In addition to the pyramids, which rose to a height of nearly one hundred feet, a number of circular buildings a third of that height dotted the landscape. They, too, had a solid stone construction. While they lacked the ornate nature of Imperial construction, they were clean and strong. What ornamentation they did have came in the form of carved stone blocks with serpent and bird imagery that reminded Jorim rather hauntingly of Naleni and Desei symbols.
“Tzihua, how many Amentzutl in Tocayan?”
The warrior held his right hand up, splaying out all five fingers. He closed that hand into a fist, chopped his left hand at his wrist, then again at his elbow. “Do you understand? Ten in hand. Ten more. Ten more.”
Jorim knew thirty could not be the correct answer. “I am not sure.”
Iesol spoke. “Master Anturasi, they use the Viruk system, counting by tens. The wrist would multiply by ten, and the elbow ten again. The shoulder another ten, perhaps? He is telling you there are a thousand people here.”
“A thousand people in an outpost?” Jorim shook his head. “How long has Tocayan been here? Tocayan yan?”
Tzihua’s fingers flashed and hand chopped.
A hundred and twenty years? Jorim glanced back at Anaeda. “Could they have done all this in a hundred and twenty years?”
“Not a thousand people, not unless they were far more industrious than even the Naleni are.” Her dark eyes narrowed. “That, or Minister Iesol might have offered a solution?”
“What?”
“If they count in the Viruk manner, perhaps they used Viruk magic.”
“That’s not . . .” Jorim fell silent and tried to reconcile two ideas he thought of as mutually exclusive truths. First, he knew the Viruk used magic and could be very powerful. The Viruk ambassador had cured his brother, and no Naleni physician could have done what she did. While Men had once worked hard to refine skills that would give them access to magic, the Viruk just played with magic all by itself.
The vanyesh had sought use of Viruk-style magic. Their quest had proven to be a disaster. Playing with magic had triggered the Cataclysm. That humans could practice magic and be productive with it—all without disastrous side effects—clearly was unthinkable.
But Jorim knew that magic was a skill that could be mastered. The vanyesh had some initial success. The Viruk likewise were skilled at it. Perhaps the Amentzutl had discovered a discipline that provided access to magic under controlled circumstances. If that were true, then their most powerful mages would be Mystics, and that would be a sight to behold.
Discovery of such a discipline would be worth more than all the gold and jewels we could possibly return to Nalenyr. The outpost and fields suggested that if magic were being employed, its harmful side effects were controlled. Just the ability to do that, to harness wild magic, would allow the opening of the Spice Routes to the west.
Jorim found himself becoming very excited by the prospect, so he quickly reined himself in. Speculation was all fine and good, but he still had no evidence that these people controlled any magic at all. Everything he saw could have been performed by massive armies of slaves, and their dead bodies could have been fertilizing the fields through which they walked. It could be that the Amentzutl didn’t even consider slaves to be people, so they weren’t included in Tzihua’s accounting. But regardless of how Tocayan had been created, for it to have been done in a hundred and twenty years was remarkable, and Jorim meant to have the secret of its history.
As they drew closer to the city, Jorim watched for evidence of magic, but saw none. In fact, what he did see reminded him very much of the Ummummorari. Women and men alike wore loincloths and, save for those wearing armor, strode about bare-chested. They wore their black hair long and braided into a single queue with brightly colored threads and the occasional bead. Field hands’ clothing had none of the colors worn by the soldiery or people encountered closer to the heart of the city. Certain colors seemed to denote caste, with green common to the soldiers, red to merchants, yellow to laborers, black to officials, and purple to individuals Jorim assumed were part of a priesthood. While a particular color would predominate, accent colors seemed to indicate other affiliations, and decorations woven into garments or beaten into armlets, anklets, bracelets, gorgets, and pectorals fell into the classes of Snake, Cat, and Eagle.
Tzihua led them to one of the large round buildings, which clearly was a dwelling complex, and into its heart. He took them to a central chamber and opened the door. “Here is your Moondragon.”
Within they found the crew of the Moondragon looking a bit haggard, but fed and rested. The circular room had a pool in the center for washing and waste stations around the outer perimeter. The crew had been given woven mats upon which to sleep and enough food that some fruits and meal breads remained stacked in a corner.
Lieutenant Minan straightened his uniform, approached, and bowed to Captain Gryst. “I deliver myself into your custody, Captain, for whatever discipline you deem appropriate.”
Anaeda returned the bow—along with Iesol, Shimik, and Jorim. She straightened first. “For what am I disciplining you?”
“The loss of my ship.”
“I think you will find it is where you left it. Repairs should be well under way by the time you return.” She looked around. “It looks as if your crew is all present.”
“Save for four we lost in the storm, Captain.” Minan looked down. “And two these people have housed elsewhere. We have seen one of them on occasion, but nothing of the other.”
Anaeda turned to face Tzihua, then glanced at Jorim. “I wish to know where my missing people are.”
Jorim began to relay her request to the Amentzutl warrior, but from behind him one of the two missing men slipped into the room. Dirhar Pelalan dropped to one knee before Captain Gryst and bowed deeply. “I have come, Captain, to be of help.”
Jorim half turned back to Minan. “The other missing person is Lesis Osebor?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
Anaeda frowned. “You had two linguists with you, Lieutenant. They took Master Pelalan to teach them our tongue. Master Osebor has been sent north, I assume.”
Tzihua bowed his head. “Nemehyan.”
She looked at Dirhar. “Meaning?”
“Master Osebor has been sent to the Amentzutl capital, Nemehyan. His task is to teach our tongue to the Witch-King.”
Jorim raised an eyebrow. “Witch-King?”
“The title in Amentzutl is maicana-netl. The maicana are the ruling caste, inheritors of a magic tradition of great antiquity and power. The King is the strongest among them. It is said he can freeze the sun in the sky and shatter mountains with a word.”
Jorim smiled. “That I would like to see.”
“And you shall.” Tzihua nodded slowly. “Now that your sea princess has come, we shall all travel north and the maicana-netl, wise beyond all wisdom, can decide what to do with you.”
Chapter Forty-nine
1st day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat
9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Opaslynoti, Dolosan
Moraven Tolo found himself no more at ease in the scavenger city after a week than he had been when they first rode into it. He realized that while he had lived a long time, his experiences had been largely confined to the old Imperial borders, and usually in Erumvirine, Nalenyr, or the Five Princes. He knew a great deal about people, and his experiences told him a lot about how they would react in certain situations. Those situations, however, had always been within the confines of what could have been described as a civilized area.
The very approach to the city alerted his sense of unease. He’d seen odd reflections of himself in the smooth stones. He appeared as a child at times, but he could not recognize himself. Another time he wore a complete suit of armor, trimmed in purple; but he’d never seen such a thin material, much less had it on. He s
aw himself with a full beard streaked with white and again as a moldering corpse with a gaping wound where his scar existed.
He wasn’t certain what he was seeing, and had no way to determine if it had significance or not. He wanted to dismiss it, but part of him could not. Ever since the healing, he’d felt different in an almost imperceptible way. The visions resonated with that sensation and fed it.
If he needed a sense of the normal to quell his sense of the unusual, Opaslynoti was not the place he would find it. Those living there took great delight in being the antithesis of the civilized east.
The six of them stood out, and the people of Opaslynoti acknowledged this and wanted little to do with them. Had Borosan not been with them, they would have been driven back into the Wastes and no one would have cared had they never been seen again.
But Borosan’s presence earned them some tolerance. While most said he was still too normal to really be one of the thaumstoneers, his skill at gyanri still earned him respect. And while his manner did fit in with Opaslynoti’s denizens, even Moraven agreed that, at least physically, Borosan was more normal than any of them would ever be.
Borosan’s friend Writiv Maos provided them accommodations in his home, which was on the third of the eight levels in the city. The ninth level was the Well, but no one dwelt there, to the best of anyone’s knowledge. Level three was the second nicest level. Anything above it was given over to visitors and newcomers, all of whom were viewed with suspicion. Below level four lived longtime residents who had no luck or ambition. They were content to grind out a meager and difficult existence working in the Well or in the ancillary industries that had sprung up to serve the needs of the gyanridin.
The Well became the focal point of the city and was, at once, revered and feared. When magic storms poured down from Ixyll, a certain amount of the wild magic would flow down into the hole at the city’s heart. No one knew how deep it was, and various stories suggested it opened into a vast underground complex of caverns, while others said the hole opened into another world. All Moraven knew was that the Well was filled with magic: a shimmering pool with shifting violets and blues that matched the curtain surrounding Ixyll itself.
The laborers of Opaslynoti performed three major jobs. The miners dug into the earth and produced raw thaumston ranging from chunks the size of a man’s head to buckets of dust. Many of the miners worked in Opaslynoti itself, but a significant number also worked independent claims outside the city. Prospectors roamed about looking for places where the thaumston already had accumulated a charge or was relatively free of impurities.
A second class of laborers cleaned and crushed the raw ore, mixed it with water and sand to create a slurry, then packed it into molds. The sheets were then set out in the sun to bake. The molds turned out pieces from a finger length to slabs suitable for using in a surface building. Most often, however, they were shaped into bricks nine inches long, three wide, and two thick.
The ingots of thaumston would then be loaded onto pallets or into baskets and lowered by means of cranes and pulleys into the Well. Moraven watched men performing that part of the operation for two days. The chargers worried about the day’s temperature, the depth to which they lowered the cargo, and seemed to constantly grouse about how this load would likely be the last until the storm season started.
The artisan laborers concerned themselves with fabricating a variety of devices that consumed the magic energy in thaumston. Many were simple things similar to the lights that glowed on some of the Nine’s finest buildings. Also popular were small mechanical animals with tin flesh and gaudy paint. For some reason, when Moraven traveled with Rekarafi through the market, an inordinate number of people offered him these small amusements.
Rekarafi dismissed the offers with a flick of taloned fingers, but only once spoke. “Do you not realize the Viruk no longer have children who would be entranced by these things?”
The remark shook Moraven. He had been cut off from his past, but he still had a future. If Viruk can no longer have children, they are cut off from any future. He wondered if it was that the Viruk could no longer reproduce, or just chose not to. Would I make that choice if my people had fallen from glory?
The easily attainable supply of thaumston made artificial light widely available. This allowed much of Opaslynoti’s life to take place deep in the earth. The marketplace, which had its surface opening beneath one of the domes, descended all the way to level five. Terraces provided permanent space for longtime merchants, while transient traders fought for space down on the central floor. Many of the merchants even invested in brilliant displays to attract people to their stalls, displays that could be considered works of art.
Light was not always useful, for many of Opaslynoti’s citizens had suffered horribly from years of exposure to the wild magic. It did things to them—occasionally subtle—but even voluminous robes and masks failed to conceal the grander changes. Worse, many of the people seemed to revel in these.
Yet others had clearly sought them. Just as the Turasynd had inserted feathers into his flesh so they would become part of him, some of the people here had done even more bizarre things. One family group had four arms, one pair set below the other. The story went that several generations earlier two brothers had been prospecting. One had broken his legs in a fall, and the other was carrying him on his back when a magical storm poured over them. The two men had merged into one and the change had bred true.
Others, it was said, had sewn the arms of corpses to their chests in hopes that the magic might affect them the same way. They had failed, but people with insect antennae sprouting from their foreheads or tiger-stripe pelts to keep them warm suggested that sometimes the experiments worked.
Moraven found these deliberate changes more difficult to accept than the random ones. That struck him as curious because he, too, through his discipline and study, sought to perfect himself. He thought back to Ciras’ comment about the disaster that would result from magic being made simple. What he saw here suggested Ciras might be correct.
He searched for patterns in the wild magic’s random effects. He saw many people who shambled along on legs that no longer bent in the normal fashion, or dragged an arm that had grown longer than its fellow. Some of them were barely recognizable as human. The most tragic cases were blamed upon being caught out in a magic storm, or a fall into the Well. Apparently some sought to commit suicide by diving into it. And while the Well never gave up its dead, it did let the living bob to the surface from time to time—though once they were rescued they undoubtedly wished they had not been.
He saw no formula to how people were changed, but he realized finding one might be impossible. As he had told Nirati and Dunos, a healing would take time. But here the magic would also use as its foundation who the person had been at the time of his change. In the case of the brothers, had it been their abiding love for each other, and the sacrifice of one for the other that enabled them to survive as they did? Did the man have one arm grow longer than the other because he was greedy and grasping?
And, more importantly, could the discipline of the swordsman’s art allow Moraven to control the magic and the change it would make in him? The tingle had grown to a distraction. It felt as if he had been sunburned. He hated the sensation. When he could no longer bear it, he sought distraction—and Opaslynoti had much to offer in that regard.
As with most other towns, hard work and spare money meant many recreational occupations flourished. Plenty of taverns had been dug out of the earth. None of them approached the simple elegance of taverns in the Nine, but this did not seem to bother those who filled them all hours of the day and night. Two breweries served the city, transporting kegs of beer on the backs of gyanrigot the size of draft horses. Houses of carnal pleasure did not seem to rely on gyanrigot, though Moraven would not have ruled it out. Though he did not survey the houses, he assumed that each would cater to a certain clientele and really had no desire to visit the more venerable establishments.
The largest centers of recreation, however, were the arenas. They ranged in size from a small pit dug in the back of a tavern to large amphitheaters capable of seating hundreds. Their presence did not surprise Moraven, since duels between men had always attracted a crowd. When Ciras heard of them, he wished to be given leave to enter a fight, and Moraven was almost tempted to let him do so.
Yet here, the arenas were not meant as places where life could be lost. The only combatants accepted were gyanrigot. Large and small, rigidly classified by weight, the machines battled to the delight of spectators. Gyanridin throughout the city proudly displayed their creations. Arenas accepted bets, and vast sums of money changed hands among the spectators. The combatants and their creators won fame and small purses for their efforts.
And while it might have seemed natural for the misshapen to battle each other like beasts, that was precisely the reason they did not. While the citizens might eschew civilization, they had no intention of abandoning their humanity. Their resolution not to kill one another united them, and murder was punished by staking the killer out where the storms could get him. The magic that changed them all would judge him guilty or innocent, and all would live with the result.
Borosan Gryst had created a new version of his largest thanaton and had lost little time in scouting out an arena where it could fight. Moraven, Ciras, and Rekarafi accompanied him to a medium-sized arena on the third level. Keles had been felled by one of his blinding headaches and Tyressa had remained behind to tend to him, but both bid them go and enjoy themselves. The quartet paid for admission in gold, which seemed to strike the ticket taker as unusual; most others bought their way in with nine grains of thaumston dust.
The quartet moved along the upper tier and finally found a place to watch the battle down in the arena. Centered in the reddish sand, a gyanrigot looking a lot like a scorpion scuttled around in a slow circle. Its six small legs held its belly a yard off the sand. The two larger forelegs ended in massive claws with serrated inner surfaces. A curved tail, complete with a wickedly sharp stinger, rose over its middle.
A Secret Atlas Page 39
