by Drew Wagar
‘This choosing we are training for …’
‘Yes?’
‘What happens? Everyone seems to know all about it apart from me.’
Charis turned towards her. ‘It is a good question. I will explain.’ She gestured for Kiri to sit down on a bench. Charis sat alongside her.
‘Candids come from all over our lands and from some beyond. After the collapse of the Voren empire and Elena’s victory it was agreed that all the lands about us would be subject to a levy to Drayden.’
‘A levy?’
‘A tax, a payment if you like.’
‘Money?’
‘No, not money. Young women.’
Kiri frowned. ‘Then the other candids I saw …’
‘Brought here from all across the land. Every town and city has, by law, to offer their high-born daughters every fifth round, so each round different women arrive from across the lands. I, Nerina and some of the other priestesses will look to see if there are any girls who develop the gift, with training it is possible to sense it. If they are found, they have to come here to be trained and chosen.’
‘What if they don’t want to come?’
‘It is the law, they have no choice.’
‘They have to leave their families?’
‘Yes. But it is better for them and for their families. If they have the gift, it can be dangerous if untutored.’
‘Like mine.’
‘Exactly. If you hadn’t received training, you would have continued to manifest the gift without control.’
‘You want their gift.’
‘The strength of the priestess-ship is what holds law and order together. If we did not have new acolytes our strength would fail and …’
Charis looked away. Kiri reached out toward her …
Worry, fear, uncertainty!
‘I will not lie to you, Kiri,’ Charis said. ‘The number of women found with the gift has been growing smaller and smaller for many rounds. Less are found, we have fewer priestesses. We cannot search as once we did. Unrest grows in some of the towns and cities. Some may even resist the search in time. That is why you’re so important.’
‘Me?’
‘You were found here, amongst us.’ Charis smiled fondly. ‘It’s not supposed to be possible. It has long been held that only high-born women have the gift. That teaching has been shown to be wrong. I sensed you and we sought you out, just in time.’
‘And if I have it, maybe others do to?’
Charis nodded. ‘That is my hope. Across the lands there will be others. We must find them.’
Kiri thought about that for a moment. ‘So, you bring all the candids here …’
‘Candids are trained in the use of the seeing,’ Charis began. ‘The fighting arts are part of that training, mostly for discipline and control. Finally there is a ceremony in the centre of the temple. The high-priestess …’
‘Launa.’
‘Yes. Launa will test you, seeking out those with the greatest gift.’
‘How?’
‘The test is … one of heart and mind,’ Charis said. ‘It touches your emotions and your feelings, not just your power. Each priestess is looking for the combination that they believe is right for the temple …’
‘Were you chosen by Launa?’
‘I was, along with Merrin. Nerina was chosen some rounds later.’
‘Then what?’
‘After the choosing, the successful candids become acolytes. They have to choose a caste to follow.’
‘Warrior, healer, administrator or … birther.’ Kiri shuddered as she muttered the final word.
‘Yes, then you choose a teacher from amongst the priestesses. Then each acolyte is taught by that priestess for four rounds before becoming a priestess.’
‘How do you know what and who to choose?’
‘You’re free to choose whoever you wish.’
‘Then I choose to be a healer and I choose you,’ Kiri said immediately.
Charis smiled, reaching out to touch Kiri on the arm. A warm feeling of approval wrapped itself around them both.
‘I would be honoured to be your teacher, Kiri. But there are rules.’
‘Which are?’
‘We will share thoughts and feelings as part of the training. There can be no deception between us. Trust must be absolute.’
Kiri nodded. ‘The gift.’
‘It allows no other choice.’
‘Nobody else would train me though, would they? The dirty slum girl?’
Charis sighed. ‘It is true that others don’t see you as I see you.’
Kiri held up her head. ‘And how do you see me, Priestess Charis?’
‘Tough, insolent, troublesome and full of too many questions for a start,’ Charis scolded with a laugh. ‘But truly? I see you as someone who was lost and is now found. You have a remarkable gift. You are precious child, not just to me, but to all Drayden. You should have always been here in the temple. We saved you, it is true. But my fondest hope is, in time, it will be you who saves us.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Scattered Isles
Round 2306, Second Pass
Coran took the parchment and unrolled it carefully on the table, placing two metal weights on either end to keep it flat. Meru saw a complex detailed map with tiny mountain ranges, seas, rivers, forests, plains and the individual dots that marked cities and towns. The text on the map was curiously functional with impossibly precise square and regular characters, quite unlike the modern gothic scripts he was used to seeing the scholars inscribe with their styluses.
It appeared ancient yet the parchment, despite its obvious age, looked in remarkably good condition except that the lower half was torn away.
‘A map?’ Meru queried.
‘Not just any map. This is our world. This is Esurio.’
‘Esurio …?’
Meru had heard the name, but it wasn’t commonly used. It was an old-fashioned word; a term used to describe something so vast and incomprehensible that it had no real meaning in modern parlance.
Meru peered more closely. The map was divided into nine thin slices, narrowest at the bottom and growing wider and wider as they moved shadeward. It put Meru in mind of a drawing of a fan. At the top of each segment an empty circle was drawn, with a smaller black circle within it. Each black circle was bisected by a straight line, which traversed the large circle at different angles. On the far sunward the line was slanted noticeably down from left to right, in the middle it was horizontal and in the far shaderight down from right to left. Underneath each circle was a number, starting at 50 at the edge, going down to zero in the middle and then back up to 50 again. Meru studied it, trying to understand what the map was trying to signify.
‘What do these mean?’ he asked, pointing at the series of circles and numbers.
‘It’s a mystery,’ Coran answered. ‘I’ve pondered them for a time myself. I don’t know.’
At the top of the map the detail faded abruptly beyond an arced and dotted line. Meru could see it was marked ‘Frozen Wastes’, to the bottom of the map was a similar line, but it was unlabelled, there was no detail beyond the lines in either direction, the map left Meru in mind of a segment of a thick wooden cartwheel. Most of the area below the bottom line was missing.
‘Frozen?’ Meru asked, trying the unfamiliar word. ‘What does that mean?’
‘The far shadeward,’ Coran answered, the grin returning to his face. He moved his hand up and down. ‘On this map shadeward is up, sunward is down.’ Coran now moved his hand side to side. ‘Sunright is to the right, shaderight is to the left.
Meru nodded in appreciation. ‘Simple enough.’
‘The further shadeward you go the lower Lacaille falls in the sky. I’ve seen that myself on my travels, no doubt about that. They say that if you travel far enough into the shadeward it will sink out of sight; darkness falls, the water itself ceases to move and turns to rock, strange sparkling lights appear in the sky. Bizarre they must be, the froze
n wastes.’
‘Water turns to rock?’ Meru echoed, looking up sceptically and then laughing. ‘Witches too?’
‘Sounds fanciful I admit,’ Coran replied. ‘But who’s to say what happens in the darkness without the light of Lacaille?’
‘I should like to see water turn into a rock,’ Meru said, letting his imagination run for a moment. ‘But darkness? With no light? How would you see?’ He shivered before a thought occurred to him.
Tricity of course!
‘I doubt it’s possible to live there for any length of time,’ Coran replied. ‘Imagine the cold! But it’s fair to say it must be an interesting experience.’
‘So what does this line mean?’ Meru said, indicating the adjacent line to the sunward. It was just above the tear in the map.
‘That I don’t know,’ Coran admitted. ‘We never found that part of the map. But if you think about it, the further sunward you go …’
‘Lacaille higher in the sky … hotter I guess,’ Meru said, thoughtfully. ‘But there must be something there.’
‘Perhaps you can’t reach it,’ Coran said. ‘A landscape consumed by fire, a dry parched wasteland. Who’s to say?’
Meru traced his finger across the map. Water lapped outside Coran’s cabin and the Mobilis rolled slightly in the swell.
‘You were here by the way,’ Coran said, jabbing his finger at the far right of the map. Meru could see a small irregular landmass was labelled ‘Amar’. It looked ridiculously small and insignificant. A tiny series of mountains and a small forest were marked and that was it.
‘But it takes a half a dozen stretches to walk from one side of the coast to the other,’ he exclaimed in surprise. ‘And yet …’
‘It’s really just a dot on this map,’ Coran said, with a smile. ‘Just a small island in the grand scheme of things, far in the sunright. We’re here.’
Coran traced his finger shaderight and sunwards to a tiny cluster of islands not far from Amar on the map. Meru could see they were labelled the ‘Scattered Isles’.
‘Notice anything else?’ Coran asked.
Meru scanned the map for a moment before realising an obvious omission. ‘Amaris isn’t marked.’
Coran’s smile widened. ‘Good to see you’re paying attention. This map comes from a time before our home city was founded, a time when …’
‘We didn’t come from here,’ Meru finished for him. ‘So …’
‘Where were we from?’ Coran slid his finger to the left. ‘Near as I can figure, here.’
His finger had moved across an expanse of ocean many times wider than their island, far past the Scattered Isles, arriving at a great continental landmass to the shaderight. Meru could see the area was called ‘Voren’ on the map. Coran moved his finger upwards, almost to the top of the map and tapped his finger on a small dot. It was on the coast, labelled ‘Nireus’.
Meru said the word aloud as if trying it for authenticity.
‘Nireus,’ Coran said, correcting Meru’s pronunciation, giving the word a softer second syllable. ‘In the land of Voren. Our people were Vorens back then. Voren was a great kingdom, no, more than that; an empire. It stretched from the coast to the frozen wastes, sunward to the limits of known lands and far into the shaderight. Stories talk of huge cities built of marble many times the size of Amaris, glorious processions, a ruling class of monarchs that stretched back into history and armies greater than any ever seen before or since. Nireus itself was just a single city, within the greater Voren empire.
‘So what happened?’
Coran shrugged. ‘It’s not entirely clear. Empires rise and fall. Voren’s fall seemed quick and destructive. It broke up within a generation near 200 rounds ago. The shadeward districts broke away becoming the land of Drem. The sunward lands became Taloon. It seems the empire of Voren broke up from within.’
‘Broke up? But why?’
Coran slid his finger even further to the left. In moments it crossed forests and mountain ranges, a distance that must be an unimaginably lengthy traipse in real life. Coran’s finger rested on another dot. A city. Meru peered more closely.
‘Daine,’ he said, reading it out loud once more. The city was marked with a curious triangle, with a short base and two long equidistant sides. An isosceles triangle.
‘In the lands of Drayden,’ Coran added heavily, leaning back in his chair and fixing Meru with a stare.
Meru couldn’t explain why, but the word sounded cold and unpleasant to him. A chill ran across him, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
Even now a ‘Dray’ is a curse, a fool, an unpleasant insult …
‘These are your witches,’ Coran said with a smile. ‘Drayden was part of the Voren empire, but some kind of civil war occurred. The Drayden folk swept through Voren like a plague so it’s said, hence the vague description you’ve been schooled with. The rest of Voren fell before them.’
‘An army of witches?’ Meru said with a frown.
‘So it was told.’ Coran nodded. ‘Voren quickly collapsed and our people retreated to Nireus, to rally their strength. Led by a sorcerer called Elena, an army completely composed of women attacked Nireus. The records are very clear about that. Whatever the details, Nireus was overwhelmed quickly. The Drayden witches were possessed of unnatural powers by all accounts. Some stories have them able to move stone by the power of their thoughts, others talk of fires starting by their command, the very weather at their beck and call. Nonsense of course, but there must be some truth behind those tales, they certainly had powers of some kind or another. They’ve been demonised, portrayed as a terrifying evil, with our ancestors as the unblemished innocents. I doubt it was that simple.’
‘But why did they attack Nireus?’ Meru asked.
‘Drayden witches had a singular purpose. It seems they wanted our people extinguished,’ Coran replied. ‘It was the last city to fall, defended until the last.’
‘But why? What had we done to deserve such anger?’
‘Nireus was described as the Crystal City. It was rumoured to be the most beautiful city in the empire, with impossibly wrought spires, minarets and dwellings,’ Coran chuckled. ‘Perhaps made from your rocky water from the wastes, a strange location for a city, in such a cold place! Whatever its real nature it clearly had its attractions and abundant riches. From the little I’ve been able to piece together there was tell of great engines, machines that mined the earth, lights far brighter than those we know today, contraptions that rolled across the land or flew through the air, enormous ships that plied the seas. Power enough to be envied by others.’
Footsteps echoed above them, clonking heavily. Probably Daf and Creg moving about on deck.
‘Machines that flew through the air?’ Meru whispered. ‘That’s impossible, people have tried for rounds to make one work …’
‘Perhaps, perhaps not. Our ancestors seemed to have had a knack for invention, that’s for sure. Something that a few of us still retain.’ Coran raised his eyebrows meaningfully. ‘Yes?’
Meru nodded. ‘But what happened?’
‘I’m guessing the Drays wanted those things and we weren’t keen on sharing. Voren fell apart. Nireus was taken, despite all those machines, the invading Drayden armies won. Some great calamity was unleashed, allowing our ancestors to escape; we’re descended from the survivors that managed the crossing of the sea, finding our way to this island of Amar and becoming the Amarans.’
‘And Nireus?’
‘No one knows. Razed perhaps, looted for sure. A ruin, most like.’
Meru looked over the map thoughtfully. ‘What of these other lands? Do they still exist?’
‘No one has been back there in living memory, but yes, I believe they still exist, as do the other lands on this map. They are all but forgotten to most of us though. A piece of our history quite deliberately buried.’
‘Why? Why not teach what happened?’
‘The truth hurts, Meru. Some folks would rather not be troubled
by the past. Even now the fishermen won’t sail out of sight of land will they? It’s all become myth and legend. Only a few even bother to ask. Did you question your teacher?’
Meru shook his head.
‘Why not?’ Coran demanded
Meru shrugged. ‘Just didn’t.’
‘Exactly, my lad. That attitude is positively encouraged today.’
Meru frowned and then asked the questions that had been bothering him ever since Coran had pulled the map out of the cupboard.
‘How do you know all this? Where did you get this map? This ship, the quay, the machines, the lights …’
Coran grinned. ‘So now you’re curious, yes?’
Meru sighed. ‘Well?’
Coran tilted his chair and balanced on its back legs. ‘Five years ago I was the second mate aboard a trawler much like yours. We were fishing on the shadeward side of Amar just like you. A storm caught us and blew us shadeward into these isles. Most of the crew were lost overboard, including the captain. Harsh and unforgiving these islands are, we were lucky to avoid being drowned. Daf, Creg, Fitch and myself were all who survived. When we came ashore we discovered the lone survivor of a previous wreck some years before. That was how I met Mel. She was half starved and dressed in rags, but she’d somehow managed to scrape an existence on these desolate rocks.
‘We took her aboard of course, whilst making repairs to our own vessel. I could see at once that Mel was a talent, she knew more about trimming a ship than I did. I offered to take her on if she could get us home. She supervised the repairs. But there was a bigger surprise in store.’
‘What was it?’ Meru demanded.
‘Mel took me on a tour of the island. She was very insistent I came alone. We traipsed over those jagged black rocks until we came to here, on the shadeward side of this island. She showed me this cavern. She showed me the Mobilis. She’d found it.’
Coran’s eyes twinkled.
‘She wasn’t much of a sight. Aged, covered in unknown rounds of filth and decay, but I could instantly see her for what she had been …’
Coran looked up, gazing beyond the bulkheads.
‘… her flanks were huge panels, riveted in place against huge girders. Everything was metal; pipes, decks, galley ways, even the walls, floor and roof. Rusting and decaying in places, but showing the unmistakable genius of its construction. How long it had lain there I could not guess, generations at the very least. It was only when I stood upon its decks I realised the biggest questions were unanswered.’