Arc 3: Chapter 19: The Hidden Folk
I followed the changeling into the cities depths, into a section not dissimilar from where Lias had placed his secret refuge. Narrow walkways hugged high walls, precarious intersections of stairs circumnavigated ever-descending rows, and narrow trenches only sporadically protected by grating dominated the neighborhood.
The slum. May as well call it what it was. I could smell sewage leaking up from below, and the rain falling in a constant drizzle from above did little to clean the scum and mineral buildup clinging to everything like the grainy interior of a water-logged cavern. Eerie faces watched me from dens dug into the very foundations of the city, like hives in stone, or from rickety, half-rotten shacks of wood stacked wherever room could be found.
“Keep close,” Barca hissed. “This place is not friendly to your kind, Goldeye.”
“Because I’m Sidhe-blessed?” I asked him, knowing there wasn’t much love lost between the land’s misbegotten beings and their immortal forebears. I kept my hand close to my axe without actually touching it. I had my cloak wrapped around my gear and my cowl up, so no watching eyes could see how armed I was.
“Because you’re human,” Barca said, pausing and turning a too-large, too-yellow eye on me. From the glimpses I’d gotten of him beneath the rags, he seemed to resemble something part small man, part dog, and part amphibian. He hopped and crawled more than he walked.
“Most of the changelings in the city can hide themselves from human eyes,” Barca continued, leading me over a bridge running over a deep drainage canal. The bridge was little more than a narrow arch of stone, with no rails on the sides. “They are close enough to human, or have glamour, and can lead relatively normal lives. But some of us cannot. Some of us are too twisted, or we didn’t inherit enough faerie magic from our forefathers to create a masque.”
He paused a moment, then continued in a more sullen voice. “Some of us are not Fae at all. Pay them no mind,” he added, indicating the watching figures. “You are safe so long as I guide you. Many know old Barca.”
“Where are you taking me?” I asked him.
“To a… leader, among our kind. You could say he is our protector, our voice, and other things besides. Once you are there, you will be on your own.”
Fair enough.
He led me deeper, until I could no longer even catch glimpses of the sky high above, or see the rooftops of the higher districts. We took a winding route, eventually passing into a series of tunnels abundant with rusted metal grating and dripping ceilings. I heard scuttling things in the dark. Vermin, and larger predators.