Taking Flight

“All right, then,” Irith said, “I’ll explain.” She took a deep breath, and began, “Shan isn’t part of the Small Kingdoms-it wasn’t part of Old Ethshar. What it is, is the last bit of the old Eastern Command, that fought under General Terrek in the Great War. You know about that?”

“A little,” Kelder said. “I mean, of course I know about the war, and I’ve heard of General Terrek, I think. He got killed by a demon, didn’t he?”

Irith nodded. “A whole bunch of demons, actually. His whole command got wiped out, pretty much-all the demons of Hell got loose at once and went running all over the east, blasting everything. That’s where the Great Eastern Desert came from-it wasn’t desert before that.”

“Oh,” Kelder said, thinking about the vast, empty wasteland that surrounded Shan, and trying to imagine what could have caused it. By comparison, the demons who wiped out the bandits looked pretty trivial.

That reminded him of the caravan they had come to find; he glanced around, but recognized none of the wagons in sight.

A few did have heads on pikes, as it happened, but none of them were recent. Two were actually just skulls, rather than heads, and the others were approaching a similar state.

Irith continued, “Right, the demons did all that, and they were going to go on and destroy everything else, but the gods themselves came down from Heaven and fought the demons and defeated them.”

Kelder nodded, partly listening and partly still looking for the caravan; that part, about the gods coming and stopping the demons, he had heard before.

“But it was too late for General Terrek, of course, and all of his people-except for Shan.” She made a sweeping gesture, taking in the entire Bazaar. “See, this was Terrek’s main supply depot, and he had all his magicians here at the time, and they had all their protective spells up and everything, and they were able to hold the demons off until the gods came and rescued them.”

“Oh,” Kelder said again, still looking around.

“Anyway,” Irith continued, “after the war ended, there were all these people here, magicians and supply clerks and quartermasters and people like that, and they had all these supplies intended for General Terrek’s army, but the army was gone, so they just kept all the stuff themselves, and started selling it.”

Kelder nodded, turning his whole attention back to Irith. The whole thing made sense, so far, except for one little detail.

“That was more than two hundred years ago, though,” he said. “They must have sold it all off long ago!”

“Well, of course they did, silly!” Irith agreed. “But they bought other stuff, or made it, and they’re all still buying and selling. And since this was the biggest cache of magical supplies in the entire World for so long, it’s still where magicians come to buy and sell, a lot of the time. Not just magicians, either. And the people here make things, too-they make glass here better than anywhere else, better even than Ethshar of the Sands. There are miners who bring in jewels from the desert to sell here, too. Let’s see…” She paused to think.

Kelder waited.

“Well, glass,” she said, “I said that. And sorcerers’ stuff, and supplies for wizards except you can get most of those in Ethshar just as well now, and medicines, I think-some of them-and perfumes, they make wonderful perfumes here, and there are dyes-all kinds of stuff.” She shrugged. “It used to be nicer, actually. Business has dropped off a lot since I first came here.”

“They must be expensive,” Kelder said. “I mean, it’s a long way to come, all the way out here.” He remembered another unexplained detail, and asked, “So where did all the buyers come from, anyway? We didn’t see anywhere near this many people on the way…”

“It’s the off season,” Irith said. “It’s much more crowded than this sometimes!”

Kelder looked about at what must have been several hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people.

“A lot of people don’t come by the highway,” Irith continued. “The wizards fly, or use some other kind of magic to get here. People from all over the eastern Small Kingdoms come overland to Dhwerra and get the highway from there, and they would all have gotten here hours ago, so we wouldn’t have seen them on the road. And there are other ways, magical ways, I think-I’ve heard stories about tunnels under the desert.”

“Oh,” Kelder said. “But what do they all eat? Where do they stay?”

“Oh, there are places to stay,” Irith said. “Inns for the customers, tenements for the natives. And they get their food by magic, mostly.”

While this discussion had been taking place, Asha had rather blearily wandered over toward a nearby merchant’s stall.

“Oooh!” she exclaimed, distracting Kelder and Irith. “Look!”

The two looked.