A Secret Atlas

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Nalenyr

  It had to stop. Nirati knew things could not continue to go as they had been with Junel. She looked down at her wrists, the purple bruising bleeding out into yellow. The marks had remained even though he’d been gone for half a week. She’d covered them, but she was certain the servants had noticed.

  They noticed. They told my mother.

  The result had been easy to see. Her mother had offered to lis-ten to anything she had to say. The invitation had come openly and even casually. She and her mother had often spoken frankly of many things, even things sexual. Her mother was the one who prepared the draught that kept her from getting pregnant. Even so, Nirati could not discuss what she was doing with her mother.

  I hardly needed to, however.

  Siatsi never had been a stupid woman, and her skill as a bhotadina was not inconsiderable. She easily deduced that Junel had been providing Nirati with draughts to beguile her. Siatsi added things to her own potions to counteract the Desei’s work.

  That is part of it, but I also think that whatever he gives me has worn off. My body is so used to it, greater and greater amounts are needed to keep me under its influence.

  Nirati knew that Junel’s potions had been losing their power over her. But she had liked that. It was not whatever drug he gave her that created her desire to be with him; the drug had only given her the fiction that she could not control herself. She was thereby freed to submit to his desires.

  And his desires became my desires.

  Junel held a hypnotic charm that built as his darker side was revealed. He could be forbidding and even remote, disciplining her where others would just indulge her. He showed her the limits of her endurance. He took her to the edge and held her there, teetering on the brink of oblivion, then dragged her back. The next time he would take her further, carrying her to new heights that threatened even greater crashes were she to fall, and she began to hunger for the thrill of those journeys.

  She fingered the bruise on her left wrist, increasing the pressure until she could feel true pain. It hurt, but not as much as she would have thought. Certainly that pain was nothing on the scale she now knew herself capable of enduring. Junel had praised her tolerance for pain, noting that her real skill in life had been undiscovered until she began to explore. He even suggested she might be jaecaixar—capable of entering the realm of magic through pain.

  Myriad thoughts had raced through her mind when he’d said that. First, she felt a burst of joy rip through her. The healing had worked. She had found her talent, and she wanted to push further and discover more. If she was good at something, she wanted to discover how good at it she was.

  Flowing quickly behind that joy, however, doubts assailed her. What if he was wrong? What if she had clutched at the first thing that appeared to be a talent and prematurely ended her search? She’d spent her whole life rejecting possible talents, and if pain was not her talent, she would once again be good for nothing.

  She might please Junel, much as she proved a comfort to her grandfather. That did give her some purpose, but what good would it be if it meant she never truly found her talent?

  The question begged an answer. Junel had a need to control her, to make her do what he wished, to be able to do with her as he wished. And it pleased her to let him do so. She gave him pleasure by surrendering herself to his control. He showed her things about herself she didn’t know—and had not even guessed at. She certainly never would have discovered them without his guiding hand.

  But is Junel guiding me to my destiny, or leading me astray?

  She thought her life was simple. Junel showed her that was an illusion. She was as mortal as everyone else, but she had an inner strength. She could endure more than others, and might well reach magic through it. She might well have found her means to realize her full potential. She could be jaecaixar!

  Yet her pride in that accomplishment also seemed absurd. Of what use was someone who was Mystic of pain? Would the Lady of Jet and Jade have a use for her in dealing with difficult patrons? What other possible use could her skill have? It would create nothing. Perhaps if there were a way she could take away another’s pain it would be useful, but that would treat symptoms, not diseases. Her mother’s skill with tinctures could blunt pain and even begin to affect a cure. But even at the height of her powers—if she ever attained such heights—she could do none of that.

  Another darker thought raced in. Just as these last bruises had lingered longer, and Junel had given her less of his drugs to increase her ability to feel pain, so had his need to inflict pain cycled higher. He would still be tender in the aftermath and attend to her needs, salving her wounds and caring for her. His tenderness even came in inverse proportion to his savagery. At some point, he would do something he could not soothe. He might lose control—the control she ceded to him—and do her irreparable harm.

  That’s why it has to stop. For the one thing the drugs could not shield her from was fear. She had been able to handle him being stern and even cruel, but when his face became a bestial mask, his eyes narrowing and face flushing, he no longer seemed human. She wondered if he might not be jaecaixar in his own right, having mastered the art of inflicting pain. The very idea sent a shiver down her spine.

  Plus, the insanity of what she had been enduring had brought another insanity with it. Often in the aftermath, and more commonly now during her sessions with Junel, part of her escaped to Kunjiqui. Her own whimpers grew faint as she rested in her paradise. Cool waters soothed her flesh, and when the gentle wind no longer brought the sound of her own pleas for surcease, her physical body would slumber and she would remain there in her dreams.

  Sometimes Qiro joined her, but neither of them needed to speak. Kunjiqui had somehow become their sanctuary from the world. Both of them felt betrayed: she by Junel and the unfairness of life, he by his son, grandsons, his Prince and—on any given day—a host of others. Somehow, through his visits with her—where they both dangled their feet in cool streams and let rainbow-colored fish nip harmlessly at their toes—his incipient paranoia all but vanished.

  Without suspicions and hatred driving him, he was just a tired old man. It wasn’t his fault that the world had thrust upon him the responsibility it had. The two surveys currently ongoing were expanding and redefining the world, allowing him to fill in huge blanks in the map and his knowledge of it, but there was still so much unknown.

  She came to understand that it was not out of fear or hatred for Jorim and Keles that Qiro acted so coldly toward them, but a fear that all the pressures he endured would crush them inalterably. To protect them, he had to toughen them. This love formed the core of his being, but he only shed the layers in Kunjiqui. Only she knew the truth.

  I have to tell them. I have to live to tell them. Nirati resolved to confront Junel when he returned from talks with inland nobles. She could no longer endure his depredations. It didn’t matter if she would never learn if pain was her talent.

  “I may have a talent, but I do have my responsibility. Responsibility to my family.” She raised her wrists and kissed the bruises. “They do everything for me, and I shall do no less for them.”

  Chapter Fifty-five

  6th 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

  Nemehyan, Caxyan

  They think I’m a god. Jorim shook his head slowly, which Shimik mimicked with all the bewilderment Jorim felt. “They think I’m a god.”

  It didn’t sound any better out loud, and hadn’t sounded better no matter how many times he said it. The Amentzutl had a god named Tetcomchoa. His symbol was a feathered serpent, and he had lived with them over fourteen hundred years previously. He’d led them through what they called the Ansatl War. As near as Jorim could determine, it was a war against some reptilian creatures. At the end of the time they referred to as centenco, after the war had been wo
n, he had gotten into a ship and sailed west.

  Jorim wished Keles were there, because he could have made sense of everything, could have found a way to explain to the maicana representative, Nauana, how mistaken she was. Jorim, housed in the chamber atop the pyramid to Tetcomchoa, walked over to the giant wheel and traced his fingers along one of the circles of figures raised on the surface. Shimik climbed up on the big stone throne and crouched on the back of the seat.

  Nauana had taken great pains to explain everything to Jorim—though whether or not she was convinced he needed to be reeducated in this incarnation or he was just testing her own knowledge, he couldn’t tell. The Amentzutl used a cyclical calendar based on lunar time and the interplay of the red and white moons. While the black moon, Gol’dun, was not figured into their timing, Nauana assured him that all time began from the birth of the black moon, which told him just how far apart the Amentzutl and Imperial reckonings of the world were. Things continued on for a period of seven hundred thirty-seven years with simple progressions that made very good sense. At the end of a cycle, however, as the days spiraled down into the center of the wheel, they entered centenco.

  Centenco was the beginning and ending of everything. It betokened great crises and cataclysms and horrors. The previous centenco had brought years without summer, and hideous winters. A savage tidal wave had wiped out the Amentzutl fleet—ending a proud maritime tradition that had been the reason they’d been able to defeat the Ansatl in the centenco before. The centenco before that had seen a horrible plague that killed hundreds of thousands. And still before that was the birth of the black moon, whence all time for them began.

  Jorim would have liked to dismiss all of this as nonsense, but when he roughly translated the dates into the Imperial system, glacial melt ran through his bowels. Their years of no summer matched up with the Cataclysm. The Ansatl war corresponded pretty closely to the rise of the Taichun Dynasty, which remained in place until Empress Cyrsa created the Nine and went off to fight the Turasyndi. The centenco prior matched the arrival of True Men to beat back the Viruk and establish the first Empire, and the Amentzutlian dating of the birth of the black moon corresponded to when Virukadeen destroyed itself and the Viruk Empire started its decline.

  To make matters worse, the rise of the Taichun Dynasty was supposed to have been led by a man who fought under a dragon banner. Prior to that, none of the warlords or princes had dared use a crest of the gods, and many said that Taichun claimed to be a god, or the son of a god. He was supposed to have arrived from the east on a ship and surrounded himself with a cadre of copper-skinned warriors.

  Of course, later historians had explained that away as hyperbole. His arrival from the east was meant to show he was extraordinary, since the sun rose in the east and he was the light that would banish the barbarism nibbling at the Empire at the time. His bodyguard was supposed to have been Turasynd, and Taichun’s chief skill seemed to have been to make alliances with warlords, then betray them to their enemies while keeping the loyalty of their people. And so he forged a new Empire, created the bureaucracy, and dictated a book of common wisdom that governed the lives of many down to the present.

  It was the Book of Wisdom that caused the most trouble, for as Nauana would offer one of Tetcomchoa’s sayings, Jorim could complete it as easily as Iesol could quote Urmyr. She took this as a sign that Jorim was recovering his divine nature, while he was having trouble dealing with the total revision of history as he knew it.

  Jorim sighed and Shimik giggled—an annoying habit he’d learned from the hordes of Amentzutl children who delighted in his company. Jorim frowned as he looked at the Fenn. “You’re not helping, you know. Half of this is your fault.”

  Shimik’s eyes got big, and he smiled, showing all of his teeth, but did not look wholly contrite. “Mourna mourna sad.”

  The cartographer growled at him. Jorim had tried to explain to Nauana that he was not a god and not divine, but she merely pointed to Shimik as obvious proof of his godliness. The Amentzutl did not know of the Fennych, so its very appearance meant Jorim was somehow special. Shimik had also picked up on the fact that the dragon was important, so when his fur developed a serpentine pattern, all who saw him were convinced that he was divine.

  In some ways, he could have enjoyed the experience of being thought a god. There were places in Ummummorar where he was highly revered, especially after slaying Viruk. He’d been feted and saluted and offered wives by the score to breed more strong warriors like himself. He’d declined, but only because he had a taste for discovery, not power.

  The problem with the Amentzutl was that they actually expected him to do something, because the world was dying. Only he could see them through the centenco cycle. The threat to the world was now the same as when he had been there before: strangers were invading, and the Amentzutl were not certain how to stop them without his help.

  “My Lord Tetcomchoa, please forgive me.”

  Nauana’s voice remained quiet, but filled the stone chamber, softening all edges and bringing light to even his darkest mood. She remained purposeful—and supremely confident in him—despite his best attempts to dispel her notions. She had filled his head with dire predictions about the rise of the seventh god—which could have also been a tenth god since three of their gods had tripartite aspects. He barely understood what Keles would have figured out in a heartbeat, and that thought provided him a place to gather himself.

  He turned and reached out to scratch Shimik behind an ear. “Rise, Nauana. I will not have you on even one knee before me.”

  “As you desire, my Lord.” The raven-haired woman rose slowly, her breath still coming a bit quickly given the exertion of the climb. “I have come to tell you that the Mozoyan Horde has come.”

  “From the northeast? As we expected?”

  “As you predicted, yes, my Lord.”

  “And the defenses have been prepared?”

  “As per your instruction, my Lord.”

  Jorim nodded and gathered Shimik into his arms. “Very good. Call the people.”

  Nauana nodded, then looked up. He caught fear in her dark eyes and for a moment dreaded it was fear of him. “My Lord, you will wish to see. They are as fog.”

  He nodded, then walked past her to the pyramid’s flat top. He gazed north. To the northeast, slowly emerging from the jungle and filling the fields, hundreds upon thousands of small creatures became visible. He could see no banners nor crests—nothing that marked an organization, nor any leaders on horseback to provide direction. It heartened him that no giants or other monstrosities lumbered among them, but this horde of child-sized creatures was frightening enough.

  The Mozoyan were not, as he had first supposed, barbarians like the Turasynd. “Mozoyan” did not mean from outside land, it actually meant from no land. The Amentzutl had no idea whence they had come, though refugees from Iyayan, a northern city akin to Tocayan, had said they had emerged from the sea almost like turtles coming up on the sands to spawn.

  At Jorim’s request, Tzihua had gone out on one of the smaller ships in the fleet, slipped into the area through which the Mozoyan were traveling, and brought back dead bodies. He’d not had to kill anything, just harvested cadavers from what had been the Mozoyan line of march. He’d gotten them back two days previously, then Jorim and some of the scholars from the fleet had conducted dissections.

  From the very first, Jorim realized these were not the sea devils they’d seen, but he could not dismiss some relation between them. They had rudimentary gill slits, and while their flesh was not scaled, it did resemble shark leather. Their heads were not as narrow as sea devil heads, but they did have mouths full of shark’s teeth, with several layers ready to pop up in place when one was lost. They still had webbed fingers and toes, though their feet were better suited to movement on land than were the sea devils’.

  It looked to him as if these were distant cousins of the sea devils: as if the sea devils had mated with sharks and with frogs, then those o
ffspring had been bred together. Eyewitnesses had reported that the creatures could leap prodigiously, and even their emergence from the forest showed signs of that. Their fingers ended in claws, but scratch tests on small animals showed no sign of venom, whereas the teeth could clearly deliver a nasty bite. They did use weapons, after a fashion, but only sticks and stones. They went without armor. Their numbers were their strength.

  What disturbed Jorim most was that they reminded him of creatures that used to haunt his nightmares as a child. He had been two years old when his father had been lost at sea. When adults were discussing his father’s death in his hearing, they said little, but a clever boy can hear things he might only partially understand.

  And such things thrive in nightmares.

  He’d had them off and on for years. His mother would comfort him when he was young, listening to his nonsensical babbling as if it were revealed wisdom, then lie down with him, holding him until he fell asleep. In later years he would awaken alone, drenched in sweat, and would huddle in his bed praying for dawn.

  He finally confided in Keles when, at the age of ten, he’d fallen asleep in the Anturasikun garden and been awakened when a frog had snapped a fly from his face with its tongue. Once Keles had stopped laughing at his utter terror and Jorim had explained, Keles had been everything an older brother should be.

  “Jorim, you are strong and fast, and they are amphibians. They are suited to water and swimming. On land you will outrun them. And their endurance? They will have none.” Keles had tousled his hair. “Do what you do best, and you will beat them, Jorim. You’ll beat them in your dreams and they won’t bother you anymore.”

  “You’re wrong there, Keles, because they are bothering me a lot right now,” he muttered aloud.

  “I beg your pardon, my Lord?”

  Jorim smiled and turned back. “It is nothing. I was talking to my brother.”

  “I see.” Her voice had all the conviction of someone agreeing for the sake of politeness. She understood he had a flesh-and-blood brother, and she accepted that, but also knew he had no divine brother. Everyone knew that. Since his brother was mortal, he could not hear such a spoken comment, so speaking aloud was just another idiosyncrasy she would have to endure.