They marched through a thronging outdoor food market. The air carried a whirl of scents, sweet mixed with peppery, pungent enough to make his eyes water, with an underpresence of death. Food stuffs both familiar and new crowded the rows of stalls, monkeys hanging beside green-plumed birds, next to fruit he had never seen before and live lizards hung by their tails and writhing. One of the Ishtat overturned a vat of some chunk-filled liquid. The man jumped back from it, retched at what he saw, and hurried to rejoin the procession as one of the leaguemen called him an idiot and a bumbler. Though he tried to, Dariel could not get a glimpse of what the soldier had seen. They moved on too quickly. He was sure of so little and felt himself in a waking nightmare, as if in a dream where he was compelled to specific actions and powerless to change course, to stop, look up, or face the thing that pursued him.

He gasped and fought for breath as the group turned, ascended a stone staircase, and stepped into the great mouth that was a hall opening. They carried on into it, Dariel stumbling even more in the dim interior. When they finally stopped, the prince nearly collapsed. He sucked breaths in through his nose, but seemed to lose the air’s effect each time he exhaled. His eyes slowly adjusted to the light, bringing the dimensions of the chamber into perspective. It was a grand rectangular space, high ceilinged, with squares cut into the roof through which shafts of light fell, making a geometric confusion of light and dark. Standing on his toes to peer over the rows of Ishtat around him, Dariel could see a great host in the shadowed areas, hundreds of hulking shapes, all the more menacing because he could not see them clearly. Dark forms, they waited silent and menacing. He blinked furiously to keep the sweat from blurring his vision.

Sire Neen and the other leaguemen stepped forward, following the tall figures toward an illumed square between the two groups. Opposite them, several figures came from the shade into the bright light. They were similar to the Numrek in their size and musculature. They were garbed differently, though, in knee-length leather skirts and sandals with straps that laced up their calves. Most of them wore loose, open-necked shirts that had a look of careful disarray, an effect Dariel had managed in his brigand days.