CHAPTER 2
Reaching to the skies are the tusks of slashed stone; snaking archways and pillars that firmament the earth. And of draping, coiling banners that batter upon the cruel wind.
A monument, you see, to this pointless city; a foundation for the city hall. The colossus that is the wooden gate, inlaid with steel, you see, is that it holds itself slave to the man that is the Lord of Metamor. Chained, the wood, then perhaps, it is his nobility, and a symbology is that the steel imprisons the noble yew that is the citie's pride and crest. You see then that the man is small. He sits upon a throne larger than him and besides a table for no one.
He says to you as you speak of the threat, and how larger it is than mere barbarians:
"Slayers? Then you speak of a wizard?" he holds back a sneer "There are no more wizards, boy! All slain, dead! Of old and sickness, buried beneath the earth we walk upon. If you speak of a wizard and tell me he is real, then you speak of a corpse puppeter. And that I will not believe; Not while I walk this soft earth"
"But say you, giant, the real threat is not magicks, but steel and boiling strength. Strength of the north! The most vile of men trod the lands above, since that capitulation, that failure to hold the simplest of fortresses-keeps! Now they come here! Upon Harpidiom to the eastern hills, aye, my countryside. "
He throws a heaving bag of hold upon the table. Gold spills from it.
"Your weight in gold if you manage to slay the Karniite leader, the scum that kills my people!"
<