When night finally fell, Raven halted, collapsing to the ground. Every nerve in his body burned. He crawled back cross the field to his hut, one agonizing arm’s reach at a time. Beside his cot, another plate of bread and boiled mutton had been placed. He somehow lifted his body into the makeshift bed. Through discipline, he endured the fatigue and pain long enough to force himself to eat his dinner. Then, he subdued to his drowsiness.
He did not remember falling asleep. So, it was a great shock when Saxon shook him awake the next morning.
“Day two, lad,” he said. He placed a plate of bread and meat beside his bed, along with a single raw egg. “Day two. The masons set the stones you brought up last night using their special pandora. The tower is ready for you again.”
Raven could barely move. Every measure of his being protested in outrageous pain. But he scrunched up his face and slowly lifted himself up, forcing his muscles to respond to his order. Groaning through gritted teeth, he finally sat up, but he collapsed against the wall. A small bout of sympathy crossed Saxon’s face as he watched on, but it was quickly replaced by his signature scowl.
“Let’s get to it,” he said before walking out.
“I really loath him,” Raven said.
“No, you don’t,” Rue replied, laughing.
“No… I don’t.”
He wolfed his breakfast before gingerly stepping outside. Birds chirping echoed in the fog-strewn morning. Dew coated tufts of brown grasses patching the field. And his tower stood dominant in his view, daring him to approach. But approach he did. After extremely painful stretching, he got back to work.
Raven had never experienced such physical torment before. On the previous tasks, he had received simple aids. A horse during the first task, to build the foundation of the tower. A pulley lift during the second task. And then a cart during the third and fourth tasks as he built his tower up. Still immense work, especially for a youth, but this final task granted no aid. His body and grit were the only tools at his disposal.
Even so, as the work went along, the monotony of the task gained relevance, and Raven was able to put his mind to work while his body endured. He thought about what remained to do on his mission. He thought about Van and Valentine, and how they were faring. He thought about Arkh.
But mostly, he thought about Noelle. What she must be thinking, watching him toil up and down the tower he built for her. He thought about how her own mission progressed. Was she finding success? Or was her required observance of this task also causing delays in her own schemes?
As he reached the landing for the hundredth time that afternoon, Raven took a small breather. He stretched his back while looking out across the field. A mother pheasant and her chicks traipsed single-file through the brush. Saxon sat on a chair near the road, polishing his armor block. From his vantage, Raven could see the whole city, ziggurats shining in the sun like golden altars. The White Fleet of Zaliance’s famed navy sat like a single grand sheet of glory across the ocean in the far distance.
Most days, such a peaceful afternoon would have granted strength and clarity to Raven’s mind, but this was a desolate place. So many unfinished towers littered the horizon. So many failed tasks by people who had given up. Who were they that had forgotten what they once desired so desperately? Where were they now? What regrets did they harbor to their dying day? The towers served as a haunting reminder. Dreams of something better in this world demanded a heavy cost.
Raven wiped his brow and got back to work. The heavy cost must be paid.
On the morning of the third day, Raven awoke startled. He found himself face-down in the dirt. He hadn’t even made it to his bed this time. Groaning, he rolled onto his back to find Saxon looking down at him. The royal guardian held the standard plate of bread and boiled lamb.
“Day Three. You must be starving.”
“I am.”
“Let’s get going. The masons finished the work from yesterday. They weren’t happy they had to walk around you all night.”
“Those poor masons. I can’t imagine the inconvenience.”
He carried on with his work. The suffering did not get easier; instead, it manifested in new ways. By the end of the day, calluses on his hands doubled in size, a searing discomfort. After the fourth day, he registered several partially torn muscles, extremely tender to the touch. After the fifth, his knees began to protest, turning purple and swollen. His production on the sixth day slowed to a crawl, reduced to a tenth of what he was able to carry up the stairs on the first day. He could feel his body start to give out on every climb. When he finally collapsed into his cot that night, the demanding toll could be felt in every fiber of his body.
Saxon came into his hut that night with his dinner. Before Raven faded into oblivion, the old man said, “You have finished one more level of your tower.”
Raven smiled weakly. “One down.”
“Tomorrow is your day of rest. Use it wisely.”
But the rest would have to wait. In the early morning of Holy Day, Raven forced himself awake. Bit by bit, he eased out of the makeshift bed, gasping at each ache shooting needles through his legs and back. It took him half an hour just to get to his feet, and another ten minutes to stand up straight. The agony reached slithering tendrils to his bones, demanding more rest.
He shook his head. No. Even at the cost of his life, the mission would carry on.
The sun had not yet risen, but a breakfast of bread and lamb was still available beside his cot. He made two sandwiches from it, donned his robes, and gingerly stepped out into the darkness, eating one of his sandwiches on his way while stashing the other. The brisk air felt good on his sore body, rapidly bringing him the alertness he required.
The path through the quarries merged onto a larger street driving deep into the heart of Reyk Zaliance. After an hour of walking, pushing through the discomfort, Raven finally came upon Marble Downs, a former upper-class section of the city, now fallen into some disrepair. It was something of a curious location. Immense houses and other city structures lined the well-lit boulevards, but in the dead of night, they possessed the feeling of desolation. As if the people who lived in this part of city dreaded anyone knowing it.
Raven soon came to the local quarter of Marble Downs, where the street branched into several others in a star-like pattern. At the center of the convergence, a massive statue of the Titan sat on a pedestal. The man’s face had been configured to appear kingly. Raven ignored the spectacle, taking one of the branching paths and finally arriving at the entrance to a small alley. There, a man in a flat cap waited. He wore long shorts and an old leather jacket that probably had once been brown, but now featured all sorts of streaked drab colors.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“You Raven?” he asked. His grizzled features suggested he was middle-aged and didn’t take much stock in appearances.
“Indeed. And you are Van’s… well, actually I don’t know what you are to Van.”
“Van’s my boss,” he replied. “He didn’t tell you? Name’s Jack Storne.”
“Van is your… boss.”
Jack nodded. “He said to meet you here this morning, so here I am and… wait, what is that…” A look of disgust came over the man as he leaned in. He took a sniff of Raven and then recoiled. “Oh, my goodness, man! You reek!”
Raven frowned. “I haven’t bathed in a while.”
“I can tell! Maybe you should! Oh man… ohhhhhh man…” Jack backed away, covering his nose. “It’s worse than that, though. You smell like a trash dump. What have you been doing?”
“Can we get on with our business, please?” Raven said, aggravated.
“Yeah, alright,” his muffled reply came. He led Raven down the alley, still covering his nose and mouth. “This is the place.”
A long row of connected domiciles made up both sides of the long alley. The house Jack led him to was boarded up at the door and both windows. A faded inscription on the door read “Forir.” Jack stood on the other side of the alley, leaving a wide gap between himself and Raven.
Raven easily pulled away the wooden panels boarding up the doorway. He opened the door, letting it sway open to dusty darkness. “What do you know about it?” he asked.
Jack cleared his throat. “Yeah, Boss had me look into it. No one’s lived in the place since the man was killed. Bit of a mystery. The constables came to no conclusions about who killed him. And it’s been a while since, about two years. He’s sort of just been… forgotten.” He reached inside his jacket and produced a pile of folded papers. “Here are the copies of their old written notes.”
He stretched out to hand Raven the notes while maintaining as much distance as he could. Raven snatched them, frowning deeper. “I don’t smell that bad.”
“Are you joking? You smell like the business end of a heifer.”
Raven flipped through the notes before looking back up at the abandoned dwelling. The first morning light provided purple clarity to the formerly black sky, and he could hear the locals begin to stir on the street.
“I better get to work. Keep looking into this and see if you can find any more information. Former neighbors. Former friends. I’ll meet you here same time next week.”
“Alright.” He came up and held out his hand while pinching his nose with the other, looking at Raven expectantly.
“What do you want?” Raven asked.
“Payment. Us Thimbles don’t do this for free, ya know.”
Raven smirked. “Tell Van to bill me.”
“Bah. You bet I will. Going to add a hazard fee, too.”
.
Raven returned from his jaunt into the city that evening drained. He ate his dinner quickly and fell into a deep sleep. But the change of pace from the past six days had provided stimulation to his mind. So, when Saxon woke him the next morning, he found some measure of rejuvenation, despite the lingering soreness. He found just a little more success than his first day. And then a little more the day after that. Stone after stone piled onto the tower, worked into place each night by masons with special pandora.
After six more days, another level of the tower had been built. However, the unfortunate cost was a complete shutdown of his body by the end of the week. Raven could now see the faint outlines of his ribs with every breath he took. His hands quivered mightily, and spasms and cramps ripped through his body all night. It was nearly morning by the time he finally fell asleep.
He awoke just a few hours later. Bloodshot eyes searched through blurry vision to discover where he was, because it took him several minutes to remember why he was there. Searing morning sunlight shooting in from the open doorway burned what little vision he had. He covered his face, physically unable to roll out of the way.
“You need to get up, Raven,” Rue said. “There’s still work to do.”
“I… can’t,” he replied hoarsely. “I can’t move.”
“You must.”
Raven contemplated his fate when there was a tap at the door. Raven opened his eyes and blinked away the blurriness to find Saxon waiting in the doorway.
“A delivery for you,” he said. He approached and handed Raven a folded sheet of paper. He then laid Raven’s breakfast on the floor before walking out.
Raven opened the paper. Inside was a single message in familiar, graceful handwriting.
“Get up.”
– N. –
He rose. He made his sandwiches. And he slowly, but surely, traveled back to Marble Downs.
Jack Storne was prepared this time around, wearing a mask of several bandanas tightly covering his nose and mouth. But as Raven limped up the alley, he suddenly gagged and backed away.
“Take a shower!” the man protested. “This is just offensive! How can you stand it? It’s like you slept in hot cheese!”
Raven leered at him as he stepped inside the house.
Nothing had been disturbed during the week. The small abode featured one bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. The connecting living room was devoid of any furnishings, having long been removed after the murder. The only embellishments across the stone floor and walls were the dark splotches of old blood where the man had been killed.
Raven kneeled, once again examining the strange, jagged line etched into the floor that started from the doorway and reached all the way to the middle of the room. He had spent the previous Holy Day examining the other rooms, but he found nothing of interest in the empty chambers.
“Do you have anything new for me?” he asked, walking the length of the line, and looking all around.
The Thimble cleared his throat. “A few things, I guess. The man was a bit of a loner. Stuck to himself, but those who did know him say he was incredibly arrogant. Loved to brag about his exploits.”
“Did any of your sources know what those exploits were?”
“Um, let’s see…” Jack flipped through a pad, quickly scanning his written notes. “One former neighbor mentioned something about mines. He said Seliph was something of a miner. Always came home dirty.”
“A miner? There are no mines in these parts. What did he mine?”
“Sorry, those are my words, not his. The word he used was ‘Gemmer.’”
Raven whirled. “He used that word specifically? ‘Gemmer?’”
“Yeah. It sounded like an insult when he said it. Why?”
“Because that’s the word used for a dealer of gems. The word is notorious in the North. Several mined jewels have been outlawed.”
“Why?”
“Without going too much into it, certain unearthed materials can be used nefariously. But there are no mines around Zaliance. Not that I’ve ever heard.”
Jack shrugged his shoulders, leaning back against the wall. “Not sure what good that is right now, though.”
“Well…” Raven slowly explored the space, looking up and down the walls. “It might explain why he lived here. This used to be a fine area of the city, and even a small home like this was costly. If Seliph was a Gemmer, it could explain how he made his money. And if he lived here, I would guess he had somewhere to stash his product.”
Raven kneeled near a far corner of the living room. The color of the stone was lighter, and he suspected something had been set here. He touched the grooves of the stones, running his fingers over them. The faintest sparkle flashed as he ran them through the dust.
“I bet it was here,” he said. “He had something holding his gems. Maybe a locker or hidden cabinet. So, the neighbor appears to have been telling you the truth.”
Jack started to come closer, but then he smelled Raven and backed away again. “The constable’s notes didn’t mention anything about seized gems.”
“Which means the murderer probably took them. And my guess is his killer is someone who knows all about them. See this long groove running through the stone all the way from the doorway?”
“Yeah. What is that?”
“It’s still a guess at this point, but I’m becoming more certain. The strongest warriors from Reyk Mune love to carry immense swords. The larger they are, the better. And some of them are so large, they will drag along the ground as they walk. For a sword to make a permanent groove in stone, it would have to be enormous. And Munians know everything about gems. They are constantly looking for higher class materials to create their weapons.”
Raven stood and came to the end of the grooved line. “I think the murderer killed Seliph with a sword right here. Seliph was found with a fatal wound matching such a weapon, right?” Raven raised his arm and slashed it across. “The blood spray matches.
It’s a connection, but this will require further research. Can you look into it?”
“What do you want me to look for?”
“I want to know what gems he was dealing. It may help me narrow down the suspects.”
He scratched his face. “Well, it’s not much to go by, but I’ll give it a shot.”
“Can you meet me next week in the quarries with whatever new information you discover? I have no need to come down to Marble Downs anymore. I’ve seen what I need to see here.”
“It’ll cost extra.”
“Yes, I’m sure it will. You’ll get paid. Just get me what I need.”