A few days of travelling across the highlands brought Raya and her friends to the crowded outlying walls of Ith. She had never been here before; growing up in Olston, Raya had learned that both Ith and Vagren were major cities, and Vagren was closer. She had never really realized how much bigger Ith was than its sister city. Guards patrolled a lengthy row of palisades, that disappeared behind hills to the left and to the right of the entry that Raya and company approached. Behind the low wall were more hills, topped by the occasional house or storehouse or camp of pavilions and traveller’s tents. Far in the distance, she could see the wooden walls and mud rooves of shacks built against the looming stone fortification of the city proper. Ith must have covered close to fifty miles. As such, this entryway into the city had become a camp of its own.
Raya and her friends had slept in the line overnight, waking when the guards started shouting for people to wake up. They processed everyone entering the city it seemed. I know these people, Raya thought of those around her. She didn’t mean Dondar and Benn, but the other travellers seeking admission to Ith. These were refugees. Not the ones from Elpan anymore, though Ith had probably seen far more of those wayward souls after the revolt last year than Olston had. These were people from Ellakar, she realized.
It was not until midafternoon that Raya and her friends reached the front of the line. She had been glad to see that there were no slavers on the city perimeter. She remembered the casual advertising of the Silver Guild, allowing people into Vagren in their shackles. Instead, a troop of near twenty guards kept watch over the gate, either patrolling or gambling in a wide pavilion to the left, or watching the men and women who approached.
“Welcome to Ith,” drawled the first guard, a senior dark-skinned man with the tattoo of a tancat’s face on the back of his palm. “What’s your business?”
Raya spoke for her friends. “We’re from Olston,” she said. “We’re just visiting the city.”
“Tourists?” asked another guard. “In the midst of all this?”
“We’re looking for people we know, actually,” Raya said. “Dago, or A—” If Axar was next in line to join the Mage Kings, perhaps it was unwise to invoke his name. “Axe.”
“Axe?” the first guard said with a smile. “We’ve got a few of those.” He tapped the pommel of a weapon at his waist, but then gave her a wink and smiled. He looked at his comrade and tilted his head.
“Let them through, I suppose,” said the other. “At least they aren’t going to die in the streets like these other rabble. That’s right, girl, most of those we let through won’t find work like they seek. There’s no work in Ith, not after the number of lost folk we’ve let in. But I don’t make those decisions. The Mage Kings do.”
The tirade finally resolved on that last, dreary note, and the two guards stepped aside to let Raya and her friends through.
It was a long walk to anywhere useful. The ashen clouds overhead didn’t let any light reach the city save limiting its own torch and lantern light within. Mount Lukar’s simmering did not cease, and the dark clouds rising from the east blanketed northern Radregar. The grassy fields on this side of Ith were marred by shacks and warehouses. Mansions with high walls and tall trees dotted the landscape, and guard patrols followed predetermined routes along the old dirt roads.
“Is there a curfew?” Benn asked, cautiously. Raya said she didn’t know, but Dondar spoke up.
“No curfew. Unlike Vagren, the slavers of Ith don’t reap their own sewing,” he muttered. The old guard tunic, with missing chain links, jangled as his trekked behind the two younger friends. “The Mage Kings buy their slaves abroad, and lords they choose engage in town-sport.”
Raya looked back at their bearded friend. “Town-sport?”
“It’s a game of sorts, a competition wherein the victors are entitled to abduct an entire town from the southlands,” Dondar explained. “Fortunately, town-sport is only permitted occasionally, and lasts a year. Otherwise there’d be no villages left.”
Raya shook her head, and Benn cursed. Olston fell under Vagren’s borders, so they were safe, but Raya could imagine the terror of an army of armoured slavers charging through their open boundary past the guardhouse and into her home.
The only silver lining from Dondar’s explanation was the safety it meant for them within Ith’s walls. They’d be free to find a place to stay, and relatively safe as they continued their investigation. Becoming an enemy of the Mage Kings might not guarantee their security, but Raya was here to find the truth, not make friends.
“I hope it never gets that bad from the slavers in Vagren,” Benn said, quietly.
Raya nodded. “Don’t worry, Viker and Lotha will protect us.” That had been part of their original alliance, she recalled. They wanted to see change in Vagren as much as Raya did, but now the destruction of Ellakar had replaced any personal plots. “We just need to focus on Axar,” she told Benn.