Esmiralda and her companions, the Optimist Monk Broo Fang Tane and the odd, loutish warrior Seymurh, have paused to rest in a tavern outside of Veral Ski, one of the largest cities in all of Korin. Here they wash the blood, gore and dirt of their recent adventure from their bodies but Mira finds the memory of their lost comrade Merrick is as restless as the living dead that claimed his life. In a dream, he hints at a new quest that Esimralda must undertake...
The street was already teeming with unwashed peasantry making their way to the stout gates of the great city. I fell in line behind a lean, crooked man dressed in rags who carried a bundle of pelts over his right shoulder and tried not to look at the vacant eye sockets of the hapless creatures. Seymuhr stood beside me, picking at his teeth. Carriages rolled by, unhindered at the gate, while we stood and slowly shuffled toward Veral Ski's impregnable walls.
"You could hide a small army in those carriages and deliver them to the queen's privy," I grumbled, impatient. "Yet we must wait, the insignificant masses, to be poked and prodded for the amusement of these so-called guards."
"I could stop one of those coaches," Seymuhr said. He wore one of his maces on each hip and he fingered one of them.
"You'd only cause a scene," I told him. "I'm merely voicing my displeasure."
"That's how they rule over you," he said. "They expect the complaints, but not the action. As long as these 'insignificant masses' you refer only voice their complaints to each other they are content to do as they please."
"Oh ho! Look at you! When did you become a social critic, so knowledgeable with the workings of the upper class?" I lowered my voice. "Let's just wait. We are nearly there."
"You pick up things when you travel," he said. "That, and things are the same everywhere. they always have been."
I had to nod. "True. These are trying times. Is this wisdom imparted to you from your parents?"
"I never knew them." He responded.
"Oh." I fell silent. I remembered, then, something that Merrick had told me shortly after I fell into his troupe: that Seymuhr claimed to have been abandoned by a river and raised by fish. Surely, that was impossible, a farce he told to deflect from his true heritage. Wasn't it? I studied him again from the corner of my eye: he was shorter than I--and I was not a tall woman--but broad and thick with muscle. I knew him to be fearsomely strong and ferocious in battle. He fought with a mace in each hand, not with any apparent skill, but with a strength and energy that battered and maimed any opponent we had come across. He was bald and loutish, with a thick nose and low eyebrows, but a sometimes disarming smile. "Well, it is true, nonetheless."
We moved forward, slowly, as the sun climbed into the sky. Soon the shadow of the Great Gate overtook us and we stood ready to enter the city.
