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(Page 3 of 6) Ivaris - Chapter 9 by Jennifer Raney
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The princess was an avid student; she practiced the deadly art with ruthless determination to master it. Gerianne drilled the princess by pretending to attack her, grabbing her around the arms and knocking her to the ground.
After only a few hours of practice, Malynna was able to draw both daggers, and have one in the eye and one in the jugular of her pretend attacker before she hit the ground. Gerianne helped her up and congratulated her, "Very good, my lady, you are a fast learner."
Malynna smiled, "When can you get me a set for myself?"
"You may have those, Highness, I will get another set. That's enough for one night, I'm exhausted," she said, putting on her cloak. "Jovraan could be here as early as tomorrow, so be prepared. Don't let him fluster you, ok?"
"I won't, Gerianne, I'm ready for him. See you tomorrow."
"Good night, my lady."
Jovraan in fact arrived later that night. He left his carriage in the last village and entered Itrisal secretly through the tunnels under the city.
Itrisal was an ancient city, built when the Itriscians were still just a tribe entering the infancy of civilization. In those days, the tribes were growing in power and waged great wars on each other to carve out what would become the empires of their descendants.
It was in the final Blood War - named such because the bloodlines of the tribes were defined by these wars - that the original Itrisal was burned and destroyed by the Enorans, permanently marking the two tribes as enemies. The treachery ran as deep in those days as they did in Ivaris's day, and the rivalry between the two empires thrived on the hatred.
It wasn't until after the Blood Wars that the Spiritists ascended to the heavens to guide their dead kinsmen away from the world of the living, so the restless souls of the murdered Itriscians lingered in their ruined city.
The survivors couldn't live in a city haunted by their fallen kin, so the engineers raised the earth around it, and built a new, city above it – like a grand monumental tombstone. The walls of the new city were built on the cliffs of the raised earth, making the city to appear to have risen out of the ground. The fields directly adjacent to the walled city were kept bare in remembrance, like a huge grave. Villages and farms surrounded the empty field several hundred yards away from the castle walls, but the distance was not just a symbol of reverence. Even approaching the lower walls of the city filled anyone with a taste of the dread held within. And so, the city walls were guarded as if by a moat – not of water, but of fear. The only sufferable entrances to the capital were the main road from the west, built up on a ramp from the village gates, and the service road from the east, also built up to raise above the cursed cliffs. Anyone attempting to enter the city otherwise would have to face a two hundred foot vertical climb, most of which through an aura of the undead.
Very few people braved the cliffs, let alone the haunted city below.
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