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.”Japheth looked up at the captain and the wizard, then back down into her eyes, still silent.Could he see her, or was she imagining it?Seren traced symbols in the air with her free hand.Where her fingers passed, lines of magical energy persisted moments before fading.Syllables of pure arcane magic tumbled from Seren’s lips.Her eyes flashed with a glint of citrine light.“There!” said Seren, gesturing with her wand down at Anusha.“I see it now—an apparition! The spirit of a drowned woman, perhaps, lingers in your hold, Captain.”Anusha cursed.She nearly woke herself.but then thought, I’ve got to lead them away from my travel chest!Instead of retreating, Anusha ran to the steps of the ladder and climbed.She slipped past the still petrified Brida on the broad rope rungs without touching her.Seren cried, “It ascends; it attacks!”Seren backed out of Anusha’s view, as did Thoster, his features betraying bafflement and a hint of concern.Japheth merely cocked his head and observed.There was no doubt he saw her; his eyes didn’t leave her as she climbed, and she ascended quickly.Without any real weight, rising required hardly any effort.She wondered, even as she clambered onto the top deck, apparently in full sight of Japheth, if she needed a ladder to ascend at all.She’d had dreams of flying when she was younger.Maybe if—Seren hadn’t run away; she’d merely retreated a few steps to cast another spell.The war wizard threw out her free hand, and from her fingertips sprang a tremendous stroke of blinding purple-white lightning.Anusha screamed as obliterating, mind-shattering pain coursed through her naked, unprotected soul.CHAPTER NINEThe Year of the Secret (1396 DR) City of NathlekhA remarkable bridge provided access to Nathlekh.Not long ago, no such bridge had been required.A decade earlier, a slow but inexorable earth movement thrust a majority of the city’s Shou ward several hundred feet higher than the rest of the city.Hundreds of structures along the edges of the fault were destroyed.By chance, the destroyed structures were mostly the homes of non-Shou, though the Shou faced their own share of loss.When the earth stopped moving, the survivors slowly forgot their fear, especially those whose homes, mansions, and businesses remained.As many pointed out too, the new city heights provided an unexpected but welcome defensive stance against a landscape suddenly more dangerous than ever before.Thus, once the sky fires, earth movements, and attacks by plaguechanged monsters subsided, a collection of the city’s Shou nobles poured a large portion of their considerable wealth into the creation of the bridge.The Dragon Bridge supported a wide and thick stone span that sprang from the earth near the piers on Long Arm Lake to rise in a diagonal line all the way up to the Sky District.The Dragon Bridge was named for its supporting arches, each of which took the form of a sculpted, sinuous stone dragon.Each successively larger stone dragon bore the weight of its span section in a unique fashion—some on arched backs, others in wide maws, and even one, who stood closest to Nathlekh’s stone column, in clawed hands raised high above its head as it reared on its hind legs.A series of three massive, gated checkpoints along the bridge’s span guarded against attacking ground forces, or, as happened on occasion even more than a decade after the Spellplague, groups of homeless refugees.Each gated wall contained barracks for a company of bridge guardians commanded by a gate captain.Raidon Kane ascended the Dragon Bridge in the back of a cart drawn by two donkeys, driven by an old Shou farmer.Raidon silently wondered if he were, in truth, being brought to Nathlekh as the farmer claimed.Last time he’d been here, there’d been no Dragon Bridge.It seemed impossible that such a dramatic change could overtake the city in little over a decade.Then again, the changes that occurred while the blue fire raged defied reason.In comparison to what he’d seen in Starmantle, Nathlekh’s uplift hardly seemed worth mentioning.His foot cramped suddenly, as if to rebuke him for recalling the awful image of Starmantle and the ghoul-like aberrations that inhabited it
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