House of Chains

Karsa slowly stood, stretching to ease his sore, chilled muscles. He could hear the steady clack of stones striking stone, but Bairoth Gild was right-they were distant. The warrior crouched down beside his pack and removed foodstuffs and a bladder of meltwater.



It was near dawn. Whoever it was working somewhere ahead had begun early.



Karsa took his time breaking his fast, and when he was finally done and ready to resume his journey, the sky was pink to the east. A final examination of the condition of his sword and the fittings on his armour, then he was on the move once again.



The steady clangour of the stones continued through half the morning. The road skirted the mesa for a distance that was longer than he had originally judged, revealing the ramp ahead to be massive, its sides sheer, the plain beneath a third of a league or more below. Just before the road departed the mesa, it opened out into a shelf-like expanse, and here, set into the mesa wall, was the face of a city. Rockslides had buried fully half of it, and the spreading ridges of secondary slides lay atop the main one.



Before one of these lesser slides sat a pair of tents.



Three hundred paces away from them, Karsa halted.



There was a figure at the secondary slide, clearing rocks with a steady, almost obsessive rhythm, tossing huge chunks of sandstone out behind him to bounce and roll on the flat concourse. Nearby, seated on a boulder, was another figure, and where the first one was tall-taller than a lowlander by far-this one was impressively wide at the shoulders, dark-skinned, heavy-maned. A large leather sack was beside him, and he was gnawing on a smoke-blackened hind leg-the rest of the small mountain goat was still spitted on a huge skewer over a stone-lined hearth near the tents.



Karsa studied the scene for a time, then, shrugging, made his way towards the two figures.



He was less than twenty paces away before the huge, barbaric man seated on the boulder swung his head around.



And gestured with the haunch in his hand. ‘Help yourself. The thing damn near brained me, falling from the cliffside, so I feel obliged to eat it. Funny, that. You always see them, scampering and clambering way up there, and so you naturally believe they never make a misstep. Well, another delusion shattered.’



He was speaking a desert dialect, a lowlander tongue, yet he was no lowlander. Large, thick canines, hair on shoulders like a boar’s bristles, a heavy-boned face wide and flat. Eyes the hue of the sandstone cliffs around them.



At his words, the stranger’s companion ceased throwing rocks and straightened, and was now regarding Karsa curiously.



The Teblor was equally frank as he returned the stare. Almost as tall as he was, though leaner. Greyish, green-tinged skin. Lower canines large enough to be tusks. A longbow leaned nearby, along with a quiver, and a leather-strap harness to which a scabbarded sword was attached. The first weapons Karsa had yet seen-for the other one appeared to be entirely unarmed, barring the thick hunting knife at his belt.



The mutual examination continued for a moment longer, then the tusked warrior resumed his excavation, disappearing from sight as he strode into the cavity he had cleared in the rockfall. Karsa glanced back at the other man. Who gestured again with the goat leg.



The Teblor approached. He set down his pack near the hearth and drew a knife, then cut away a slab of meat and returned to where the other sat. ‘You speak the language of the tribes,’ Karsa said, ‘yet I have never before seen your kind. Nor that of your companion.’



‘And you are an equally rare sight, Thelomen Toblakai. I am named Mappo, of the people known as Trell, who hail from west of the Jhag Odhan. My single-minded companion is Icarium, a Jhag-’



‘Icarium? Is that a common name, Mappo? There is a figure in my tribe’s own legends who is so named.’



The Trell’s ochre eyes narrowed momentarily. ‘Common? Not in the way you ask. The name certainly appears in the tales and legends of countless people.’



Karsa frowned at the odd pedantry, if that was what it was. Then he crouched down opposite Mappo and tore off a mouthful of the tender meat.



‘It occurs to me, of a sudden,’ Mappo said, a hint of a grin flickering across his bestial features, ‘that this chance encounter is unique… in ways too numerous to list. A Trell, a Jhag, and a Thelomen Toblakai… and we each are likely the only one of our respective kinds in all of Seven Cities. Even more extraordinary, I believe I know of you-by reputation only, of course. Sha’ik has a bodyguard… a Thelomen Toblakai, with an armoured vest made of petrified shells, and a wooden sword…’



Karsa nodded, swallowing down the last of the meat in his mouth before replying, ‘Aye, I am in the service of Sha’ik. Does this fact make you my enemy?’