Perhaps I should not have been so harsh with Derrek Rowan. Perhaps I should have left my mind unspoken and played things out by feel. But in that moment, I kept only what silence I could, and said only what was in my heart. He bowed his head low in apparent acceptance and understanding, and for the time being … that was the end of it.
The caravan departed three days later. Like Elana, I spent that time in my room or in the bath. Unlike Elana – ironically, like Derrek – I spent that time alone with my thoughts.
I thought of Rrii`aa, back in Liddarn. Of the curves and angles of her face, and the patterns in the colors of her eyes. I thought of the comfort of her company, of how well she could discern if I needed to speak of my troubles or ambitions, or if I needed to sit and listen, or just to sit in silent companionship.
I wondered how the time was passing for her. Last winter in the mines had been hard on our people. The cold – which we do not quite feel like djuunan do, but which we do feel, nonetheless – and the dark had only made our claustrophobia worse. Rrhii`aa and the other Sisters of Amalai had struggled to keep our spirits up, even when the passion for Elana’s cause had been fresh, and she had visited us in our rearguard caverns with some frequency. The length of our quest had always been unknown, but with the prince gone, for months, now, llamenan morale must be low. Morale throughout the whole of the resistance must be low. How long before they gave up hope?
I thought of Derrek, and of what it might have been like to be raised by such alien immortals. Of what it must be like to be both a peer and yet indelibly other. Of what it meant to leave such station and luxury to travel the Compact as a nameless vagabond. To regain all that power and wealth, to be a hero of the realm and beloved of the only other Great Wizard, the would-be emperor, only to walk away from it all, again, and build a hovel of a blacksmith’s shop in a poor corner of the Compact.
He was fifty-seven years old – a few years younger than I, adult but still youthful by the standards of my own people. Veralar was our age, her vigor maintained by her mystical practices and physical disciplines, but no one mistook her for a young woman. Orland had been younger, married with a child, but past his prime: his health and strength already beginning to wane. But Derrek looked of an age with Elana, now: too young to be one of the most powerful people in the world. And yet, he had lived three whole, full lives in that time. Two of those lives had been built on lies, as had the fourth life that he had been building in So’renner, which we had interrupted.
His face had never been open to me. His short, immobile, djuunan ears and the scar that weighed down half his face had always combined to leave him inscrutable. But I also understood, now, how thoroughly he must have trained that inscrutability, lest he give away his alien upbringing, or give some advantage to the numerous political opponents he must have navigated during his years in the Obsidian Cabal and after. And perhaps even before he even came to the Compact, to judge by our own experiences with the archons of Khrigo City.
I thought of our alien hosts and their luxurious hospitality. The golden, god-like sao`ashan, with their uncanny three eyes, lacking iris or pupil. Their expressions, muted and exaggerated by turns, and the sense I had that they spoke constantly to one another even when we could see but not hear them. Derrek had confirmed that guess, and warned us to keep close the protective talismans he had given us, less they use that same power to listen in on our thoughts, unspoken in our own heads.
I thought of the giants who served the sao`ashan. Massive and aloof, they were strong enough to kill any of us with a careless gesture. They stood tall and proud, and yet they lived in service to beings sometimes less than half their height.
I thought of the rooms they had lent us. The elaborate architecture and the masterful art that adorned it. The clothing and jewels they had given us as gifts. The funeral for Orland. The stately dinner to which Derrek had so conspicuously not been invited had been small but extravagant, boasting a dozen courses of spicy and delicious food that I could hardly recognize. They had called upon us to stand and speak of our quest and our journey in greater detail than we so far had, and they had listened with rapt attention before insisting on still more details of our encounters with the Prophet of Enhyl and the dragon Lynqxaemass, and of our acquisition of the Blade of Xadaer. And then they spoke to us of the last outsider to appear on their doorstep, the great bard Dano`ar, and the tales he had told of Vencar and the compact.
And I thought always of the tales of sao`ashan and giants, both, on which I had been raised, the cultural scars of shame and terror that they had left on my people. Of how the rrotran had worked their mines, alongside the Jor. Of how we llamenan had worked their fields and orchards. Of how, together, we had made them fine things of glass and gems and porcelain, of gold and silver and steel. Of how we had lived and worked in their households, serving their every need. Of how we had rebelled and fled, and lived in fear for generations that they would seek us out and reclaim us.
I wondered if Elana and Rennin had yet realized that the sao`ashan were the so-called demons of Tal Thannuu that they had feared when we set our course toward the Lightning Plains. I had not corrected them, then. Nor had Derrek, for perhaps very different reasons than I had first assumed. If they had, the hospitality that we had so far enjoyed must be even more incomprehensible to them than it was to me.
On the day before our departure, our host, the Lady Archon Ingmatmar, priestess of the Flame, met us for breakfast one last time.
“I hope that you have found my garden suite to your liking,” she said.
“The rooms are beautiful,” Elana said without hesitation or reserve, “and you have been most generous in attending to our every need. We are deeply grateful.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Ingmatmar. “I hope that you will be met with equal hospitality as you travel deeper into the Holy Empire.”
I took that for a warning. I’ve no doubt Elana did, as well.
When we returned to our rooms, we found yet another gift of garments waiting for each of us: heavy robes and coats, and layers of undertunics, in which to face the cold of winter and the north.
“Well, Derrek,” Elana said as he demonstrated how each of the garments was worn. “What do you foresee for us as we travel inland?”
“Cold,” he said. “The hardships of travel, softened by a larger company and restored provisions. Politics. Some of the cities will be more grand, others less. It is likely that we will face each new city’s archons as though we were entering the Holy Empire for the first time. I will continue to live and travel as Yma Rinlo. There will even be cities where you will be expected to call me thus. You may, at times, feel less like diplomatic personages than like animals performing in a circus.”
Everything he said proved true.
The week or so we had spent in Ingmatmar’s estate had seen the departure of what, it turned out, passed here for summer warmth. We learned swiftly that the high walls and twisting streets of Khrigo City were protection against the howling winds of the plain as much as against beasts or invaders.
We were delivered to the city gates in palanquins, and met the caravan outside of those protective walls even as the first light of dawn pushed bitter winds from east to west. The caravan consisted of six wagons, each pulled by a pair of massive bull aurochs, with horns spreading almost as wide as Elana was tall. The first wagon and the last bore a crest that I took to be something like a gryphon, which appeared also across the shoulders of the cape worn the sao`ashan sorcerer who stood atop that first wagon, watching as cyclops and Jor double-checked the ropes and knots which secured enormous tarps over the contents of the other five wagons. He waved to us as we approached, and shouted for the giants to finish their tasks with haste – the translation spell was doing its work well, and meaning came to us almost as quickly as he could speak.
Then he leaped from the top of the wagon, landing gracefully on his toes as we approached.
“Yma Rinlo,” he said with a dramatic flourish of a bow. “This one has heard of the djuunan priestess, but did not expect to ever meet her. Nor did one expect to find her so handsome.”
Derrek bowed back, a more stately gesture. When he translated for us – a matter of necessary theater, as we were not supposed to know the Imperial tongue – he declined to repeat the flattery.
“This one is known as Darjaran,” he went on. “Welcome to my caravan. This one is grateful for the opportunity you present, to make his journey back to Ghol Vidar before winter sets in.”
Darjaran was among the tallest of the sao`ashan that we had encountered, tall enough to look Derrek in the eye. He was also one of the palest, his skin an unusual matte yellow and his eyes pearly white. He was dressed in dark browns, accented with white fur and polished brass, with heavy trousers tucked into heavier boots and a heavy coat under his fur-lined, gryphon-painted cape. The outfit was crowned with a cylindrical cap that appeared to have fur both inside and out.
Derrek translated, then introduced each of us in turn.
“We are grateful for your escort and hospitality,” said Elana, giving Derrek a moment to make that translation for her.
“You are most welcome,” he said. “This one cannot live up to the hospitality of the archons, but hopes that you will find his company more entertaining if not as refined. You may walk with the hands and the freemen if you wish, or you may ride with me upon my personal wagon. With courtesies performed, it is time to depart.”
This was, I realized as he clambered gracefully up the side of the wagon – which, unlike the clearly cargo-laden wagons behind us, looked like a house on wheels – the closest that I had physically been to any of the sao`ashan. If it had been their custom, as in Georg or Handar, I could have shook his hand. We all looked to Derrek, who shrugged. After a moment, Elana climbed the ladder that Darjaran had disdained. The rest of us climbed up after her.
Darjaran stood at the helm of his wagon, shouting orders and encouragement at the giants by turns, and snapped his wrist in a gesture that somehow prompted the aurochs yoked to his wagon into motion. The other wagons, each with a giant at the reigns, fell into order behind us.
My companions settled in at the helm with Darjaran, who filled the air with endless chatter while Derrek ran a steady and increasingly unnecessary translation. I settled myself on the back of the wagon, watching the giants. I kept my ears half-tuned toward my companions, in case they said something important or interesting, but Elana was mostly inquiring about trade. Under other circumstances, I would have found the differences – sometimes subtle, sometimes shocking – between Derrek’s translations and the spell’s absolutely fascinating; here and now, I couldn’t bring myself to care.
In addition to the giants driving the wagons, there were a dozen more working as guards, all wearing brass-ornamented steel breastplates over heavy leathers and under heavy woolen capes. The Jor, as always, travelled in pairs of twins, and for each pair of twins there was a cyclops. To that point, though the uniforms differed, they all fit the same mold as the soldiers and servants we had seen up until now. A few hours watching, though, revealed more differences than similarities.
Although not every set of three seemed to be equally close, a pair of Jor twins and their cyclops companion seemed to be a core social unit of the sao`ashan Holy Empire. Scouting groups were almost always arranged such, and when we stopped to camp for the night, more than half the company seemed to sort themselves into similar arrangements. The giants who had served the archons had been stiff backed, standing tall and proud. These giants had pride, too, of course, but they were warmer and more relaxed. They talked as they worked, laughing and jockeying. The cyclops flirted shamelessly with the Jor, and traded dirty jokes between themselves that made their twinned companions blush and squirm.
Four of the six wagons were filled to overflowing with trade goods, held in place and protected from the wind and sand by the large tarps that the giants had been securing as we approached. The last and largest wagon in the caravan was packed entirely with tents and provisions for our company. As the sun dipped toward the horizon, the caravan wound to a halt and the giants raised our small tent city with practiced efficiency around Darjaran’s wagon, with the other wagons arranged in a tight crescent to form a windbreak for the camp.
The tents were of a style unknown to me: rounded hexagons and octagons, with walls of lattice frame wrapped in heavy felt and leather, a smoke hole in the roof, and a closed vestibule outside the door. To my utter shock, iron stoves were carried off the back of the wagon and actual sheet metal chimneys were mounted in the smoke holes, even as the tents were raised around them. Some firewood had been brought with us, and scouts scoured the land for more while the drivers lit fires in the stoves and carpeted the tents with heavy furs. Our tent was pitched so close to Darjaran’s wagon that the giants who raised it could barely pass between them. It was, thankfully, much smaller than the giants’ tents, built to the scale of the sao`ashan.
Based on the treatment we had received so far, I half expected to be invited to join Darjaran for dinner in his cabin. I was half right. He did invite us to join him for dinner, but he ate outside with his company, trading lewd jokes with the cyclops and complimenting his Jor cook on quality of the curry, which was much spicier than anything we had been served by the archons. Tears poured down my face, my nose ran profusely, and I thought my tongue might actually blister. None of my companions fared any better, not even Derrek. Elana, Rennin, and I were discretely offered extra servings of rice, and extremely milky tea, which helped immensely. They offered Derrek these things, too, but not an ounce of discretion.
“Yma Rinlo!” Darjaran laughed. “This one is surprised! Are the tastes of the djuunan priestess too refined for freeman’s food? This one thought such delicacy was reserved for priestesses of the White Lady! Serve you not the World Serpent? If you cannot stomach such earthy fare, how can you stand the fire of the stars?”
Derrek tried to laugh, but it looked more like choking. He had to dab his face with a handkerchief, eat a ball of plain rice, and drink a glass of milk before he could speak.
“Darjaran, have mercy,” he pleaded. “I am many years out of practice. There are no peppers in the Compact, sweet or sharp.”
Somehow, Derrek found the fortitude to continue the charade of translating the exchange for us. Fortunately, our cultural illiteracy had saved the rest of us from giving up the game by laughing prematurely. I was upset at Derrek, yes, but not enough to take pleasure in his suffering.
Darjaran laughed, but bowed as deeply as we had yet seen from the sao`ashan.
“Then this one knows what he will sell, if ever the Great Ice Wall is again opened to trade.”
“Is that a possibility,” Elana asked, once Derrek had repeated the remark in the language of the Compact. “Trade between our peoples?”
“What was once may always be again,” Darjaran said philosophically. “But it is you all who sup with archons, not this one. But, since it was this one whose forefathers sold steel to the priestesses of Shii, and it was this one who has been hired to convey first the singing dragon and now a djuunan tyrant and her advisors to the heart of the Holy Empire, this one has hopes. What think you?”
At the word “tyrant” – which Derrek, of course, rendered as “Emperor” – I thought Elana might give up the game. Fortunately for us all, she had not discarded the careful diplomatic mask which had seen us through our time with Ingmatmar. I wished desperately to ask if that was the word the sao`ashan used for whoever ruled over the archons of the city-states, but filed that question away for later.
“I think that I would be open to such trade,” she said, “if the question were posed to me formally.”
After dinner, Darjaran left us to our own devices. Part of me wanted to explore the encampment, eavesdropping on the giants, but Elana wished to retire and that seemed the wiser choice. We found a lit lantern and a pile of firewood outside of our astoundingly over-engineered tent. Taking both inside, we found that our packs had been left here, in case we needed anything within, each at the foot of a padded mat, next to a pile of blankets and pillows. The four mats were laid out in a circle around the stove, head to head and foot to foot. The arrangement was both spacious and warm.
Come morning, we ate a quick breakfast with Darjaran and his company of giants, then climbed atop his wagon to get out of the way while the giants stripped the camp bare with even greater efficiency than they’d put it up in the first place. We were travelling again barely more than an hour after dawn.
Once again, I took a place at the back of the wagon, watching and listening to the Jor and the cyclops – the freemen and the hands, Darjaran called them – perform their duties, and watching the Lightning Plains pass behind us, mile after mile. I could see no evidence of the scrubland on the horizon. Perhaps it was already too far away, or perhaps the surprisingly sharp demarcation between scrub and desert had, in fact, been the line between the distinct realms of Holy Lands and the Lightning Plains, and the veil could only be seen from closer up, or different angles.
The landscape around us was more desolate than anything I had ever seen in the Compact. The only thing I had even heard of that might compare were the Namoran Badlands or the Sacred Desert south of Naal. The land was rocky and sandy, spotted with thin grass and skeletal bushes. It was flat except for the massive mountain range rising sharply on our left and the improbable pillar-like formations of stone that thrust up at irregular intervals in every other direction. And yet, every two or three days, the scouts came back with some massive beast to supplement our stores: a wild aurochs, usually, or a gargantuan deer-like beast that Derrek had not found in Dano`ar’s travelogue.
At a similar interval of every two or three days, we would come to a river crossing or an oasis around a deep sweet water spring. At each of these locations, a wall-like fortification had been built as a windbreak. There were no stores or sleeping chambers in these fortifications – they were used too infrequently, Darjaran explained, and too likely to become nests for scorpions or other pests – but they each contained a single outbuilding: a bath house.
The first of these we came to was early on the fourth day out, and it was both a shock and a relief: our first sign of civilization since we left Khrigo City. The river was wide and the canyon it had cut into the ground was deep. The bridge that crossed that canyon was a marvel of engineering, three great arches supporting a road wide enough for two of our huge wagons to cross side-by-side. The wall that would provide us shelter from the wind was thicker than most of the houses I had seen in So`renner, and the bath house was tucked between that wall and the edge of the bridge, itself.
When the giants had finished checking the bath house for vermin, Darjaran activated the pumps and boilers with a touch – the first overt act of magic that I had seen in the Holy Empire. His eyes glowed and the faint tracery of geometry and writing on the wall erupted into light. I could hear the water moving through the walls and the floor, and the room went from frigid to sweltering almost instantaneously.
“As guests in our Holy Empire,” said Darjaran, “I offer you the first use of the baths, while my companions set our encampment.”
Derrek bowed low and thanked him. Darjaran bowed back and left us alone in the warmth.
“If your grace and your consort would like the bath to yourselves,” Derrek added to his translation, “I’m sure Khanaarre is as glad as I am to give you that privacy. But please recall that this is a public bath, and similar courtesies and taboos apply here as at home.”
Which was an elaborate way of telling them not to have sex here.
Elana and Rennin sighed.
“I had guessed,” she said. “But you’re right to say so explicitly. I would appreciate the privacy, though.”
I smiled at them in sympathy.
“I’ll bring you your bags,” I said.
“The bath will fill in a few minutes,” Derrek added, “as the water comes to temperature. Have no worry that it will overfill itself.”
“Thank you both,” said Rennin.
We left them there.
However efficient the giants were at raising the encampment, they were not literal magic. Our tent was still half-built and our bags were still wherever they had been stowed when camp had been broken in the morning.
In search of something approximating privacy, I wandered beyond the wall behind which our encampment was rising. The land to the east of the road sloped gently downward, the canyon a dark and jagged line cutting between the pillar formations rising from the otherwise flat expanse. With the sun just reaching its apex, the ever-present wind was as low as it would likely be all day, and still it pushed me back toward the wall.
The landscape, pale stone and sand turning bleached white under the noon sun, the pillars looking like echoes of lightning rising up from the earth, was beautiful, once you grew accustomed to it. But it was so alien that it made me desperately homesick in ways that even the mines of Liddarn never had.
I was on the verge of tears when I heard the shouts of alarm.
It took me a few seconds to find the source: Darjaran and a trio of scouts atop the wall above me, pointing northward across the canyon. I looked where they looked. At first, I didn’t see it. And then I did: a silhouette descending from the sky, enormous wings outstretched and neck extended, sinuous tail extending behind. My first thought was “dragon” but the word our guides and guards used was rendered “wyvern” by the translation spell. I hoped that it was right.
I had passed the stairs that ran up the lee of the wall to the top, and I ran for them. By the time I reached the wall, the cyclops and the two Jor had formed a defensive triangle around Darjaran, polearms at the ready. He stood in the middle of them, his back to me as he faced the descending wyrm. His shoulders were tense, his elbows out, his hands in front of his chest.
I took a similar posture, my wizard’s claw ready against my palm, and waited for the creature to come within range. I sensed Derrek Rowan take his own place behind me, and I knew he held that knife ready, too.
Darjaran judged the monster within his reach, first, and I was treated to my second sight of magic in the Holy Empire. Somehow, I had not fully grasped the core truth of my people’s stories, or that when the sao`ashan divided themselves into “sorcerers” and “priestesses”, those distinctions were not just what passed for gender among them. Darjaran dropped one hand low, then raised the other high, and lighting shot up from the earth and down from the sky to strike the soaring beast in the middle. It shuddered, then fell, then recovered itself, regaining a bit of the height it had lost – if none of the momentum – with a great flap of its wings.
I stuck next, calling fire from the air, an explosion such as I had used to keep Lynqxaemass earth-bound. Except that this time I did not give the creature room to maneuver or recover. The fire burst immediately between its shoulder blades, a concussive force that rendered the downdraft irrelevant, and wrenched a shriek of fury and terror from the monster.
My attack drove the creature into a spiraling freefall, smoke pouring off its back. And yet, somehow, it still regained control, diving down into the canyon and out of our sight. I had another moment of fear that it wasn’t a wyvern or flying drake, but a true dragon. Only the fact that it had not yet spoken, even to curse us, gave me any confidence that this was self-defense, not murder.
The creature emerged from the canyon with a terrible shriek, coming up at the very edge and landing on the wall with us so swiftly that none of us had time to strike before its shriek gurgled into a spray of foul-smelling venom. Whatever attack Darjaran had planned, he managed to reform it into a protective shield before more than a fine mist of droplets made it past him. A few drops struck me, burning like nothing I had ever felt before, and drove the spells I had been preparing from my mind. The cyclops and one of the Jor beside me screamed in pain. I was in agony, too – too much to hear the words Derrek spoke, but not too dazed to see the broad blade of light that crashed down behind the wyvern’s head, scorching a mark into the top of the wall and cauterizing both sides of the wound so that the venomous spray was cut off even before the beast’s head hit the walkway.
I fell only a moment before the giants did, the venom seeping into my blood and turning the world green before it went black.
< Previous Chapter | Home | The World | Next Chapter >
Thank you so much for reading!
New chapters drop every Sunday morning barring unexpected circumstances. New maps and art drop when I finish them, any time except Sunday morning. For the inside scoop, other stories set in Dathl’lyr, access to new chapters six weeks before they go public, and/or a look into all the other things I do, please consider joining my Patreon campaign! Don’t like Patreon or just want to support my work? Drop a tip in my jar over at Ko-Fi!
Leave a Reply