The smell of the noxious city arrived long before they caught sight of it. Upon both sides of the river, strange lights danced in the mists. Some of the crew cowered at the sight of them, but Loctrean was unimpressed. He’d heard of far scarier things at his father’s knee than bobbing lights in the fog. Besides, his father’s ghost had told him to go to Perla, and so he remained confident that no harm would come to him on the journey. There was a reason he was here, and he must find it.
Once the boat arrived and tied up at the wharf, Loctrean took his leave.
Of course he didn’t know what to do now that he had arrived. His father had not been specific at all about what to do once he got to Perla, only that he should go.
He walked the whole length of the city, and as anyone who’s been there can attest, it’s a long, narrow place, trapped between the swamps and woods on the one side and great hulking piers of the spiral on the other. Loctrean walked to the far outskirts of Perla without discovering anything. He was penniless and hungry, and had no idea what to look for or where to look for it.
A rain began to fall. First there was a drizzle, and then the skies opened up and a torrent poured down as if upon him alone.
An ancient, domed fane stood at the edge of the city there, on the last street before the city wall. Multiple rows of columns lined the front of the old temple, all of them gouged and pocked from centuries of bitter sulfurous rain. Loctrean hid beneath the roof that the columns supported, and while there he looked inside. The interior was dark and quiet and cool, filled with still more slender columns like a forest thick with trees. Small rugs were strewn everywhere. No rain dripped there. In fact, dust hung in the air. No one was praying or attending. He couldn’t fathom to what deity the fane had been built in the first place—all icons and statues seemed to have been removed, or stolen—but it was dry and offered protection from the rain. He found a secluded alcove, curled up, and went to sleep. He hoped his father would show up again and tell him what to do.
Instead, while penniless Loctrean slept, a group of thieves crept into the fane. They had been coming there nightly for weeks. Each night they chiseled and loosened the mortar around a stone that, once removed, would give them access to a usurer’s shop that abutted the old temple wall. The moneylender was a true fiend but known to be enormously wealthy. The thieves intended to kill him and rob him of his obscene fortune. The previous night they had succeeded in removing the large stone on which they’d been working for weeks, lifting it from the wall of the fane. Now they worked even more cautiously but urgently to remove the smaller bricks from the wall of the adjoining house. What they failed to take into account was the usurer’s penchant for staying up late into the night to count his fortune. He had blacked all the windows where he kept the money so that no one could see inside. To the thieves it appeared that he’d retired for the night.
Thus the evil usurer, sitting in the very room they intended to plunder, was alerted to their intrusion. He blew out his candle and waited.
At last, the thieves removed enough smaller bricks in his wall to allow one man to slide through. Triumphantly, their leader insisted he should have the first look, and he stuck his head into the hole, only to find a cackling madman awaiting him, brandishing a scimitar.
When his feet frantically kicked out, his friends hauled the thief back into the temple only to discover that his head had been lopped off. Even as they stared in horror, the alarm was sounded. The usurer had rushed into the street and bellowed for the police. The thieves dropped the corpse of their leader and fled.
Poor Loctrean awoke to their commotion. He stumbled from his alcove just as the authorities arrived.
“Here’s one!” shouted a deputy, and the police fell upon him and beat him senseless. Of the gang they found only the headless body.
They dragged Loctrean to the jail and threw him inside. He lay battered and bleeding upon his cot that