Meddling in Foreign Affairs

Chapter 11: A City of Elves

The city of Maiorsem was deep in the Escatar Forest, but it would probably only take a little more than a day to get there by boat. Unfortunately Dismas was not in a boat. That and he had double the normal weight in gear, and was injured. He walked as quickly as he comfortably could in unsteady and unfamiliar terrain, but it still took him four days to get to the cliff that housed the elven city. As soon as he spotted it in the distance, he hid their bags again and cautiously approached. He was exhausted from walking the whole day, but was glad for the muted light that came from the setting sun.

The whole journey he had been on the lookout for more elves, but the only other living creatures he encountered were those that inhabited the trees. Unlike the ones he had seen along the river, some of them were scaley and had visibly sharp teeth. They were also larger than most forest animals he'd seen before. Soon he could see elves moving about on top of the cliff. There were boats tied off at the bottom of the cliffs, and Dismas was relieved to see the dwarven boat that he and Byulat had traveled in. There was at least a bit of hope that he was here in the city still.

Maiorsem was a polar opposite of Dragstyenost. While the dwarven city had been dark and enclosed within a mountain, Maiorsem was open and upon first glance didn't even look like a city. Ironically, it also was less open to trade. Dragstyenost contained a large harbor and market easily accessible to visitors, but the elves separated their harbor from the city with formidable cliffs the Escatar River had cut into the stone. The only way to get into the city was through a system of ropes and platforms that could only operated from above. Although it was constructed as defensively as Dragstyenost, these defenses were significantly less obtrusive.

As the sun continued to go down, the city began to light up and Dismas noticed that there were houses in the trees in addition to the buildings on the edges of the cliffs. As he watched, he realized that the lights were not coming from fire, which was probably good, because otherwise the threat of forest fires would be extremely high. Dismas couldn't tell what the sources of light were, but it was greenish and wasn't flickering like fire would.

Dismas decided that the best way to infiltrate the city and find Byulat would be to come at it from the forest, because the river would be watched more closely. It was a steep climb through the forest, which left Dismas winded, but it was better than getting spotted and captured. When he finally arrived at the edge of the city, he was relieved to find the streets almost completely abandoned. There was a hedge of thorns surrounding Maiorsem, but it didn't concern him too much. He would find a way to slip through it or cut himself a hole to crawl through.

The hedge was well constructed, so Dismas took out a dagger and cut the branches away to clear a path. He tried to estimate Byulat's size to make it large enough to fit his large shoulders just in case they had to escape the same way. When he was standing inside the city, he kept his hood up and walked as much in the shadows as possible to avoid detection. No one seemed to pay too much attention to him, and most of the elves were probably in their homes, considering it was now properly dark and the only light came from glowing flowers spread evenly like street-lamps.

He wandered around for a while to orient himself as to where things were, and where he should avoid when trying to leave. The closer he got to the center of the city, the larger the trees and buildings were. The tree in what appeared to be the middle of the city was bigger than any tree Dismas had ever seen, and the building in its branches was similarly enormous. The whole thing seemed to be glowing, but as he got closer, he realized it was just completely covered in the street-lamp flowers. The only way up was a huge staircase that spiraled around the trunk until it reached the platform forming the base of the building where the trunk split.

As Dismas was staring at the tree house, he failed to notice the sound of a group of people coming his way until they were almost upon him.

"You, standing there! Why did you cut a hole in the fence?" the elf leading the group asked.