by Wil McCarthy
“Among other things.”
In fact, Manuah was worried about all sorts of possibilities, only some of which he could clearly articulate. His mother, Adrah’s aunt, had often chided him as someone who worried too damn much, about too many things. And perhaps she was right about that, but while she had trained him to keep quiet about most of it, that had really only made the problem worse. The less he shared of the things that bothered him, the more power they seemed to hold over him. And yet, the more wealth and power he accumulated, the more men he had working for him, the more servants his wife commanded, the more ridiculous it seemed for him to be afraid of anything at all.
After a moment of silence he asked Adrah, “Can you people really speak to the gods? Do the gods speak back to you?”
“Not in The Language, no. You know that. But they make their patterns known. Brother, what’s on your mind?”
Sighing, Manuah took his gold-leaf-covered walking stick—worth more than most men earned in a year—and pointed west to the Great River, past the edges of the city and the harbor, to where the river’s waters fanned out and spilled broadly into the ocean. “That water is rising, too. Every year, the river gets a little wider, eating up a few more feet of the farms that line it. Every year, the spring floods get worse. Not just deeper, but worse, with faster water and more mud and debris. This water comes from somewhere, yes? Past all the towns, into the wild lands and the desert beyond that, there are hills, and the water comes from behind those. From the mountains.
“The mountains are white. The wildmen call it ‘snow,’ but they say it’s what happens to water when it gets cold. And when it gets warm, it turns back to water again. What if the mountains are getting too warm? What if the land between the harbor and the delta just washes away? And Brother, the edges of another big river delta begin just thirty kos farther that direction. You haven’t left The City in many years; you don’t really understand the shape of the land, but the fan of the Other River is close. And that water is rising. Kingdom is great because the land is fertile, because we live in the flat space around these two river deltas. But what if the water keeps rising?”
“I’m sure the gods would never allow that,” Adrah said, with a confidence that Manuah envied.
“Would you ask them for me?” he pressed. “I’ve seen some big storm surges, and I am afraid. If the gods became angry, it wouldn’t take much to drown us all.”
“Well, then we’ll see to it they don’t get angry. My brother, you look so tense. It helps nothing if you walk around like that. Will you try some poses with me?”
* * *
Throughout this conversation, Harv Leonel’s consciousness hung just beneath the surface. He was Manuah, or felt that he was, and could not remember anything else. But here, for a moment, his own thoughts floated to the surface, and he noted (with something like astonishment) the grace of their speech. The word for Harbormaster was something like Vaivas Vakta or “Keeper of the Waters,” and Adrah’s title was Vaivas Jyotis or “Keeper of the Stars.” The Great River was Sarudas Vakti or “stream so big it has waves,” and the Other River was Chera Vakti, which meant something like “Brother of Waves.” And The City was Chera Sippar, and the Kingdom was Chera Desa, and the word for brother was simply Chera. And so in their words and in their minds, everything was brother to everything else, and the result was a kind of holistic poetry Harv could barely follow, like a joke whose punchline he didn’t quite get. But this was their everyday speech; they weren’t composing or trying to outdo one another. It seemed this wordplay came as naturally to them as speech itself.
And Harv also took a moment to, it seemed, turn Manuah’s head and survey the landscape around them. He could not, for the life of him, figure out where they were. The City had thousands of stone buildings and tens of thousands of wooden ones. Probably at least a hundred thousand inhabitants, which was a large settlement for almost any era. And the Great River had to be almost ten kilometers wide—wider than the Nile!—and he had the distinct impression that it flowed from north to south, and that the Grand Sea was to the south, and that this brother river to the west was parallel, and nearly as large. And although he had aced every geography and geology and world history course he’d ever taken, he couldn’t think of a single spot on Earth that met this description. Adrah looked vaguely Middle Eastern, or perhaps Indian, and his clothes bore some resemblance to those of a Tibetan monk, although the colors were all wrong, and the cloth, while soft-looking, seemed to have been woven from particularly large thread. And although it was summer, the temperature here did not seem overly hot. Did any of that mean anything at all?
Anyway, was there really such a thing as a saltwater frog? Was Harv simply hallucinating? Given the strength and complexity of the magnetic fields pulsing through his brain, he supposed it was a possibility. He surely wasn’t supposed to be here, and no one had ever done anything like this before, and every second that went by might be causing irreversible brain damage. And yet, there seemed to be very little he could do about it. He couldn’t feel the chair in which he was reclining. Couldn’t feel himself at all. He was Manuah.
These thoughts flitted through his mind, taking all of two seconds, or a third of a kesthe, before his consciousness submerged again.
* * *
Manuah grumbled for a few moments, before allowing Adrah to lead him through a series of stretches—first the fingers, then the wrists, then the elbows and shoulders, and similarly with the feet and legs and finally his back, which really did ache. He might be a lord and a shipping magnate, but when the dock crew was short a man he was not above loading and unloading cargo with his own two hands, or supervising a repair crew by getting in there and showing them how they were supposed to apply the tar. Or steering. No matter how respectable he got, he would never lose his love for standing at the stern of a boat and sculling, or pulling on the steering oar for all he was worth, to make those tricky turns without any of his sailors having to dip a paddle in the water. He never felt more free than that.
“You carry your worries on your back,” Adrah told him. “I can see it from here. Perhaps that wife of yours can rub it for you, but here, stand with me. Like a tree. Like a post. Like a marsh reed in the wind. Now extend your knee, and now the other one…”
This was not Manuah’s first time being led through the poses—not even his first being led by his baby brother—but it was perhaps the first time he felt that spiritual thing one was supposed to feel while doing it. Not the presence of the gods, exactly, but a kind of openness to the world beyond the boundaries of his flesh. Something pulsed in him that was neither fire nor water nor light, nor strength or weakness, but resembled all of them in some way, and when it was done—after almost half an hurta of jumping and posturing—he felt a better kind of tired than he had in months.
“Clarity,” his brother told him. “The poses align the body in accordance with natural principles, and this in turn aligns the mind. Helpful thoughts join together, and unhelpful ones slide off you like water off a heron’s wing.”
“Why?” Manuah wanted to know. Why should it work that way? If the body and soul were separate things, then how could the one affect the other?
“Because the gods decree it,” Adrah answered happily.
And again, Manuah envied him, because his own mind went to darker places. Indeed, if the gods had that kind of power, to reach inside human beings and affect their bodies and their souls, then what couldn’t they do? If angered by the actions of human beings, what wouldn’t they do?
“Keep them happy,” he beseeched his brother, and mounted the first ladder to begin the long climb down to solid earth. In the meantime, he had an appointment to keep, here in the physical realm.
“May the next month be kind!” Adrah called after him.
1.2
The palace of King Sraddah was, without any doubt, the finest building Manuah had ever seen, which made it most likely the finest in the history of the world. It might be only half a
s tall as the Tower of Stars, and surrounded closely by lesser buildings that blocked the view of it, but it was covered in ornate carvings shod in gold and coppergreen leaf, and painted with red ochre and white lime. It was a battlefield of color; not only images, but also words, for those few who could interpret them. Across almost two hundred years, each generation of the royal family had added more to the display, until hardly a spot remained smooth and colorless. It was a lot to take in, and a few quick glances would hardly even convey the shape of the building, much less the carvings on it! But if one cared to spend a day studying the outer walls (which Manuah had, in his youth), they told the story of Sraddah’s ancestor Kagresh, who had united all the towns along the banks of the great river, and merged several of them to form The City. A lot of blood had been shed in the process, and many grudges were formed whose echoes lingered even today. And yet, the survivors had outnumbered the dead, and had eventually come to agree that their lives were better, and that swearing allegiance to a king and being part of his Kingdom was not such a bad thing after all.
The entrance was a door in two parts, made of great wooden planks held together with copper bands, and guarded by three soldiers dressed in leather and wooden armor, almost as if they were giant toys. But these were hard men who had fought their share of battles, and had accepted this quieter job as a reward for service. Their spears were tipped and shod with copper, and they carried nasty-looking obsidian knives. They were not to be trifled with.
One of them held a big gray dog on a leash, and the dog eyed Manuah suspiciously, as if deciding where to bite him if things went ugly. Also not to be trifled with.
Fortunately, Manuah had made an appointment, and was expected, and his golden walking stick and crimson robe and broad-brimmed sailor’s hat left little doubt as to his identity. “Harbormaster” was a secular hereditary title, and “Counter of Tides” was nominally a religious one, although the priestly trappings had fallen away from it long ago. “Lord Cousin” was one he held but never used, because it sounded pompous down on the docks, but in any case, Manuah carried enough royal blood that he was not to be trifled with either.
“Good morning,” he said to the guards, speaking familiarly, as though they were his own workmen.
“Harbormaster,” one of them acknowledged.
“I’m here to speak with my cousin,” he told them, and this was a little pompous, because he was such a distant cousin that he was not entirely sure of the lineage path himself. But still, the guards nodded and bowed and got out of his way.
“Beautiful weather,” one of them said to him as he passed, and if they had been his workmen (or especially his sailors) this would have been the start of a conversation about winds and tides and the movement of high clouds. But these were soldiers, and “weather” to them was only a question of rain or sunshine on their backs, so he simply Mm-hmm’ed his agreement and moved on into the palace.
The interior courtyards were no less beautiful than the outer walls, though in a different way. Here, ferns and cedar trees grew, and elaborate carpets were draped along the inner walls, and so many linen-robed servants were scurrying around that Manuah wondered (not for the first time) what tasks could possibly keep them all busy all day. But the question was partially answered when three of them approached him: one woman with a clay mug of water, one with a small plate bearing an even smaller piece of oiled and salted bread, and one young man with a writing board and charcoal pencil.
“Good morning to you, Lord Cousin Harbormaster,” this one said. “May I offer you refreshment?”
“No, thank you,” he answered. “I broke my fast at home.”
“Yes, of course,” the scribe said quickly. “I meant no offense.”
“None taken,” Manuah assured him.
The two of them tapped hands. Then, even more delicately, the scribe asked, “May I offer to wash your feet and armpits before your audience with His Majesty?”
Manuah laughed. “No, thank you. My wife has made quite sure I’m presentable, and I haven’t stepped in anything on the way over here.”
“Of course, Lord Cousin Harbormaster. I’m ashamed to ask the question at all.”
“We all have our jobs to do.”
“As you say.”
The two women melted away on some other business, while the scribe led Manuah into the sanctum, down a series of dim corridors, and into the court chamber where King Sraddah stood, holding a slip of thin papyrus up to the unshuttered window, trying to hold it steady against the light breeze.
In a corner, the young Prince Raddiah sat, playing with little tin soldiers. Nearly a hand taller than the last time Manuah had seen him, he was dressed in a finely embroidered, red-and-yellow byssa-cloth robe that was clearly too small for him, but just as clearly too expensive to discard. He looked up for a moment, saw it was only his boring Uncle Manuah, and looked disappointed.
“Hello, Uncle,” he said, and turned back to what he was doing. Then, more softly: “Die, Surapp dogs! See what comes of defying me.”
“Your Majesty,” the scribe said to the king, “may I announce your Lord Cousin Manuah Hasis, Harbormaster of The City and Counter of Tides.”
“You may,” the king said, without looking up. He wore a thin band of gold around his head, and smelled of perfume and incense and sweat. “Damn it. One of my generals has drawn a picture of the entire Kingdom here, but I can’t seem to make sense of it. There’s a trick to it, like reading I suppose.”
He showed it to Manuah, who said, “Yes, the sailors sometimes draw pictures like that as well. Though not on papyrus, of course.” Essentially, boats were made of papyrus—tough reeds of it flattened and woven and bundled, and then flattened again, and curled up at the edges and ends, and decked with cedar planks. And then, in the case of Manuah’s own boats, caulked at the bottom with tree rosin and oil sands. But if a sailor were ever holding a sheet of papyrus, it was generally saturated with tallow, and he was about to weave it into the hull to repair a minor leak. (Major ones required drydocking and, in Manuah’s very strong opinion, a high-grade asphalt pour.)
“Hmm,” the King said, not finding the comment amusing. “Well, I have an invasion to plan, somewhere on this little picture. Can you see Surapp Great Town on here? Damnation and rot, I wonder if my eyes are bad. But how could they be? I never have trouble seeing things far away. Wouldn’t be much of a general if I did.
“In any case, the Surapp plague me. Building a city of their own! The stone there is of poor quality, but for two generations they’ve been quarrying granite in the Back Hills, and carrying the blocks down the Other River on boats. Two generations without a break! Which shows a lot of initiative, I think, but we can hardly allow it. Not unless Kingdom absorbs the Surapp.” He smiled at the idea. “Then we’ll have two cities: one on the east of the Great River, and one on the west of the Other River. That seems acceptable, yes? There’s a symmetry to it, and it might encourage landless sons to colonize the coastlands in between. And then the industrious Surapp will serve me instead of blistering my bottom.”
That idea seemed to please him. He spent several seconds just standing there, contemplating it. Then troubling thoughts seemed to leak in; the ease left his face. “We’d have to do something about their language, don’t you think? I never could understand those bastards.”
“It’s not so hard,” Manuah said, perhaps a bit too hurriedly. Indeed, the speech of Kingdom was more similar to the Surapp language than the faces of Manuah’s sons were to one another. Two weeks’ sail to the west, where the Grand Sea narrowed and finally ended, there was a collection of towns along a river of their own, and their speech was even farther removed—more a cousin than a brother to The Language. And another quite different cousin dwelt two weeks’ sail to the southeast, on a river of their own, and although Manuah had never been farther east than that, he’d heard tales of even more distant lands, with even stranger speech. If Sraddah had to learn one of those, he might have something to complain about. Fo
r that matter, if one traveled fifteen days up the Great River, past Shifpar and Erituak, there were orchard keepers and wildmen who spoke a completely different language that seemed to bear no relation whatsoever. By comparison, the Surapp tongue was nothing at all. “It’s mostly a matter of inflection.”
“But why should I learn their language? Does it benefit me? Are they delivering it to me as tribute? No, if they’re to join our Kingdom then we must all speak the same. The conqueror decides, but everyone reaps the benefit. You see? That’s how to think big! One day, won’t my great-great-grandchildren rule the entire Earth?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Sire.” Manuah said. He tried to stay out of politics as much as possible, but he had been to Surapp Great Town many times—it was less than two days’ travel!—and there were men and women there he counted as friends. If Sraddah sent his soldiers to take the place, he hoped the Surapp would surrender without too much of a fight. If they resisted, Sraddah would simply kill them all and smash their buildings, which did not seem to be in anyone’s best interest. Still, it seemed better than the wars of extermination and retreat that the wildmen were perpetually fighting. Nobody ever really won that sort of war, and half the people didn’t even survive it, whereas when Sraddah was your enemy, you could win best by capitulating utterly.
“No,” the king said absently, “I don’t suppose you would. That’s probably why my ancestors stomped the crap out of yours, ah?”
“I wouldn’t know that either,” Manuah said, now with some irritation. Neither would you, Sire. Sraddah’s ancestors had been larger and stronger, but Manuah’s were cleverer, and he imagined they simply hadn’t seen any point in battling that way. Fine, let them rule us. We’ll just keep getting wealthy.
“Well,” Sraddah said, putting the slip of paper down on his conference table and weighing it down with a copper knife. “What brings you here today, Manuah? Your aide said it was important.”
“Indeed, yes, it is. I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I’m increasingly concerned: the water level is rising in the harbor, and the ocean, and the rivers. Since the time of our grandfathers, the level has risen the height of a house. If it should rise that much again during our lifetimes, it would begin to enter The City proper. Since we live on a flat plain, Sire, with water on three sides, this is not a good situation.”
