Demon's Gate (The Demon's Blade Book 5) by Steven Drake

Author:Steven Drake [Drake, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-06T22:00:00+00:00

Morning brought heavy fog that obscured everything beyond a few feet away and further added to the tedium of the forest. A dreary gray curtain veiled the trees, reducing them to indistinguishable spires, shadows in the gloom. Elira slowed the advance to prevent the army becoming separated in the fog, and because the limited visibility made an ambush more likely.

After about an hour’s march, the army emerged from the fog and struck the Catari river, a wide, shallow, slow moving watercourse that ran from the Green Mountains in the northeast to the sea far to the south. The river’s width interrupted the canopy to permit a belt of unbroken sunshine through to the river and its banks. The sunshine around the river had encouraged a healthy variety of plants along the banks and within the river itself. Lily pads clustered in the stagnant water along the shore, some bearing large, broad-petaled white flowers inexplicably perched atop a slender stalk and competing with tall cattail reeds that extended further out into the river. The banks of the river marked the most significant undergrowth seen so far, a hodgepodge of river grasses, course bushes, and an occasional short willow tree that hung weeping branches over the water’s edge. A well-worn path marked by regularly spaced moss-covered stones ran alongside a few feet from the water, an interesting choice, given that just a few feet of flooding would inundate the path. Elira insisted the river had flooded just two times in her some one hundred fifty years of experience. Curious, but the elves knew their own land.

They arrived earlier than expected, shy of midday, in the capital, Catarnar, a cluster of stone structures scattered among the trees along the river’s opposite bank. The stone buildings seemed to be made in imitation of other structures built by the ancient elves but showed differences that reflected the lesser skill of the builders. Unlike the pristine structures of Kadanar, which had passed almost unmarred through the ages and bore no seam, brick, or mortar, these structures showed both their age and the rudimentary nature of their construction. Though the elves of Catarina retained the style of their ancestors, they used the simpler brick and mortar techniques common to all intelligent races. The stone must have once been white but had faded over centuries to creamy beiges and pale yellows. Moss grew upon the stone of many buildings, so much that some buildings appeared nearer to green than any shade of white. The stone had crumbled in places and subsequently been repaired with the wood of the forest, giving many of the structures the look of misbegotten hodgepodge construction common to the poorer quarters of many cities. Some of the buildings, presumably newer additions or replacements for structures that had fallen altogether, had been constructed entirely of the henna brown Marrow Trees.

Nearly all the city lay on the opposite banks of the river. During their approach, they passed a few structures, many of which had been abandoned, but some remained occupied.

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