Rova 21, 4707

The first scream came just as Father Zantus started to speak. Kali, Ameiko and most of the crowd around them turned to see where it had come from when the second scream pierced the air. Ameiko focused on something in the distance, said “Goblin!” and then took off at a full run, darting and weaving through the crowd as a wave of panic rippled across the square from the southwest. Kali called out after her, but Ameiko neither turned nor slowed. Then, a chorus of shouts, yells and howls erupted from everywhere and true panic set in, several people running in any direction that took them away from the festival grounds. Kali lost sight of Ameiko in the chaos.

As the crowd scattered, Kali watched a small, dark shape slip behind a wagon parked next to Savah’s Armory. A small animal of some sort lay in front of it in the street, motionless in an expanding pool of blood. Strange, high-pitched voices—nonhuman voices—joined the cacaphony.

“Dad…?”

“We need to leave. We need to leave now!”

Akmal and Denea started to run but stopped mid-stride just as abruptly and Kali collided with her father, almost knocking them both down. Briefly irritated, she quickly saw what was wrong: a group of six goblins had appeared in the square, one jumping up on to the tables and scrounging for food while the others shrieked at disoriented stragglers.

“Go around, not through!” she heard her mother call out.

Denea grabbed Akmal’s arm and steadied him, then looked directly at Kali. Their eyes met, and Kali nodded. Let’s go! she thought.

As they dashed along the southern edge of the square, dodging scattering townspeople all the way, Kali caught sight of several heavily armed individuals confronting the goblins who were now advancing on the thinning crowd. She thought she saw Sedjwick and Kyras among them, but she did not recognize any of the others (and you could hardly forget, say, a half-orc carrying the largest battle axe she had ever seen). When they reached the southwest corner of the square, Akmal (now in the lead) almost ran straight along the narrow alley between buildings to Shell Street, but at the last second he saw something he didn’t like and yelled out “Right! Right!” and rounded the corner. Denea and Kali followed close behind. The battle in the square sounded fierce and brutal.

Now headed towards Church Street, the Kesk’s jewelry shop straight ahead, Kali glanced over and saw two goblins fall, slain by a pair of sword fighters. A large man and an equally large woman had nearly cut them in half. A priest was tending to a teenage boy who lay dying on the ground behind them.

Where is the town guard? she thought to herself.

Akmal called out “Stop!” just before they hit Church Street. The three of them came to a halt, hearts pounding and breathing heavily.

“What is it?” Denea asked him. Kali recognized the stressed tone in her voice.

“Something large, just past the Cathedral. I do not know what it is, but I see two animal eyes reflecting in the dark.”

Kali saw a glint of steel and noticed that her mother was wielding her dagger, and remembered seeing her draw it while they were running. I didn’t even know she was carrying that. Where does she hide it? She’d only seen her mom produce it like this a dozen or so times and it always gave her chills.

“Are you armed?” Denea asked her husband.

“No,” he replied.

“Idiot.”

“It was a festival.”

A huge ball of fire rose into the air on the far corner of the square. All three turned in unison and saw a wagon engulfed in flames.

“The fuel oil,” Akmal observed.

“More are coming. Can we make it to the house?”

Kali watched as several more goblins descended on the square. The group of would-be defenders—she counted seven of them now—met them head on. There was still no sign of the town guard. A furious skirmish erupted.

“That thing is still there. It is watching us.” Akmal replied.

“We’re probably safer near them.”

The fight in front of the Cathedral was over almost as fast as it had started. In less than half a minute the square was littered with the bodies of slain goblins. One of their wounded—Kali couldn’t see who—was sitting on the steps. Father Zantus had arrived and was reviving the critically injured teenager. The group held an agitated discussion that Kali could not hear, but she was pretty sure what they had decided: to the south, plumes of smoke were rising from the city center and there were sounds of distant fighting. They started moving that way when yet another scream rang out, this time from the northeast, near the city’s north gate. It was followed by the furious barking of a large dog.

“That thing is moving. It is headed towards the White Deer…” Akmal said. Unspoken—he didn’t have to say it because they were all thinking it—was, Next to our house.

The impromptu militia stopped, turned, and bolted up Church Street, running towards the source of the commotion.

“Go!” Akmal shouted.

Kali saw it happen and cried out “Wait!” but it was too late: a goblin sprinted out from behind a water barrel along Junkers Way heading in the same direction as the others, just as Akmal and Denea stepped into the street from alongside the building. Neither saw the other and the goblin collided with Akmal’s legs at a full run, sweeping them out from underneath him. Akmal went down hard onto his side, landing inches from the goblin that had been flattened onto its back, the wind knocked out of it.

Denea reacted first, bringing her dagger down with a sickening thud into the prone goblin’s chest. It shuddered and was still.

Kali watched this all unfold. Something in the back of her head told her she should have been frightened, but she wasn’t. It also occurred to her that, all around her, people had been panicking but she hadn’t done that either.

“Are you OK? Are you hurt?” Denea asked her husband.

“I may have broken a rib when I fell.”

He got up slowly. Denea handed him the large knife that the goblin had been carrying and he took it without question or comment. Up the street, the dog had stopped barking and they could hear another skirmish. From the sound of it, this one was much more fierce than the others.

“Through to Cliff Street?” Akmal asked.

Denea nodded and they moved, crossing the road more carefully this time, then slipping between the jeweler and the neighboring house. When they emerged on the other side they saw one of the town guard laying face down in the street on their left, almost certainly dead. His sword was not drawn and his hand had been clutching his crossbow when he fell. It looked like he had been stabbed from behind while readying his shot.

They went over to him and Akmal bent down to confirm what they already knew.

He added, “It is Garridan.”

Kali was staring at the crossbow on the ground. She looked up at her dad, to the sounds of the fight up the street near their home, and then at the glow from the fires burning in the city to the south.

And then she picked it up.

“Kali.”

She turned to face her father. He was holding something out in his hand.

“The quiver.”

§

 

Spring, 4701

Kali scampered down Main Street, taking care to avoid running into a pair of guards leaving the garrison as she slipped between it and the town hall. She didn’t want to miss too much of the sunset over the water, but colliding with someone on the busy streets would guarantee that she’d not get to see anything at all. She rounded the corner with equal care, a right turn that took her to the cliffs overlooking the gulf. She could see the enormous glassworks a couple of buildings down on her left as she trotted out to the edge.

The sun was just above the horizon, still bright but turning a fiery orange as it sank slowly to the water. She sat down on a comfortable grassy spot just a few feet from the edge that had become her favorite viewpoint, so caught up in her routine that she did not realize at first that she was not alone.

She recognized Nualia, of course; Kali knew who Nualia was within days of moving to Sandpoint. Everyone knew Nualia. At barely eleven years old she’d been fortunate to see more of the world than most people would in their entire lives. She’d seen humans from nearly every continent and humanoids of all types, but Nualia with her silver hair and purple eyes stood out among all of them. Not that she hadn’t come across others with a distinct or unique appearance, but those were all cross-breeds of some sort. Nualia looked both human and otherworldly at the same time.

What did mom say she was? Aas-something?

“It’s not polite to stare.”

Kali turned her head away quickly, feeling embarrassed. She could tell her cheeks were flushing as she said, meekly, “I’m sorry.”

Nualia was laying on her side in the grass just off to her right, one hand resting on her abdomen. Quite a few people in Sandpoint came out this way to watch the sunset every now and then, but this was the first time Kali had run into her here. For some reason it made her uncomfortable.

Nualia turned to face her.

“You’re Kali.”

It wasn’t a question, but Kali answered as if it was.

“Yes, miss.”

For just a fleeting moment Nualia looked annoyed and Kali was embarrassed again.

Dummy! Just talk to her like she’s normal.

People did weird things around Nualia. Not so much the ones living in Sandpoint, but those in the farmlands out to the east. They would ask to stroke her hair, or to have a lock of it, and to touch her face or hand. Some even asked her to kiss their children. Once while she was out with her parents Kali saw someone kneel at Nualia’s feet in supplication, and beg or pray for something. She wasn’t sure what because she couldn’t hear the words, but her mom was very annoyed and remarked harshly about the farmers being superstitious. Her dad was more reserved, but she could tell he found it terribly rude and he was shaking his head as they walked away.

“Other kids pick on you.”

Also not a question. This time Kali didn’t say anything. Yes, some of them did; she was getting used to it, and was learning who to avoid and who to ignore. That didn’t mean that she wanted it pointed out to her. Uncomfortable under Nualia’s gaze, Kali looked down. Her eyes found a path of dirt on the ground.

Nualia turned away, staring out over the gulf where the sun was dipping into the water, slowly turning from orange to a deep red.

After a couple of minutes she said, matter-of-factly, “It gets worse.”

The sun set in awkward silence.

§

When her parents announced that they would travel to Niswan just a few weeks ahead of her 11th birthday, Kali could hardly contain her excitement. It had been over five years since she had last seen her grandparents or the city where her father was born, and she could recall very little of her time in Jalmarey with any clarity. Some of that was simply the nature of a young child’s memory, but in the years since then the Nassim family had also been to the foreign ports of Kalsgard, Azir and Merab, numerous smaller settlements in Cheliax, and even briefly—very briefly—to the docks of Promise in Hermea (speculating about why Mengakare wanted those items would be a family pastime for many years). After the move to Sandpoint and the settling in at her new and now permanent home, those memories of what she saw as a young girl of six in Niswan were competing with others more recent and far more vivid.

She read a great deal about her father’s homeland in preparation for the journey and the more she read the more obsessed she seemed to become. At first, Akmal was concerned that the Kingdom would not live up to her expectations, but Denea quickly pointed out how unlikely that was: Niswan was a city that was formed, and still shaped by, the elementals and genies weaving magic in service to the Vudrani rajahs. Jalmeray was the west-most Impossible Kingdom and in this case it’s name was no exaggeration: the Kingdom itself would not and could not exist if not for the outsiders that were instrumental in its creation. One evening, Kali had asked if it was true that there were palaces “where the fountains flowed with wine instead of water”. Her father replied, nodding, “I have seen it”. How was it possible to be disappointed with such a place, when the reality was so much more fantastic than any story could convey?

And Denea was proved right in the end, as she often was when it came to her daughter. The almost eleven-year-old Kali was in awe of Niswan’s wonders. She walked on streets of red stone, between ornate pagodas several tiers high, silken streamers on their roof tops flowing in the wind. And the marble was everywhere: buildings, statues, fountains…some of them a pure white that gleamed int he sunlight. Niswan was a delight for the eyes, and there were many delights for the other senses as well. Now that she was old enough to appreciate it all she found the city to be nothing short of majestic.

Young as she was, though, she was also very keen and it did not take more than a few days for her to suspect that, aside from the culture, something about Niswan was very different from the other cities she had seen. It nagged at her. There were some obvious contrasts. The streets of Niswan were not just clean, but immaculate. The city itself was busy and bustling, yet also quiet and distinguished. It even seemed to have an effect on her mother: normally outspoken and rarely hesitant to offer her opinion on matters, Denea was reserved and deferential here (some might even call her behavior “polite”, though perhaps not within earshot). Yes, those things were obvious, but there was something else. Something much more subtle.

It was a couple of days before it came to her. Every city had its social and economic divides and Kali was under no illusions as to where she and her family fell on these scales. While the developed world might consider Sandpoint to be little more than a backwater settlement, her family’s life there belied its means. Children her age, or of any age for that matter, did not as a general rule travel the world, much less with her frequency. Most people did not leave their own country except to flee for their lives or as (unwilling) property of another. She knew, even at this age, the privilege under which she lived and a large part of that understanding came, surprisingly, from her mother. Denea not only didn’t shelter Kali from the harsh realities of poverty, at times she deliberately exposed her daughter to it. “Your father’s influence,” she would tell Kali many years later. “I wanted to raise you better than I was.”

What Kali saw in Niswan was a city like any other, except…there were no impoverished. There were poor, for sure, but she had yet to see what had been a common sight in every city of any size: the desperately poor, with no money and no prospects, surviving only at the generosity of others. There were no beggars, no homeless, no squatters and no squalor. When she broached the subject with her mother that evening, just as she was going to bed, Denea kissed her forehead and said, “You are an observant and clever young lady. And it is too late to talk about this tonight.”

Her father woke her very early the next morning, before dawn. “There is something I need to show you,” he said.

Two white horses were tied at the post in front of her grandparents’ home with reigns and saddles for riding, and Akmal helped her up onto the smaller one before untying them and mounting his. Once he was satisfied that Kali was ready, he said only, “Follow me,” and trotted off.

Akmal led her through the city as day broke. Whatever questions she had he was not ready to answer, and she eventually gave up on asking them and rode behind her father in silence. After nearly three quarters of an hour they had left the city proper, traveling along a small road on a grassy hillside overlooking the water. Down below, a rough path emerged from the brush and trees just above the shore, which it followed to austere wooden docks.

Akmal stopped, dismounted, and motioned for Kali to do the same. She eyed two  baqaara, ornately decorated as she had come to expect from Niswan (and in stark contrast to the docks where they were moored), sitting in the perfectly still water. Two men—a boat captain and a dockhand, Kali presumed—were preparing one of them for launch.

“Now, we sit and wait.”

In time, four hooded, cloaked figures emerged from the trees below, following the path to the docks. They approached the readied boat, greeted its captain, shed their cloaks and stepped aboard.

Kali gasped audibly.

“What happened to them?”

“This Kingdom was born from elemental magic 4,000 years ago, shaped by the will of the Maharajah Khiben-Sald. The magic of the genies still serves the rajahs today, alongside that of powerful sorcerors. This magic is responsible for the wonders around us, including the unnatural order you have seen in Niswan where even the lowest caste is provided for. But all these things…they come at a cost.”

The four figures took their seats, two choosing oar positions along with the captain.

Akmal continued, “All of this magic from hundreds of spells flows around us like the wind, and like the wind it is harmless…except on rare occasions when it is not, and causes these afflictions. This is the toll levied on a city created by, sustained by, and bathed in powerful magic from both our world and beyond.”

Kali watched in silence as the dockhand untied the baqaara’s mooring lines.

“If you are wealthy, or well connected, or simply have a large family of even modest means, you can pay to be cured. If you have none of these things…” He paused before continuing. “A lucky few are not severely stricken and may even recover in time. Most, however, are like this. They eventually become burdens on their families. When they have nowhere left to turn, they turn to the island of Gho Vella.”

The baqaara shoved off and its captain steered it away from the shore as the oars were lowered into the water.

“These men who ferry them. They do not ask for payment. No one knows why they choose to do this; if you ask them they will not say. We call them ‘The Curse Shepherds’.”

The boat picked up speed now, the captain and oarsmen rowing unsteadily at first but eventually smoothly and in concert. It was several minutes before Kali spoke.

“Why Gho Vella? What’s there?”

“I don’t know. Very few people do; I imagine that even fewer care.”

§