziar’s blade, whose color immediately changed to amber upon my taking possession of it, and throttled Vhal’s throat against the floor.

“Do you feel shame, Lord Vhal,” I asked, my voice trembling with rage. I noticed in the reflection from his eyes that my own eyes were emitting a golden glow of their own. “Shame for failing to protect your Mistress Cziar? Shame enough that your life is now forfeit in your eyes?”

He didn’t answer, his tears streaming across his cheeks, his face turning deep red as I almost unwittingly choked him.

“She’s waiting for you, Vhal,” I said. “In whatever paradise awaits people like you. I’ll send you there, but first, I need something from you.”

“You…”

“What was that?” I asked, loosening my grip slightly, my rage subsiding.

“Y… you took… my mistress… from me…”

“Yes,” I replied. “But it was your slug from your pistol, and that’s why you can’t go on living.”

He sobbed loudly. I shook my head, stood up, and took a few steps back from him as he shrunk into a fetal position, bawling and calling out his mistress’s name, saying he was sorry over and over. I knelt down, shaking my head, and cried my own tears. I got the feeling I wasn’t the protagonist after all. This propensity for viciousness, this aptitude for violence, my relative apathy, they all pointed toward the notion that I was a very bad person before I lost my memory.

Vhal moved toward his mistress, taking her hand in his and frowning up at me.

“What do you want from me,” he asked, exasperated.

“I want answers, Vhal,” I said, shaking my head and looking at him piteously. “I need to know what this place is, first of all.”

“This place?” He straightened up and his face took on a perplexed expression. “You… you don’t know this place?”

“Should I,” I asked, waving Cziar’s sword… now my sword, to gesture into the darkness beyond its dim light. “It is too dark to see any detail, and even if I could, I can’t remember a damned thing.”

“You can’t remember anything?”

“I remember not stuttering just now, Vhal. I remember your mistress attacking me unprovoked.”

“I…,” Vhal started, then looked down to Cziar, his face tightening and grim. “You have no idea where you are or why you’re here. You have amnesia.”

“Yes,” I said, sitting on the ground near him, still keeping my blade within striking distance of him in case he turned on me.

“Kind of cliché, don’t you th…”

“Of course it’s cliché,” I said, angrier than I should have. “I woke bleeding on the floor… over there… and was attacked by a massive creature with glowing blue eyes. A… burloq?” He nodded. “I found myself more capable in defense than I rightly should be… grabbed a sword off one of these corpses, and managed to scare the burloq off.”

“Lopped off the end of its tail,” he said. “That’s what the Caretaker sent us here to investigate. Mistress Cziar was in the room when the caretaker gave me the order. She said… that she was destined to accompany me on this quest… and poor Noul Lemley… he volunteered too. If I had come alone…”

“None of this might have happened,” I said. “I deeply regret killing your friends, Lord Vhal, but I am confused and frankly just trying to survive. I need answers. Please.”

He sat quietly for a few moments, his eyes darting around as he tried to consider what should be done.

“Answers,” he said. “Then you kill me. That’s the deal.”

“If that is your desire, yes.”

“So be it. This place is called the Span. It is a death sentence. People dropped in the Span are guilty of the most heinous crimes. The Span is sealed to prevent all light from getting in, and then the nocturnal Burloq is sent in, hungry for blood.”

“I’ve heard enough,” I said. “What did I do to deserve this sentence?”

“I don’t know who you are,” he admitted. “But by the looks of you, by the way you fight, I think you may have been one of the dissidents who recently conspired to assassinate Queen Lelyna.”

“Dissidents,” I repeated. “Assassination? It seems like I have the skill set for such a task.”

“Well, if you were indeed one of the Seven Usurpers, your plot failed. Our queen is safe.”

“What of the others,” I asked. The other six of these Seven Usurpers.”

“Above my pay grade, I’m afraid,” Vhal admitted. “I wasn’t even aware that any of you were caught. But if you found that sword in the hand of a corpse, I would say that accounts for at least one other member of your treasonous cadre. Now, if you will keep your end of our bargain.”

“I’m not finished with you yet, Vhal. I need to know how to get out of here.”

“I can’t allow that, usurper,” he said defiantly. My anger rose in my throat as my jaw clenched tightly. “I’ll answer questions, but I won’t betray my nation to a criminal’s whims. If you want out of here, curse you, find your own way out.”

I rushed toward him, blindly furious, and took his shirt collar in my hand, twisting it and bringing him up to his feet. I repeated my demand, for a way out of the Span, but he remained defiantly silent on the issue. I held him at the fullest length of my left arm, which was somehow strong enough to suspend him onto the tips of his toes, and I looked down to his mistress once more. I looked back to him, then began to slice the robes away from her, exposing her chest, defiling her remains in an effort to force him to be pliant. I was every bit the villain he had made me out to be, every bit the villain I was afraid I would turn out to be. He struggled with this, looking down, then away, from his beloved mistress, but his resolve remained. I sighed, dropped him to the ground, and shrugged.

“Cover her up. Then get the hell out of here.”

“What,” he said while frantically draping the torn robes over Cziar’s exposed body. “Only to allow you to follow me to an exit? No… we had a deal.”

“I might have been an assassin,” I said, struggling to admit it aloud, “but I have no intention of killing you.” I walked away from him, in the relative direction I believed he had approached me from earlier. “If you wait long enough, I am sure the burloq will be along.”

His protests faded behind me as I found my way through the darkness of the Span. Eventually, I did indeed hear the familiar roar of the burloq and a final scream from Lord Vhal of Wherever.

“Rest well in your mistress’s arms, Vhal,” I said grimly. I had found a massive drain at the center of the Span, a small footbridge leading across it to a central pillar and a ladder leading up to the catwalk overhead and, I hoped, my freedom from this place. As I crossed over the drain grates on the footbridge, I perceived someone, or something, watching me from above. As nonchalantly as I could, I glanced upward, seeing naught but the nigh infinite shadows above. I continued onward, still cautious of that instinctual feeling of being watched, until I came to the ladder leading upward. In order to climb, I would have to disengage my sword’s blade, hold it between my teeth, and rappel the steps in utter darkness. If someone awaited me above, they would have every advantage.

Once the final, diamond-shaped segment of my sword’s blade sealed tightly into the handle’s pommel, I began to make the climb regardless of the risks. There was no way of knowing how far up this ladder went, but judging from the height of the catwalk near the wall and the gradual slope of the Span’s floor, I guessed it had to be about a 30 meter climb. As I passed the 15 meter mark, I paused, slung one arm over a rung, and took out my sword, engaging the blade and pointing it upward. I could now see the catwalk, a narrow walkway suspended from above by thick bundles of metallic wire. There was nobody on the walkway proper, but leaning against the ladder portal on the balcony landing above was Noul Lemley’s lantern-staff, its flame doused.

Once on the balcony, a wide platform encircling the dome’s wide central pillar, I took the lantern-staff in hand. The staff was made of wood with several engraved metal plates running the length of it. There was a magnetic flint lighter attached to the hook from which the crude lantern hung. With the lantern lit, my eyes once again experienced a disorienting bloom, but after a brief moment I had adjusted once more. I began across the catwalk, the blackness now both above and below adding to the dreadful gloom of the place. I supposed that if Vhal spoke true, if this was indeed a form of death sentence, it certainly looked the part. Just being in here made one feel dead, even while still drawing breath.

About ten minutes of walking brought me to a widened perch which I guessed was the half-way point to the outer wall and, I prayed, escape. I took a moment to move close to the edge, a chest-high metal fence protecting me from falling over. A pair of dull blue eyes regarded me from the floor of the place, and when I met its gaze, it shrunk back from me. The burloq remembered the man who took its tail, it seemed, and did not wish for a rematch.

At the end of the catwalk I found a silvery, rough-hewn cave, the walls coated in a kind of glass-like film. The lantern’s dim light was amplified in the wall’s gleam, the path before me as bright as if sunlit. A slight ache grew in my temples and beneath the wells of my eyelids, but I pushed on. The sound of rushing water was now quite audible as well, and the relative dearth of noise within the Span left my ears ringing in a quite distracting way. As I approached the exit, I heard the faintest sounds of movement beyond the widening arch of the cave’s orifice. I doused the lantern, placed the staff on the cave floor, and took my sword in hand, keeping the blade rapt within just in case I needn’t shed more blood this day.

The noise was that of hooves clattering nervously on the stone path leading away from the cave. A carriage sat parked nearby a slope leading to the edge of a whitewater ravine. Still attached were a pair of horses bearing armor matching in design and material that of the late Noul Lemley. A approached cautiously, getting within feet of the animals before noticing the slumbering carriage driver slumped over onto his side, a bottle of some sorts clutched like young to a protective mother.

“Hey there,” I called out to him. The horses reacted more than he did, knickering to one another and swatting their tails at their reins. I climbed up, keeping the sword in hand but with the blade disengaged, and searched his body. He was armed with a short-bore shot rifle and a small carving knife; whittled softwood shavings were on the ground near the carriage, so I guessed he was crafting something to pass the time while his masters entered the Span to investigate the injured burloq. Both weapons were taken with ease from him, not once did his stir.

I entered the carriage itself, finding a uniform quite like that of Lord Vhal, probably Noul’s dress uniform, and proceeded to don the clothes. They were a bit loose in some areas, tight in some others, but I thought they would do the trick in a pinch. There was also a billfold with some cash and a ticket stub for some sort of drawing or lottery inside the chest pocket, a set of keys and a tarnished wedding band in the right pants pocket. Upon seeing the wedding band, I grimaced. Noul was married. His gauntlets likely chafed when he kept the ring on. A set of scratches on the surface of the ring seemed likely evidence to my sad theory. I wondered if he had any children as well.

“I need a drink.”

Wiping a few tears from my cheeks, I stepped out of the carriage, straightened my uniform, and cleared my throat. The uniform included a plumed hat with a low sitting brim, and I hoped it would aid in hiding my true identity from the driver when I rose him from his slumber.

“YOU THERE,” I hollered, startling both the driver and the horses. The driver fumbled his bottle carelessly, but my reflexes caught it just as it was about to smash on the coarse stones below. I looked up at him, frowning disapprovingly, and he gasped, straightening up to attention.

“Sir,” he said, his accent thick with guttural drawl, “Ye’ startled me, sir.”

“Sleeping, and drinking on your post,” I said, mimicking Lord Vhal’s accent as well as I could, “Really racking up the points today, aren’t we?”

“My apologies, sir,” he said, his eyes darting back and forth between my eyes and the bottle I was waving through the air. I gestured as if I was going to toss the bottle over the ravine and his eyes widened greatly. “Please, sir, don’t! That there bottle cost me two days pay.”

I paused, regarded his pleading eyes, and smiled, uncorking the bottle and swigging a bit of the foul, bitter concoction within, then handing it back to him.

“Two days doesn’t seem to buy much these days,” I said. He smiled and retook the bottle.

“Yer alright, sir,” he said, pouring three huge mouthfuls of the… whatever it was I had just poisoned myself with. He finished with a loud smack of his lips, then offered me more. I took the bottle for the sake of the role I was playing, but had no intentions of causing any further internal injury by drinking from it again.

“Tell you what,” I said, reaching into my billfold and producing a 25 Zal note from within, noticing the color sweeping into his face as I did so. “How about I take care next week’s refreshments for you. All I need is a ride back into town.”

He frowned, rubbing his unshaven face and looking toward the cave. “Me master ain’t returned from the Span yet, sir,” he said. “I’d hate to leave him w’out a ride.”

I doubled my offer, producing another note of equal value. He straightened in his seat and took the reins firmly in hand.

“Where to, sir,” he asked, pausing for me to say a location. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. “Friss? Or…”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Take me to Friss. Good taverns, Friss.”

He laughed and nodded. It was a guess.

END CHAPTER ONE