Blood and Bone

The Stone City

"The Academy has granted me passage," she repeated steadily.

​​​​​"So you've said." And as the guard gestured for them to pass, he spat at the ground, narrowly missing the hooves of Tora's horse.

For a moment Mhera was frozen ​​​in shock; then she was seized by an incredible rage such that she would have turned the horse around had she held the reins. But Tora held them, and she only steered them forward and away from the walls.

"He spat at you," she told Tora. "How could you let him do that?"

"There are worse things in the world than mockery and spittle," came the stony reply. "Witches have endured far worse. A disrespectful guard is not worth the time." Tora might have been through worse, but never in Mhera's life had she seen the chieftain treated in such a way. In the clan no one could even speak to her without bowing, or sit when she stayed standing.

Mhera had always known that a divide existed between the first and second branches of magic, but she had figured that if people like Chua and Miranda could come from the cities, they must not be as bad as they were made out to be in Ahawi's tales. Now, as the soft thud of hooves on earth was replaced by sharp clicking against cobblestones, she began to wonder.

Houses grew around them on all sides. Mhera was disappointed; Chua's tales had made out the buildings of the Stone Cities to be grand towers of sandstone, but the squat homes she saw around her were barely taller than the clan's huts, and much more dirty. Young children ran up and down the filthy street in equally filthy rags, while hollow-eyed men and women lingered on corners and or peered out from boarded windows. The smell of urine and dirty laundry quickly flooded her nostrils and Mhera gagged.

"Chua described the city...differently," she choked, and saw Tora smile.

"Chua lived in the Second District," Tora replied. "We are passing through the Third."

As they delved deeper, the houses seemed to straighten and grow in height- still sparse streets quickly became crowded. The stench around them was overpowered by wafting smells from vendors and shops. Silver-scaled fish from the Caulian, the kind her brothers brought home, were poured out of barrels and exchanged for coppers, while crates of chickens, plucked and boiled or live and squacking, were hauled from the backs of carts.

"Stay close," Tora called, almost drowned out by the shouts of merchants hawking their wares and the haggling of the masses of customers.

The fare around them only grew richer as they pressed deeper into the district. The fishermen here were foreign, Mhera guessed, recalling Kokyang's stories. There were slender, dark merchants from Deondance and weathered old seamasters from the Kraknea Isle, selling everything from squid the length of a finger to crimson fish as wide as Mhera was tall, all presented on beds of salt. Instead of coarse meat pastries, bakery windows displayed rows of baked goods of every kind, all under the watchful eye of the baker. There were colorful arrays of fruit and vegetables, flanks of cow and pig split open and salted or baking on hooks over fires. A merchant of fabric passed them on a wagon boasting folds of every color and style- Mhera thought she saw a watersilk alike to Chua's, and was turning back to see when something else caught her eye.

At the side of the road stood a bare-chested man surrounded by an eager crowd. He held out his hand, showing what appeared to be a pale reddish rock, a coarse cut of gemstone.

"What're they looking at?" Mhera called at Tora, but quickly got her answer. As she watched in amazement, the stone began to pulse with a faint light. The glowing surface fractured, then crumbled in the man's fingers as if it had been struck by a powerful blow- yet there was none. The shards poured from his palm onto the ground.