Volume 1, Chapter 50: The Port Welcomes (Patreon)

Hurrin was not pleased to see me. His wrinkled nose was joined by narrowed eyes and a deeper breath when his gaze shifted toward my staff, where the glow of Bri’s fire still flickered at the top. He even tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword and shifted it, sheath and all, slightly along his hip.

Still, despite his obvious reluctance, he approached and gave me a shallow bow.

“Master Hurrin. Good to see you,” I said, turning the ring on my pinky slightly.

“You decided to wait for me,” he replied. “I see your spirit passed inspection.”

“That’s only the flame she left behind. I asked Bri to remain by the river and find shelter there.”

“Let us hope her light does not lure any ships onto the shallows. Do you truly wish to accompany me? There is nothing glorious about my task. I merely have several documents to deliver.” He started walking toward the port along the stone road.

“Is what they contain a secret?” I asked, matching his pace.

He considered the question for a moment—or perhaps simply waited until we passed a wagon pulled by gaunt reptodons and packed to the brim with goods. The driver seated at the front was a stocky dwarf who muttered a curse under his breath when his animals noticed us and jostled his cargo.

“The exact contents are, but I can tell you that they concern opening a simpler and more direct route to Frogflower. To do that, however, we need resources controlled by the administrator of this port—the Minister of Port Affairs and Intercity Trade, Lorkthor, the Dark Tower. Without his favor, nothing will come of it.” He paused, looking into the distance, where a broad building of polished white stone loomed, partially hidden behind the waterfall. “Considering who is making the request, however, that favor may prove entirely elusive and far beyond our reach.” His answer, along with the weariness in his body language, suggested that this was not the first time he had been sent to seek an audience with the minister, whoever he might be.

“You don’t like being here,” I stated as we finally stepped onto an actual city street, if it could really be called that. It followed the curve of the enormous cylinder rather than running straight. One side disappeared beneath buildings pressed against the stone wall, while the other was protected by a waist-high barrier beyond which the entire port dropped away toward the river.

Only now, standing inside it rather than looking from a distance, did I begin to understand how much of this place had been built vertically.

Above us, another street crossed the wall perhaps thirty feet higher, supported by thick beams driven directly into the rock. Another ran above that one, and another still farther up, until they became little more than lines broken by bridges, balconies, staircases, and platforms hanging over the abyss. Elevators moved between them inside open steel frames, their chains constantly rattling as wooden platforms loaded with people and cargo rose and fell past one another.

The buildings were even stranger up close.

Some had clearly been carved directly into the stone, their doors and windows opening from walls that remained part of the enormous cavern itself. Others had been built outward from it with timber, steel supports, and pale fungal stalks thick enough to serve as columns. In several places, the two approaches blended together so completely that I had trouble telling whether I was looking at architecture or something that had simply grown there and was later accommodated into urban design.

One building had a second floor made almost entirely from some dark brown mushroom material, its surface ribbed like the underside of a cap. The structure beside it was ordinary gray stone reinforced with iron bands. Between them, someone had squeezed a narrow shop beneath a staircase and covered its front with hanging strips of leather, dried herbs, ropes, hooks, lamps, and objects I couldn't immediately identify.

The street itself was broad enough for two loaded wagons to pass each other, though doing so appeared to require considerable shouting.

People constantly stepped aside as carts rolled through, pulled by reptodons whose claws clicked against the stone. Porters hurried between them carrying crates on their shoulders. Dwarves pushed  low handcarts loaded with metal ingots. Humans rolled barrels toward one of the elevators. An elf stood on top of a stack of boxes arguing with an orc below him while both pointed furiously toward the same cargo manifest.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in winning the argument quietly.

The roar of the waterfall made that impossible anyway. It filled almost everything here—a constant deep thunder bouncing from one side of the Pit to the other. Beneath it came the creaking of cranes, the clatter of chains, shouted instructions, animals protesting their employment, merchants advertising whatever unfortunate objects they had convinced themselves other people desperately needed, and somewhere below all of that, the slow rush of the river.

The air carried just as much information. The stench came first—the smell my nose registered as sweat, damp stone, and the decomposing corpse of some small reptile nearby, being torn apart by mammals that looked like a cross between foxes and rats. I could smell blood too. Vomit. Shit.

Then came smoke, oil, old wood, something pleasantly spicy being cooked somewhere nearby, and the peculiar earthy sweetness I had begun associating with the fungal material used throughout the Underrock. Every few moments, a colder current of air rolled across the street from the waterfall and covered my face with a fine layer of moisture.

I wiped it away and looked toward the building Hurrin had indicated earlier, trying to ignore the explosive mixture of smells that everyone else seemed completely accustomed to.

From here, the Ministry looked even more out of place. Most structures around us had been forced into whatever space the port allowed them. Lorkthor's building seemed to have forced the port to make space for it.

Broad walls of polished white stone projected from the side of the Pit ahead, arranged in clean lines that stood in almost insulting contrast to the architectural chaos surrounding them. Part of the structure vanished behind the waterfall. Through the moving curtain of water I occasionally caught glimpses of windows, columns, and pale balconies before the torrent concealed them again.

I was beginning to understand why the man working there was called the Dark Tower. Although, judging by the building, White Palace would have been considerably more accurate.

“You don't like being here,” I repeated, turning my attention back toward Hurrin.

His eyes weren't on the ministry. They were fixed on a group of three orcs unloading crates farther down the street.

“No,” he answered after a moment. “If hatred for a place had a human shape, it would be me.”

“Because of the orcs? Why are they hated so much here?”

“Orcs? No. Not necessarily. I do not come from a family whose fathers and grandfathers fought in the underground war. There is no more hatred for them in my blood or upbringing than what I absorbed from the streets and later from the army. I understand that most of them, when given the opportunity…” He stopped for a moment when one of those furry creatures darted across our path.

Hurrin instantly shifted his footing and avoided colliding with it.

My gaze followed the animal toward a hole in the wall of a nearby building, then toward something I had previously taken for a pile of trash or rags stuffed into a corner beside the rock.

Looking at it longer, I realized it was a person. Covered in filthy clothes, the man was probably dead, asleep, or unconscious. His face was covered by a greenish bioluminescent fabric that occasionally released glowing spores into the air.

“When given the opportunity?” I reminded Hurrin, pulling my eyes away from the strange sight.

“Yes… forgive me. The animal distracted me,” he added, returning to his walking pace. “I was saying that orcs are like humans. Different, yes, but most would rather live than fight if given the choice. My dislike of this city comes from the fact that it rejected me long ago for something I had no control over. I am not permitted to go higher, to see the sun. I will not see my family either, because I do not want them to have to be ashamed of me again. All I can do is watch as everyone else is welcomed with open arms and wind whispering their name. Everyone except people like me.”

“I understand,” I replied. “That’s why you warned Mr. Peter?”

He met my eyes and answered only with a sad nod.

“Is that man dead?” I changed the subject, gesturing lightly with my staff toward the person beneath the rags.

“No… probably not. The mushroom gill covering his face is still releasing spores whenever he breathes.”

“Mushroom gill?”

“Jade Velvet. It’s a kind of poison. It’s harvested from mushrooms that grow here in the Underrock, on the other side of the river, deeper in the Jade Valley. The gills are cut from the caps and sliced into small pieces resembling handkerchiefs, then distributed illegally throughout the city. Supposedly—I’ve never tried it myself, because I can see what it actually does to people.” He nodded toward the man lying against the wall, who was just then kicked by another passerby carrying a barrel on his shoulder. “But supposedly it lets you see the future, the past, or some other miraculous visions. What it definitely does is destroy people who can’t resist it. They want more and more until they end up like that one, or with nothing beyond the end.”

“So it’s a drug?”

“I do not know that word, Master Arthur.”

“Never mind. It’s a term we use in the country I come from. It may mean nothing to you, but it describes the phenomenon perfectly,” I replied as we reached a large arch separating the street from a sectioned-off plaza where the minister’s building had been constructed.

The arch itself looked like the bow of a fairly large ship, built from fungal matter stretched over a framework of both wood and metal. I would have expected a fungus separated from its main growth to die, but this one not only continued glowing with its own light, it had also spread outward, covering a significant portion of the wall surrounding the estate.

Even so, the fungal growth wasn’t what drew the most attention. Neither was the fact that the arch itself had once been part of a ship. My gaze lingered longest on the hanged man dangling from a rope tied around the end of the bowsprit—a rope that, like the entire figurehead, had also been overtaken by fungal growth.

The man hanging from the other end must have died a long time ago. Most of the skin had vanished od dried on the exposed parts of his body into nothing more than a parchment, while his pants were covered in something resembling salt, the same crystalline substance glittering across his hands, face, and bare torso. His arms had been tied behind his back, and five flat stones—or perhaps crystals—had been driven into his dried chest, each glowing with a dim yellow light.

“That is Gishoya of the Sun’s Arc,” Hurrin said after noticing how long I was staring at the corpse.

“Why is he hanging out here in plain sight?”

“As a warning to others who might think of blowing a wind against the Vizier. A dozen or so years ago, his criminal empire nearly managed it. He almost overthrew the existing order and seized power, but his own people betrayed him after reaching an agreement with the Vizier.” Hurrin looked toward the hanging body. “An elf who once had almost everything, who nearly reached the heavens, is now nothing more than a warning hanging at the lowest point of the city.”

“Was that done by the justice system, or by his own people?”

“That? The hanging? His people betrayed him, but the Vizier’s Guard carried out the execution,” he replied, gathering himself before stepping beneath the arch.

The guards stationed there wore armor that looked like a combination of metal plates, chainmail, and leather patches. They guarded the passage but showed no reaction whatsoever to our approach. The spears in their hands continued serving mostly as something to lean on.

“How does it work in the city? If someone commits a crime, can you report it to someone? A guard, or who?”

“You can tell a guard—perhaps he will react—but they mostly protect important locations and maintain order around them. They will not chase a thief unless he practically runs into them. That is what the Sunnies are for—the Sun’s Watchmen. They have outposts in different parts of the city. They investigate crimes and bring criminals before justice.”

We passed another pair of guards—a human and a dwarf. Unlike the human, the dwarf wore something resembling plate armor made from fungal material.

“Complicated,” I lied. “Hopefully I won’t have to deal with either of them.”

“Sometimes the winds of life steer us toward the troubled waters of death, as my grandmother used to say. Better to know whom to turn to when the need arises. It is good that you ask.”

“And lodging? Where could I stay the night without trouble?”

“Most inns have rooms where one may stay for a time. More permanent lodging can only be rented through a property manager—for example, a landlord. But please take this information like dust carried on the wind. I have lived outside the city for so long that what I know may no longer be current.”

Only the guards standing at the front doors stopped us—an orc roughly my height and a human—crossing their spears in front of the stairs leading upward.

“Purpose of your visit?” the orc asked, and even though I didn’t know the language, I had the distinct impression that his accent marked him as someone from outside the city.

“A message from Master Plasario for the Minister of Port Affairs and Intercity Trade, Lorkthor, the Dark Tower. For his hands only,” Hurrin replied in a calm voice.

“Two people!?” the human guard asked, raising his eyebrows. “Ain’t that a little much for guarding a piece of paper?”

He said the second part in a lower voice, which suggested that he actually was surprised by the situation and had reached for sarcasm to hide it.

Only here, with the nearby waterfall thundering around us, did I realize that at some point I had started raising my own voice as well just to be heard over the noise.

“Yes, two!” Hurrin shouted back.

At that exact moment, the wooden-and-steel doors to the estate flew open with a crash, revealing the creature responsible. He filled almost the entire doorway.

The orc was broad enough across the shoulders for two men to stand comfortably behind him, his body built from slabs of muscle that seemed excessive even by orc standards. He wore a simple tunic made of several layers, loosely wrapped around his torso and stomach, along with light linen trousers. One enormous hand remained pressed against the door he had just thrown open, fingers splayed across the wood as though the thing weighed nothing.

Both guards turned toward him, probably reacting less to the noise than to whatever expression had just appeared on our faces. Then the orc stepped beneath the lintel and straightened. And kept straightening. He had to be eleven feet tall.

His gray-green skin stretched taut over a neck thicker than my waist and a face that looked as though someone had taken an ordinary orc and exaggerated every feature. Heavy brow. Broad nose. A jaw large enough to bite through my forearm. Two thick, boar-like tusks curved upward from his lower jaw.

That jaw slowly pulled into what might have been a smile and if not for those tusks, I might even have believed it was one.

“Hurrin, you filthy lizard!” he shouted toward us. “What brings you here this time, you man-defiler?”

“Viperdile,” Hurrin hissed through clenched teeth, tilting his head to the side.

I was almost certain the orc hadn’t heard him, but he still stepped forward, shoving the guard aside with a single sweep of his hand. The human didn’t protest, but had to scramble his feet to keep from falling after the giant’s gesture.

“Viper-dile?” the orc repeated more loudly. “Am I reading your lips right, little man? Think we might have a problem.” He slammed one fist into his open right palm.

I instinctively took a step back.