by Devin Hanson
“The sun has melted your brain, wetlander,” Rajya jeered. “A full Ranger squad with a balai spear failed to discover the cause.”
“Not to be insulting,” Jules pointed out, “but you never had a chance to investigate. Your captain led you into a trap.”
“And Andrew is a Speaker,” Iria said.
“Great. He is a diplomat. What is he going to do, advise us on how to die?” Rajya sneered.
Iria looked at him and Andrew sighed. “You started it,” he said to Iria, “you finish it.”
“Andrew does not speak to his king,” Iria said, “he Speaks to dragons.”
Rajya scoffed then shook her head when she saw Iria was not joking. “You cannot be serious.”
“There’s a reason why I don’t go telling everyone,” Andrew said.
“If this is so, then you can call off the dragons?”
Andrew shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve only spoken to one dragon so far. I don’t even know if these desert dragons would speak the same language.”
“We will have to go carefully,” Jules suggested, “and see if we can find an opportunity for Andrew to speak to one without exposing himself to too much danger.”
“It’d be a lot easier if Ava was here,” Andrew said.
“You said four days?” Iria frowned. “We cannot wait that long.”
“No, I agree,” Andrew shook his head. “We have promised our aid, and I won’t back out on it.”
“We are in accord,” Iria said. “We leave in the morning. I will ask Jeb to assist us in provisions and equipment.”
“So much for a chance to relax,” Jules sighed.
Chapter 11
Chia
Sunrise over the desert came in an explosion of salmon and pink, shot through with traces of red. They rode mules, each rider trailing a spare loaded down with skins of water. Iria’s desperate exodus to the contrary, travel by foot in the desert was by and large a terrible idea. Even in the relative cool of the early spring, a man alone would have a hard time carrying enough water to last more than a day or two.
The Sunwell Arroyos were two days travel on foot from Nok Norrah, but there was nowhere to leave the mules safe from the dragons, and they would be sorely pressed for water on the third day. Instead of going straight to the Sunwell, they took the road to Chia.
Chia made an ideal staging point to venture into the Sunwell. It bordered the system of arroyos and made use of the seasonal floods to irrigate the crops and recharge the deep wells the town relied on for survival.
The mules made the trip to Chia quickly, if uncomfortably for the two Salians, and by the late afternoon of their second day of travel the town came into view. Andrew didn’t know what he was expecting, a smaller version of Nok Norrah, perhaps, but he was unprepared for the town when it did appear.
“We are here,” Iria announced, pulling Andrew out of his saddle-sore daze.
Andrew snapped his head up and looked around. There was no town that he could see, and he was used to the Salian camouflaged building style. There just wasn’t anything there to see, just the slightly hilly desert they’d been riding through for the last several hours. The only feature on the landscape was a small adobe hut painted a brilliant hue of blue.
“What, that? That’s not a village, Iria,” Andrew grumbled. “That’s a hovel.”
He barely got the last word out of his mouth when they crested a small rise and a canyon opened up in front of him. The crack in the earth fell away abruptly, and as Andrew urged his mule delicately closer, he saw the walls of the canyon were terraced and the riotous green of growing crops made his eyes hurt after so long looking at nothing but shades of ochre. Houses and other structures were carved directly into the rock, with swaying wooden rope bridges strung along the cliff faces providing passage. Far at the bottom of the canyon, Andrew caught the glint of running water.
“Welcome to Chia,” Iria said with a smile when she saw Andrew’s face. “We come at a good time. It is awkward traveling the bridges at night when you are not familiar with them.”
A spear-carrying guard came out of the adobe hut and greeted Iria in a dialect Andrew couldn’t follow. The two spoke for a minute then he waved them forward with a gap-toothed smile.
“The Ranger mounts are still here,” Iria said quietly. “They worry that they would have to keep them for much longer. Chia has water, but feeding and watering two dozen horses has put a strain on their resources.”
“He seemed happy with whatever you told him,” Jules said.
“I told him that if we do not return in two days, he can sell the horses and our mules to Nok Norrah. It would bring Chia much wealth.”
The reminder of why they were out in the desert was unsettling, and Andrew approached the downward slope with trepidation. Blue-painted boulders were stacked along the entrance, masking the initial approach. To human eyes, it stood out like a waving flag, but if he squinted and pretended he couldn’t see blue, it turned the approach invisible.
If only dragons in the north were that easy to hide from.
Andrew’s nerves turned out to be for nothing. The mules took the narrow path down into the canyon with the same placid ease with which they had traveled the road. Their footing was sure and they more or less ignored the commands of their riders, following the path at a steady pace to the first of the terraces.
The terrace was what Andrew associated with a small town, and he could almost forget that two dozen paces to the left the cliff dropped off to the next terrace nearly two hundred feet below. A rustic inn was nestled up against the cliff face, complete with a barn. Chickens raced about, not bright enough to get out of the way but scared enough to make a fuss. Other common stores faced toward the inn and lined the cliff edge, giving the courtyard a sense of enclosure and safety. Andrew recognized a wainwright, a smith and a general goods store, along with what he could have sworn was a glassworks.
Iria saw him looking and said, “Chia exports glass and pottery as their main trade goods. The monsoon rains wash thousands of pounds of fine clay into the canyon.” She beckoned. “Come, we should see to the mules, and I’ll give you a tour after.”
Andrew climbed the last carved steps and looked back, wincing as the rising sun stabbed him in the eyes. It was still cool, this early in the morning, but already the sun was baking the sweat from his skin. He didn’t think he’d ever be happy to see the open desert again, but leaving the steep cliffs of Chia behind was a relief.
Iria’s promised tour the night before had quickly given him more than enough of rickety rope bridges to last a lifetime. He forced himself to follow the balai anyway, refusing to give her the satisfaction of begging to return to safety. The residents climbed the narrow stairs and braved the swaying bridges every day, he could grit his teeth and pretend like he was enjoying himself.
It didn’t take long before the wonder of the town overcame his unease and he asked Iria endless questions about how the residents carried out their lives. He quickly saw that even these small-town citizens had a greater grasp of scientific techniques than even the most competent engineers in Salia. Andrew was used to seeing alchemy used to solve building problems. It was a simple matter for an alchemist to build a tower dozens of stories tall using enhanced materials such as airon and pureglass to keep everything upright.
The Maar, though, seemed to frown on alchemy and alchemists in general. Their structures used brilliant engineering and had a sureness about their calculations for strength and stress that boggled his mind. He had thought the Maar to be crippled as a society without the use of alchemy, but he was beginning to think that Salia might in fact be the stunted ones. Anyone could be an engineer here, and they had a free flow of information that was alien to him. When he asked a question about the interlocking stonework that reinforced a section of a terrace, Iria hailed a passing man, and Andrew was treated to an impromptu lesson on static forces and the material properties of granite versus sandstone.
It was a humbli
ng gesture. These people relied on their knowledge of the sciences to keep their town alive, yet had no compunction about sharing that knowledge freely. Andrew likened the experience to an alchemist teaching a total stranger the runes and sayings for creating airon.
Who had the right of it? There was merit to cloistering knowledge, and one could argue that the techniques of alchemy could be used for harm more easily than the, he stumbled over the unfamiliar word, calculus of static pressure forces. But he knew the real reason was to keep the power of the Alchemists Guild private and profitable.
Perhaps sensing his mood, Iria cut her tour short and led them back up the cliff to the inn. On the trip back, Andrew found his thoughts confused as he worried at the problem. Even in the heyday of the dragon and human alliance, alchemy was a secret art. It was true that there were aspects of alchemy that could be used for ill purpose, but did that make it right to limit the full body of knowledge? Imagine a people where even the meanest commoner knew the basics of runework and could produce airon, pureglass, and the dozens of endlessly useful alchemical materials.
Imagine that people with the knowledge and science of the Maar! Combining science and alchemy with the friendship and support of the dragons… such a people could create an oasis of splendor and plenty.
As Andrew walked across the desert following Iria, the idea of such a society lingered on in his mind. Freedom of knowledge was an addictive concept and one that he could think about endlessly. Schools that taught runes and science side by side, libraries where anyone could come and learn, the people wealthy through trade and safe with the protection of the dragons.
“Someone’s lost in thought,” Jules said behind him, catching his shoulder and steering him away from a cactus he was about to walk into.
“Sorry. Iria showed me something last night. I’ve been thinking on it.”
“Well think on it later. I think we’re getting near the Sunwell. This is no time to be daydreaming.”
Jules was right. Once Andrew had his attention off his thoughts, he saw the ripples in the lay of the land that suggested the presence of arroyos. The vegetation had slowly been changing as well. There were different kinds of cactus around, plumper varieties that flowered and sported brightly colored fruits. Even the brush had a greenness about it that was lacking closer to Chia.
He also started seeing wildlife. Hares sprinted away at their approach, hawks wheeled overhead and once they saw a group of several dozen antelope go springing away, their leaps high enough to clear buildings.
The signs of animal life brought a sense of foreboding to Andrew. He had spent weeks living in the deep wilderness with Ava, and he knew that dragons only lived where there was plenty of food. The arroyos teemed with life, and not just the small animals that could survive off dew and residual moisture, but antelopes and other large prey.
Chia was the closest human village to the Sunwell. Arguably, Chia was in the Sunwell as it was built into the walls of a canyon formed by the same monsoons that carved out the arroyos. Where they had traveled to by now, though, there was no sign of human habitation. This land was for the dragons only.
Iria led their little band across the desert. Following her came Andrew, ostensibly so he could call off any dragons that attacked them. Next came Jules, and last came Rajya, who scoffed at Andrew’s polite query about her leg injury. She was used to something she called the sand walk, and this city-dweller snail’s pace was something she could keep up with if she was missing a leg entirely.
Despite Rajya’s scorn at the speed of their progress, the day had yet to get truly hot before they hit the first of the arroyos and Iria called them to a halt.
“Let us stop for a minute to drink,” she said, after they reached the bottom of the arroyo.
“It’s barely been an hour,” Jules said. “We don’t need a break yet, despite being city dwellers.”
“The heat of the day will leech water from you faster than you can drink,” Iria said absently, her attention on the desert about them. “Drink before you get thirsty and you will stay alive.”
They each carried a pack with various gear Iria deemed necessary to travel in the arroyos, but the vast majority of the weight was just water. She had explained the inherent problem with desert travel on foot. “The more you sweat, the more you need to drink. The more weight you carry, the more you sweat. A person carrying weight in the desert all day needs to drink at least a gallon and a half of water. That’s fifteen pounds. You,” she pointed at Andrew, “are larger and will need more like two gallons of water a day. We will carry enough for two days and hope it is enough.”
Andrew’s pack was nearly fifty pounds. Four gallons of water, food, plus various bits of gear filled out his pack and he was glad of the Maari invention of hip straps on the pack to help take the weight. If he had been using his normal pack, he would have thrown his back out by now.
To Andrew, the idea of drinking water had the double benefit of lightening his load. He didn’t protest the break and gladly swung his pack off to get at one of the skins inside. The water was still cool from the Chia well and he resisted the urge to splash his face.
“We do not have enough for a proper scouting formation,” Iria was saying to Rajya. “I will scout for us and watch for dragons.”
“And other humans,” Andrew added.
“And humans,” Iria amended with a serious nod. “Rajya, you will stay with them and guide them.”
“I would scout with you,” Rajya said sullenly.
“I need you in fighting form,” Iria said gently, “If your leg is weak from climbing the arroyo walls, you cannot protect them.”
Rajya cursed, but acquiesced.
“Do we need to carry your water?” Jules asked.
“What for?” Iria asked back, politely curious.
“Well,” Jules flushed a little, “if you’re scouting, then you’ll be doing much more running.”
“It is a kind thought,” Iria said, “but not necessary. We waste time. Rajya, lead the way.” She took two steps and seemed to run up the side of the arroyo and was gone. Andrew realized with a start that there was absolutely no sign of her passage. No sand shifted down, no rocks were dislodged, no vegetation disturbed, no footprints in the loose sand. She had vanished like a ghost without a trace. And she was carrying a pack just as heavy as Andrew’s. It was a sobering display, reminding Andrew just how out of his element he was.
“We move,” Rajya announced.
Traveling in the arroyos was at once more pleasant than the open desert and more difficult. The steep walls granted them shade more often than not, but the drifts of loose sand at the bottom made the going tough on their legs. Andrew learned to walk along the edges where there were rocks and gravel compacted into the sand that gave him some resistance to push against on each step.
Calling the cleft in the earth an arroyo was something of a misnomer, Andrew discovered. In fact, they were traveling through a system of arroyos, dozens of channels that split and merged with varying frequency. At times the arroyo they were walking down would go straight for a hundred yards, other times the passage split and ramified so frequently that the high desert stood isolated in little islands of water-hewn sandstone columns.
The depth of the arroyos gradually deepened as they traveled north-west. It was subtle, but by noon when Iria stopped them again, the arroyos were easily twice as deep as they were upon first entry.
“We will stop now,” Iria said, leading them to a cool overhang. “The day will soon grow too hot to travel in, so we will wait it out here until nightfall.”
Andrew shucked his pack and leaned against it with a groan. They had taken quick breaks several times an hour to drink and rest, but the forced march Rajya had led them on had sucked the strength from his legs. He could only imagine how strong Iria’s legs had to be to scout for them all this time, and yet she looked only mildly tired.
“How do you do it?” he asked.
“Do what, Andrew?”
&nb
sp; “I thought I was in fairly good shape, but you’ve been running laps around us all day.”
“Maybe you are not in as good shape as you thought,” Iria said with a smile. “How are you holding up, Lady Vierra?”
“Please,” Jules sighed, “just Jules. Leave the Lady for the city.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
Jules waved a hand dismissing it and dug out one of her own water skins. “I’m doing better than Andrew,” she shrugged. “My pack is lighter.”
Iria nodded. “We make good time. Rajya, take the first watch.”
Rajya nodded and shucked her pack. She drew out a water skin then scaled the arroyo wall with almost the same ease Iria had demonstrated, but it was clear her leg was giving her problems.
Once Rajya was over the lip of the arroyo, Iria settled back with a sigh. “It is hard for Rajya to accept you being privy to the secrets of the balai. She tries not to show it, but it angers her that you are with us.”
“Sorry,” Jules said. “We don’t mean to cause you trouble.”
“You do not, or I would have left you in that warehouse. No, Rajya thinks in terms of what she can stick a knife into. For that, she is very good. But when matters go beyond the merely physical, she has not the experience to recognize value in assistance.”
“She can’t be that much younger than you,” Andrew said doubtfully.
“Rajya is older than me by three years,” Iria said with a small smile. “But she has only recently reached the rank of balai. I have been balai longer than she has been a Ranger.”
“I don’t mean to pry, but how is that possible?” Jules wondered, “You’re the same age as I am.”
“I started young,” Iria said shortly. “Enough about me. I would hear how you became a Speaker, Andrew.”
“Well, I guess we have time enough for stories.” He glanced over at Jules. “Feel free to jump in if I miss something.”
By the time the sun finally sank below the horizon and Maeis lofted her bulk up to replace it, Andrew was eager to return to the trail.