Elfborn: The Quest

An Unhappy Discovery

Now, to say that the buildings bound the square itself was a bit of a misperception. Truly, it was an open space like any in an Evindelian town. Yet the buildings that surrounded it, tall, narrow and closely packed together, looking as if they were made from brick and mud before being painted white to reflect the head, gave the impression of walls around the square. In reality, the buildings were several metres off of what Lash would call the square's perimeter.

The square was also of considerable size, perhaps twenty or so metres diagonally. That made the buildings that surrounded it that much more impressive for their size, a feat that was accomplished by the ancient engineers of Romis but was yet to be realized by the builders of Evindel.

But Lash forced these thoughts from his mind as he strode forward, intent on the road's sparsely populated mouth. The sooner he got the Michealines out of the open, the sooner he and Garrett could return to the beach to make sure the rest of the survivors were still alright. Although he wasn't sure where he was going to hide them. Looking up at the buildings on either side of them, he wasn't quite sure if he could even trust one of those spindly things to stay up long enough to shelter them overnight!

The dark windows that lined the buildings' faces gazed down on them like dark eyes as the small company of Evindelian knights crossed the square, keenly aware of the armed guards standing watch at the gates behind them. It would only take one of them to suspect something and sound the alarm to stop this furtive escape attempt before it could truly be realized. Still, they had no choice but to press on, looking neither to the right nor the left as they strode quickly towards the pathway, trying to adopt an air of confidence in their destination.

A confidence they were forced to continue to carry as their slippered feet stepped off the cobblestones of the well ordered square and into the maze that was Nakanir. To quickly discover the road they had chosen was more of a footpath than anything, leading them into the very heart of the maze. Lash could only hope that this maze, like the legendary one of ancient Minos, didn't have a beast waiting for them at the center.

For the first few minutes that they traveled the pathway, again looking only straight ahead if not down at their feet and the dusty ground that was passing beneath it, it appeared they had made the correct choice in the roads they chose to travel. For it was indeed as sparsely populated as its entryway, with only the occasional man stepping past them with barely a nod in greeting, his swarthy face intent on some distant goal.

That suited the Michealines just fine. The last thing Lash, Garrett or Sir Cedric wanted to do was to have some traveler start up a casual conversation with one of them. A conversation that none of them would be able to have.

But it didn't take long for Lash to notice something else. As the buildings around them grew more and more unkempt and in ill repair, so did the people that they ran across as they pressed deeper into the city. Were they perhaps moving into a less populated part of the city? A slum of some sort?

One look at the condition of the buildings around them seemed to confirm that. And any observation of any duration of the people passing them yielded they were growing more and more shabby in their dress, their robes frayed and discolored with stains and dirt, their looks evasive and their features wan and hardened by the trials of life.

Indeed they had passed into a less fortunate section of the city, a quarter they would later learn was known to the people of Nakanir as the Hut Tefadah, the Corridor of Thieves. A place most citizens of the city had learned to avoid, and by a rather broad margin. Of course the Quest knights knew nothing of that history. But they would soon find out, much to their chagrin.

His boots whispering as he stepped across the cracked cobblestones underfoot, Garrett drew close to Lash.

"I don't think I like the look of this place," he murmured, glancing about them at the people they now saw sitting in burnt-out hulks of buildings, staring from their doorways as if the uniforms the Michealines had borrowed somehow offended them. Their looks were no longer evasive, but openly defiant. Some had even gone as far as to draw wickedly curved daggers, testing their edges with dirt-encrusted fingers as they stared at the knights passing them by.