The Broken Knife

Getting Li ‘registered’ was surprisingly easy. They had to go back to where Raff signed them up in the first place, and give more coins to the harried people controlling the tables there. The greatest length of time was spent waiting for an animal handler to come look Li over. Fortunately, there was no handling involved, though Kaz did have to give Li several instructions, and the human male watched carefully as Li obeyed. When he was satisfied, he hurried away, and a new piece of paper was issued to them.

“If you happen to know anyone else who’d like to participate in the tournament, let them know they’ve extended sign-ups,” the female said as she pressed a piece of carved metal first against a piece of cloth soaked in ink and then onto the paper. Kaz accepted the page, staring at the perfectly replicated image of a knife or sword crossing a burst of something that looked like stylized flames.

Raff shrugged, then hesitated. “If we wanted to add somebody to our group entry, could we do that?”

Holding out her hand, the female said, “Let me see your papers again.”

Her pale eyes scanned the page Raff handed her, and she nodded. “Normally, you could only make changes this morning, but given the events of last night-” She grimaced, fingering the white bandage that wrapped around her head. Deep bruises had already formed beneath her skin, and Kaz had had to restrain himself from offering to heal it. He needed his ki, though, and the injury wasn’t life-threatening. She would heal on her own, given time.

Picking up a different piece of carved metal, she touched it to the ink cloth and pressed it to the page. “Yes, you may add members until your first bout. The first round is drawn by lot, so how many members you have won’t change the order you fight in. There’s no reason not to allow it, and a battle with more people in it will make a better show. If anyone questions it, tell them to call for me.”

She tapped the page meaningfully, and Raff reached out to pick it up. There was a glint of silver as the paper changed hands. Then Raff gave his strange salute, fingers flicking from his forehead, and led Kaz away.

Li was very grumpy as they wound their way through the streets of the city. She was unhappy that she’d had to do what some human told her, even though Kaz was the one who had actually spoken the words.

“We just had to show them that you’re a trained beast,” Kaz murmured. “I think.”

“What’s that, Blue?” Raff asked, glancing over his shoulder. He was leading them toward the palace in the center of the city, at least in a very general way. As they walked, the streets had become wider, and fewer people walked as the covered carts grew more numerous, so by now they were no longer surrounded by people. There was also remarkably little damage left from last night’s attack, and no bodies had been shoved into the shadows next to the low walls that lined the street.

“Li is a little angry that she had to listen to the human called an animal handler,” Kaz told him, and Li hissed her agreement, flicking her wings irritably.

Raff glanced at her. “Standard. They have to know you’re not going to go wild and start eating people when you get bigger.”

“How big do wyverns get?” Kaz asked, ducking around a tree that had grown up from a gap in the stones. It was a very odd place to find a tree, and there were others, evenly spaced along the road ahead. Had there once been statues or some other special kind of object in those holes, and the trees grew up when they were removed?

Raff held a hand at his eye level, palm down. “‘Bout that high,” he said. “Lot of it’s neck, of course, but their scales are hard, and their teeth and claws are sharp. One on one, a full-grown wyvern can take down most normal men, and hurt a lot more on their way out. Most important, though, is their scream.”

Li immediately began sending pictures of herself, much larger than Raff, lifting and throwing the animal handler. She did not, however, eat him, and Kaz felt that that was a tunnel in the right direction.

“Scream?” he asked almost absently, watching Li’s images and the ever-expanding castle at once. The building was very impressive, but it also looked a bit like someone had built a wall around several very different buildings and decided that that made them one. There was nothing graceful or integrated about it, unlike the buildings in the two cities within the mountain.

Raff stuck his finger in his ear and twisted, grimacing. “Like a knife through the skull. Their owners teach ‘em to shriek if anyone else gets close, and you can hear ‘em two counties away. Better than any magical alarm.”

Li let out an experimental whistle, and Raff quickly waved his hands to get her to stop. He looked furtively around as he said, “We’re in a nice neighborhood now. The folks here aren’t used to loud noises. Unless you wanna lose that license again, and get kicked outta Cliffcross, I recommend you stay nice and polite.”

Kaz looked around with fresh eyes. The buildings here were large, but no larger than the shops in the area around the tournament hut. The thing that really made them different was the broad expanse of grass between them and the street. This grass was usually enclosed by a stone wall that was rarely higher than three feet. The walls wouldn’t keep anything out as they were, but they also didn’t look unfinished, and Kaz hadn’t been able to figure out why they were even there.

Before he could ask, however, Raff came to a halt at the end of a new street. Pointing down it, he said, “There you are, Blue. The mage college.”

Kaz stepped up beside him and stared down the street. It was long, straight, and wide, but after a few blocks, no more buildings stood in neat rows parallel to it. In fact, nothing stood beside it at all, because the ground dropped away, leaving an empty pit over which the road passed as if nothing at all had changed.

“That’s the Cliff,” Raff said. “It goes all the way around the college. No one knows if someone created it, or if it happened naturally, but there’s a kind of island in the middle, and they built the college on it. Hardly anyone actually lives there, even the senior mages, so they cross the Cliff multiple times every day to go home or eat anywhere other than the dining hall.”

He paused thoughtfully, watching a series of covered carts passing each other, some going forward over the yawning chasm, while others were heading back toward Raff, Kaz, and Li. “Well, some of the mages use a portal, or so I’m told, but they have to power it themselves, and there aren’t many who can.”

Raff started forward again, and Kaz followed. Li shifted from claw to claw as she eyed the approaching darkness warily. She wanted to fly and see how far the pit extended, but it would take a great deal of ki to keep her front feet concealed, at least until she practiced more, and there was something… unsettling about the huge gap that made her unwilling to actually fly over it. It felt as if something lurked in the depths; something that might simply swallow a wandering dragon whole if given the opportunity.

“What’s a portal?” Kaz asked, trying to distract himself from the way his fur was rising from his skin with each step.

Raff’s brows lifted and he glanced back at Kaz. “We went through one,” he said. “The longest, strongest one I’ve ever heard of, at that. That’s what connects your city in Mount Scarabus to the outside world, without all the bother of actually digging a tunnel. Nobody’s exactly sure just how far inside the mountain the city is. Probably the only reason nobody’s tried to take it over, honestly. Too much trouble getting troops and supplies in when the enemy controls the only easy entrance.”

Kaz remembered the power swirling in the five kobold chiefs who had powered the portal. He definitely wouldn’t call it ‘easy’. Idla, especially, would need a long time to recover, given the damage to her core. It couldn’t have been good for her to participate, and he hoped she had the sense to realize it.

“There are more portals here?” he asked as they walked closer to the Cliff.

Raff nodded. “I have no idea how many. There are at least five, though. One to the Mage Tower in the palace, one to each of the main gates, north and south, one to the Mage’s Quarter, where most of the magic folks live, and one leading to the incinerator.”

Kaz halted, then lifted a finger to point toward the buildings that were beginning to rise at the end of the street. There was, of course, a wall, because humans seemed to love walls, especially those which were too small to be anything but symbolic. Through a gate and above those walls, he could make out sloping roofs.

“The incinerator isn’t there?” he said.

“Nah,” Raff said, “but the only way to get to the incinerator is. When I was, uh, young, they tested me to see if I had enough magic to be a mage. Fortunately, I failed, but only by a little, and while they were testin’ me, they showed me around. Student mages are supposed to drain their mana every day, as much as possible. That helps ‘em grow their mana pool. But the more they get, the harder it is to get rid of it all safely. The incinerator can drain anyone short of a full mage in a matter of minutes, so they use it as a training tool.”

“So where is the incinerator?” Kaz asked the question very slowly, since it seemed that Raff didn’t understand the problem.

“Oh,” Raff said as they reached the edge of the pit. Leaning over yet another lot wall, he pointed down into the depths. “It’s down there somewhere.”

Kaz looked down, and was nearly blinded by the most brilliant expanse of red ki he had ever seen. With a soft yelp, he staggered back, rubbing his eyes. But this time, his physical eyes were fine, and it was his internal ones that had been injured. He whimpered as Raff turned toward him, and the male’s mana faded in and out, all but invisible.

Raff frowned. “What’s wrong, Blue?”

Kaz pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until colorful spots stood out against the blackness behind his eyes. Those spots finally resolved into Raff’s mana and Li’s core, which whirled as she crooned softly, stroking her head against his cheek.

“What is that?” Kaz finally managed.

Raff twisted to look down into the hole again. “It’s the Cliff. Like I said, nobody knows where it came from or how deep it goes. A few idiots have tried rappelling down into it, but they never come back, even though the mages insist it’s safe, so we just kinda figure that’s enough information.”

“You don’t see that light?” Kaz asked. “Nothing?”

The big male frowned. “Blue, that hole’s as dark as Pellis’ black heart. Nothin’ goes down, and nothin’ comes up.”

“Then how do you know the incinerator is down there?” Kaz asked, edging closer to the wall again as he pulled as much red ki out of his eyes as he could. When he’d been in the mosui city, the amount of red ki from the crystals there had made it hard for him to see anything else. By suppressing the flow of red ki to his eyes, he found that he could make it so the red was barely visible, and didn’t overwhelm the other four colors. His vision was better and his eyes more saturated with ki now, however, so it would be difficult to achieve the same effect.

“Cause they told me so,” Raff said as Kaz cautiously peered into what looked like a miasma of red fog. “Well, they tell everybody. People don’t much like to think about what goes into the sewers. Outta sight, out of mind, eh? But every now and then somebody asks where it all goes, and the answer is, the incinerator. Down there.” He gestured toward the depths.

“Then how do we get there?” Kaz asked, and Li whistled. Would the human answer the question already?

Raff sighed. “That’s what I’ve been tryin’ to tell you, Blue. The only way there is through the portal, and the portal is inside the mage college. The college they absolutely won’t let us random strangers into.”

Kaz lifted his gaze to stare at the buildings down the broad street. Now that he was close, he realized that the road itself had a sort of flat plane of rich gray mana beneath it, but otherwise there was nothing. Was the mana the only thing keeping the broad stone path from tumbling into that noxious red fog?

“We need to go down there,” Kaz finally said, pointing toward a spot where the red shifted from contaminated gloom to a truer, deeper red color.

“I agree,” a grim voice responded, and Raff almost fell backward into the pit as he tried to turn and pull out his sword at the same time. A lean hand and an arm covered in a black sleeve emerged from a shadow that hadn’t been there a moment before, easily catching the big man and pulling him back up.

Chi Yincang stepped into the sunlight, his mouth set and grim, far from his usual impassive self. He looked angry, and, worse, worried.

“Lady Lianhua and Yingtao are down there,” he said, holding up an amulet that hung on a long chain around his neck. Kaz had never seen it before, but it burned with a bright flame of power. A slim thread of gold, blue, and black ki began in its heart and trailed down into the abyss.