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open door.

 
     
CHAPTER 7
     
     
    Venir had reached the outskirts of the City of Bone after leaving Mood and the Red Clay Forest behind. A mile away from the city’s main south gate, he stood and gazed at the massive stone walls surrounding the city. They were unlike any others on Bish, enclosing well over a hundred thousand occupants as if in a giant castle.
    There was little evidence of how the great city had come into existence, but the dungeons and catacombs below were filled with tombs and bones from a long-forgotten time.
    Venir watched as the wall’s enormous portcullis opened like a gaping maw ready to devour its next meal. The southern outskirts of the city walls always bustled with activity as merchants and farmers plied their trades day and night like worker ants.
    The City Watch was thick in the area, Venir knew from experience. They were strict in enforcing who could enter and who could not. The Royals did not welcome other races, but allowed inhabitants to barter with them on the outside. The City Watch also recruited citizens. Anyone with skill or charm would be welcomed and escorted inside, never to be seen again by their families. It was considered a great honor by outsiders to be taken into the city’s sanctuary, but often those persons met a most unpleasant fate. This, in fact, was how Venir had arrived in Bone as a boy.
    He had been a strapping young twelve-year-old with bright blue eyes and shiny, thick blond hair. But he was alone: his family had long been slaughtered by underlings at his village of Throhm. Bandits had taken him in and traded him to devious merchants, who then took him to the City of Bone to exploit his skills. There he worked as a slave below several Royal castles.
    His only friend then was a fellow slave boy named Melegal. Their days were filled with cleaning the muck and grime of the excesses of those above. The nights were filled with lashings and fitful sleep on a cold, damp dungeon floor with only grimy cleaning cloths for blankets.
    The only good thing was that the slavers educated them so that they could understand their duties and how Royal systems worked: reading and writing were needed to meet the demands of their superiors. And as they grew more skilled, they rose up from the less subservient positions. It was still slavery, but a better life than many had on Bish. Those without skills did not survive long.
    But the slavers took the older ones as they approached adulthood, and these were never seen again. The younger ones were left wondering where they had gone. Unbelievable rumors had struck terror in their hearts. Even today, Venir still did not know where the older slaves had gone, but he knew of many who had survived.
    He and Melegal had been lucky: they had picked up the reading and writing. Melegal had the precious gift of being able to take dictation with a fluent hand. Venir, conversely, relied on his strength, and was made a sparring dummy for Royal sons to develop their battle skills. He never fought back as they dished it out to him over and over. It was a time in his life he preferred to forget, and he pretty much managed to do that—until times like these that brought him back to Bone.
    Returning his thoughts to the present, he headed far off the beaten trail up a barren hillside. He started to feel good about returning back to civilization and his friends, good food, strong drink, and feisty women.
    Venir entered a cave opening hidden by thick bushes. It was just big enough to get a small horse through. Inside, it fanned out in a variety of directions, and he walked ahead a hundred feet or so. The caves were neither deep nor dangerous, but those who came across them were invariably too scared to enter for fear that underlings were nearby. And Venir liked them to think this, and he would even litter the cave paths with old bones of various animals—and sometimes even underling skulls.
    Now he took several turns in total darkness, then found a door. He