“Mind if I take this?”
She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. I slid the picture from the frame and tucked it into my jacket.
“Thanks for your time, Deirdre. As I said on the phone, I wasn’t hired to find your daughter but I promise I will do whatever I can.”
She thanked me through tears and let me out. I left her in the empty house with sadness, silence and two cold cups of tea.
I hadn’t eaten anything all morning. That wasn’t an anomaly for me, but when I passed the old man in his empty restaurant I made myself stop.
A Specials menu had been painted up on the wall over the counter.
“Fried rice and coffee,” I requested, taking the same seat as last time.
“Are you sure, sir? I can try again with the eggs.”
He was so eager to improve upon the previous day’s effort that I couldn’t say no.
“All right. Breakfast Special.”
“Runny eggs.”
“If possible.”
He lumbered into the kitchen leaving me to marinate in the aftershock of my morning. The sadness of that poor woman was sticking to me like a damp sweater.
If you held up my life and measured it against the rest of the world, it wasn’t so great. But it never had been. That, in some ways, made me lucky. I’d never had anything to lose. Not like that poor Siren and her house of paper memories.
I took out Edmund’s journal on January and ran my eye across the meticulous notes. Most of them were song ideas or book recommendations. One page was a calendar marking the days of each lesson. There was one scheduled for today, Test – KA, which I doubted either of them would be attending. Every four lessons, KA was written again beside a number and a couple of words: KA – 5th Better. KA – 10th strained. KA – 10th Windy, excusable. The most detailed notes were at the beginning, before it all became shorthand. The first KA section was on the third lesson and accompanied an extended but still cryptic description: KA – fine up to the fifth row but lacks the resonance to carry further with any emotion. Fifth to Tenth can hear words but lacks punch. Eleventh row and beyond almost inaudible.
He was testing her in a theater. Somewhere outside. Probably a public space that was easy to access. I hadn’t grown into the cultured man I’d once hoped to be, so if there were a theater in this city, I’d certainly never been a patron.
I racked my brain for half an hour, waiting for the fabled breakfast to arrive. Every now and again, I heard swearing from the kitchen and the silver-haired man would poke his face around the corner.
“Sorry, sir. Little hiccup. Trying again!”
Then he would disappear before I could respond. Eventually, I just left payment on the table and let myself out. I wasn’t hungry anyway.
The information center was a ten-minute walk up the road: short in footsteps but an age in memories. The once-glossy posters that promised opportunity and equality were shrunken and brown inside their cabinets. Brochures with the title Sunder: A World of Work featured an excited Ogre with a pickax in his hands. A banner over the barred kiosk window advertised The Sights to See! with an illustration of the waterfall that came through Brisak Reserve in early spring. In a sad coincidence, the poster had faded to reflect the current reality of the landscape. In the image, as in life, those shimmering blues had faded to a septic green.
There was a map on the outside wall that had cracked and flaked beyond comprehension. The row of pamphlets along the side had mostly turned to mulch, with pieces scattered like confetti in the soggy leaves. I flicked through the fragile remains of the papers that hadn’t completely fallen apart. Advertisements for zoos, shows and museums had merged into solid blocks. One frayed brick had some kind of circus on the front: Mr Majelin’s Magical Jamboree. The clown’s face was made even more horrific by the warped peeling of the paper. I cracked open the pages and found a rock-hard sheet whose cover had been preserved by the others. The dates of the shows were written across the center: First five days of Summer – Only at the Kirden Amphitheater.
12
The faded tourist map was no help so I relied on the reluctant directions of beat cops to lead me through the sodden sports fields and up the embankment.
There were plenty of free seats in the amphitheater but I stood at the back against a leafless tree. Down on the circular stage, a group of hungry-looking troubadours bounded around in snarling masks and black cloaks. Thirty or so people, mostly children, watched from the marble steps that curved around the stage like the shadow of the moon. I hadn’t seen the play before, but I knew the story. Like a lot of the fables of creation, fact and fiction had been blurred right from the beginning. You could trace any magical creature back to a moment of connection; a divine point in history where the great river reached out and touched reality. Each species had their origin story and the one being played out on stage was one of my favorites.
This legend begins with Domik Tar, a dark Wizard of old. Through propaganda and promises, he amassed a formidable army of apprentice Mages who followed him across the land to carry out his bidding. For their loyalty, they were to be given the glory of standing at Domik’s side once he had overthrown the entire world. Their army soon grew to such a number that the roving band of evil Wizards needed a settlement to house their swelling ranks. Domik, a servant to none but his ego, selected the base of the Elk River upon which to build his fortress.
The Elk was a well-known holy wonder of the Northern Valleys. The natural springs that filled it were said to run alongside the great river itself, which infused it with elements of that sacred power. Domik chose a location right beside the mud-flats where the springs came down the mountains and joined as one. This location was, and had always been, inhabited by the Ingari people.
A tiny village built around the riverbank was home to the small, Half-Elf tribe that lived in a symbiotic connection with the land around them. They valued the health of their environs above all else, and in return, the rivers and forests rewarded them with a bountiful harvest of fish and fruit.
Being foragers and farmers, they had neither the nature nor the training to fight Domik’s forces, and their entire population was slaughtered in a matter of hours. No ceremony. No remorse. Every last Ingari was left dead in the mud.
The stones for the fortress were gathered from the mountains. Forests were flattened and turned into tables, beds and bonfires. Soldiers came from surrounding provinces to join the army and assist in the construction of the citadel. By the end of the following year, the great fortress was home to five thousand warriors of many species who were all preparing for war.
Seemingly impregnable, the building had foundations on both sides of the river with bridges and runways connecting them. The towers were decorated with barred windows and pointed spires on all sides. Domik looked upon his creation and crowned it the Castle of Gargos. With the mountains behind them and the river ahead, an advancing army could be pummeled with arrows and magic-shot from a multitude of positions before they ever got within range of a siege.
As a final monument to his fearsomeness, Domik commissioned the creation of a hundred statues. From across the lands, he rounded up the most celebrated artists he could find. They were coerced or kidnapped by his apprentices and taken back to the fortress to begin construction. Gathering their mud from the element-rich banks of the Elk, a hundred sculptors created a hundred mighty statues: each one intended to be more monstrous than the last. The artists combed their nightmares for inspiration and created horned, fanged, winged monstrosities that would sit atop the towers and glare down a warning at any adversary that dared to approach.