by Karen Myers
“And Rubti, that means I’m placing a great responsibility on you.” His sister returned his look with unaccustomed seriousness. “Just getting our herds from Zamjilah to Kurighdunaq will be a trial, even if those we spoke with when we passed through still plan to come with you. It’s no small thing to uproot so many animals and people, and bring them to a new clan for an… uncertain adventure.”
“I can do it, tigha,” she said. “I may only be a dirum-malb now, just an apprentice herd-mistress, but I’m sure I can do it.”
Penrys laughed. “Don’t you think you’ll be a full dirum if… when you succeed? If that’s not a masterwork, moving so many animals three hundred miles west, I don’t know what would be. Talk to the dirum of this caravan and learn everything you can. Stick to her like a burr and make yourself useful.”
Najud said to Rima, “Take care of her for me.”
“Well, I will,” the older woman said, “but I don’t see the least need to worry about it. You go off and give that old Kigalino what he wants, and we’ll see all three of you in a couple of months.”
Najud and Penrys shared a look. If only it proves to be that simple.
CHAPTER 2
“Is it a river, or the world’s longest lake?”
With a sense of wonder, Penrys studied the view before her. She sat her horse with her two companions, each of them holding the lead rope of a pack string of five animals.
From the bluff, worn by the river below, the flooded Junkawa flowed east. The roiled waters of the Mother of Rivers dominated the landscape. On the far bank, to the north, an isolated ridge stretched away into the blue distance. Its near end point, cut through by the river and erased from the memory of the land after that, was covered by the works of man—Yenit Ping, the Endless City.
She knew there were ways to travel the crumbling ridge down to Mentsek Tep, the lower town at its foot, diked and embanked against high water, but at this distance she could make out only the faintest smudges of color and structure. The western garden district that Najud had described was completely invisible, but the eastern industrial area was identifiable by the smoke that drifted steadily upstream at this time of day.
“That’s the last piece of unfloodable land before the outlet, Munraz, a hundred miles away. The river broke through that ridge some unthinkable number of years ago, just like the game ‘water cuts stone.’ Some day the river will have its way again and they’ll have to move the city further back.”
Najud kept up a running education for his nal-jarghal, his apprentice. He’d visited the city before a few times, and Penrys had at least read about it and was familiar with Tavnastok on its river in Ellech, even if fifty Tavnastoks could have easily fit inside Yenit Ping, but Munraz was only eighteen and had never seen a city of any kind, there being none in central sarq-Zannib, the home of the most traditional nomads in the nation. The permanent settlement of Qawrash im-Dhal, the base of the Grand Caravan in eastern sarq-Zannib, had been startling enough, and then Tengwa Tep of the yellow bricks and colorful stucco on the south bank behind them had opened his eyes wider.
But this… this was the largest city in the world, by repute. Penrys had seen many illustrations, back in the Collegium of Wizards in Ellech, north across the sea. And there, stretched out before her, was the world’s largest river to serve it, with a valley to match, hundreds of miles wide for much of its length. There were no bridges over the Junkawa until Gonglik, at the head of the Steps, in Neshilik, fifteen hundred miles to the west, and then only over the southern of the two main branches.
She opened her mind. Even from this distance she could feel the press of all the people across the water, swamping the population of Tengwa at her back.
“I hope the others will see this,” Penrys said. “They may never get another chance.”
“Rubti told me they were going to come and look before the Biziz Rahr moves on. After they get tired of the sights of Tengwa Tep.” Najud smiled at the thought of his young sister’s reaction.
“I miss them already,” Penrys said. “After two months on the road together.”
The click of hooves reminded her they weren’t alone. Zep Pangwit, their guide, in his long brown robes, reappeared from below and waved them on impatiently to follow him down the broad diagonal track, terraced into worn steps, that led to the stone docks at river level.
Penrys had never seen a river harbor like this. A bare stone embankment stretched out from the base of the cliff, well above the spring flood level. It was two hundred feet broad, and worn lines memorialized the streets that would appear after the snowmelt had passed. Regularly spaced holes indicated the anchor points for the wattle walls that would be carried down the stepped road to erect temporary structures once the danger of flooding was over.
A massive stone wall west of the stepped road’s outlet, more than thirty feet thick and a dozen feet higher than the current river level, jutted out from the bluff at an angle to deflect the force of the river, and in the backwater formed by it were dozens of solid stone docks, each one the width of three wagons. Both the top of the barrier wall and the docks were worn smooth by water, attesting to unusually high floods. A cluster of stone-flagged roads fingered out to access the docks, but they seemed very widely placed.
“What’s this like at mid-summer’s low water?” she asked Najud.
“Look under the surface, to the right of a dock,” he said.
It was as though there were another stone dock, like a long stairstep, fifteen feet down, and her mind drew for her a path to a paved road that led to it, now underwater, from the branching network.
“It’s like a staircase… How many steps?”
Zep Pangwit was off arranging transportation with one of the larger of the docked ships, a deep-bellied horse transport, but Najud supplied the answer. “Three—low water, high water, and the rest of the year.”
“That’s quite an investment. How’d they ever build them?”
“It was hundreds of years ago,” Najud said, “but I believe they sank barges loaded with stone in low water until they had the bottom layers anchored for the breakwater and the docks, and then, over several years and only during the lowest water, they built permanent walls around those foundations. After they got above the low water level, it went faster.”
He glanced around the handful of ships at dockside and grinned at Penrys. “You should see this place in summer when it’s full of people. Once the high water passes and the merchants can set up outposts on the lower docks, the dockyard is crowded with temporary buildings. I’ve never seen them doing it, but I hear they can set up this whole place in a week, to kick off the trading season—they’ll do that just after the Biziz Rahr leaves. And then they’ve got to use the signal flags to let Yenit Ping know when there’s a dock vacancy, before they let another ship come in for mooring.” He pointed upward at the bare patches forty feet up on the cliff, with stairways and paths cut into and above them for access.
Penrys thought of the lenses they must use to read each other’s messages across the river, Yenit Ping and its satellite on the southern shore. It wasn’t the technology that impressed her—she could see how everything worked, and Ellech could have duplicated it all—but the mute testament of how much wealth and organization and manpower it took to tame this giant river well enough to create these harbors on both sides. That was the part that was so hard to duplicate in the rest of the world. And Yenit Ping was an endless showcase of marvels like this.
Penrys fingered the chain around her neck nervously and bespoke Najud so their apprentice couldn’t overhear. *Once we cross, we can’t get back without help. We don’t really know what Tun Jeju intends—what if it’s just to keep a third chained wizard under Kigali control?*
*Not too late, Pen-sha, if you want to stop. We can turn around and rejoin the biziz, or just head on back to Zamjilah or Kurighdunaq.*
She smiled at her husband, and shook her head. *What, and give up your hope of a caravan in the west? Can’t use the
permits if we don’t come when they call.*
“And besides,” she said aloud, “aren’t you curious about what they want?”
It took an hour, all three of them, to lift the packs from their horses at the dock and lead the animals through the hull access amidships to their tight stalls below deck. Penrys did her best to sooth them into compliance but a couple revolted in the unusual situation and had to be wrestled into place with ropes. They stood in place afterward, trembling, dismayed by the feel of the ship moving under their feet.
While the sailors latched and sealed the mid-ship hull gap, the three travelers helped haul the horses’ packs up the gangway, and the crew lowered them via rope and a suspended pulley into the hold. The destination was nearby, but they would have miles of stubborn sailing to get to it, fighting the current, and the load, light as it was compared to the horses, needed to be balanced correctly.
While she worked, Penrys kept an eye on their guide. His face showed little, but her mind-scan revealed more. He disliked foreigners, as he counted both the two Zannib men, and found her particularly distasteful, probably a mix of her unknown nation, her alien Zannib clothing, and her shoulder-length hair, neither long enough for a proper Kigali braid nor truly short, like the rare women in the military ranks.
He felt shamed, as well—perhaps this errand, to guide them to the Imperial Security offices in the Yenit Ping, was somehow beneath him.
She reached out to the captain and his crew. Nothing odd there, just routine employment—though the curious glances at the Zannib clothing of the party betrayed some curiosity. Zannib were an unusual sight for them, either at riverside or north of the river, where they were going.
Munraz was watching the sailors, too, and seemed able to follow the conversations. The nightly lessons Najud had given him in learning Kigali yat, once they’d crossed the border and had native speakers within reach to draw from, seemed to have worked for him—a good thing, since it would be less unsettling for him to get those mind-sharing lessons from Najud than from Penrys. He had enough of a problem with hero-worship, Najud had told her, and besides, she was a married woman now, not to mention eight years older.
Finally, all was settled, and the mooring lines were cast off, with just a couple of light sails for steering hauled up to help turn the bow out into the river current, inescapable even in this backwater. Then the captain set his sails to take advantage of the easterly wind and headed into the main stream. Najud had explained that the prevailing winds this close to the ocean ran to the west in the morning, and the east in the evening, and the seabirds hanging suspended effortlessly in the air confirmed it. Even with that help, however, it would take the ship the rest of the morning to tack upstream against the current to cross the few miles to the other side and then ride the current into the crowded central harbor of Yenit Ping.
Najud observed Munraz, with his teeth clamped shut, clinging to the rail of the ship with a desperate grasp and staring at more water than he’d ever seen before—a wholly alien environment.
“So, nal-jarghal… I forgot to ask you. Did anyone ever teach you how to swim, or should we add that to the list?”
Of course I can’t swim. Where would I have learned?
Munraz bit his tongue on the ungrateful thoughts. His jarghal meant nothing insulting by the jest, he knew. It’s not the water I fear. The river was just one more barrier erected between his old life and his new.
He wouldn’t have returned home if he could have, not to that perverted life of the wizards of his clan—the inbreeding, a future of a terrified wife or a drugged one. Or none at all.
His right hand gripped the rail of the ship harder, in momentary remembrance of the knife it had held, the firm grip needed to cut the qahulajti’s throat, above the chain, still loose on her neck—she had yet to finish growing into it, so young she was, like a little sister. So dangerous. And so doomed. What his uncle would have done to her—it didn’t bear thinking of. Munraz had denied him the prize and helped her die cleanly.
The senior bikraj, Khizuwi, had thanked him for ending the qahulajti, the necessary action to restore order. But Munraz agreed with Penrys—he couldn’t hold the young girl responsible for all the deaths she’d caused, more like a natural disaster than deliberate malice. He could never say so—he didn’t think mercy killing would be as acceptable an explanation as traditional justice. He thought Penrys suspected the truth, and understood, but time and distance hadn’t made his hands feel any cleaner.
No, there’s no way to go back, Munraz-without-a-family. The clan adoption had been good of Najud, kind. To a man with a fond family—what was one more orphan? It was something else he shared with Penrys, the shared glance when the exuberance of Najud’s siblings painted such a vivid and cozy picture, and they both felt like outsiders, through no fault of the others.
No point in thinking of Penrys. She was Najud’s, and rightly. She treated Munraz like a younger brother. He flushed remembering the one time he’d confessed his admiration of her to Najud, and had been reminded of the impropriety of it.
Their journey across sarq-Zannib to Qawrash im-Dahl had been interesting, seeing more of the world, though every time they were introduced the strangeness of a young jarghal and an almost-as-old nar-jarghal seemed to strike people, whether they asked about it or not. Najud and Penrys discouraged the questions, and he was grateful, but he felt as if his history were written on his forehead for all to see.
And then, once they’d joined the Biziz Rahr, Najud’s professional interest had pushed aside some of their studies together. Was the man a jarghal, or a trader? And Penrys was no better. Maybe this was why apprentices studied with older masters, men who’d settled into their life’s work instead of flitting from flower to flower like some unsatisfied bee.
For a moment black and yellow stripes wrapped themselves around his vision of Najud chatting at the rail with Penrys, and he added diaphanous wings before blinking them away and concentrating on keeping his stomach settled as the ship dipped and rose in the current.
CHAPTER 3
Unlike the half-empty harbor on the southern shore, the central harbor of Yenit Ping was full of life. The river rarely froze in winter, and traffic up and down the northern shore was active year round, though this was far from its busiest season. Signal flags the height of a man flapped, five and six at a time, from three stout masts, visible from the harbor and bluff of Tengwa Tep, Penrys assumed.
Their ship sought its modest mooring well away from the grand plaza of temples and imperial buildings, set back from the edge of the embankment, that displayed the order and power of Kigali for all to see. The three travelers and their guide leaned on a rail out of the way of the sailors, and the foreigners gaped at the sight.
“Is that where the emperor lives?” Munraz asked, happier now that they were no longer in the grasp of the main river.
Najud chuckled. “Hardly. He’s up there.”
He pointed up to the ridge with its cliffs, almost a quarter of a mile back from the level embankment. “The court and its functionaries live up there in Juhim Tep. What you’re seeing are the central offices of government—they have satellite locations in Juhim, and scattered in smaller districts throughout the city, and in the lesser cities of the empire, but this is their central place. The temples, too, though the best of those are up in Juhim Tep.”
“What I want to know,” Penrys said, “is how they built this huge flat place so high above the river, with the ridge set so conveniently back.”
Zep Pangwit condescended to explain the glories of Yenit Ping to these outlanders. “Our ancestors found the rubble of Tegong Him here, where the river had brought it down. All that was necessary was to break it up and level it out, until they were satisfied with the height above the floods. Of course, they broke off more of it as needed to make the cliffs steeper, for the better defense of Juhim Tep.”
Penrys blinked. Pride and satisfaction were strong in his voice, but when she’d digested his explanatio
n, she thought them well-merited. The civic and religious buildings were faced in a smooth white stone, but the older buildings she could see were the same red-brown as the cliff in the distance. The central portion of the city and the foundations of the embankment were all made from the stone of the ridge. What the river had started, the Kigali had continued, improving on nature. She wondered what it had looked like, before the empire.
From her reading she knew that there were famous hoists that hauled people, horses, and goods from Mentsek Tep at the base to Juhim Tep, but she couldn’t make out any of the details from here. What an impregnable situation for a seat of empire, like a castle with a moat of air.
She opened her mouth to ask how the upper town was defended from the back, and then thought better of it. It would be probably be interpreted as military spying rather than academic interest.
The sailors uncovered the hatch to the cargo hold, and Penrys postponed her inquiries to help unload their goods.
“Try to keep up.” Zep Pangwit’s testy complaint woke Penrys to the fact that she was staring like any countrywoman while the traffic passed her by in both directions.
There was just so much to look at. The Kigaliwen she’d met in a military context had been orderly and professional. But these city-folk, with their innumerable interests and their busy errands were endlessly distracting—as many women as men, all carrying something or hastening somewhere, children and dogs underfoot and dodging the delivery wagons, and a few people on horses, like themselves. Now and then a closed litter passed behind its guide, its four bearers chanting rhythmically to keep step together. It made the bustling Gonglik with which she was familiar seem like a rural village.
Some of the Kigaliwen stared back at them, surprised by the sight of nomadic Zannib in the heart of Yenit Ping.
Najud had taken charge of Munraz and kept up a quiet buzz of conversation to defuse the young man’s panic at the size and closeness of the crowds. Penrys swallowed uneasily and almost wished he’d do the same for her. The smells were as alien as the people. Tavnastok was nothing like this.
