Hadjar arched his right eyebrow skeptically. Alas, only the bats could appreciate it.
“Do you really not know who fairies are?”
“Who? I think they’re more of a ‘what’!”
Hadjar snorted. Then he coughed. Then he laughed out loud. He laughed long and hard. Even his belly started aching. After two weeks of complete immobility, this pain was a pleasant change of pace.
“Why are you laughing, barbarian?”
“Just give me a minute,” Hadjar said, out of breath, “let me enjoy the moment.”
“What moment?”
“The one where I know something you don’t.” Hadjar laughed again. He sighed and sniffed. “What a wonderful feeling it is when everyone around you seems dumb.”
“I never called you dumb. Ignorant maybe, but not dumb. I’m gonna ask you one last time, barbarian, who are fairies and how do you know about them?”
“They’re the messengers of the gods. I know about them because my mother told me stories when I was a child. I thought all children knew about them...”
Again, there was utter silence in response.
“Hey, baldy, don’t go all quiet on me now...”
Silence.
“Einen!”
“Calm down, barbarian,” Einen whispered wearily, “let me digest this new information. It’s not every day somebody tells me they’ve eaten tangible proof that the gods exist.”
Alas, the islander didn’t get a chance to finish ruminating. Footsteps were heard in the hall, and Hadjar finally saw someone besides bats.
Chapter 334
“You look good, stranger.” The paunchy man who’d shielded Hadjar from the red-haired witch’s spell leaned over his ‘bathtub’.
Now that Hadjar could see him from up close, he noticed something quite abnormal: slightly sagging, fatty cheeks, which even the weakest practitioners couldn’t have. During training, even without any meditation, a practitioner’s figure would become rather attractive and well-shaped. Only those who had advanced a long way down the path of cultivation could have some extra fat on their sides, along with people who needed it on their own chosen path.
Neither seemed to be the case with this man. Although Hadjar wasn’t a true cultivator since he was still at the Transformation Stage, he could feel the presence of the Spirit in another person. In Einen, he’d detected the influence of the Staff Spirit and the Spear Spirit. In himself — the Sword Spirit. In this paunchy man, he could feel no Staff Spirit, nor the Spear one, the Dart one, not even a Stick Spirit. Hadjar sensed nothing that would be familiar to him.
Nevertheless, the man held a military iron staff with a colored stone at the top. The power emanating from it wasn’t at the initial levels of cultivation, but at the level of a Heaven Soldier.
“What do you want from us?” Hadjar asked, looking into the man’s eyes.
“What do we want?” The man seemed surprised. “From you? By the Evening Stars, we want nothing. It was you, strangers, who disturbed our peace.”
“We just came near the entrance to your city.” Einen joined the conversation. “If you stuck your heads out of your hole more often, you would’ve noticed that we’d emerged from a spatial fault.”
The paunchy man turned to him, measured Einen with an appraising look, and then shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter whether you appeared from a fault, rode in on desert ravens, used a flying carpet, or the Jasper Emperor himself carefully put you here. Strangers aren’t allowed to enter Underworld City.”
Hadjar could definitely dispute that. He knew of at least one stranger who’d wound up here and, moreover, become a disciple of the Sage.
“South Wind,” Hadjar said. “My teacher is South Wind. He was the Sage’s disciple. I have his seal.”
“South Wind,” the man repeated, as if trying to remember someone. “South Wind... South Wind... I don’t remember anyone who went by that name.”
“He changed his name to Eternal Stream,” Hadjar pressed, not giving up. “In Lidus, he was also called The Sand Sea of the Hot Valley.”
“Still nothing.”
The paunchy man continued to examine the tub, sometimes checking things that were comprehensible and obvious only to him. He did it very casually, using simple, deliberate movements. He seemed to have experience with this.
“Serra, then.” Hadjar noticed the strange man flinch. That encouraged him. “Serra the witch. She was my brother’s wife. Not for very long, but still! And she was my good friend-”
Hadjar didn’t get to finish speaking. The paunchy man ran his fingers along his staff, and as he did so, it was as if an invisible giant had struck Hadjar’s belly with an iron fist. Along with wheezing coughs, a trickle of blood escaped Hadjar’s mouth. Leaking out of the corners of his lips, it dissolved in the green liquid.
“We found her amulet among your things, stranger.” The paunchy man’s voice was full of steel and cold hatred. “Many of us loved and respected Serra, so I would advise you to stop bringing her up.”
“But-”
Another blow caused Hadjar to twitch in a reflexive attempt to defend himself. He felt like a stupid fly trapped in a tenacious spider’s web.
“I don’t know how you defeated one of the best disciples of the Sage, but your lie is obvious to anyone who was even a little familiar with Serra.” The man got up, turned to Einen, and struck him with the same invisible air attack.
“Why...” the islander hissed out, spitting blood.
Ignoring Einen’s lamentations, the paunchy man returned to Hadjar’s side.
“Serra never loved... men,” he said, “and her many mistresses are evidence of that. I don’t know what fate you’ll choose, but I’d avoid her sister if I were you. Nobody who knew Serra would believe that you were able to kill her, but Tilis won’t stop. She’s vowed to avenge her sister’s death.”
With these parting words, the man turned around and walked off, out of Hadjar’s line of sight. Suddenly, it dawned on Hadjar.
“Ramukhan!” Hadjar called. The man halted. “By the Evening Stars, the Great Turtle as my witness, Demons and Gods smite me if I’m lying, I’d also love to... avenge her death. Alas, there is no mortal whose life could be placed upon her funeral pyre.”
A deathly silence filled the dungeon. Even the bats didn’t dare make a sound.
“Make sure to tell Tilis all about it,” the paunchy man answered mockingly, and added, “If you survive.”
He heard the man walking away once more, followed by the thud of a stone door. Or maybe a hatch. Hadjar’s imagination, which had been flourishing in the time he’d spent watching only the unchanging ceiling, had conjured up a hinged bridge.
“Are you sure you had a brother and not a sister?” Einen asked with obvious pain in his voice.
“I’m certain,” Hadjar grunted, “it’s you I’m suspicious of.”
“I’m surprised to hear you’re interested in what’s beneath my robes. I’ve heard that sodomy is strictly forbidden in the north.”
“I never understood why, but, nevertheless, in the past six months, I’ve never seen you naked.”