by Ryk E. Spoor
“Yes,” she heard herself say, and knew from that feeling within her that it was true. “Yes, Toron. I may not be always alone, but I have to be the spearhead of any force. I can’t walk in with an army.”
“Then,” he said, settling back in his chair, “what can I do for you?”
“We were hoping,” Victoria said, having finally accepted that the wonderful offer was not to be, “that you might be able to give us directions. Specifically, directions to the Spiritsmith.”
The huge head tilted, the wide-set eyes regarded them, and the mouth suddenly curved up in that fang-edged smile again. “Of course. The Raiment of a Justiciar, forged for the last living Justiciar, Kyri Vantage. And none other could forge such armor, unless it were the Wanderer or the Archmage—and the tradition would be lost, and neither of those is easily reached, either.” His gaze suddenly snapped back to Victoria. “Pardon me for a momentary diversion—but what of your other niece? Does she know—”
“The truth?” Victoria shook her head. “Not yet. Oh, I shall tell her—and soon. She is a Vantage, she has the right to know, and she is a wise girl who knows enough to stay silent on these matters. But I have not yet told her, and I will not until after Kyri is well gone.”
Kyri nodded. “She’d follow me otherwise.”
“Most assuredly—as you would, if it were Rion setting out alone on such a journey.”
“That was my concern,” Toron said gravely, “and I am glad you have already anticipated this possibility.” He rose from his chair and strode over to an ornately carven silver-and-blackwood cabinet. “Now, as to your question . . .”
The cabinet folded open, became a map of Zarathan—or, at least, of the huge continent on or near which was every country or place Kyri had ever heard of. Toron smiled again at her surprise. “Did you think I had chosen this room idly? One of several meeting places within T’Teranahm Chendoron, the Dragon’s Palace, meant for strategy and consideration of deep policy. A map is just one of the tools oft-used for such things.”
Kyri nodded, moved to join him, as did Victoria.
The cabinet-map swiveled down and moved outward, became a flat table-like surface. Toron touched a point in the center, towards the lower half, and a glittering white star of light shone out. “Here we stand, in Fanalam’ T’ ameris’ a’ u’ Zahr-a-Thana T’ikon, Zarathanton. North, beyond the Forest Sea, the Ice Peaks, and at their center and apex, the Crystal Mountain.” A line of blue traced its way almost due north to the mountain that some said was the seat of Terian himself.
“On this map, then, we look to the west, and slightly north from the Crystal Mountain, for the Spiritsmith works on the border of beauty and destruction, where he might look to the Crystal Mountain with eyes that see past the horizon, and turn precisely around,” the line streaked across and stopped at a range of mountans, at a point between two rivers, and Kyri felt a shock of disbelief, even as Toron continued, “and look to the center of Kuri’shenkildis.”
Victoria shook her head. “Why in the name of the Dragon Gods would he build a forge on Hell’s Rim?”
“You—or rather, Kyri—might ask him, when once you have reached him,” Toron answered wryly. “There are many reasons one might choose such a place, not the least being the desire to observe that corrupted place that you call, so inaccurately, Hell, and think on what once was.”
Kyri did know that the name “Hell” merely reflected the chaotically deadly conditions within, that produced aberrant monstrosities, and was not in any way connected to the netherplanes called the Hells, but she didn’t know there was a past to Hell, or Kuri’shenkildis as Toron called it. “What once was?”
Toron nodded slowly, staring at the ring of mountains surrounding abomination. “Once it was one of the fairest parts of this world. And we were not blameless in what happened.” He shook himself. “But that is not a tale for now. Many reasons the Spiritsmith might have; there are undoubtedly ores and gemstones to be found in those mountains which are rare or unheard of elsewhere. Or perhaps—even most likely—he simply prefers his privacy. Nonetheless, here he makes his home and his forge.”
Victoria squinted at the map. “Can you narrow it down a bit? That dot of yours, if I read this scale aright, must cover at least fifty miles of the mountains.”
Kyri’s heart sank a bit as she saw Toron shake his head. “I am afraid I know it only in this general sense, Victoria,” he said. “Once, true, I visited him . . . but that was very long ago, before the last Chaoswar, and the details are gone from my mind.”
She shook off the momentary doubt. “It doesn’t matter, Auntie,” she said confidently. “Myrionar said to have faith in It, and what Adjudicator Toron’s told us is incredibly useful. I could have searched all the continent from the Empire of the Mountain to Thologondoreave and the White Blade and never have come close in a hundred years of looking. That’s a big area, I know—I patrolled parts of Evanwyl, remember, so I know how very large a mile is in the wild—but still, it’s not impossible. And if there’s anyone there at all, they’ll have to know something.”
Aunt Victoria looked, for just a moment, like a mother worrying about her children, and Kyri felt a surge of affection. She’d really rather be doing this herself and keep me out of it . . . but she knows she can’t.
Victoria’s head came up and once more she was the sharp-eyed adventurer. “True enough, and there’s almost nowhere on the world where there is not someone. I would not, however, recommend you follow the route old Bridgebreaker just traced.”
Toron snorted. “I wouldn’t recommend it either; I was merely following the directions I recalled.”
Kyri just shook her head and laughed.
“Is that so amusing?” inquired Toron.
“Oh, no it wasn’t that,” she answered, and pointed. “It’s that the only reasonable route . . . is the one I just arrived by, and it’s a long, long trip.” Close to three thousand miles by the Great Road, I think, fifteen hundred in a straight line.
“Then,” said Aunt Victoria, in her most practical tone, “you’d better get started.”
19
“Well?” Poplock asked. “Any luck?”
Tobimar grinned, accompanying the smile with a gesture as though handing something to Poplock that meant things had gone well. “We’ll be talking to the Adjudicator and Marshal of Hosts T’Oroning’Oltharamnon hGHEK R’arshe Ness by the end of the day. And maybe, if we’re lucky, the King himself.”
Poplock bounced onto Tobimar’s shoulder, which sported solid guards excellent for a Toad his size to perch on. “If you manage his name that well when we meet, he’ll probably be impressed. Humans usually don’t do that well.”
Tobimar nodded. “It’s not easy. Some of those sounds aren’t meant to be pronounced by our voiceboxes, you know.” He shook his head with a wry smile. “The Lord of Waters—my mother—was very, very emphatic about getting those sorts of things right, though. I remember when my brother Terimur tried to use an exhaled cough for the hGHEK sound . . . oh, the Waters were troubled that day. A dry day for Terimur.”
“Don’t suppose you speak much Toad.”
Tobimar snorted. “I know enough to know I’d look like a fool trying. Your language includes little hops and face-shapes for the nuances, and some of the sounds! I don’t have an air-bladder for a mouth.”
“True, you poor humans are crippled that way,” Poplock agreed equably. “But I’ll give you credit for knowing your limits. And you do seem to have learned something about our language, which is more than most of you bipeds bother with. I guess being a prince makes you learn stuff.”
“If you’re a Silverun of Skysand? Learn or get no water past your ration, that’s the way of things.” Tobimar emerged from the carved-stone doorway of the Winnower of Speech, the office devoted to ensuring that proper petitioners had their opportunity to speak even with the highest in the land, and looked to his left and up.
The towers of the palace loomed up nearby, the highest reaching
more than half a mile into the sky, and it sent a small chill of awe down his back to think that soon he would walk through those gates and speak with one of the Ancient Saurans who might have actually walked his ancestral lands. It was too much to hope that he would remember the information Tobimar sought; the damage the unleashed energies of a Chaoswar did to even deific memories left only legends and vague senses of continuity usually. But there was no doubt he stood closer to the past in this place than anywhere else in the world—save, possibly, the peak of Mount Scimitar itself, or the rumored Fortress of the Wanderer.
“By the Rainbow Mountain, that’s a big building. Gets me every time I see it this close.”
“I don’t think you’re alone there. Sand and Stone, I think the central tower could hold most of Skysand’s entire palace, maybe all of it, the Seven as well as the One.”
“What’s the meaning of that?” Poplock punctuated his question with a whipcrack of his tongue that snagged a passing beetle. “The Seven and One thing. That was in your story, that poem, too.”
“Oh, that.” Tobimar saw a flamespice vendor and handed him a pair of silver Glints for a couple of skewers of the seasoned, fire-cooked meat. “It all has to do with Terian.” He explained the tradition of his family’s connection with the Mortal God. “Eight is his number, but it’s also crossed over with Seven—Terian’s one of the few gods that is respected in the Empire of the Mountain because somehow the numbers Seven and One are sacred to the God-Emperor himself, or so they say.”
“So is there . . . um, well, a Seven and a One?”
“The Seven Stars and the Single Sun?” Tobimar frowned in thought, taking a bite of the first skewer. “Well . . . there should be. ‘Seven Stars and a Single Sun hold the Starlight that I do own.’ Terian is sort of a derived name—it’s from T’Tera a Mion, Greatest Lord of the Stars.”
A bounce-nod. “Isn’t it Terian Nomicon?”
“You’re joking.” A glance showed otherwise. “Oh. Well, no, Nomicon is . . . um . . . something like giver or creator or source of good power . . . it’s a title for any of the great gods of nobility and good.”
“Oh. I thought it meant that Elbon Nomicon and Terian Nomicon were related.”
Tobimar burst out laughing, then apologized. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But the thought of the Father of Dragons being related to the Mortal God . . . might as well ask if they were related to your god with the silly name—”
A kick to his ear stung. “Bah. It’s you human and lizardy types that have gods with silly names. Our god’s name means something, and not in a language everyone else can’t speak either; Blackwart the Great, and you will know him if you meet him, by that name alone.”
Tobimar rubbed his ear gingerly and accepted the justified rebuke. “Anyway . . . where was I? Oh. Anyway, it’s said that the Seven Stars are talismans Terian made that, combined with the Sun of Infinity, become something tremendously powerful.”
“Infinity—that’s the other name for Terian,” Poplock said, pointing at the golden sigil clasping Tobimar’s cloak.
“Indirectly, from the Seven Sacred Scrolls which tell parts of his tale, yes, as he is always referred to the same way throughout, as in that verse we were discussing.”
“I did wonder,” Poplock said, crawling with casual quickness over Tobimar’s head to the other shoulder, “why it was that you didn’t try that verse. Your mentor said it would be a weapon, right?”
“When nothing else would serve, yes, I guess. Though Khoros’ words were never all that simple to interpret. And the power of Terian is really strongest against things of spiritual darkness—much worse than mazakh. If they’d summoned one of the Mazolishta, well then I might have tried it. But magic isn’t really my strong suit.”
He saw a towering shadow in the smaller castle doorway (a doorway still large enough for four men to walk through side-by-side) resolve itself into the massive figure of the Marshal of Hosts, accompanied by two human women who, while shorter by far than the immense Sauran, were clearly quite tall themselves. The first was an older woman with hair that had once been black, and still had streaks of midnight within the silver here and there; the other was much younger, maybe his own age, but with hair of mountain-sky blue, tipped it seemed with gold, and a brilliant flash of pure white in the center of her forehead. He’d noticed there was a lot of hair-coloring, skin-tinting, and feature-shaping in Zarathanton. The amount of casual magic, in fact, was staggering.
He stood to see if they would be next, but the Marshal leaned down to the Winnower and said something as the two women continued down the Road past Tobimar; the Winnower nodded and the Marshal disappeared back into the Castle, presumably to take care of some errand. Several other groups in Petitioner’s Square, the area of the Great Road that was in front of the castle, had been doing the same thing.
“Where are we in line?” Poplock asked, showing he’d been thinking along the same lines.
“I think there’s only one more group ahead of us, from what the Winnower said. If they don’t take too much time, we’ll be in pretty soon.” He gestured at a small knot of five very young people standing near the Winnower’s doorway, as though afraid to lose their place in line. “Still, ‘pretty soon’ could be an hour or so,” he said. “So let’s take a look at what’s around the Palace Square. Lots of stores and booths here meant to take advantage of this big flow of petitioners, you know.”
“Should we just wander around like that?” Poplock asked, looking back at the gate they were planning on eventually entering.
“Don’t worry about losing our place,” he said, and held up the carved crystal callstone. “The callstone will let us know when it’s our time.”
Poplock looked at it suspiciously. “How sure are you that it’ll work no matter where we go?”
Tobimar laughed. “Very sure. This is very similar design to ones I’ve seen in Skysand, and I can’t think of any time one failed, unless someone hit it with a negation—and that would be sand-blasted obvious since the crystal would stop glowing. And they’ll work for at least a mile and a half.”
“But that would take us a long time to get back from.”
“True,” Tobimar acknowledged, “and while they would be able to tell from the stone that we were responding, they wouldn’t want to waste the time waiting, and neither would we. So that’s why we’ll stay here in the Square. Only a few minutes to cross even from the far side.”
Satisfied, Poplock settled back down on Tobimar’s shoulder, and Tobimar walked idly around the perimeter, examining cloth, buying a small crystallized sweetsap treat (and getting a bag of crickets for Poplock), and generally surveying the immense variety of goods to be found here in front of the Castle.
A display of goblets, trays, and other eating utensils caught his eye and he strolled over to the vendor. “Unusual to see a Child of Odin dealing in these wares.”
“Hah!” Very humanlike but both too wide and too short for normal humanity, the Odinsyrnen vendor looked up with a smile on her broad-featured face. “You mean us dwarves deal more in the military workings. You’d be surprised indeed. But not so surprised, at that. Similar skills, and both requiring a heart for beauty in shaping, even if the one is for killing or preventing killing, while mine is—I like to think—far more practical application for everyday beauty.” She watched him as he carefully picked up various pieces and examined them. “You have an eye for symmetry, I see.”
“Symmetry is often a foundation for beauty,” Tobimar agreed. “This one . . .” he held up a long serving platter, half of a silvery-blue metal, the other side of gold or a heavily gold alloy, the two halves separated by a filigreed border bar of silver or platinum, “. . . an excellent Ya-Shi-Naiga serving dish.”
“Correct—but how do you know? After all, the matebond dishes for mazakh bonding feasts are very similar.”
“Well, first, I think the mazakh bond-dishes have two pairs of handles, one pair near each end; they’re carried to the table by the bond
ing couple, facing each other and moving sideways, if I remember right. This tray has two handles only, one large one on each end. Second,” he pointed to the handles, “the blue end’s handle has what looks to be an eight- to ten-carat Ymir’s Blood set in the center, while the gold end sports a Fire Ruby of about the same size.”
Poplock hopped onto his hand and poked at the Ymir’s Blood, a gem the impossible pure blue of a glacier’s heart. “Chilly. Oh, I get it!”
“You are quite correct, young human. The virtues of those stones now fill their respective portions of this dish, so that the hot-and-cold dishes favored in Artanian Ya-Shi-Naiga maintain their temperature and freshness during one of their interminable ceremonies. If you were able to identify those gems so certainly, however, you must either be far more perceptive, or perhaps more educated, than many.”
Tobimar grinned. “It was the gems that caught my eye, actually.” He noticed the Marshal now emerging from the main castle gate, then striding over to the Winnower; a few moments later the group of five young people followed the Marshal inside. Almost there. “I’m Tobimar Silverun.”
“Silverun . . .” she said, seeming to roll the word around in her mouth as though sampling it. Then her eyes lit up with understanding. “Ah, now, of the Silverun family? From Skysand itself? That would indeed make sense. Many gems from your country’s mines have I used over the years; their magic is powerful and fresh. Well worth the premium.” She leaned forward. “You wouldn’t happen to have any . . . trading supplies, would you?”
Tobimar smiled back. “I’m not a miner or a vendor, but I have been carrying some . . . reserves with me.”
“Any you care to sell? I’m looking for materials now as it is.”
Tobimar brought out the small pouch he kept hidden in his clothing and handed it to the merchant. She carefully opened it and poured the contents unobtrusively into a nearby table, set slightly below the level of the display stands, with a low ridge running around the outside to prevent anything on it from rolling or falling off.
