When Dago’s eyesight finally returned, more than a week later, he found himself staring into the wooden tray he’d been using. Amidst all the commoners were a few crowns. Three of them. This is what Dago’s begging had amounted to, little more than two day’s meals. He stared down at it for a long time with his fresh vision, before looking up at his surroundings. He’d managed to find his way into the city of Ith, leaving the Low Dales behind, and seemed to be calling a shop’s alleyway his home. He thought it was wider, a street. He’d been begging an alley…
A small assortment of tattered robes and burst pillows had been his bed, he saw. He stood up and brushed the dirt off his worn out clothes. Disgusting. At least he didn’t have too much scruff growing on his head yet. He looked at the small bent berry bush that had been his shade. It was not a fence after all.
He looked down at his hands. An incredible sight. “At last,” he muttered. He emptied out the tray of coins into his palm and then tossed away the wooden frame. It clattered against the narrow walls as Dago marched into the nearby street. People walking by wore brown, grey-violet, pale red, bright green. Their noise seemed quieter now, more tame, now that Dago could see them.
“Hey, you’re not blind,” the man sitting on his deck nearby said. The shopkeeper. “I told you, ma.” The man had black hair and olive skin, and an outraged look on his face. “We gave you coins, liar.”
Dago leaned closer to the deck. “I never thought you had black hair, but I see it now. Thank the gods, I see it now.” With a spring in his step he strode away.
The commoner’s market of Ith was a dangerous place, but during the day it wasn’t too bad. Guards patrolled it as much as slavers. Dago spent all of his coins on food; he had managed to hold on to his sword throughout that whole ordeal.
The magicians had too many strikes in the red, and Dago was done playing his game of hired and jobless. He had a job, one he’d been ignoring for far too long.
He left Ith by the Sunner’s Gate, across the Low Dales and through the Old Village. His road led east, toward Vagren and eventually Ellakar—the night rose ahead of him, and Dago walked right through it.