The Burning Tower

by Colin Glassey

  This was their first night inside Kunhalvar territory, and they stopped in the late afternoon at a bustling little village. The local tea house was doing good business with men sitting around the small tables drinking tea or the grain spirit called zloty. Most of the men looked like tradesmen of the town, there to drink, exchange the day’s news, and flirt with the young women serving the tables. Despite the crowd, there were a few rooms available for the Keltens.

  The differences between Hazeny and this village were noticeable. People were busy, but there was less fear. The guards at the gate were like the guards at the border outpost: disciplined and, if Sandun was any judge, determined.

  There was a difference also in the way the people went about their tasks. For some time, Sandun could not put his finger on it, but eventually he concluded these were a people at war. He had seen something of this during the year of King Pandion’s rebellion: not much laughter, and many people moving with purpose.

  The expedition attracted some notice, but most of the townsfolk had better things to do then gawk at the strangers at the back of the inn.

  As they were heading to their rooms, Valo Peli had a quiet word with Sandun. “A man came in after us. I recognized him from the border post camp. He is dressed as a common laborer. You can guess that his purpose is to watch you.” Valo Peli said this in a very even tone, with no surprise and no dismay.

  Sandun thanked him and informed the others. The rest of the Keltens chewed over this news in their own way. Some were resigned; Kagne and Padan were upset.

  “This place worries me,” Kagne complained. “No one seems to be having any fun. And now we are being watched? The sooner we leave, the happier I’ll be.”

  Padan was contemptuous. “The first embassy from Kelten in more than three hundred years, and they are worried we are spies? It is to laugh.”

  Sandun was not concerned. In several discussions among the senior archivists, the topic of the king’s confidential reports had come up. It was known that King Pandion employed spies and received written reports from some of them, but these reports were never delivered to the Archives. One well-connected archivist let slip that the reports on the doings of the Fiodroch ambassador were never written down, despite or because of the noble women he had seduced over the last five years. Given that the Lord of Kunhalvar was surrounded by enemies, it made sense to Sandun that he would have many spies and that they would pay special attention to strangers from distant lands.

  A low, wet fog greeted them the next morning as they prepared to set out. The day’s journey was through a thick forest of river trees. The road twisted this way and that as it wove a path between small lakes.

  When Sandun asked about the lakes, Valo Peli said, “The great river Mur makes these lakes. I have seen old maps that show the river as quite different from how it runs today. No one understands why, but there is no stopping her. One must build towns some miles back or on top of hills to avoid the Mur. Floods were partially responsible for the destruction of Serica’s first capital, Soltvarkas, which is not far north of here. The great earthquakes also played a role.”

  “Earthquakes?” asked Sandun. “They are commonplace in Kelten and in many islands of the Archipelago. But none of our books talk about earthquakes in Serica.”

  “Earthquakes are regarded by most as a sign of heaven’s displeasure. Few would talk about such things, as they reflect badly on everyone. Do you regard them lightly in Kelten?”

  “Earthquakes destroy farmhouses and fences far more often than they destroy cities.” Sandun replied. “It is hard to think of any great crimes done by simple ploughmen. Our temples teach that the quaking earth represents the ongoing struggle between Sho’Ash and the enemy. It has little to do with the acts of mankind. Or so we believe.”

  Shortly after noon, they reached the port. The buildings all looked ramshackle, and the soil was soft and muddy. But as they reached the last house at the end of the road, the great river was spread before them, and it took their breath away.

  The Mur looked more like a lake than a river, yet the water was moving, rushing, hurrying from north to south. No river in Kelten could compare to the great river Mur. It was vast, and the far shore, though thickly forested, was distant and hard to see. The Mur wasn’t noisy, but it seemed alive, its surface constantly changing. Large waves came downstream and then passed, leaving the waterway a bit shallower, till another large wave came down, almost as though it was breathing. The water was dark but not inky. Sandun tasted the water; it tasted of earth.

  A small group of people were already waiting to cross. Most were farmers with their few possessions lying beside them, wrapped in rough cloth and coarse ropes. A few soldiers and two merchants were waiting with bulging sacks on mules.

  As they watched, a boat approached from the eastern shore. It was long but rode fairly high out of the water. At first it was hard to see how the boat was moving, but as it got closer, they could see the men on board pushing it along with great poles. The boat did not head for the ferry point; instead, it ended up some half a mile downriver, and then the men poled the boat upriver close to the shore, where the current was weaker.

  The men pushing on the poles were tall and wiry thin. Their effortless balance on the boat as it swayed from side to side reflected a lifetime of experience on the water. The people waiting in line ahead of them boarded the boat, and then it shoved off with a cheery wave from the captain at the tiller.

  Sir Ako haltingly asked Valo Peli about fishing on the river.

  “Many great fish live in the Mur. But not good fishing,” Valo Peli told him. “The current is too strong. Better fishing in the lakes and smaller streams that come into the river from either side.”

  An hour later, the ferryboat was back. Sandun showed the captain the paper that Scribe Jelesik had given him the day before. Sandun expected the ferryboat captain to ask for a translation, but instead he slowly read the document, calling one of the younger men over to help him with one of the words.

  “On official business, are you? No charge to you. On you go. Warning to you: riverside gets tricky in the afternoon, hard to see things in the water.” The captain’s speech was hard to understand. Some words he used were unfamiliar to Sandun, who looked at Ashala; she shrugged. Riverboat language was not part of normal Serice language education.

  The boat, seen up close, was long and wide enough for four men to stand abreast. The boatmen were a cheerful lot, with lots of jokes and laughter as the expedition moved their horses, the Piksie rams, and their packs on board. The horses were blindfolded and tethered firmly to the central timber of the boat. The Piksie rams were tethered but not blindfolded. The passengers were strongly told to keep to the center, as the boatmen needed at times to run from one side of the boat to the other.

  Crossing the rivers of Kelten was never a cause for concern; as a result, the expedition was carefree as they sat amid the packs and ropes in the center. But Sandun saw that Valo Peli was visibly nervous, and Lathe seemed even more concerned as he scanned the water.

  “Are there monsters in the river?” Sandun jokingly asked Valo Peli.

  “Yes, though rarely do they come this far north. It is the spring flooding that has begun, and many are the hidden dangers crossing the Mur. Still, it looks safe enough today. I have seen it when a storm whipped up waves taller than a horse…that was not a good time for crossing.” Valo Peli shook his head at the memory. Sandun nervously wondered how deep the river was and how big the river monsters were.

  When all was ready, the boatmen pushed off and poled their way through the shallows near the shore. Sandun knew enough about boats to tell that this ferry had a shallow keel, and it swayed back and forth while eddies in the current pushed it first in one direction, then another. The captain was at the tiller in the rear, while an equally sun-beaten man was at the bow, staring intently at the water ahead of them and yelling unfamiliar words back
to the captain.

  The water became choppy, and huge upwellings of water appeared and disappeared all around them. Many tree branches and pieces of broken bark rushed past on the surface of the water. They were now out in the main current of the river, and the poles could no longer be used to push the boat; instead, the river boatmen used their poles to fend off oncoming flotsam. Although the boat was being carried by the current, it was traveling at an angle, and sticks and broken treetops banged into the upstream side of the boat. Some of the pieces of flotsam were quite large, and the whole boat shook when squarely struck.

  Basil’s dog, who at first had been happy to look around at the water, was now lying unhappily between his master’s feet. “I’ve never been on a river like this,” Basil said loudly. “It beats out every river in Kelten put together. We are only halfway across. By Hurin’s Beard, this is inspiring!”

  Sandun was about to respond when yelling broke out from three of the pole handlers on the upstream side. They were pointing at a large shape that had emerged from the water. The captain stood up and looked intently at the shape upstream and the water between them, and then he yelled strident orders as he pushed at the tiller. He was trying to turn the boat to head directly south with the current. At the same time, more of the pole men came over from the other side of the boat.

  The boat turned slowly, and the distance between them and the dark shape narrowed. Now Sandun could see that it was a great tree trunk, with several broken branches still hanging off the trunk. It was almost completely submerged, perhaps waterlogged or made of some dense wood that barely floated.

  The boat was nearly parallel to the distant shore, but the great tree trunk was upon them. The pole men moved around the stern of the boat, shouting at one another, poking at the water. Even in its broken and decayed condition, the tree trunk was a monster, and the current was carrying it right toward them.

  The captain strained at the tiller, the boat began to veer again, and the pole men, legs braced against the deck boards, pushed at the trunk with all their might. To try and balance the load, the Keltens moved toward the front of the boat while staying low and holding tightly to the gunnels.

  The trunk slipped past the boat, making great scraping noises. Branches dragged across the underside of the boat, pulling at the keel like claws. Suddenly, the tiller twisted out of the captain’s hand, and he was thrown to the deck with a cry. Something had caught the boat, and the ferry began tipping over.

  The lookout ran from the front of the boat to the rear and wrestled with the tiller as water surged dark green over the side. Several poles snapped. One young pole man had an elongated saw blade on the end of his pole, and he attacked the tree beneath the water with a frantic energy, sawing up and down while the boat twisted and groaned.

  Padan was praying loudly to Sho’Ash. Ashala clutched a piece of broken pole, her eyes wide with fear. Olef was looking about in all directions, like a cat about to jump off a ledge, while Basil had his arm around her.

  With a shout, the man with the saw cut through the underwater tree branch, and the boat slowly righted itself again with more groaning and scraping noises. Two of the pole men found buckets and started bailing out the water at the bottom of the boat. The captain sat up, but he was in evident pain, using one arm to hold the other tightly against his body. The lookout replaced him at the tiller, guiding the boat away from the trunk and toward the eastern shore.

  With the danger over for the moment, Sandun tried to suppress the urge to laugh but found he couldn’t fight it. Kagne looked at him quizzically and said, “You always did have an odd sense of humor, Sandun.”

  “No, it’s just…too ironic. For us to have crossed the deadly Tirala Mountains only to be drowned crossing the Mur. What a joke that would be!”

  “The stars told me that we would make it back to Erimasran. We were in no danger.” Kagne seemed to be unafraid of the river. Likewise, Sir Ako had shown no sign of fear.

  The rest of the trip was uneventful. They reached the eastern shore and slowly poled their way north to the east ferry, crossing through shallow waters. Once they were evidently safe, everyone became quite talkative, and Padan led them all in a song of praise to Sho’Ash, the song usually sung on the last day of High Holy Week.

  After singing, Sandun asked Sir Ako why he had been so unconcerned about the crossing.

  “I liked my chances on this river. With my older brothers, I’ve been down two of the swift rivers that flow from the Alps and join the Saperchios near Agnefeld. If the boat tips over, I learned you stay with the boat and wait for it to run aground or for other boats to rescue you. This water’s not too cold; we could last for an hour, maybe two. Ah, I should have mentioned that once we got on board.”

  Sandun did not reply; traveling down rushing streams in small boats was beyond his knowledge of the world. Even fishing in the ocean was a thing that few men did unless they made their living at it because of the danger.

  They disembarked, their packs and shoes wet. Sandun went to the captain and offered him a dozen coins for his trouble.

  The captain shook his head in refusal. His shoulder was sprained, but no bones were broken.

  “I thank you for the offer, but I cannot accept it. We should have avoided the abalta and given you a smooth crossing. It’s my fault, and I hope you will not hold it against me when you speak to the lord. I’m sure he will understand as he’s one of us.”

  “Truly, I had not heard that.” Sandun was nearly certain the captain was exaggerating the Lord of Kunhalvar’s relationship to riverboatmen.

  “Aye, our lord comes from riverboat stock. His father and grandfather before him poled boats on the river. The family fell on hard times, lost their boat, and then died of the plague, but he’s from riverboat folk as sure as the sun is hot. He knows what our life is like.”

  This news was deeply shocking to Sandun, and he mulled it over all the rest of the day and after dinner. For nearly the entirety of the nine hundred years of Pellian Empire, the emperor had claimed descent from either the Great Commander or one of his relatives. And for the last six hundred years of Kelten’s history, the king could trace his line back to King Agiden the Founder. The idea that a commoner might become a ruler? It was profoundly unsettling. Who would follow such a man? How would he know he was chosen to be the king?

  Sandun did not include the captain’s claim in his daily log entry, but he resolved that he would—carefully—ask Valo Peli about it when the opportunity arose. Not for the first time, Sandun questioned his decision to lead the expedition to Tokolas instead of one of the other great cities of Serica.

  The next day, as they rode on the main road to Tokolas, Sandun quietly asked Valo Peli about the Lord of Kunhalvar.

  “Yesterday, the captain of the ferry said that the Lord of Kunhalvar comes from a family of riverboatmen. I doubt not that I mistook what he said to me.”

  Valo Peli looked at him with surprise. “Not at all. You understood him correctly. Didn’t I mention this? He was born to a very poor family, and he spent most of his life penniless.”

  Sandun tried without success to hide his dismay. “How can he rule a province? How can he hope to become King of Serica? He is just a commoner.”

  Valo said, very matter-of-factly, “That is of no matter. The founder of the Green Kingdom came from a humble background. He was the best man, and heaven approved of his character. He became king and founded the Green Kingdom. When a kingdom falls, as the Water Kingdom most definitely fell, then the founder of the next kingdom can be almost any man. The Iron King, who rules a very large territory farther east, is a former iron miner, and his family mined iron in the hills for many generations. His background is not important. What matters is his character.”

  Valo Peli paused and looked at Sandun with interest. “How is the king of Kelten selected when one kingdom falls?”

  Sandun replied, “In general, th
e kings of Kelten are always drawn from the same family. The current king, Pandion III, traces his descent from a line of kings dating back some six hundred years. The idea of a commoner becoming king, that is…hard to imagine.”

  “But what happens when a kingdom comes to an end?” Valo pressed the issue. “How is the new king selected?”

  “I suppose one of the great lords would become king. Likely someone closely or even distantly related to the previous king.”

  “That is not our way. In Serica, a man may rise very high, even becoming a chief minister. And yet his children, while they can enjoy wealth and some measure of respect due to their father’s great position, unless they study hard and are diligent in their duties, they are likely to have only minor positions, or none at all. We say, ‘A minister’s son is rich but lazy, and his son in turn will become a townsman with a fancy scroll on the wall.’ That is often how it works out.”

  Sandun was not convinced by Valo Peli’s assertion. Perhaps in a time of civil war, such turnover might occur, he thought. But surely, once the war had ended and a new king was in power, the great lords would gain title to vast estates and would pass them on to their children and so on, for hundreds of years, just like it was in Kelten, Fiodroch, Jibur, Melnehlan, Akia, and the rest of the Archipelago.

  The remainder of their journey to Tokolas was free of trouble. The road was well maintained and frequently patrolled by mounted soldiers. The towns they rode through were busy but orderly. The lands on either side were rich, well taken care of. In all directions, farmers were out working in the fields. The expedition’s “safe conduct” pass was frequently inspected by guards at town gates and occasionally by mounted patrols, and they were always treated with polite respect. On both nights, they were put up at the finest tea houses at no charge.

  Sandun’s misgivings about the humble origins of the Lord of Kunhalvar gradually faded into the background, as it was clear to everyone that this area was at least as well run as the lands around the great estuary in the center of Kelten. Whoever the Lord of Kunhalvar was, judging from the towns and roads they traveled, his reputation for good government was justified.