Chapter 670 — The Gao Song Conjecture
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 5
The clue Amber had found caught Gao Yang somewhat off guard. He had once guessed that this Sarilendoff was perhaps a fallen noble, or someone stripped of his title for some crime and forced to live under a false name—but never had he imagined the man was a defected royal shadow guard, and one who had defected in the very midst of a mission to seek out the Gondor legacy... That inevitably invited speculation.
It seemed the Ansul royal house had not been entirely ignorant of the secrets buried in the Dark Mountains. Though the relevant traditions had been largely lost in the Fogmoon civil strife, they must still have held certain clues—at the very least, they knew there was something in the Dark Mountains.
Of course, this conjecture rested on the premise that what Sarilendoff had been seeking was truly the Defiant Fortress, and not some other piece of the Gondor legacy.
"So far we have found no other entrances to the Defiant Fortress, and the one entrance already located shows no sign of having been opened," Gao Cen said as he pondered. "And even if he had truly entered the Defiant Fortress, that would not explain his defection. It was nothing but an ancient research installation—what could possibly be inside that would make a royal shadow guard betray his king?"
"I cannot make sense of it either... Looking back now, he truly was a man who never spoke of his past, and he lived in utter disarray," Amber shook her head, her voice a little subdued. "He was always dragging me from place to place, changing addresses constantly, forging identities, pilfering under the noses of local nobles just to get by. Most of our energy went into that, and for a long time I resented him for it... But thinking back now, all of it had its reasons."
"The royal house would not let a defected shadow guard off so easily. They must have searched the Southern Reach for him for a long time, so he had to keep hiding. Nor could he use his transcendent status to seek respectable work—every trade connected to transcendents was watched by the nobles—so he could only be a thief, or occasionally take mercenary work under the guise of a wanderer, and even then he could not stay in contact with other mercenaries for long, lest some of them turn out to be black gloves in the service of a noble."
Amber pursed her lips. "That is about the size of it..."
Gao Yang began to ask about details from those years. "Was Pi Yun already with you two back then?"
Amber scratched at her hair. "Pi Yun had been a friend of my foster father since not long after I could remember, but when exactly they met I do not know. A half-elf's childhood memory is no match for a human's—and in my case it seems worse still. My memories of that time are all a blur."
"A fugitive royal shadow guard, hiding all that time, yet he takes up with a friend like Pi Yun—does that not strike you as strange in itself?" Gao Yang lifted his eyes. "A man fleeing the royal house's pursuit would not normally befriend strangers unless he had a reason he could not avoid. Did your foster father ever mention such a reason to you?"
Amber frowned. "He never told me. I only ever heard the two of them boasting that they meant to become the strongest outlaw duo in the Southern Reach—but that reason is surely nonsense."
"You do not know, but Pi Yun surely does," Gao Dai said. "If the chance arises, perhaps he would be willing to speak of it."
Pi Yun—a druid who was both a Sleeper and a divine officer of the End of All Things—hid a great many secrets behind the guise of that slovenly little old man. Gao Yu was certain he still kept much concealed, and among it perhaps something concerning Sarilendoff.