Spring 77, 512 Tenth bell. The skyglass in Lhavit was magnificent. Laszlo wasn't sure he would ever get used to it. Beautiful and luminescent in the moonlight, and even more colorful and brilliant during the day. Lhavit was a city of light. It called to him somehow, and it made something in his heart want to sing. Since stepping through the Amaranthine Gate, the radiance of the city had all but extinguished the shadows that Alvadas had left in the back of his mind. He was in a new place. What kept him sober was knowing that the splendor of this place couldn't save Abalia from her fate. Even with Syna's light warmly embracing them through each day, and the city glittering like crystal, she would still die in agony. Most likely, anyway. Whether or not her child would be born Symenestra was still mostly unknown. Others had recently claimed to know for certain what race his child would be, but Laszlo had refused to believe them. The true answer, he hoped, lied somewhere in the vast archives of the Bharani Library. If Ethaefal parenthood were possible, then it must have happened many times in the past five hundred years. Of the few libraries that existed in the world, if there was a record of it, it would be here in Lhavit. So now there was the small hurdle of gaining entry into the place. The price for information, Laszlo had learned, was information. That seemed fair. All he had to do was write something down, about something. Mountain travel seemed to be his specialty as of late, and aside from Abalia's pregnancy, the most prominent thing on his mind. He had traveled to Kalinor from Alvadas, then back, and then doubled back again, nearly catching his death in the storms the third time around. The trek to Lhavit had only been merciful in its change of scenery and being comparably brief, which wasn't saying much. Petch the Unforgiving. Grind it all up into dust and send it into the winds. Laszlo would be happy if another Djed Storm would come and shake the earth flat—save the peaks of Lhavit. So were the words which Laszlo recorded onto parchment in scrawls of ink, the plume of his quill bobbing gently under the scrutiny of his hard, golden eyes. The stained tip of his pen scratched noisily against the thin, stiffly dried leather balanced precariously against his lap, silencing only when he paused to visit the inkwell set beside him on the ground. The Ethaefal was sat on the road outside the Mhakula Tea House, propped modestly up against the wall of elegantly designed structure. Were it not for his horns and fine dress, he might have appeared as a vagrant yearning for alms. Instead, the blond looked like more of a romantic, sitting outside and soaking up the sunlight as he wrote his life onto paper, wholly consumed in his own world. In truth, Laszlo was a bit of both, but mostly neither. While a vial of ink sat near one hip, a fragrant cup of tea was set on the other side of him. It was no longer hot enough to let fly ribbons of steam; by now it was lukewarm, though not one drink had been taken. Laszlo had purchased a cup mostly to enjoy the smell of it, which also helped overpower the acrid tang of black ink. Were it alcoholic, Laszlo might have been more inclined to down it all quickly. |