Sons of Ironstorm - Book 2: Griffon's Call

To the Merchant's Quarter

Walking quickly, it didn't take Lawrence long to traverse the distance between the gardens and his apartments, deep in the heart of the palace complex. Oddly enough he didn't find his mind a morass of chaos, as he half expected it to be after the terse missive and his decision to find the stranger. 

Instead it was a strange calm that descended down onto him as if he was doing something that was always meant to be, something that he should've done long ago. That calm imbued him with further determination. If this stranger could give him even one answer to the legion of questions crowding through his mind, it would be a trip well worth the effort.

Unfortunately, effort would be the catch phrase of this particular expedition into one the darkest and most foul corners of his great capital city. As Dulcae had pointed out, the infamous Brewers' Corner was indeed a den of thieves; the sole carry over from the time of the Usurper, when Tal Morun herself was a breeding place for malcontent and evil. As hard as his father and General Kent, commander of the city's Home Guard, worked, they could never fully stamp out the darkness that seeped from every nook and cranny in that place.

And now Talemon's Crown Prince and king-to-be would journey to Tal Morun's darkest corner in the hopes of finding answers that would explain the missive's terse words. 'And, perhaps, unlock the mystery of my dream,' he mused as he turned a final corner and strode down the hallway that led to his apartments. After all, did the missive not mention dreams being the clarion call? 

Considering how his nightmare burned in his mind, it could only refer to the reoccurring vision that grew increasingly more vivid with each passing night. And he dared not mention how he was brought into its midst by merely touching the missive scroll. 'I'll have answers out of this creature, if I must bring the whole of the Corner to its knees to do it!' he silently vowed.

Nodding to the pair of Griffons guarding his door, their duty day and night now that he would soon take the throne, he opened the heavy portal of iron-strapped oak and stepped inside. Closing the door behind him, he quickly stepped to a wooden closet sitting in the corner of his room, intent on getting clothing more appropriate to skulking than what he currently wore.

Like the man himself, Lawrence's apartments, containing a sleeping room, a sitting room, a small library, a personal office and a lavatory, were functional yet replete with touches of different lands. Each part was a section of the whole, and the whole greater for the diversity. Tying the rooms together were thick Scattered Kingdoms carpets in the rich colors of the desert, red, maroon, brown, tan, and deep blue, piled high and thick on the flagstone floor to ward off the naked stone's chill. And on the walls paintings and etchings from well-known artists based in Tal Morun's own Artisan's Corner, added oil, watercolor and ink distinction.

Further personalized touches were found on the mantle of the great fireplace which dominated the bedroom's northern wall in the form of delicate ivory carvings from Xanchalda, including fish, and willowy birds called laethra by the locals, which hunted by walking on their long legs through the swamps. Once prey was located, they quickly stabbed into the murky water with long, pointed bills to snap up a reptile, small fish or amphibian too slow to get out of the way. They were joined by a variety of other figures, both from Xanchalda and other lands Lawrence had traveled to as a soldier, and as a diplomat.

As he stepped into the bedroom, the big prince reached out automatically to touch his favorite, a stone carving of a thinking man, sitting cross-legged on the ground, with his head in one hand, and the other propped on his knee as he stared thoughtfully at the ground before him. He too was from Xanchalda, painted in rustic browns and greens, the top of his head worn smooth from the frequency of the tall prince's touch. Lawrence considered the little man, called an u'nari by the Xanchaldans, or thinker, good luck and a source of calming strength.