and taking a piece out of an arm or leg. Their chuffing, bleating, snorting sounds helped part the traffic, and more than a few of the people that he passed stared up at him curiously.
“Why do they look at me so?” he wondered.
“Because they have never seen an elfling before,” the Guardian said.
“Am I truly so different?”
“If we were on foot, then we might not be so readily noticed,” the Guardian replied, “but mounted on a crodlu, we stand out among the crowd. They cannot help but notice. Even the half-elves we have seen are taller than the average human, and longer of limb. We possess normal human proportions, yet our features are different.”
“I have never felt so out of place,” said Sorak. “I had looked forward to visiting a city, but I do not think I would want to live like this.”
Before long, he came to an open square at the center of the merchant district, where the beast traders had set up their pens. The odor of manure mingled with the smell of sweat and the musky scent of pelts from beasts of almost every description. One of the pens was filled with z’tals, upright lizards sold primarily for meat, though their flexible scales were often used for razors or small knives. They hopped about, trying to leap over the wall of their enclosure, but they were unable to jump high enough. Stupidly, they kept hopping en masse from one end of the pen to the other, emitting high-pitched, yipping sounds.
Another pen held jankx. The small, furry mammals lived in burrow communities out in the desert and were valued for their meat and for their pelts. Their enclosure had a stout wooden floor to prevent the jankx from digging their way out. Puzzled, they kept scratching at the wood with their paws, unable to comprehend why this curious “soil” would not loosen.
Farther on, Sorak saw larger pens that were used to contain kanks. The large, docile insects moved about sluggishly in their overcrowded confines, the clicking of their mandibles providing a percussive accompaniment to the yelps and cries of all the other beasts. Their exoskeltons were often used for armor, but it was not armor of high quality, for it was brittle and had to be replaced quite frequently. Kanks were more prized for the thick, green honey they excreted, which was nourishing and widely used as sweetener in food and drink.
Beyond the kank pens were large corrals that held erdlus, flightless, gray- and red-scaled birds that stood as high as seven feet and weighed up to two hundred pounds. Erdlu eggs were a staple of Athasian diet. The skittish birds milled about inside their corrals, their long, powerful legs pawing at the ground. Their snaky necks craned around in all directions, and shrill, high-pitched cries came from their wedge-shaped beaks, especially when Sorak approached with Tigra. The tigone’s presence sent them running around in circles, shrieking with alarm.
At the far end of the square, nearest the ziggurat, was an open area that held no pens, for the beasts sold there were too large to be contained by them. Inix lizards grew to a length of sixteen feet and weighed up to two tons. No pen would have held them, and so they were chained to massive blocks of stone that functioned as anchors to keep them from wandering about. Their backs were protected by hard, thick shells and armored scales, capable of bearing a great deal of weight. They were often used in caravans to transport riders in howdahs strapped to their large backs, and the nobility frequently used them as vehicles to get around the city, allowing a servant to drive the beast with an obsidian-tipped prod while they relaxed in their shaded and luxurious howdahs.
On the other side of the open square, well away from all the other beasts, Sorak saw several mekillots. The largest of Athasian lizards, mekillots were used as caravan beasts, easily capable of pufling the heaviest of wagons, or as war lizards, bearing armored howdahs. Only wealthy merchant houses or standing armies could afford to buy them since mekillots were expensive to maintain and were quite vicious. Anyone who strayed within reach of their long tongues was liable to wind up a meal. There was only one way to control them, and that was to employ psionicists as handlers. Obviously, any merchant who dealt in mekillots needed to employ a number of psionicists to keep the gigantic lizards under control, for