“The city seems quiet enough,” said Brian, when Aran came to relieve him, taking his turn at watch.
“Yeah, and draconians not ten miles from here,” said Aran, shaking his head.
The knights were up early to see the gates open. No one was waiting to enter and only a few people departed (mostly kender being escorted out of town). Those who left took the road to Rigitt. The gate guards remained in their towers, venturing out into the cold only when forced to do so by someone wanting admittance. The guards walking the battlements did so in bored fashion, pausing often to warm themselves at fires burning in large iron braziers and to chat companionably. Tarsis was the picture of a city at peace with itself and all the world.
“If draconians were watching for these people on a bridge leading to Tarsis, you can bet they’re also keeping an eye out for them in Tarsis itself,” said Brian. “They’ll have someone lurking about near the gates.”
Aran winked at Brian. “So, Derek, are we going to march into Tarsis wearing full knightly regalia and carrying banners with the kingfisher and the rose?”
Derek looked very grim.
“I have consulted the Measure,” he said, bringing out the well-worn volume. “It states that fulfillment of a quest of honor undertaken by a knight with sanction from the Council should be the knight’s first priority. If the fulfillment of the quest of honor requires that the knight conceal his true identity, succeeding at the quest takes precedence over the duty of the knight to proudly proclaim his allegiance.”
“You lost me somewhere around precedence and fulfillment,” said Aran. “In words of one syllable, Derek, do we disguise ourselves or not?”
“According to the Measure, we may disguise ourselves without sacrificing our honor.”
Aran’s lips twitched. He caught Brian’s warning glance, however, and swallowed his glib comment along with a gulp from the flask.
The knights spent the rest of the day removing all their badges and insignia. They cut the embroidered decorations from their clothes and stowed away their armor in the back of the cave. They would wear their swords, and Aran would keep his bow and quiver of arrows. Weapons were not likely to cause comment, for no one went forth unarmed these days.
“All that’s left of our knighthood is our mustaches,” said Aran, tugging at his.
“Well, we’re certainly not going to shave,” said Derek sternly.
“Our mustaches will grow back, Derek,” Aran said.
“No.” Derek was adamant. “We will pull our hoods low and wrap scarves around our heads. As cold as it is, no one will pay any attention.”
Aran rolled his eyes, but he accepted the ruling meekly, much to Derek’s surprise.
“You owe Derek,” said Brian, as he and Aran were arranging the screen of brush over the cave.
Aran grinned sheepishly. The knight’s long, luxurious red mustache was his secret pride. “I guess I do. I would have shaved my mustache, mind you, but it would have been like cutting off my sword arm. Don’t tell Derek, though. I’d never hear the end of it.”
Brian shrugged. “It seems strange to me that we risk imperiling our mission for the sake of some fuzz on our upper lips.”
“This is not to be termed ‘fuzz’,” said Aran severely, fondly smoothing his mustache. “Besides, it might actually look worse if we shaved. Our faces are tan from the sea voyage, and the white skin on our lips would look very suspicious, whereas, if we don’t shave… well… I’m sure we won’t be the only men in Tarsis with mustaches.”
They decided to enter the city separately, their reasoning being that three armed men entering alone would cause less stir than three trying to enter together. They would meet at the library of Khrystann.
“Though we have no idea where this library is or how to find it,” Aran remarked lightly. “Nor do we know what it is we’re looking for once we get there. Nothing I like better than a well organized fiasco.”
Bundled in their cloaks, their hoods pulled low and scarves wrapped around their faces from nose to neck, Aran and Brian watched Derek ride down out of the hills, heading for the main city gate.
“I don’t see what we could do differently,” Brian said.
Aran shifted restlessly in his saddle. His customary cheerfulness had left him suddenly, leaving him moody and edgy.
“What’s wrong?” Brian asked. “Your flask empty?”
“Yes, but that’s not it,” Aran returned gloomily. He shifted again on his saddle, glancing around behind him. “There’s a bad feel to the air. Don’t you notice it?”
“The wind’s changed direction, if that’s what you mean,” said Brian.
“Not that. More like a goose walking across my grave. Only in this case the goose has built a nest on it and hatched goslings. I felt the same way before the attack on Castle Crownguard. You’d better go, if you’re going,” Aran added abruptly.
Brian hesitated. He regarded his friend with concern. He’d seen Aran in all sorts of moods from wild to reckless to merry. He’d never seen him in a black mood like this.
“Go on.” Aran waved his hand as though he were shooing the aforementioned geese. “I’ll meet you in the library that was probably destroyed three hundred years ago.”
“That isn’t funny,” Brian growled over his shoulder as he walked down the hill, heading for the gates of Tarsis.
“Sometimes I’m not,” said Aran quietly.
3
The bargain. The Library of Khrystann
Before the Cataclysm, Tarsis had been known as Tarsis the Beautiful. When she looked into her mirror, she saw reflected there a city of culture and refinement, wealth, beauty, and charm. She spent money lavishly, and she had money to spend, for ships brought rich cargos to her ports and laid them at her feet. Lush gardens of flowering plants adorned her like jewels. Knights, lords, and ladies walked her tree-lined streets. Scholars came from hundreds of miles away to study at her library, for Tarsis was not only elegant and refined and lovely, she was learned, too. She looked out over her glittering bay and saw nothing but joy and happiness on her horizon.
Then the gods hurled the fiery mountain on Krynn, and Tarsis was forever changed. Her glittering bay vanished. The water receded. Her ships were stranded in the mud and muck of a wrecked harbor. Tarsis looked in the mirror and saw her beauty ruined, her rich clothes soiled and torn, her jewel-like gardens withered and dead.
Unlike many who suffer tragedy and adversity and have the grace and dignity and courage to rise again, Tarsis let tragedy sink her. Wallowing in self-pity, she blamed the Knights of Solamnia for her downfall and drove the knights from their homes into exile. She blamed wizards, too, and dwarves and elves and anyone who was not “one of us.” She blamed the wise men and women who had come there to study in the ancient Library of Khrystann, and she drove them out. She left the library in ruins and forbade anyone from entering it.
Tarsis turned mean and mercenary, covetous and grasping. She took no joy in beautiful things. The only beauty in her eyes was the glitter of steel coins. Her seaport was gone, but she still maintained overland trade routes and used her wiles to foster trade with her neighbors.
At last, more than three hundred years later, Tarsis could look in the mirror once again. She would never regain her former beauty, but she could at least dress herself up in her borrowed finery, rouge her cheeks and paint her lips. Sitting in the shadows where no one could see her clearly, she could pretend that she was once more Tarsis the Beautiful.
The city of Tarsis had been guarded by a twenty-foot-high stone wall, pierced by towers and gates at intervals, and by the sea. The wall ended at the harbor where the sea took over. Where the sea ended, the wall resumed. The wall remained, but the sea’s absence left an unfortunate gap in the city’s security.
A reduction in the population caused by the departure of sailors and ship builders, sail makers and merchants and all those who had depended on the sea for their living meant a drastic drop in tax revenues. Tarsis went from wealth to poverty literally overnight. There was no money to build a new stretch of twenty-foot-high wall. Five feet was about as much as could be managed. Besides, as one Tarsian lord said gloomily, they didn’t need protection anyway. Tarsis had nothing anyone wanted.