Slithering Maze 4: Mold, Prejudice, and Other Roadside Hazards

Basysus, 23, 1278: Riding along the road north of Ishnanor, headed for Arth Prayogar and so many complications…

Author’s Note: Kingdom of the Slithering Maze is a serialized fiction story that is a part of a collection called the Windtracer Tales. It follows the adventures of Tela Kioni and her crew dealing with expeditions in and around the world of Awldor. There they hunt down lost, and possibly lethal, relics of the Ancient Order, a near-mythical kingdom lost to the centuries old cataclysm, the Great Collapse.

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Previously: Tela meets with the shaman, Liru da’Lerdat, to discuss the old debt she owes him. Only to find it is wrapped up in a dangerous lost temple, with an even equally dangerous artifact. One that, if Liru is to be believed, had to be sealed away instead of destroyed. Leaving Tela with the uneasy task of breaking the temple open, recover the ancient device, all before a greedy merchant guild from Jata gets their hands on it!

Basysus, 23, 1278: Riding along the road north of Ishnanor, headed for Arth Prayogar and so many complications…

“We’re going to die in a cloud of angry, yellow mold spores,” Kiyosi groaned over his tin cup of coffee.

It had taken Ki almost the full five days while we traveled north out of Ishnanor to mostly calm down. Now, the worst of it was just a general mid-morning anxiety until he got enough coffee into him.

I was seated on the left side of the viprin’s windwagon next to a window, with my nose in a leather-bound book. Two books, really. I took turns with each one.

The first was my trusty leather-bound journal, coffee stains and all. I’d filled several pages with everything I could find on viprin temples, religious practices, and the Upheaval Crusades. Liru corrected a few of my notes and added still more that the Windtracers didn’t know. Anything to tease out fact from myth about this Iraxi.

As for the other book, it was by one Rathalla Vasam, a mercenary and architect who wrote an amazing amount about the temples he stumbled over in his travels. Specifically, ruined temples just dripping with death traps for sticky fingers. It’s a good book, but really I could only borrow it, so long as I promised not to build anything based on what I’d read.

Now the line in the journal between ‘ruined temple’ and ‘tomb’ was a little blurry. But overall, I figured it amounted to the same thing. Either way, it was a fascinating read. Still, Ki’s morning declaration of our moldy death distracted me.

I dropped a faded red cloth ribbon between the pages in front of me and closed the books. The dozen popular ways to hide poison needles in the privy would have to wait. I peered over the books with a deadpan look.

“Mold?” I asked while I raised an eyebrow.

“Five,” he replied, gesturing wildly with his tin cup. Fortunately, no coffee suffered in the sloshing. “Five kinds of mold spores. Especially that hugging, crawling kind!”

Ki had a small thing about mold ever since one tried to grab him in a ruin a couple of years ago. I was way too familiar with getting terrorized by some nameless thing in a crumbling ancient fortress. But really, this was the third morning about death mold. I wasn’t buying it, but I also knew Ki needed to warm up talking about whatever really bothered him.

“At least they’ll be colorful?” I asked not-so-helpfully. “Molds usually are.”

All right, that wasn’t entirely true. I had thought I was being helpful, but I also jumped out of perfectly good windows on occasion.

He tossed a sour look at me before crossing the windwagon over where I was. With a long breath, Ki ran a frustrated hand through his red-brown hair, over one of his curled horns, then rubbed an eye. Once finished, he settled down on the bench across from mine, wrapping his tiefling tail around him almost protectively.

“We’ll just keep our distance,” I added, trying to salvage something from the conversation. “Prowling mold is slow.”

Ki nodded, but didn’t bother to reply. I let go of a soft sigh.

Silence dropped like soft, falling leaves. I started to say something but thought better of it. There was a time to pry, and this didn’t feel like it. Ki stared out the window, sipping his coffee. Worry nagged at me, so I distracted myself with whatever was past the window.

Outside, the prairie rushed by at the breathtaking speed of an ambling buffalo. Prairie wind played with the long grass, then rustled the white sailcloth of the wagon’s inflatable sailwings.

Viprin windwagons were similar to the usual garden-variety kind. Three sailwings, one on each side with a third like a dorsal fin on top. Once inflated, they kept the round, or oval in this case, body gliding in the air just off the ground. Inside, the boiler and driver were at one end, sleeping nooks at the other, with a common room in between, complete with benches and windows. Absolutely plenty of space for pacing, thinking, ranting, or suffering through mold anxiety.

Though, I was convinced the latter really had nothing to do with grabby mold. I nibbled at my lower lip a bit and picked through all my words before I knocked the silence aside.

“This really isn’t about mold, is it?” I asked warily, with a quiet voice.

“Not really,” Ki admitted after a second, then shook his head. “It’s more about where we’re headed.”

“Damn all the hells.” A sigh colored with a blush of guilt spilled out of me. “I get it. We’re heading to Arth Prayogar, the grand capital city and all that of the Jata kingdom. They don’t like tieflings, and have some pretty twisted up ideas about tieflings.”

Kiyosi pursed his lips, then blew out a soft sigh. For a moment, he didn’t reply. Instead, he just looked out the window at the flat, rolling scrub grass of the prairie.

“That’s putting it mildly,” he finally said in a solemn tone. “Healers have studied tieflings, people like me, for centuries. It’s no secret that magic storms sometimes cause newborns to be born as tieflings.”

Kiyosi took a slow, thoughtful sip of his coffee. A dark scowl pulled down over his face as he glared at the view.

“No secret, except in the Jata kingdom.” Ki’s mouth twisted into a disappointed grimace. “There, it’s gods know what all they come up with each season to ‘explain’ away tieflings. All because centaurs are somehow immune to being born a tiefling. They just love their superstitions.”

The bitter note under his words clung to the air like the foul stench from a skunk.

I pulled my knees up closer to my chest, or as best I could given space, books, and body. Quietly, I stared off into the middle distance.

It honestly killed me a little, asking Ki to come along to Arth Prayogar. A part of me didn’t want to, but Kiyosi’s a master healer and a little better than I am with languages. Something also nagged at me that I might need his and Mikasi’s help to cope with Herd Tolvana and whatever was inside Toshirom Ifoon.

Finally, I gathered my thoughts into something coherent.

“All right,” I sighed. “Worst case? We’ll be inside Arth Prayogar with Liru as part of his entourage for only a little bit. Say a few hours,” I explained with a small shrug. “Then we leave. After all, Toshirom Ifoon is well outside the city walls.”

Of course, that also meant we had to survive both the city, and Herd Tolvana, to even get to Toshirom Ifoon in the first place. I figured that sort of went without saying.

“No getting arrested this time?” Kiyosi asked with a rueful smile. I shot a perturbed frown at him.

“Hey!” I snapped. “We weren’t fully arrested, just a little arrested. I’m sure the Trade-Wardens have forgotten all about that by now.” Memories of an irritating nobleman’s son came to mind. “Besides, he was all grabby and irritating. He asked for it.”

“There is that.” Ki chuckled while he shook his head. “So, have you found anything more about this Iraxi? What does it look like? How did Liru’s people even seal up something like that?”

I idly tapped my stylus against the edge of my journal while I flipped back several pages.

“Nothing directly.” After I found what I was after, I handed my journal to Ki, open to the right page. “Liru didn’t know any details, just more myth. But I found some side notes in Rathalla’s journal that got my attention.”

Ki glanced up from skimming my journal.

“Wait. Rathalla?” His eyebrows raised with each word. “The same Rathalla Vasam out of the Gateway City of Khnum? Isn’t his journal one of the restricted books from the Records Hall?”

“No,” I replied slowly, with a perturbed look. “I’m still banned from going near those for another five weeks. Besides, they don’t loan those out. Rathalla’s journals are in the Exploration Logbooks section.”

“That makes sense,” Kiyosi commented. “His journals are almost a field guide on how to not get murdered by an ancient ruin.”

I half-shrugged. “You know, I almost think old Rathalla here has been in a viprin temple turned death trap at least once. I’ve found a couple of pages on the viprin temple and tomb practices.”

Ki nodded, read a few more pages of my notes, then tapped my journal.

“Armored elementals? Woven metal armor?” His eyebrows knitted with enthusiasm over his eyes. “By the Mending Brother, Tela, has Mikasi seen your notes on the Iraxi, and this theory you have about a ‘net’ of sun-magic threads?”

I nodded a little and waved my stylus in vague circles.

“The other day. That’s what got him all excited and working on that brass box of his. It’s the one with an alarming amount of springs. Something to do with the elemental armor idea.”

“I wondered what he was working on up there next to the windwagon driver,” Ki replied as he returned my journal. “Other than talking the poor man’s ear off.”

“Mikasi’s just excited.” I settled my journal back into position against my legs, then continued my notes. “It’s his first expedition since he officially became a Windtracer a month ago. You remember how we were.”

“True,” Kiyosi said with a sigh. “Tela…”

The rest of what Ki wanted to say fell apart as the windwagon jolted to a quick stop with a rough rattle of metal joints. Outside, the Planus buffalo snorted in frustration while a string of conversations filled the air. Not all of it sounded happy.

“What in the seven watery hells?” I grumbled and swapped an uneasy look with Ki.

He stood and hurried for the front of the windwagon, while I set down my books and leaned out the window.

Ahead of us on the road, I saw a quartet of centaurs in padded chainmail standing in the middle of the white cobblestone road. None of them looked happy, and at least two looked like they might’ve wanted to be somewhere else. I frowned, recognizing the lantern and sword emblem on their cloaks and tabards.

“Trade-Wardens?” I mused. “What’s the Arth Prayogar city watch doing way out here? We’ve at least another day’s travel.”

My question got some of an answer when I saw a fifth centaur strut into view. Lean, sandy-haired and furred, and no larger than a small pony like most centaur, he wore a layered set of tabards and robes. On the outermost one of rich purple, there was the emblem of a ram’s head with golden wings.

It was absolutely the last thing I wanted to see.

“By the Lady Deep,” I swore under my breath. “An auditor from Herd Tolvana.”

The auditor let his eyes drag over the windwagon, as if he appraised it and found it lacking. A look of suffering disdain pulled at his almost snobbish expression. His eyes met mine when I tried to duck back inside, out of sight.

“You there!” he demanded as he stabbed a finger at me. “Get down here! This windwagon is to be searched for contraband.”

“Contraband?” I murmured.

I eyed the journals on the bench beside me. Surely not those. How would they even know about my notes on the viprin and the Iraxi? Something didn’t tie together here, and I wasn’t sure what. Quickly, I stuffed the two small journals into my shoulder bag, then leaned back out the window.

“Be right there, general! Hold your horses!” I called back with a bright grin.

“You will address me as Auditor Elkerton! Auditor Gregori Elkerton!” he snapped back. That regal, self-important sound under the word ‘auditor’ was hard to miss.

“Well, all right then, Auditor,” I replied with emphasis on his title. “I’ll be right out.”

Quickly, I trotted out of the windwagon with whip and bag in hand. That probably wasn’t the best look, since I caught up with Liru and the others out front, staring down two centaurs with loaded crossbows.

I got the impression that conversation wasn’t really a priority anymore.

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Windtracer Tales is a work of pure, unashamed fiction. In fact, it considers itself rather fancy and quite proud of itself. Names of characters, places, events, organizations and locations are all creations of the author’s imagination for this fictitious setting. Any resemblance to persons living, dead, or reanimated is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s, since the characters and the author tend to disagree a lot.

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