The Warden Threat
~*~
From the top of a rocky hill, Trixie could see the outline of the city and the elongated oval island known as the Mound in the middle of the river. On the highest point sat Greatbridge Castle.
The two travelers paused to take in the sight. From a distance, it looked quite impressive with its thousands of varied buildings stretching miles from both sides of the river.
“I think it’s gotten larger since I was here last,” Grandpa Nash commented.
“It may have,” Trixie replied. “There always seems to be something being built somewhere.”
The old man scanned the surrounding landscape, taking in the fields, orchards, and farms in the valley below. His gaze paused at an outcropping of rock almost hidden in a copse of trees to his left. The face on the side away from the city rose flat and vertical like a natural stone wall.
“That’s called the Masters’ Gate,” Trixie said, following his line of sight. “It’s supposed to be cursed or at least bad luck. I’m not sure I believe it myself, but no one ever goes there.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” he said, although she thought he looked distracted.
“We should be in Greatbridge in less than an hour if we don’t dawdle” she went on. “Would you like to join me for lunch before you go to the university?”
“No, but thanks for the offer. I think I’d like to go straight there. I’m a bit eager to see it. Besides, I know you’ve been looking forward to getting home and taking it easy for a while.” He smiled.
This she could not deny. She always liked coming home, but before long, she knew she would be back at the guildhall seeking another assignment. She also needed to check in to collect her pay for this trip.
That afternoon, they met more traffic than Trixie thought normal on the main road running east. The active streets leading toward the center of the city brought them past large civic, religious, and commercial structures boasting their importance, low shops with wide windows advertising their wares, and modest houses with small windows preserving their privacy. The smell of smoke, grease, and the accumulated aromas of thousands of irregularly bathed people and their byproducts pervaded the scene. As they walked, Grandpa Nash told her the history of some of the older buildings they passed. He paused at one of several narrow stone bridges providing crossings over thin, sluggish streams doing extra duty as drainage ditches and the public sanitation system. “What I think they could use right about now is a quantum leap in civil engineering,” he said softly as if to himself.
“What?” Trixie asked.
“I’m sorry. I must have had a stray thought go to my mouth instead of staying in my head where it belonged. You know, after a while, even the best of us stop functioning quite as well as we once did,” he added with disarming a smile. “It was just a passing idea about what I might be able to teach here.”
“What was that word you used—quantum?”
“Oh, that. It’s from a foreign language, sort of. Kind of a dialect really. It’s rather hard to define but in this case it has to do with going from one place to another very quickly.”
“Like running.”
“Not exactly, but that will do.”
“What language is it from?”
He hesitated a moment before responding. “I don’t think there’s a good translation for it in our language. They’re called subatomic physicists. They don’t live anywhere around here.”
“I suppose that’s why it didn’t sound familiar to me.”
“I’m sure that’s it.”
“Do you think I’ll ever meet any of these Subademicfisicants?”
“Subatomic physicists. No, I doubt it very much.”
“It’s just that in my profession I need to know the languages of the people I might encounter, at least well enough to ask directions, get a room and a meal, and things like that. I’m not bad at Gotroxian, and I can get by with my Eastfielder. But since I’ve never heard of these Subademic, uh, people, then I probably don’t have to try to learn their language.”
“Not at all,” he replied. He seemed relieved about something.
They crossed the stone bridge spanning the river to the Mound. Three double-harness gond wagons could easily go abreast across the wide pavement. Nash told her it commemorated victory in a war she had never heard of three-hundred years before. At each end, a pair of granite battle gonds in full armor stood guard. The beasts loomed life size, half again as large as those used to pull wagons or saddled to spare the tender feet of the well-to-do, with the added features of long tusks and down curved horns.
Trixie and Grandpa Nash said their farewells after crossing and parted company, agreeing to meet in three days at University Park at noon.
“Don’t forget to practice your reading,” Grandpa Nash told her as he turned toward the path leading to the university.
“I won’t, I mean I will, I mean I’ll practice.” She laughed and waved, and then started down a different road toward the guildhall.