Slithering Maze 12: Whispers, Dust, and Shadowed Fates

Basysus, 27, 1278: Old Quarter District. Arth Prayogar. Living a cautionary tale…

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 and her companions confronted Garrik, the would-be thief and current thorn in Tela’s side. Cornered and a bit desperate, the thief admits he’s been working three mysterious robed figures here in Arth Prayogar. Murderous individuals with a deep interest in Rathalla Vasam’s logbook. He also gives up the location where he meets them… an old flophouse tucked deep in the Old Quarter of Arth Prayogar…

Basysus, 27, 1278: Old Quarter District. Arth Prayogar. Living a cautionary tale…

I often wondered when my life had turned into a cautionary tale. Stalking death cultists over old historical artifacts probably had something to do with it.

The Old Quarter of Arth Prayogar was a bad, greasy watercolor of what it once had been. Colors had smeared and faded since Prayogar’s early days. Once orderly streets with merchant tents were now a breakneck maze of buildings uncomfortably close to each other.

Sandstone foundations had cracked from weather. Pale yellow adobe clay walls were chipped, with holes haphazardly patched using brittle, bone-white clay. Doors, wood sealed with resin against the dry heat, still surrendered to years of weather.

The spiderweb of streets and alleys was cast in sharp, long shadows. Old Quarter’s paths were thick with memories of better times, lost dreams, and the smell of salted cod desperately chasing rot.

We reached the centaur fountain with the broken ear at the cusp of evening. The setting orange sun peeked past buildings with its dying breath.

“You didn’t have to come along,” I said to Atha.

The minotaur strained his shirt with a massive shrug.

“Nothing better to do. Also? Hyu owe me tea.”

Skarri said nothing. I rolled my eyes, then turned down Grayclove Street.

“Atha? Why are you in Prayogar, anyway?” I asked. While we walked, my eyes swept over the near-identical ramshackle buildings. Many looked abandoned.

“Mercenary contract,” he rumbled. “Was a bad deal. I didn’t take it.”

Skarri finally broke her silence, slithering next to me. Nerves laced every word.

“Tela, are you sure these are Fateweaver cultists?“ Skarri asked. “Robes and incense could have been anyone.”

I nodded, leading our trio down one of the dingy alleys off Grayclove Street. It was across from the only rundown flophouse I’d seen. Prairie rats skittered out of the way over dark, foul stains to safer spaces. The rank air didn’t just smell stale—it tasted dead.

“Three robed figures? Candles with incense? Gliding walk? Seems to fit,” I replied with a sigh. “We’ll know for sure once we’re inside.”

We stopped a few paces into the alley’s slanted evening shadows, underneath a suspiciously leaky rainwater pipe. Atha found a stained rain barrel to put in front of us. Not much cover, but anyone glancing into the alley would see a boring barrel before seeing us.

“If cultists, why do they want an old logbook?” Atha asked, taking up a position behind us.

I shrugged, rubbing my eyes against the itch of the alley’s lingering stench.

“They probably found something that feeds their three fates, murder-happy, philosophy.”

I pulled the crumpled, hand-drawn map of maze-like alleys from my bag, frowning over it. Then I tapped the three marked locations, followed by where I’d added a symbol for the broken fountain.

“This flophouse where Garrik was meeting his shady associates? It was already marked on the map.” I waved the crude map slightly. “It’s one of the three locations.”

“Where did you getz that map, anyway?” Atha rumbled, folding his arms over his massive chest.

A thin trickle of tired, dingy locals passed by on the street under lit street lanterns. We watched them warily, waiting until their footsteps and hushed conversation faded away.

“City council chambers,” I murmured. “Someone slipped it into my pocket when I wasn’t looking. No idea who. I didn’t see anyone.”

Skarri coiled her tail underneath her, leaning on the nearly full barrel. Her eyes studied the alley behind the flophouse on the other side of the road.

“It sounds like a trap.”

I arched an eyebrow at her.

“Sure, but given what’s at stake, it’s worth the risk.”

Atha breathed out a rumbling sigh.

“That note might mean hyu, or the Windtracers, have a friend in Prayogar. Patron maybe. Could be a good thing.”

I gave my crude map a sour look.

“That or someone’s trying to kill me,” I replied tartly. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Hyu are a very paranoid woman,” Atha said flatly.

“Maybe. But I’m also a very alive woman,” I replied with a sideways glance at the minotaur. “One goes with the other.”

“None of us will be alive if we aren’t careful,” Skarri hissed, nervously fingering the hilt of her saber. “My people have lots of bloody stories of Fateweavers sacrificing people, even entire towns, to weave the dying into their ‘tapestry’.”

I leaned on the rain barrel next to Skarri, as long shadows cut charcoal slices out of the night air. A pale moon peeked low out of the evening clouds over the rooftops while we waited. I fidgeted with the map.

“That’s why Ki and Mikasi went to that Koriss Grand Archive to dig up anything related to Fateweavers.” I drew a slow breath. “It could be anything from the Toshirom Ifoon ruins to rare documents. Maybe the cultists just show up every year like some sort of locust?”

“Hm,” Atha grunted, looking past us. “Light on. Second floor. Three people moving around a table. Bone pale wearing red robes.”

Skarri gripped my arm.

“Windtracer, they could be mid-sacrifice! We should do something!”

“Hm,” Atha grunted again. “I could shove the door in. Could shove door into a cultist. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Skarri and I slowly glanced back at Atha. I raised my eyebrows.

“What?” Atha replied, a little perturbed.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

“All right, just wait. I doubt they’re killing anyone right now. Last I knew, Fateweavers only do that at certain times of the day.” At Skarri’s horrified look, I added with a shrug, “hey, even death cults keep a schedule.”

Schedule or not, three figures in wine-red robes slipped out the back ten minutes later.

With red cowls mostly covering bone-pale faces, the trio hurried down the other alley away from us. They moved quiet as a mourner’s whisper, strides eerie and smooth as ice. I shuddered as they vanished around a corner.

“Let’s go,” I whispered, then raced off across Grayclove Street for that weather-beaten door to the flophouse.

One picked lock later, I slipped inside with Skarri on my heels. Atha loomed outside in the dark alley to keep watch. Up a set of loose, wood-plank stairs with more holes than my average plan, we found the candlelit room Atha had spotted from the street below.

I paused next to Skarri in the upstairs doorway. It was both everything we worried about, and not what we expected at all. But at least now we knew who the robed figures were.

“Fateweavers,” I said with a solemn declaration.

Beeswax candles, scarred with bloody runes, lit the narrow room. The flickering yellow light bathed four stained tables, countless smudged papers, inkwells and more. Sharp scents of charcoal and burned copper haunted the air. Then there was the obvious sign that this was a Fateweaver lair.

“Is that a severed finger on that table?” Skarri hissed nervously. “Also, are those snake patterns and sun signs painted in…”

“Don’t think about it,” I warned, giving it all one last look before I took my own advice. “Check the tables. Look for anything related to your people’s culture. Especially if it references Toshirom Ifoon. I’ll take the tables on the back wall.”

Skarri nodded, then slithered over to a table against the eastern wall. We worked quickly, pouring over, and through, the mess of bloody knives, used candles, and stacks of parchments.

“Anything?” Skarri asked a few minutes later, words tight with frustration. “There’s no telling when they’ll be back.”

“Nothing about Toshirom Ifoon, the Iraxi, or why they wanted Rathalla Vasam’s logbook,” I grumbled. “Just a lot of notes about windwagons, when they come through, and what they’re carrying.”

A glossy, black leather book caught my eye. I picked it up, then immediately dropped it when something oily seeped out the edges against my fingers. I rubbed my hands on my pants to drive away the crawling, greasy sensation.

“Saint’s Tide, I want a hot bath after this! No, two baths. That stuff had a heartbeat! Skarri, find anything?“

The temple guard glanced at me while I hurried over to the round table in the middle of the room. She was wrist-deep in what looked like stacks of dubious red-stained paper and knucklebones.

“No,” she hissed sharply.

Every muscle in her shoulders was locked, and the cobra-hood around her neck and head was flared in alarm.

“You also don’t want to read these. I have, and wish I hadn’t.”

Then she scowled at something under the stack of nightmares.

“Wait. There’s a map.” Skarri shoved aside the fouled papers for a better look. “It shows this part of Arth Prayogar. Older map, I think. They’ve marked several places outside the city with time of day and symbols I don’t recognize.”

She glanced at me.

“They also have the same locations on here that your map does, Tela.”

“Lady Deep and her Nine Misbegotten Children,” I muttered bitterly. “Grab that map, or copy what they’ve written, if they bolted it to the table.”

Skarri hissed softly in reply, snake tail thumping the wooden floor nervously while she worked quickly.

I focused on the round table in the middle of the room with its stained tablecloth. The whole thing was a cluttered mess.

A storm of partial translations written on scraps of paper littered the surface. Inkpots, rotten quill pens, and even a few uncomfortably sticky daggers added to the decor. A dozen half-used candles surrounded the grim assortment. I pushed aside inkpots and a handful of mummified fingers, then got to work.

“Most of this is just philosophy written by someone with a deep hatred of legible script,” I whispered. “It goes on about weaving the second Great Collapse from people’s blood. Ghoulish, but not useful.”

Then I noticed a dirty, cream-colored bag underneath the mad scribblings.

“Oh, what do we have here?” I murmured, tugging the small bag out of the pile.

The canvas bag was smeared with faded brown stains of old dirt, and tied closed with a braided bright red cord. I turned it over in my hands, studying it with a scowl.

“No symbols on the bag, so maybe not originally Fateweaver. They stick those three masks of fate on damn near everything.”

The bag was a little heavy with what felt like three pieces of metal inside. They were too big to be any kind of coin, so I guessed amulets. I clenched my jaw, narrowing my eyes at the knot holding it closed.

“Fateweavers are disgusting, so we do not think about who the red cord is really made from,” I murmured in a singsong voice while I untied the knot.

Three tarnished, round brass medallions, each the size of my palm, dropped out of the bag. Small, sharply angled letters like snake fangs were engraved around the edges. It was a dialect of Tashkiran, the language of Skarri’s people. The center of each medallion had some variation of a serpent eating, surrounding, or cuddling the sun.

“Lashqa nashkas sesh gop toran vash sun-gop,“ I read aloud, running a finger slowly over the letters.

Skarri instantly spun around, eyes blown wide in panic.

“What did you just say?” she exclaimed sharply.

I frowned, glancing between her and the medallion in my hand.

“Just this.” I held up the medallion for emphasis. “I’m not that fluent in your language, but I…”

Skarri darted over next to me and snatched a medallion off the table. She turned it over with a wild look.

“Tela, this is bad,” Skarri hissed frantically, waving the medallion at me. “Do you know what these are?”

I rubbed my thumb over the letters, then the emblem of the serpent coiled around the sun.

“The three sisters?” I replied as memories from the past days of reading caught up with me. “Three sun sisters, right?”

Skarri closed her eyes, biting her lower lip a moment. After a slow breath, she tapped the medallion in her hand with a stubby claw.

“Yes,” she hissed, stretching the word tight, then touched each medallion. “Storm-shed. Sunbound. The Hungered. The three Sunfate sisters.”

Skarri arched an eyebrow ridge at me. I could see the unease glimmering in her rust-red serpent eyes.

“My people believed in this philosophy once. It nearly destroyed us until the Coil Clans turned toward more rational beliefs.”

I thoughtfully jiggled the medallion in my hand.

“That was during the Upheaval Crusades, wasn’t it?” I asked warily.

“Yes. Three serpent-sisters braid fate, unsealing the Sun’s tongue,“ she translated, brushing a finger over the engraved letters.

“Aile Shavat,” I swore. “The Sun’s tongue? That’s the Iraxi, isn’t it?”

Atha’s warning growl echoed up the stairs a half-heartbeat later.

“We gotz problem! Trouble through other door!”

Skarri and I looked around at the room, now a bit more of a mess than before. I stabbed a hand at the table with the map.

“Grab that! I’ve got these,” I snapped, shoving the brass medallions and a few random Fateweaver translations into the dirty canvas bag.

We raced for the way out just as a pasty-pale, thin human man wearing a blood-red shirt, dark charcoal vest and clothes appeared. He slammed a hand onto the doorframe, blocking the exit with his body, grinning with too many teeth.

“Windtracer,” he said in a gravelly voice.

“Got it in one!” I replied with a coy grin.

Then I slammed the door on his fingers.

After that? Everything got interesting.

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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.

Also! Windtracer Tales and Windtracer: Adventures in Awldor is written with much respect to Starfarertheta and their work on the other half of Awldor.