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Message: <blockquote data-quote="havenstone" data-source="post: 5334435" data-attributes="member: 61094">Rivers of BloodSHIELDING THEMSELVES AGAINST a morning cloudburst, the three riders skirt the massive central mount and bear off through the city to the southwest [<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4795861-post90.html" target="_blank">see map</a>].  Nurak informs them that this geomantically inauspicious corner of Tziwan is where the most desperate migrants to the capital wash up – runaway slaves, ragpickers, petty thieves in hiding from the Shrouded Path, and vascars (those cursed with a wasting disease, known in the North as vascarus and in the South as mafeng, that resists priestly healing).  “We would be wise to stay out of those qoheis, where the fortunately futile hunt for you will surely be at its height.”  He points to a distant black outcrop which ends in a long, jagged precipice.  Squinting through the rain, Atrix and Darren can just make out the tiny figures suspended from its edge.  “There are the Execution Cliffs of Tziwan.  Most knowledgeable of Northerners, you are doubtless already aware of the Xaimani habit of excruciation?”    “To flog, pierce, stretch, stone, and drop from a great height,” Darren recites bleakly.  “Chang warned us.”    “Such public punishment is reserved for offenses of the most egregious nature,” their Sufza friend explains.  “For lesser faults a slave will not be so dramatically disposed of, but simply sold to the Mines.”      Unlike the fertile, densely populated plain to the north of the Shanyang, the terrain beyond Tziwan to the southwest is craggy and thickly overgrown with trees and vines.  The only human habitations are clusters of rickety huts clinging to the steep, rocky cliff-faces.  The broad highway through the jungle is busy by Senalline standards – thanks mainly to legionnaires and slave caravans traveling between the capital and the distant province of Guizan – but it seems empty compared to the throngs that permanently plied the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4790959-post86.html" target="_blank">roads of north Xaiman</a>.    Two hours’ ride from Tziwan, the road skirts the edge of a yawning crevice.  The rock here has been seared lifelessly white and eaten away in great bubbles that cascade down into invisibility; even with his dwarrow amulet on, Darren cannot make out the bottom.  “Siseo laou,” Nurak declares, gesturing at the emptiness.  “When joined with water, it will corrode even the most sturdy of stones.  These hills contain many thick veins of the salt.”    “Why in Ain’s name do the madmen mine the stuff?” Atrix says, shaken.    “The Xaimani have not been noted among the Sufza for their sanity,” Nurak agrees.  “But I am told they find it useful in etching steel and in some manners of magics.”    THE THREE FRIENDS soon leave the main southwest highway.  The branch road is lined with many more of the gaping, barren fissures where water has breached a deposit of siseo laou.  In some, the sound of dripping water is accompanied by fizzing, gurgling noises emerging from the depths.  The air takes on a faint acid tang.  By late afternoon, the road arrives in the town of Graiqal, a poor-looking place built from salt-scarred stones.  On either side of the pitted street stand merchants’ stalls, painstakingly waterproofed with many layers of greased canvas.  They offer grey-white cubes of siseou laou immersed in bowls of clear oil.  Several traders’ carts, similarly protected against rain, are loading up blocks of the caustic salt for transit to Tziwan.    As they agreed before leaving Tziwan, Atrix assumes the role of a minor Chramic noble on his first trip to Xaiman, with Darren as his factotum and Nurak as their guide.  Nurak gets directions to a run-down winehouse where travelers can rent rooms.  “It is to be assumed that the Refined Path overseers will come here for their evening libations,” he informs the Northerners in their quarters.    “Excellent.  I’ve thought of a plan,” Atrix begins, staring up the well-guarded jungle road toward the Mines.    “Here we go,” Darren sighs.  “Rivers of blood.”    “What?  No – this is a cunning plan.”    “They always start off cunning, but they end up with us having to kill lots of people.  Or, you know, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4712537-post52.html" target="_blank">die</a>.  Either way: rivers of blood.”    “We’ll see about that,” retorts Atrix, irked.  “If we’re lucky, we won’t even have to get within a mile of the mine.”    THEY DESCEND TO the main drinking room, eat a light meal, and join the mine overseers when they arrive.  Atrix does his best to be charming, buying rice wine for the scarred Refined Path workers and spinning a grand story about his plans to start shipping siseo laou in bulk to his home in Chraman.  The lunatic idea of taking any significant quantity of the salt on board a ship sends the overseers into paroxysms of mirth, but Darren holds their interest by explaining his (quickly improvised) design for protection of the hold against dampness.  When they ask Atrix how he got the fresh scar on his face, he laughs it off with talk of the rough taverns on the Tziwan docks.    After several rounds of wine, Atrix draws aside Jumji, the Fourth Overseer, a white-whiskered Xaimani who has been the most amiable of the miners.  “I’m not just here for the salt, you know.  I heard talk in Tziwan of a couple of Northerners who were sold here.  These new Pale Folk slaves.”    “That is true,” says Jumji, suddenly cautious.    “Are they kept together with all the rest of the slaves?”    “In the same pen, yes.”    “I would be very interested in seeing the girl.”  Atrix absently jingles the purse of gold coins Nurak gave him.  “Just for a night.  Discreetly.  You look like a discreet man.”    The Xaimani swallows, then shakes his head.  “That would be impossible.”    “Irregular, I’m sure.  But impossible?”    “Wholly impossible.”  Jumji wrinkles his nose in distaste.  “She was very weak from the day she arrived.  Siseo laou does not spare the weak for long.  She died yesterday.”    Atrix stares in consternation at the Refined Path overseer, unable fully to mask his grief and guilt.  Jumji’s face twitches uncomfortably, and Atrix feels a sudden, angry certainty that he’s lying.  “What a shame,” he shrugs.  “I’d have given a lot for such a rare opportunity.”    “A shame indeed,” mutters the overseer.  Jumji soon excuses himself from the group and leaves; Atrix and his friends do likewise, returning to their quarters.    “AT LEAST WE know Kay’s in the same pen as the others,” Darren says encouragingly as they descend from the window of their room.  “We’ll sneak in, find it, and break her out before the guards know we’re there.”    The road from the town to the mines is steep and switchbacked, broken by small rivulets of hissing, pungent water that burst from the hillside.  The three friends move stealthily through the rocks past the first guard outpost, but as they are approaching the second, Nurak fails to see an acidic pool underfoot, and splashes noisily.  The five guards spring upright, raising their lanterns and bringing spears and maces to bear.  Atrix, Darren, and Nurak charge down, trying to silence them as quickly as possible, but one of them bellows, “Intruders!” repeatedly until Nurak’s staff cracks his skull.    “This clumsy Sufza begs your forgiveness,” Nurak whispers, aghast, as they hear guards’ excited shouts from both below and above.    “No time for that,” Atrix replies tersely, wiping his sword clean.  “Quick, up to the mine.  It’ll be rivers of blood after all.”    The mine sentries are for the most part semi-skilled local thugs employed to keep droves of doomed slaves in line.  The first wave charges down eagerly, expecting to put down an escape party, and are shocked to confront two well-armed Chramics and a Sufza.  Atrix fights like a demon, pressing fiercely up toward Kay, refusing to give ground even when it means taking club blows to his head and body.  Nurak and Darren, desperate to maintain their uphill momentum, cut down the guards who get past Atrix.  Together, they kill a dozen Xaimani and fight their way up to the high point of the road.  They can see the steaming caverns of Graiqal, and a high-walled stockade – the slave pens where Kay must surely be sleeping.    They also see that more than twenty guards remain, most of whom are marching down to the fight.  Meanwhile, the initially noisy guards from the lowermost outpost have fallen silent; clearly they have found their comrades’ corpses and are moving forward more cautiously, determined to surround the intruders and take them by stealth.  The bloodied Northerners sway in place for a moment, feeling their adrenalin evaporate and the exhaustion of the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4849859-post110.html" target="_blank">previous day’s ordeal</a> weigh down their limbs again.    “I’m sorry, cousin,” Atrix murmurs, his voice strained and bitter.  Then he looks over to the silent Darren and Nurak.  “There's no way we can win here.  We did our best.  Let's get out while we can.”</blockquote>

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