Duke Lowpeak was surprisingly accepting of Serenity’s Death magic, at least as long as he promised not to do anything to harm Lowpeak. It was enough to make Serenity wonder if the Duke had known another Death mage in the past, although it was also entirely possible that he simply respected the distinction between hostile monsters and friendly Pathed people. Many people didn’t, especially when the person in question was different.

It took hours for Andarit to explain everything that happened after the Duke and his son left Zenith. Serenity was happy to fade into the background except for explaining the unknown mental call in Zenith after they left the dungeon. Andarit’s memory of that time was missing or at least fuzzed enough she wasn’t able to say what happened.

Andarit and her father were still talking about events when they stopped for the night a few hours later. Serenity had long since stopped paying attention to the conversation; the political situation in Zenith didn’t matter to him.

They were on their way the next morning when Kalo asked Serenity what he wanted in exchange for escorting Andarit home. Serenity didn’t even have to think about the answer. “The portals in the Zenith Control Zone are closed, and I need to head to Lyka. May I use your City Node portal?”

He’d have gotten her somewhere safe outside of Zenith no matter what, but he probably would not have escorted her to Lowpeak. His preferred solution was originally to take Andarit offworld with him to Lyka; it would have been far more convenient if the portals had simply been open.

The Duke’s smile told Serenity that the man didn’t mind. “You may, but I doubt it’ll get you what you need. There’s no offplanet portal at Lowpeak. It was on the frontier, not a good place to have open for trade. That didn’t change when we allied with Zenith. We’re self-sufficient because we have to be.”

Serenity felt like the ground had just been pulled out from under him. “Then how can I get to Lyka? Do you know where another portal is?” He couldn’t build one. He didn’t have Lyka’s coordinates, he didn’t have the power to even open an interstellar portal, and any portal he made would be relative to his own location. There were ways to fix the last two, but the first one was insurmountable. He had to know where he was going or he couldn’t get there.

“We leave through Zenith. Those are the only portals that are still open and accessible.” The expression on the Duke’s face shifted. Was it apologetic or sympathetic? Serenity wasn’t certain but it was one of those. “With Zenith closed off, I’m not certain if there is a way offplanet from here or not. Maybe somewhere else will be open because Zenith is closed?”

Serenity thought about it for a bit before he concluded that he might as well go to Lowpeak proper. Perhaps the City Node would have a portal listing for the planet. After all, it did have the capability to open a portal to somewhere else on Zon.

The mountain known as Lowpeak wasn’t small except in comparison to all of the mountains around it. In fact, the largest difference wasn’t that it was lower; it was that there was a large flat space at the top of the mountain. If it had continued up like the other mountains, it would have been only slightly shorter than they were,

The flat space wasn’t quite level; the rock face sloped. Even so, it was close enough that the ground could be built up and leveled. The work had clearly been done for the first time in the ancient past; some of the buildings were older than the Palace in Zenith.

Lowpeak City was a strange blend of the ancient and the modern. The very old buildings were all built of stone and covered in runework that resembled the runic inscriptions on the Palace. Despite their age, they were all in better shape; Serenity suspected that any that failed simply weren’t around any more.

The majority of the buildings were obviously far more recent, yet they often appeared older. Even the stone buildings showed wear that the ancient buildings didn’t.

Most of the city was built with wood and brick. Compared to Zenith it seemed both smaller and wealthier; there were no areas that seemed to be set aside as slums. Serenity knew that didn’t mean slums didn’t exist; it simply meant they weren’t on the road from the river into the city.

Serenity expected the Lowpeak Manor to be like the Palace, an ancient building covered in runework. It wasn’t; instead, it was a brick-faced sprawl that would have seemed out of place in a modern Earth city only because of the style, not the age. It was only a single story tall, with a roof that more than doubled its height at the peak, but it covered far more space than seemed reasonable for the three-person Lowpeak family.

Of course, Serenity was fairly confident that it wasn’t just the family in that building. There was probably a resident staff, larger than the one at the Lowpeaks’ Zenith residence, and it seemed likely that it was also the local government building as well.

The brick building was surrounded by gardens. While some of them were flowering, Serenity noticed that most weren’t; in fact, it looked like only the ones closest to the pathway were traditional flowers. The rest appeared to be plants Serenity vaguely recognized as useful rather than ornamental; many were herbs, but he couldn’t even come close to recognizing others.

The inside of the building had a tiled stone floor, but the walls were rich, polished wood. There were a number of windows, but they were all small. There were signs situated at intersections and above doorways; it was obvious that there were expected to be people who didn’t already know where they were going.

Duke Lowpeak led Serenity through the relatively elegant if sparse public area to the Lowpeak City Crystal. It was located in a relatively secure part of the building, behind a set of heavy doors with both locks and a bar, but Serenity noticed that everything was open.

The Duke followed Serenity’s gaze to the doors. “We lock up when I’m gone, but there’s no need when I’m in Lowpeak. If someone can stop me from getting to the City Core for two weeks when I’m in my own territory, locking up won’t help anything. Since there’s no offworld capability, we don’t need to guard it from incoming portals, either; under the Zenith Charter, any Zenith citizen would need the permission of the King to take the city. There are some additional restrictions in the treaty, as well.”

“Mm.” Serenity wasn’t quite comfortable with that answer, and the reason seemed obvious. “You may want to change that policy. If the invaders take Zenith, the portal restrictions will lift and that won’t be true anymore.”

Kalo nodded and glanced at his daughter. “They’d have to kill all the qualified heirs first or wait the year and a day, but I take your point. I’ll start having some plans drawn up to deal with that.”

Kalo gestured towards the City Core; this time, Serenity stepped up to it.

The message he got when he tried to access the portal function was not helpful.

[No portal locations are authorized]

It took some searching, but Serenity was able to find a listing of portals on Zon with the potential to be used as off-planet portals. It was a short list and he immediately discarded the two labeled as “Zenith Public Portal” and “Zenith Capital Portal”. The other six seemed possible, but he was going to need help finding out where they were.

When Serenity emerged from his communion with the City Core, the room was empty. He had to search back on the route they entered through to find someone who could direct him to the Duke.

Kalo and Andarit were already eating dinner when Serenity arrived. There was food ready for him as well, but they clearly hadn’t waited. Serenity tried to bring up the portal locations, but Kalo waved him off, saying they’d look into them after dinner.

Dinner should have been excellent. A properly cooked and seasoned meal was a lovely change from the traveling food they’d been eating for most of their meals since they left Zenith. Serenity found himself disappointed that it clearly used surface-raised ingredients; the additional mana in monsters’ bodies added enough to the flavor to make up for only having them as jerky, and that was missing in the evening meal here.

Other than that lack, the food was good. Serenity was confident that he would have enjoyed it more back when he was human.

After the meal, Kalo led Serenity to the ducal library. It was a surprisingly small room for a library, probably only forty feet to each side. One of the shelving units held maps instead of books; while many were folded, many were rolled in map cases, and it was one of the map cases that Kalo pulled off the shelf. “Where did you say the portal nodes were?”

Serenity pulled up the list. “Marnmot, Ika, Adze, Starfall Tower, Dragonrest, and Kes.” It was an odd collection of names. Two of them had the same sort of naming convention as the local nobles but the rest had names that sounded more like names to Serenity, the way Zon itself did. Zenith, on the other hand, was another word with a meaning like the nobles’ family seat names.

“Hm. Starfall Tower is out; that’s in Celestials’ Rest and it’s definitely in the Zenith Control Zone. I know I’ve heard of dragonrest, isn’t that an island?” Kalo trailed off and stretched out the map on a large table in the library. He spent some time searching before he tapped a spot on the map. “Yes, there it is. Dragonrest Isle. It’s owned by one of the Courts; interesting to know that they have a portal that goes off planet. I’m not sure if it would be usable, but it’s certainly not convenient.”

Serenity looked at the map. He could see what Kalo meant; Dragonrest Island was a large island off the coast of Zenith, squarely on the other side of the country. It’d taken him a month to get from Zenith City to Lowpeak; Dragonrest Island was at least half again as far. On top of that, it was entirely possible that the portal wouldn’t work. The map didn’t indicate which areas were in the Zenith Control Zone and which weren’t.

The other four locations were harder to find and took several more maps. They ended up having to use ancient maps that Serenity was concerned about potentially damaging in order to find where those locations had once been. None of them were in the currently settled areas, at least not as far as Duke Lowpeak knew; Ika, Adze, and Kes were marked on the oldest map as EVAC, along with many other cities near them.

Duke Lowpeak didn’t know what that meant for sure; he simply knew that it meant they weren’t inhabited. After the experience of the Nights of Shadows Palace Dungeon, Serenity had his own suspicions about what it meant.

The map could be old enough. There were layers of magic on it to preserve it; on top of that, Kalo kept it in a case that was itself enchanted to preserve and repair. Serenity recognized the runework; it was extremely similar to the runework on the wardstones at the caravan rest, but far more delicate and lower power. Serenity suspected that it would require a more skilled runemaster to make the runes on the map case, while the giant wardstones required either power or a lot of time.

By far the closest option was Marnmot. It was only about a hundred miles from the edge of Lowpeak Duchy, but that didn’t mean Duke Lowpeak was happy about sending him there. “If they’re all as dangerous as Marnmot, you should simply stay here. One way or the other, it’s less than a year until the portals in the Zenith Control Zone are open again; even if you can’t use one in Zenith, you’ll surely be able to get to Starfall Tower.”