First off, a big apology for the slowing-down current updates - tons of work and a five-day cold are horrible things to fight with. So a big thank you to everyone who's reading this, and a particular thank-you to Fyriel, who keeps reviewing but I can't reply directly, so - thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy the rest of it :)
Chapter Eight – The City of Doors
After the screaming wind died away, and the feeling returned to her fingers, Jaiyan silently decided that some clever wizard somewhere absolutely had to invent a way of travelling across the planes that did not involve being catapulted through a whirl of energy that felt being rammed through wet snow and then being dropped face-first onto stone afterwards. She rolled her shoulders, felt her muscles twinge, and then forgot entirely about whining when she looked up. "Valen?"
He was there beside her, tall and solid and with an arm around her. "Yes, my love?"
"There's…no sky."
He laughed. "Yes, there is."
"Well, it looks all wrong. It's a funny colour, to begin with." And it was, all flickering and in tones of shifting grey. She squinted, tried to see clouds, or stars, or anything else, and failed. "What time of day is it?"
"Nearly sunset," Valen answered. "As you would call it."
"How can you tell?"
"By the way the sky is changing."
She considered sticking her tongue out at him, but instead switched her attention to the dark shapes of spires and high roofs overhead. There was stone behind them, and cobbles beneath her feet. They were standing in the shadows of an archway, and the street slanted sharply away from them, plunging down the curve of a hill, towards a dark cluster of buildings. Above, jumbles of stone and wood leaned into each other. Platforms and balconies jutted from soaring towers, and Jaiyan could have sworn she could see stairways that swept down at impossible angles.
At least, she thought, impossible for anyone to walk on properly.
"Boss!" Deekin grabbed at her arm. "Boss, look at all the things! Walking in the street!"
She blinked slowly. "Sorry, Deeks. You're ahead of me. I'm still transfixed by the architecture. Say, Valen, how do they make it all stand up without collapsing?"
Valen followed her gaze to where a top-heavy tower loomed over a building with blacked-out windows and smoke palling from three chimneys. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "I never saw anything collapse, though."
She nodded absently, and found her eyes wandering back over the sharp edges and odd slopes of the buildings nearest. Looking past them into the flickering grey distance made her head ache. Finally gazing down the street, she wondered if she should laugh or shy back under the archway and hope she would wake up back in Neverwinter.
"Jaiyan, beloved? Are you alright?"
"Yes," she stammered. "I'm just looking at…what is that?"
"Glabrezu," Valen explained. "Demon."
"Oh." She stared at the creature's broad, swaying back as it ambled down the street, one clawed hand on the hilt of a massive axe, and its huge, wolfish head held low and predatory. "Right. What's it doing?"
"Best not to ask," Valen said drily.
She dragged her gaze away from the lumbering demon, and tried desperately to find a smaller, more human shape in the crowd. It seemed that everywhere she looked, she saw odd forms with wings or horns or snake-like tails. She recognized a lithe, dark-haired succubus, and thought she spotted a trio of imps, fluttering along together, chirruping as they sped past a clutch of short, squat creatures that she could not name. This is insane, she thought. They're all just walking as if they're normal people, not looking at each other, just like people do in other cities.
"Boss!" Deekin's cold nose nudged her hand. "Boss, Deekin sees an elf!"
She followed his pointing fingers, saw a slim-hipped, green-garbed figure darting through the crowd. Whoever he was, he did look elvish, with tapering ears and an enviably slight frame. "Well. How about that."
"Feel any better?" Valen asked.
"A little," she said, grudgingly. "Am I likely to get killed if I stare too much?"
He laughed. "Possibly. Come on. Let's find an inn."
Perfectly content to step aside and let him lead, she gripped his hand and trailed him down the hill, through the press of the crowd. Deekin grabbed at her other wrist, and she considered briefly what a spectacle they must make, two blinking outsiders and a tiefling, trying not to lose each other. Valen shouldered through the throng as if he knew where he was going, and Jaiyan hurried to keep pace. Eeling around the bulk of something with huge shoulders and a long, elegant neck, she pulled Deekin alongside her. If she lost him among the crowd, she did not fancy her chances of finding him at all, never mind in one piece.
The street swung around at the bottom of the hill, crossing a wide avenue. Here, the pace of things slowed somewhat, and Jaiyan could hear merchants calling prices. A quick glance at the draped stalls showed her traders hawking jewels and weapons, potions and bolts of cloth, fluttering pixies in bell-shaped jars and salted meat. Past a pair of high, haughty-looking statues that rose a good twenty feet or more above the cobbles, a wood-fronted building nestled in the shadows of two spiraling towers. Jaiyan stared, had a second look at the ungainly way the parapets reared out, tried to figure out how the second of the towers had not yet spilled its stone blocks onto the avenues below, and gave up.
"There," Valen said, pointing.
"That's a tavern?"
He smiled. "See the sign?"
She looked over the shoulders of a group of white-skinned, lizard-like creatures, and saw spidery words winding past a fading image of an elegant golden feather. "The Curling Feather? What kind of a name is that for a tavern?"
"The Yawning Portal?" he countered.
"Well, fine, but at least there there's a practical reason for the silly name." She followed him across the avenue and up the stairs between the towering statues. Her fascinated gaze drifted across the merchant stalls, fixing on a handful of strange purple jewels, set in looping silver, that some reptilian-looking creature passed across to a hooded figure.
Valen steered her across to the tavern door, and paused, the light in his blue eyes suddenly serious. "When we get inside, let me do the talking."
She nodded. "Alright."
"I mean it," he added firmly.
She grinned up at him. "I promise. Even I can keep my mouth shut sometimes."
"I have never before seen such a sight," he said, straight-faced.
Jaiyan gave him a good-natured shove, and laughed when he shot her an injured look. He scooped her hand into his, and led them across the threshold, and into a billow of smoke. She blinked watering eyes, and made out a crackling fire, and tables wreathed in blue haze, and drapes half across the windows. Not a one of the patrons was human, she noted, and decided that she did not care.
She half-heard Valen bantering with the innkeeper, while she looked through lowered eyelashes and studied the taproom's occupants again. Most of them were hunched over their drinks, staring blankly down with the jaded kind of look she had seen inside most taverns. Others sat in groups, softly chatting, or playing dice. This was a quiet place, she realised, the kind of tavern usually found down an alley, or around a corner, hidden and away from noisier, bustling places.
Valen's arm tightened around her waist again, jolting her from her thoughts. Coins clinked on the bar, and Valen pushed them across to the innkeeper.
Who picked them up with a pale hand, the skin mottled with a strange, spiraling pattern. Intrigued, Jaiyan looked further up and discovered that, while the innkeeper's neck and face were free of such markings, his eyes burned a pale yellow, and the thick, curling hair that tumbled past his collar was glossy and almost flaxen. She almost blurted a thoughtless question, remembered her promise to Valen, and instead let him guide her away from the bar.
Across the taproom, with Deekin jogging along behind, and barely a whisper raised between the quietly drinking patrons, she gripped Valen's hand harder and murmured, "Do they have a bath-house here?"
He laughed. "They've a maid who'll fill a bath in our room for an extra copper."
The stairs led up onto a wide, lamp-lit landing, where the air smelled of hay and something else, something that reminded Jaiyan of armour polish. After ushering Deekin into his room, she trailed Valen to the door across the floor. "The innkeeper…?"
Valen was fumbling with a heavy bronze key, frowning. "Yes?"
"Was…was he a tiefling?"
"Yes," he said, sounding surprised. "How did you know?"
She shrugged. "I don't know." She had seen no horns on the pale-haired man's head, but there had been a coiled intensity about him, in the tilt of his face and the set of his shoulders. "Something about his eyes. Something that reminded me of you, I suppose."
"Oh, really?" He forced the key around with a low growl, and finally heaved the door open.
Cool air rushed out to meet them, and Jaiyan shivered when she stepped across the threshold. Pale, grayish light streamed in through the open curtains, slanting across the bed and washbasin and empty fireplace. While Valen locked the door behind them, she wandered across the creaking floorboards, stopped at the window, and forgot to shed her pack and cape.
The roofs and domes and high spires of the city rose up before her, piling one upon another until she could make out little detail amid the haze and the blurring lights that lined bridges and blazed at tower windows. She could still see people, figures, thronging wide avenues and narrow alleys, or crowding into the marketplace below.
"There are many tieflings in Sigil," Valen murmured from behind her. She heard his footsteps, and then his arms were sliding around her, pulling her back against him. "Should I be worried?"
She grinned and twisted around. "Only around ones who remind me of you, I suppose. Do I hear a hint of jealousy?"
"Only the slightest," he answered, smiling. "Now, is my lady pleased?"
"And overwhelmed, quite enraptured, and almost speechless."
"Speechless, indeed?" He grinned, ducked his head forward, and captured her lips in a soft, lingering kiss. "I am rather tempted to take advantage of such a situation."
The pliant, teasing motion of his mouth on hers stole her thoughts, and the sarcastic retort she had planned. "You'd better," she managed, almost breathlessly.
He laughed again, that soft, warm sound that she was almost certain she had never heard in company other than just his. Jaiyan opened her mouth to say something else, but his hands travelled up to the straps on her backpack, and then to the clasps on her cape. He found the snarled ties on her tunic next, and when he scooped her up into his arms, and carried her across to the bed, she decided to happily ignore the gleaming lights of Sigil behind her.
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Valen stirred, felt first the rough touch of the blankets, and then the air, soughing across his bare skin. Still warm, he noted, after he had finally caved in sometime after midnight and ventured downstairs in search of firewood. He started to roll over, and stopped when he realized that Jaiyan was still coiled around him, her head against his chest and her legs wrapped around his. He sat up slightly, and let his gaze linger on her hair, thick and brown and unreeled across him and the sheet beneath.
She seemed small, almost vulnerably so, and he wondered again if he had made the right choice in agreeing to return to Sigil.
He knew the city's vagaries well, had learned the cruel business of survival on its twisting streets, and he supposed he could keep Jaiyan from proper harm. Besides, he thought, she's been leaping head-first into ridiculous danger since long before you met her. Just keep her breathing, and we'll survive Sigil.
Demons and devils walked the streets here, and once, that would have left him riddled with apprehension. Even as a child, he had hidden himself behind statues or columns or corners and watched devils march pass, and felt his blood seething. Grimash't and his battle slaves had taught him what that meant, and how best to let the anger take over, and turn him into something mindless, and mad.
But that was before the Underdark, he remembered, before the Seer, and before Jaiyan.
He recalled Cania, and standing amid the cold wastes, while his beloved steeled herself to talk to the woman called the Knower of Names. She had spoken Jaiyan's True Name, and his, and it had been with the strangest frisson of awareness that he had heard himself named Oeskathine, the Demon-wrestler.
Too many years back to count, even if he could remember them properly, his mother had once sat him down at her dresser, and looked him straight in the eye.
"Valen," she said. "I need to talk to you."
He looked up, all coltish legs and arms and a shock of ungroomed scarlet hair. "About what?"
"Your father." A heavy note of regret crept into her voice, and he wondered why. But she had gone on to tell him of the cambion, unnamed, whoever he was, who had been a customer. Like all the Mistress' workers, his mother drank a potion that should have kept her from thickening with child, but such things were less than infallible, he learned. She kept the details from him, but he understood that she had been sick and forced to work, and whatever the potion was meant to accomplish, it could not if she had thrown it up some hours prior.
"So I have these." He raised his hand, touched his horns. "What does it mean?" He had seen many others on the streets of Sigil, horned, or with snapping tails, or wings, or an unsettling gaze that could terrify a snake. He had never particularly thought himself out of the ordinary, but neither had he tried to wonder why his mother was so simply human.
"It means you have demon's blood, Valen," she replied, softly. "You're a tiefling."
"I know," he said innocuously. "The others outside called me a tiefling. I knew that."
But he did not know what it meant, even though she told him of the Blood Wars, and how demons and devils fought and slaughtered, and how the sheer need to kill would pound through his veins. She had tried to explain, but he had been too young, and just nodded, and tried to not to think about how her voice had wavered.
Now, thinking, with his gaze absently on a wayward lock of Jaiyan's hair, he wondered why his mother had known such things, and even why she was in Sigil. Had she travelled there, an innocent, or had she been born to the turning, winding streets as truly as he had?
But he himself had never learned, and Grimash't had only taught him to kill, quickly or slowly, and revel in shed blood.
But she spoke your True Name, he reminded himself. She spoke your True Name in the Reaper's place, and stilled your demon blood. Rid you of it, and its tempting.
But what was it the Reaper had said? "It means you are no longer a slave to the demon in your blood. You still carry your infernal heritage, but you will tame and control it. Not the other way around."
He was still not sure what it all meant. It had been in Grimash't's care, and then in Cania, that his blood had overtaken him to such terrible, violent effect; never here, never on the streets of Sigil.
He shook his head, tried to drag himself from such thoughts. This is absurd. Stop worrying. You're here now. You know this place.
But the lingering fear remained, that he was scrabbling for some justification for the fluttering anticipation that he still felt. Back in Sigil. Back on streets that he knew.
Beside him, Jaiyan murmured something to herself and turned over, dragging his arm with her when she burrowed underneath the pillows. He smiled and brushed her hair away from her face. Feeling vaguely idle, he curled himself around her much slighter shape, his hand clasped between both of hers, and his face against the nape of her neck. He would wake her soon enough if she did not stir on her own, but for now, he was content to lie beside her and wait.
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Grey light poured in through the taproom windows, painting long, pale stripes across uneven floorboards. Dust clouds swirled above the table Jaiyan had her elbows planted on, and she found herself considering – and not for the first time – that cheap and grubby taverns must be the same, all the worlds over. A bare handful of other patrons occupied the other tables – two were eating, three others sat and stared blankly into their cups, and a third group quietly talked. She had expected more sidelong glances, if not outright comments, and perversely found herself a little disappointed.
"Boss?" Deekin peered at her over a plate of warm bread. "Boss be thinking?"
She laughed and returned her attention to the cup between her hands. The drink inside was hot and steaming and tasted vaguely of honey, though she was a little apprehensive about asking the innkeeper exactly what was in it. "Sorry. Bad habit."
Deekin clicked his tongue. "Deekin not sure he should ask…but…Boss and Goat-man…feeling better?"
She chewed at the inside of her cheek. Valen had vanished outside to catch his bearings properly, and made them both promise not to set foot outside the tavern before he returned. "Ah…guess you heard the fight we had, then."
"Only Deekin and the whole of the docks, Boss."
She glared at him for a moment before dissolving into laughter. "Oh, Deekin."
"Yes, Boss?" he inquired innocently. "What is it?"
"You know what." She leaned her chin on her hands. "But yes, we are." She studied him, the narrow slant of his head, and his deep-set, black eyes. "Are you alright? About being here?"
He shrugged philosophically. "Deekin goes wherever the wind takes him. Or wherever Boss decides to go. Whichever." He grinned then, all sharp teeth. "Deekin feels that he be very far from Old Master's cave, though."
"I know what you mean." Jaiyan sipped at the drink, let its sweet, slippery taste fill her mouth. "Do you remember that night?"
"Remember? Deekin not forgets."
There was a world of memory in those words, she knew. She had been young and stumbling, and whatever cocky sureness she thought Drogan's training had given her had fled in the face of the attack and the bitterly cold night. And the kobold, she recalled. He had been small and shivering, wearing patched leathers, and edging hesitantly out of the snow-heavy trees. Holding up a wrapped bundle, and pleading that she not try to hurt him.
The last time she had seen kobolds, they had attacked the village, set fire to the stables behind the tavern, and killed too many people that she knew. But he had been so ridiculously unassuming, and had not even bothered to unsling the crossbow he carried across his back. So she had warily lowered her sword, and promised that she was not there to harm him.
"Do you ever want to go back?"
Deekin tapped his claws against the tabletop. "To the hills?"
"Yes. All those caves, where Tymofarrar lived?"
"Nope. Well, Deekin thinks maybe, sometimes." Another shrug. "Sometimes Deekin thinks he might want to meet other kobolds, and maybe teach them things. About books and songs and adventures. But then…Deekin thinks he prefers being here, with Boss."
She grinned, mostly to stop the sudden, absurd rush of excitement. "Even if we get killed in some dismal back alley by something not entirely human?"
Deekin gave a laboured sigh. "If Boss gets killed in some dismal back alley, Deekin will be sure to write something pretty and show it to all the kobolds that he teaches."
