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TALI SMASHED ANOTHER flask on the stairs at the top. As Dun listened to the tinkling shards dancing down the steps, he reminded himself why he liked her: She was smart.
“That should be slippy enough to keep them amused for a while,” she said.
“Where now?” Dun said.
“Through the market,” Amber said.
“Won’t our scent give us away if we’re being searched for?” Dun asked.
“There should be enough distractions going on there that we will slip by if we are swift.”
“Won’t the market be guarded?” Padg said.
“Yes,” Amber said simply.
“Great. I was enjoying your plan until then.”
“It is the only plan there is Padg,” Amber said to him quietly.
Noises drifted up the staircase to them, a melee of shouting and swearing punctuated by the definite sound of a skull connecting with stone.
“Time to go,” Dun said.
The passage to the market became wider as they neared their destination. Amber reassured Dun that if the market were to be guarded, then the main route in, the one they were taking, was so wide at the market end that guarding it was impractical. There were many other narrower passages in and out that made a two guard scent-search of all passers-by much more effective. She reassured him getting out of the market again would be their real problem. Reassurance wasn’t what Dun was feeling.
His unease started to lift when the sounds and smells coming down the passage fully permeated his consciousness and were too big to ignore. There was something intoxicating to Dun about the bustle, noise, and smell of a strange market. At once safe and predictable: everyone everywhere needed, food, tools, something to smell nice; but at the same time wild and different. Dun could hear the sounds of stone being hand ground, next to a hawker crying “yip, yipyip yiii!”. He smelled talcum, sweat, sand, and old dust. The irresistible magic of the mundane and the exotic. Dun felt happy, then his next foretelling arrived. The swirling feeling came so quickly it caused him to lose his balance and he slid sideways into Padg.
“Easy there, feller!” his friend said. “Hey, are you okay?”
But Dun soared on the foretelling, which was his most vivid to date. And it was very simple: He was at the market buying something. This market. Buying something hand-sized, no, something that would fit in his hand. Something carved. A totem. The things that all folk carved. Small statues of animals, portraits, abstract shapes. Made from different materials depending on a tribes traditions, but the common thread to all of them was texture. The carvers often picked raw pieces for their feel before they started, and then a slow process of etching, scraping, writing, smoothing. They were sometimes finished with blobs or glazes of scented resin, sometimes left plain. The totems were widely sought and traded and on market stalls, kept on woven thongs or strings to prevent thieves.
“Thieves!” the shout from the totem stallholder was shrill and very, very loud.
Dun felt jolted back to the present, and then felt the totem in his hand. He felt his hand being jerked nearly out of it’s joint as Padg dragged him. The four of them ran in a line, hand in hand, Amber at the lead as she knew the market the best. A fact displayed by her deftly kicking the leg from a stall on their way past, spilling the stalls contents to the ground and its owners curses into the air. As the chaos spread like a stain behind them, Amber led them along the wall of the massive market chamber and pulled them smartly down a small passage, away from the main chamber. She reached down to check her position, and then grunting her satisfaction that she was in the right place, kicked a grill at floor level. She bundled the others through the tube it revealed and reinstated the grill once they were all in the tube.
“Forward!” she hissed at Dun’s backside. “There is a small chamber ahead.”
The tunnel was claustrophobic and had a small amount of water running in a groove beneath them as they crawled. It had the effect of making an unpleasant trip into an unpleasant damp and fusty trip. Ahead was longer than any of them really expected. Finally, Tali, out front, found the passage widen.
“Here,” she whispered.
“They won’t hear us down here. We’re safe for a while,” Amber said.
“Good!” Padg said. “What in the hells were you thinking?” He rounded on Dun.
“I don’t know. One minute I was in a foretelling trance, then I was being dragged here.”
“What seems like a harmless, odd quirk in an old friend is less amusing when it's about to get us all killed!”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“What did you steal?” Padg asked. “I hope it was worth nearly getting us all killed.”
“A totem,” he said quietly.
“Is that it?”
“Yeah.” Dun’s voice sounded small even to him. “It’s not as if I intended that to happen. I didn’t even know it was.”
“I know,” Padg said, half in apology. “What is it anyway?”
“The totem? I’m not sure. I haven’t really had a chance to examine it.”
He took it out of his pocket and felt its surface, turning it, and exploring the egg-shaped item in his hand. The ovoid was stone and seemed to have two “faces”. Half of its surface was polished smooth, its opposite side pitted irregularly, possibly the natural surface of the stone. There was something about this object that Dun felt he already knew. A familiarity not with the object itself, but somehow with what it was. That was the thing with totems, many were not simple. There were levels of meaning to them, sometimes spiritual or political. There were portraits, caricatures, maps, toys, puzzles, animals, abstract shapes. Some even had embedded scents, small crystals of incense, or perfumed wood, sometimes blended to create an artful olfactory layer on top of the tactile one.
But what did this one mean? And why did Dun feel like he knew it so well?
