Matabar

Book II. Chapter 50 - Old business

Ardi watched the houses of the Central District drift past—a silent, stately procession. They were pompous in a way: all stone and elegance, painted like debutantes at the Emperor’s New Year’s Ball. Ardan himself had never been to such an event, but he remembered the colorful descriptions of Grand Princess Anastasia, who’d sometimes mentioned it in her letters.

Anastasia…

Ardan glanced at his wrist, where the mark of Allane’Eari, the Sidhe of the Cold Summer Night, lay hidden beneath the cuff of his shirt. Poplar, who was half forest cat and half Vila, had kept his word… After the faithful companion of the heir to the entire Empire had seen the blue mark, he had brought Ardi no more letters.

It was strange how something that had seemed like an inappropriate and often dangerous venture to Ardi now stirred a dull ache of longing in his heart. It was an oppressive sort of ache. He realized, to his own surprise, that over the past year, he had come to regard Anastasia with the same kind of fondness he had for Elena and Boris. Even if they hadn’t seen each other in a while, that feeling still…

He felt like somewhere out there, among the gilded spires and wide avenues, among the stained glass, the gold, and all the exes, there was a person who knew even more about him than Tess—it was a pleasant thought. It brought him a sense of peace and warmth.

Yes, Ardan truly did miss his correspondence with Anastasia. The little girl imprisoned in the pompous luxury of the Palace of the Kings of the Past could sometimes understand him better and more deeply than anyone else.

Ardan wanted to believe that he understood her, too.

The young man smiled at his own thoughts. For some reason, he saw a similarity in the absence of Atta’nha’s bracelet from his arm, the Sidhe’s mark, and… the analyzer. It had, until recently, been the foundation of the Empire’s power, and now, a mere six months after spells and other methods that could be used to deceive the analyzers on the market had appeared… it had receded somewhere into the depths of history.

It had been several months since they had repealed the law requiring minors to wear state-issued analyzers. In the Grand University and the Ley Faculties of the various institutes, analyzer plates were no longer used in work and experiments. And in the Spell Market, you could buy one for just a couple dozen kso, while at the beginning of the year, the simplest model had started at twelve exes. It was funny, in a way…

Perhaps if one looked at it from another angle, was there really such a great difference between, say, crossbows and analyzers? Once upon a time, crossbows, weapons born from the genius of human engineering, had allowed the armies of the human tribes to match the might of elven archers.

Simply put, people no longer needed to spend decades training their own marksmen. You just needed an artel of smiths, some ore ingots, a bit of strong wood, and a couple of months on the firing range. That was enough.

“Oh, look, look, Matabar, it’s flying! A dirigi-ship is flying!”

“Airship,” Ardan corrected him out of habit.

Arkar, his nose nearly pressed against the car’s windshield, was gaping at the darkening evening sky. There, among the autumn clouds, lights glittered. The first civilian airships had begun to ply the skies over the Empire’s eastern coast. In a few years, perhaps the first, most daring of these “sky wolves” would set out west as well, toward the Azure Sea—the country’s second most populous province after the capital. And in another ten years, they might even cross the Swallow Ocean or the Shallow Seas.

Or maybe not.

Maybe people like Professors Convel, an Manish, and Kovertsky, Lord Edward Aversky, Mart Borskov, Erzans Paarlax, and many others, would invent something new. Something that would just as surely replace the airships.

“Arkar,” Ardan lowered his hand and straightened his cuff. “What do you think is the point of the Conclave?”

The half-orc tore his eyes away from the mesmerizing sight of the steel behemoth flying through the sky and turned to Ardan.

“You want the honest truth, half-pint, or something high-flown?”

“For starters, I’m surprised you managed to say the word ‘high-flown’ without gagging.”

Arkar snorted and showed Ard a fist the size of half his head. To humans, Ardi had always seemed tall, but to orcs, he was indeed a “half-pint.” And considering Arkar himself was a half-blood, the description suited him as well, but Ardan chose not to mention that.

“I could repeat it while redecorating your mug… your face, I mean, Ard, in a nice shade of purple. Decided to get clever, have we?”

“I will warn you, Arkar, that this time, I intend to defend myself.”

“Oh, sure you do. Your staff’s stuck between the seats. Right where your smart-aleck noggin… your head, I mean, is about to get stuck.”

They exchanged a look and smiled in unison. For some reason, chatting with Arkar often sent Ardi’s thoughts back to the trails of the Alcade mountains and its forests. It was easy with the half-orc. And clear. Or maybe it was just easier and clearer than it was with most humans.

“Alright,” Arkar grunted. “For those who don’t have their own cogs t… brains, I mean, the Conclave is something like… I don’t even know, Matabar. Like someone wise and knowing. Someone you can follow. Someone who keeps the covenants of our ancestors and the ways of the Sleeping Spirits.”

“And you don’t believe in that?”

“Me?” Arkar asked and, after a moment’s thought, shrugged. “I believe in the laws of the Kar’Tak. And I believe that humans are, more often than not, too greedy. Too deceitful. And too concerned with the comfort of their own asses.”

“It’s strange to hear about greed from a gangster, Arkar,” Ardan said, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Another thing he liked about talking with Arkar was that he never had to choose his words—provided, of course, that they were speaking one-on-one and the half-orc didn’t have to maintain his reputation as the Overseer of the Orcish Jackets.

“Fair enough, I suppose…” Arkar took a sharp turn, leaving the Crookedwater Canal behind them and the New City somewhere to the southwest, and they drove on through the industrial zone and toward the Firstborn Quarter. “The dough… exes, I mean, they’re practically a religion in themselves. Most popular one. The Face of Light, the Sleeping Spirits—that’s all for the weak or the stupid. But exes,” Arkar smirked and ran his yellow claws over his stubble. “Money. It’s united everyone. On both continents. Everyone prays to it now. Whoever has more is better. So maybe I’m a greedy bastard, Ard, but at least I’m flush… got coin, I mean. Look at you, still walking around without a ring. The wedding’s in four months… Can you even pay for it? Well? How do you like living like that? I’m guessing not so much.”

“Are you trying to push me down the dark path of the gangster?”

Arkar just waved a dismissive hand.

“Even back then, after Baliero, when you were spouting all that junk at me… telling me rubbish, I mean, I realized it was a… an… Ah, to the demons with it, a rotten business.” The cars around them were thinning out, and the houses were giving way to fences and factory smog. “You might not be a Cloak, but you’re no gangster, either. Such a typical Matabar. Your ancestors couldn’t decide if they were beasts or Kar’Tak, either. And so they lived somewhere on the border between the two.”

“And the Conclave?” Ardan decided to return to the original topic.

“What about the Conclave,” Arkar shrugged. “To be honest, Ard, they sit around and let one rip… fart around, I mean. Loudly. It stinks sometimes. They spout all sorts of nonsense. But they’re useful, too. Our kind isn’t exactly eager to listen to the shorties… humans, that is. And so the Conclave is needed to make sure the rest of the Kar’Tak follow the laws. I think that’s the only reason they haven’t been disbanded yet. And for me, they’re just convenient accountants who spread the coin around to the needy.”

“Haven’t been disbanded yet…” Arkar might not have known too many fancy words and often slipped into gangster slang, but he possessed a quick and perceptive mind. That was probably what had allowed him to hold such a high position in his gang and command the respect of the entire Metropolis underworld.

“Arkar, how are things in the Six right now?”

The half-orc snorted and glanced quickly at Ardi.

“Is this the curious youth gabbing with me… talking, I mean, or is it a Cloak?”

“I don’t know,” Ardan answered honestly. “I was just thinking… remember our conversation about Alla Tantov’s body? The mutant?”

“I remember.”

“I think it’s already been found.”

“If it had been found, I’d know,” Arkar retorted a little gruffly. “Unlike the Black House, Matabar, my coin isn’t limited by the perfumed wigs on the dumb heads in Parliament.”

“You’d know if someone from the Six found it,” Ardan insisted. “But what if it wasn’t one of the major gangs?”

“The punks? You’re suggesting it was the punks? Small-time thieves, I mean… well, that could be possible, I suppose, but they’re not likely to show their faces with it anywhere. They’d just get themselves killed.” Arkar stopped the car, killed the engine, and pulled out the ignition key. “So if some punks found that thing, then to the demons with them. They’ve just dug up a load of trouble for their own asses…”

Ardan glanced at his wrist. Something didn’t add up about this Alla Tantov business. Yes, she was, or had been, a mutant, and most likely one created specifically for the type of work she’d done. After all, her mutation had allowed her to change her appearance, which fit perfectly with the Puppeteers’ style of hunting… and playing their game.

However, considering the research they were conducting and the scale it often reached, the very idea that they needed Alla Tantov’s body, no matter how unique a mutant she was (which Ardi doubted), seemed unlikely. But if the Puppeteers didn’t need Alla Tantov, then what did they need…

“This box…” Alla placed the wooden case on the table. “I think it’s some sort of artifact from before the Imperial era, and-”

“It’s no artifact,” Ardi cut her off, perhaps because he was feeling a bit bold and wanted to repay Alla for her earlier interruption. “Just an ordinary elven puzzle box.”

…

There was a faint, barely-audible click, and the box’s lid popped open. Ardan managed to glimpse an old iron key lying inside it. Alla shoved him aside slightly and took out a simple key casting mold from her handbag — two small trays filled with a viscous, clay-like substance. She pressed the key between them, held them together briefly to ensure the imprint was good, cleaned the key with a handkerchief, and put it back in the box.

“And what does that unlock?” Ardan hastened to ask.

Naturally, Alla didn’t reply.

Ahgrat! Ardan roared in his mind and barely stopped himself from slamming a hand against the door.

All this time, the answer had been right under his nose. Why would the Puppeteers resort to complex machinations to get Tantov close to Trevor Man? He had already been cooperating with the Puppeteers! He probably wouldn’t have given them the Staff of Demons “just because,” but given Man’s personality, he would have sold it for the right price. And the Puppeteers were clearly not short on money.

Which meant that they’d needed something that Man not only wouldn’t have given away, but also wouldn’t have sold for any amount of money. All that said, Man had not been an idiot. He must have seen what happened to those who sold their souls to the Puppeteers. He would hardly have cooperated with them without some insurance regarding his own safety.

It was like hunting in someone else’s lands without knowing the first thing about the owner. This was the sort of foolishness that Ardan’s first minor skirmishes with snow leopard cubs on the snowy trails had cured him of.

No, Man hadn’t just thought or assumed he was safe; judging by his conversation with Le’mrity, he had been completely certain that he was the Puppeteers’ equal.

“He had insurance…”

“Matabar, you’re starting to scare me. Is it a custom among you Speakers to babble at yourselves… talk to yourselves, I mean?”

Man had been holding something that had guaranteed the preservation of both his life and his well-being. And Alla Tantov had been sent in to obtain it.

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The Puppeteers weren’t looking for her body at all.

They were looking for the key.

Or rather, an impression of it.

Sleeping Spirits! Up there, on the airship, Ardan had been, quite literally, standing an arm’s length away from the key to something incredibly important to the Puppeteers. Something so important that they hadn’t been able to touch Trevor Man!

“Arkar… if someone from the Six had found Alla Tantov’s body, the auction would have definitely happened by now, right?”

“Most likely,” the half-orc shrugged.

“Which means that someone else found her after all…” Ardan, out of habit, bit the tip of his tongue and immediately asked, “You said you can buy anything on Sleepless Street. Tell me, are there any illegal chimera and mutant labs there?”

Arkar grunted in surprise and scratched his stubble again.

“Could be, Ard… Could be, but you won’t get in there that easily. Neither will I… But I see what you’re getting at. If Tantov’s corpse was found, it was probably taken there right away for a fat stack of cash… exes, I mean.”

“Exactly, and-”

“And, Matabar,” Arkar interrupted him. “You need to go have a word with the Conclave now. I’ve been grinding… put in a lot of effort, I mean, to arrange everything. And if you go and screw it all up again, I don’t even know what I’ll do to you. Got it?”

Ardan could have asked why Arkar was helping him, but… For some reason, he felt like if he asked that, it would be their last conversation, and another heavy fist would find its way to his jaw. Arkar was helping him because he wanted to. No more, no less.

Maybe it wasn’t just Ard who sometimes felt like he had a friend in the half-orc. Maybe Arkar, too, imagined that hidden beneath the regalia of an Imperial Mage was his friend, the half-Matabar.

“You’re right,” Ardan nodded. “Let’s go.”

Last time, they had driven along the old, and in fact, only route connecting the Firstborn Quarter with the rest of the capital. It went through the ever-humming, lively Niewa Avenue, then over the Cavalry Bridge, which suffered from endless traffic jams, after which, beyond the Merchant District, lay the single road leading to the Firstborn area of the city.

However, a new bridge had recently opened across the Winged Canal, allowing them to approach the quarter from the other side. This, however, had little effect on the view that opened up before them.

“Hold on, almost forgot,” Arkar patted his pockets and pulled out a few kso coins. “This is for-”

“The punks,” Ardan nodded. “I remember. So they don’t steal the wheels.”

Turning away from the car, he tilted his head back. It was almost like he was searching for the roofs of skyscrapers or the canopies of tall buildings. But there were none to be found here. The role of canopies was filled by hundreds of walkways, bridges and alleys raised above the ground.

The Firstborn Quarter had been built, if one could put it that way, on hills, and so stairs reigned supreme here. They were of every possible type and maddeningly numerous: spiral and straight, wide and narrow, stone and wooden, with landings and without, with railings, or bare like the girls in the now-permanently-closed Crimson Lady’s brothel. They embraced the mismatched houses that clung to one another, looking like an endless layer cake, one layer placed upon another until there was no more space.

And the space never ran out. Nor did the houses. They were small, being two or at most three stories high, and they served as foundations for each other on one side of the hill, while on the other, complex webs of walkways, both underground and elevated, stretched toward them.

Narrow streets, next to which Old Park’s sidewalks would seem like wide avenues, pierced the Firstborn Quarter, dividing it with the unseen brushstrokes of a mad artist. No sane mind, be it human or otherwise, and no engineer worth their salt, would ever dream of creating something so insane.

“It’s gotten even more crowded here lately,” Arkar sighed, climbing one of the staircases that led, of course, to one of the “lower streets.” “More Kar’Tak are coming to the capital because of the railway.”

Ardi didn’t comment on this and continued to study the buildings, which looked even stranger up close. They were absurd in places, but in some ways, also fascinating. The chaos of his last visit had prevented him from truly absorbing the peculiar flavor of the Firstborn Quarter.

Surprisingly, buildings from vastly different eras, styles and cultures stood side by side here. The houses of the orcs, wide and spacious, were adorned with symbols and carved bas-reliefs with large windows, paying homage to their steppe past, and managed to coexist with those of the dwarves. The latter, in turn, were squat, square, entirely without frills, but massive, heavy and ready to withstand an artillery shell, with arrow slits for windows. And higher up, for example, one might find the airy structures of the elves, their facades invariably clad in wooden panels that had somehow withstood the breath of the local winter.

Occasionally, Ardi’s eyes would fall upon small, almost comical structures from which the rare goblins would emerge. They somewhat resembled dwarves, only they were smaller, far more slender, without beards, but with pointed ears like elves and skin the color of a stagnant swamp.

Here, everyone jostled and clamored, speaking in the languages of their peoples, but using dozens of different dialects. Sometimes it was enough for the Firstborn to be separated by a few hundred kilometers in order for their once-unified language to undergo changes and split into two branches.

If Ardan was orienting himself correctly, they were moving perpendicular to Sleepless Street, which spanned the entire district and was the heart of its commercial life, and its life in general. It ended, of course, at the only local avenue, which had two-way traffic and could accommodate several cars at once.

Last time, he and Arkar had nearly burned that very same avenue down.

“The way to the Conclave isn’t the shortest,” Arkar sighed, parting the diverse crowd with his shoulders. “And, Sleeping Spirits, how tiring it is to walk there.”

“No one invited you here, Arkar,” a deep, rumbling thunder rolled above their heads. “So you can piss off back to the city center and your filthy accomplices.”

Ardan didn’t need to turn around to know who was speaking to them. But he turned around anyway.

A colossus that was about three and a half meters tall loomed over them. He was also so broad-shouldered that only a few meters remained between him and the neighboring houses.

The ogre was without a coat (just like last time), but wearing the same green shirt from before, or so it seemed like to Ardi. It was nearly the same color as his skin, with a black tie that could easily double as a blanket, a wide-brimmed hat the size of a small barrel, and blue pants that, if unstitched, could likely serve as a sail. Sergeant Boad was the very same ogre he had first met six months ago.

The ogre had a heavy, square lower jaw, a nose that had a funny shape—simultaneously flattened and yet with its tip turned up toward the sky. His deep-set eyes were hidden in the shadow of his hat, and in his right ear swung an earring that could’ve passed for a small bracelet. His face resembled a cross between a forest toad, a Kargaam turtle, and, logically, given the distant relation, an orc. Except there were no tusks, and the shape of his skull was completely different.

“Boad, you stoop-shouldered cur, do me a favor—get so far away that I never have to see you again.” Arkar, no small specimen himself, looked like a child next to Boad. An equally insolent and fearless one.

Boad adjusted his belt—if you could call the leather contraption capable of replacing a tow rope that—pointedly displaying his holster and revolver. It was of a caliber so large that a shot from it would probably inflict only marginally less harm than some modifications of Ardan’s Ice Artillery.

“If the size of your piece is all you can show off, Boad,” Arkar flashed him a predatory smile, “I still know it won’t work.”

Boad answered the jibe with the exact same grin. Except ogres had no tusks, no fangs, not even any remotely sharp teeth. Their jaws and teeth were somewhat like a horse’s: large, straight and almost square.

Only they didn’t need them for grinding down grass and soft food, but for crushing bones. The digestive system of ogres, their larynx and esophagus, were designed so that these monsters hardly needed to chew their food. They just tore off enormous chunks and swallowed them whole. The only problem was the bones, which they ground up.

And so, when one was armed with this knowledge, such a smirk looked no less intimidating than Arkar’s.

“I’d love to see you say something like that to my face, Arkar, when I'm not on duty but not right now,” Boad turned to Ard and placed a hand on the grip of his revolver. “Right now, I’m more interested in the shorty who decided he could ignore my words. I believe I already warned you that you are not welcome here, Corporal.”

Ardi hadn’t even managed to track how the narrow passage between two tight staircases had emptied, leaving only the three of them and a few dwarven guards in uniform who had just arrived. Ardan remembered some of them from their last encounter.

During that first meeting, he had been thoroughly unnerved by the sight of the gigantic ogre and his equally-impressive piece of iron. But now, after everything that had happened, and considering the fact that Ardan was holding his trusty staff in his hands and wearing rings with accumulators on his fingers, he… felt no threat to himself or Arkar.

Moreover, Ardan was certain that the dwarven guards surrounding them, their almost rectangular fingers hovering near the oddly-shaped grips of their miniature revolvers, wouldn’t be able to influence the outcome of a potential confrontation all that much. And maybe Boad spotted something in Ardi’s face and posture, or maybe he just remembered that he was dealing with someone who, even though he was persona non grata, was still an employee of the Black House.

“Are you going to the Conclave?” Boad boomed, removing his hand from the grip of his hand cannon.

Arkar neither gloated nor continued to press the sergeant, which was unusual for him. Just as demonstratively moving his own hands away from his axe and revolver, he gave a restrained nod.

“You guessed it, Boad, we’re off to the Conclave.”

“I’ll escort you,” Boad waved a hand to his subordinates, and they all but vanished into thin air. They disappeared into the cunning labyrinth of walkways, bridges, descents, and forking roads.

Sleeping Spirits! When, six months ago, Boad had told Ardan that he could get “lost” here and “no one would ever find him,” the ogre had not been exaggerating in the slightest with his threat. In a place like the Firstborn Quarter, neither maps, nor Star Magic, not even a compass would help him. Without a guide who knew the area intimately, he wouldn’t just fail to find his way, he’d never see the sky again. He would just remain here, forever wandering the complex, interconnected system.

In the end, their “little” group, which included a half-orc standing two meters and twenty centimeters tall and weighing around two hundred and sixty kilograms, and an ogre nearly three meters and forty-five centimeters tall and weighing over half a ton, traversed something that couldn’t really be called streets. They were more like tunnels dug through an endless series of branching paths, bridges, descents and ascents, past strangers’ doors and windows, and a crazy number of Ley-lanterns that created an illusion of light.

The sky was not visible. This sensation weighed him down no less than the company of the giants walking beside him. To his surprise, Ardi realized that he had long ago grown accustomed to being the tallest person in whatever company he found himself in. It usually brought him a certain sense of comfort.

“What’s the news, Boad?” Arkar asked suddenly.

“And why are you interested, Jacket?” Boad replied in a booming bass. “So you can try to, as you people put it, shake down some hard-working business or shop again? Or, wait, how do you do it… ah, yes. You offer your protection in exchange for you not coming back at night to break in, burn everything, and rob them blind.”

Ardi didn’t know how to feel about Boad, but he understood one thing—Boad didn’t carry a guard’s token in his pocket for nothing.

“And I’m hearing this from Boad the Belcher of all people?” Arkar didn’t even turn toward the ogre. “The leader of the ogre street gang that terrorized the southern part of the Kar’Tak Quarter for twenty years?”

“Yeah, Arkar, right up until you and your Jackets turned us over to the guard so you could take for yourselves what we had spent so many years building up.”

Ardan had never changed his opinion of someone so quickly. Boad had been a gangster?!

“Well, you see how well that turned out,” Arkar shrugged. “Here you are, now caring for the honor of the Crown’s skirts in this shitty place that-”

Boad grabbed Arkar by the shoulder and slammed him against the wall. And despite his enormous bulk, he’d moved with a speed that would have made even Shali nod in appreciation.

“This shitty place, as you put it, you two-faced bastard, is our home.”

“Your home,” Arkar, it seemed, didn’t feel even an ounce of fear while he was breathing into Boad’s navel. “Unlike you, ogre, I was born in the north. Not here in the capital.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Only what I’ve already said, you stoop-shouldered cur,” Arkar reached out and tugged on the ogre’s tie. “The shorties’ advert… their clothes, I mean, suit you, Boad. You’re a shorty yourself, just in a Kar’Tak’s body.”

The sergeant reached for his revolver, but froze. Ardan’s raised staff was pressed against his side.

For a moment, a stillness hung in the dimly-lit passage, filled only with the clicking of the Ley-lights.

“And why am I not surprised to see that the Second Chancery looks after gangsters,” Boad unclenched his fingers and allowed Arkar’s feet, which had been held in the air this whole time, to touch the ground. “Or that you, Arkar, are playing for both sides as always.”

“I don’t play for any side, Boad,” the half-orc brushed off his jacket and straightened the collar of his shirt. “I only look for profit. For the Kar’Tak.”

Boad just snorted, the sound oddly horse-like.

“The Arkar I’ve known since childhood only ever looks for one kind of profit—his own,” Boad turned to Ard, who had already lowered his staff. “Whatever you might think of him, Corporal, as soon as this bastard figures out how to use you for his own interests—believe me, he’ll do it without a second thought or a shred of guilt.”

The ogre sergeant, without waiting for a reply, stomped forward with heavy steps, while Ardi glanced sideways at Arkar, who was rubbing his shoulders.

“It’s a long story, Ard,” the Overseer of the Orcish Jackets answered the unspoken question. “I’ll tell you sometime… when I’m drunk and in a foul mood… So, tonight, I guess.”

Arkar, his brow furrowed, cracked his neck and followed after Boad. Ardan, now observing them both with a steady gaze, realized that he had misunderstood the relationship between the two Firstborn. He had assumed that their mutual dislike was due to them being on different sides of the law, but in reality, it was far more complicated.

“Ironic,” Ardan whispered to himself and reached up to adjust his hat… which wasn’t there. “Ahgrat.”

They completed the rest of the journey in silence. The Ley-lanterns still flickered overhead, and Firstborn would sometimes appear around them, seemingly out of nowhere. Usually, as soon as they saw Arkar and Boad, they would hurry to disappear, which they did with great success. At first, Ardi tried to memorize the routes they were taking, but he soon realized that it was a useless effort.

The construction of the Firstborn Quarter had no master plan or engineering design behind it. Here, they’d just… built. And rebuilt. Simultaneously. And so, the streets that had ended in dead ends just a couple of months ago could now extend right through houses, connecting with others. And vice versa—recent thoroughfares could suddenly culminate in a dead end because they had been blocked by yet another wall.

It all resembled a hive. Or an anthill. It was just as alive, seething, cramped, and at the same time, reliable and monumental. It was certainly enough to endure Boad’s steps, which sent vibrations through the soles of Ard’s feet. Sometimes, the young man worried that a piece of the cobblestones would fail to withstand the strain of the sergeant’s weight and fly out like a bullet, straight into his face.

It was no wonder that giants and ogres weren’t allowed in the central districts of the capital…

“We’re here,” Arkar announced.

They rounded another narrow corner and suddenly found themselves in a wide square. It surrounded a freestanding building. Unlike the others, it was not connected to its neighbors by any bridges, stairs, or a complex system of walkways. It was like a tree that had separated itself from the forest. However, it was not a thin and frail one, but massive and strong, ready to withstand any storm on its own.

It was completely devoid of any frills like exquisite ornaments or caryatids, window casings, or a grand porch. It was just a stone square about eighteen meters high. And only by looking closer did Ardi notice that it was not made of brick or poured concrete over a rebar frame.

No, what the young man’s gaze fell upon were multi-ton granite blocks assembled in an intricate mosaic, which had been fitted together into a single structure. It almost looked like the result of a child playing with blocks. In some places, narrow blocks were joined with wide ones, in others, angular ones interlocked with each other, while straight ones covered the resulting joints, reliably protecting the structure from any threat.

Ardan knew what this was.

“The Echo of the Stars,” he breathed out. “The lost art of the high elves.”

“It’s not so lost, Ard,” Arkar rumbled. “There are only two masters of it left in the whole Empire, but they do exist.”

Ardan, on his way to Shamtur, had pondered the art of the Echo of the Stars. The high elves, using sound vibrations, would spin a special spindle made of Ertalain, which created magnetic fields so dense that they could then heat rock and shape it almost like clay.

“Welcome to the Conclave,” Arkar gestured toward the only door leading into the building.

He did so with a distinct lack of joy.