Audryn turned to face me, put her palm flat against her chest below her throat, and said, “Welcome to the Darssan, Thalessi, though your arrival was unintentional.”
To my surprise, she had the same green-gray eyes Sai Aleynten and I do. In my travels, I’ve seen maybe ten other people who had the same eye color I do, so two of them in one place was unusual. I wanted to ask about it, but I felt awkward about blurting that out. “That’s certainly true,” I said instead. I thought about mirroring her gesture, but decided it might not mean greeting, or at least might not be reciprocated by the same gesture.
“Well, if anyone can get you back home, Sai Aleynten can,” Audryn said. She spoke his name with such pride and respect that for a moment I wondered if we could possibly mean the same person. I decided to be polite and not act as if Sai Aleynten puts my back up, which he does.
“I hope so,” I told her, though as I said before, I’m not sure if I care whether I go home or not. Again, being polite to the people who are still basically keeping me captive is probably the best course of action. “Your name sounds familiar.”
“I’m named for the woman who founded the Darssan,” she said, and then I remembered what Terrael had told me. Well, I learned a lot of things this afternoon—I’m sure there are things I’ve forgotten to write down.
“We’re going to look at the maps to see if Thalessi can show us her country,” Terrael said. He was eating more daintily and seemed to be using that as an excuse for not meeting Audryn’s eyes, though he did a fair job of still looking at her occasionally. Poor Terrael.
I wonder what their courtship customs are, here in Castavir. In Balaen, women are supposed to indicate their interest in a man before the man can reciprocate, and if it’s the same custom here, Terrael could be in for a long wait, because I didn’t see any evidence Audryn feels anything for him but friendship. But I’m not going to assume it’s the same here. I’ve been in many different countries and they all seem to do things their own way. Still, I feel for Terrael. Not that I would know what being in love feels like.
Anyway, we finished eating, and Terrael took me back to the cavern. Audryn came with us. She seemed interested in what we were doing, and I wonder if she was in the circle of people when I arrived. She didn’t say anything to me, just to Terrael, but I caught her watching me once or twice with this speculative look, as if she was waiting for me to do something interesting. It was unnerving, but not antagonistic, so I didn’t react.
The maps are in a large cupboard near the room with the aeden. Each map is rolled up around a wooden rod, and the rods are stowed on metal stands on wheels, so they can be rolled out into the cavern, which is what Terrael did. He lifted one of the rods off the stand and laid it on the cavern floor, then unrolled it to its full length. It was big—maybe six feet long and nearly as many wide, and the minute I saw it I forgot to breathe.
I’ve seen many, many maps in the course of my quest. Some of them were ones I was using to find my way, more of them I found when I was looking for other things. So I know the geography of my own country, and the surrounding region, so well I could draw a map of my own. And I know what the two other continents look like, at least as well as anyone does, since few people from Balaen have ever crossed the ocean. And what Terrael was showing me was a map of Balaen.
I’m still overwhelmed at the thought. I have no idea what it means. And when I say it was a map of Balaen, that’s not completely accurate. The continent was the same—exactly the same—and the major landmarks were all there, like the Myrnala River that runs north to south and nearly cuts off the eastern side of the continent. But the cities were all wrong, like the big one lying right on the Myrnala River, and nothing where Thalessa should be.
And—this is what really shocked me—there was a small range of mountains near where the western border of Balaen ought to be. When Terrael pointed to it and said “That’s where we are now” I examined it closely and worked out it was close to the spot where I’d been sleeping the night they summoned me. Obviously I can’t tell with any exactness, but it can’t be coincidence.
Terrael asked me if I recognized anything, and I lied. I didn’t know what else to do. I suppose it wasn’t entirely a lie, given that I didn’t recognize any of the cities, and I sure as hell didn’t know what that mountain range was doing there, but I didn’t know what to say. I don’t know what it means! And I’m reluctant to give anything else away to these people—I know, I told Sai Aleynten about the magic, and I agreed to answer their questions, but this seems so big—
I’m taking refuge in lists again. It’s my way of coping with things that are too big for me to understand.
1. This is all a huge coincidence.
2. I’ve been pulled forward, or backward, to a time so distant from my own the landscape and the culture have changed.
3. This is some kind of other-world, like in children’s stories, where it’s almost the same as my own but with key differences.
4. I’ve been knocked on the head, and this is all some elaborate hallucination from which I will wake at any moment.
Hell. All of those seem so unrealistic and impossible. I suppose someone who didn’t know any better might say “anything’s possible with magic,” but that’s just not true. Magic has rules and limitations—at least, mine does, and I bet Terrael’s does too. In fact, he even told me invisibility was impossible for them, though how he’d know that, I have no idea. I’ve always assumed, when I couldn’t do things, it was because I hadn’t figured out the right way yet. But magic does have limitations, and everything I’ve listed does seem like a child’s fantasy story.
But to resume: Terrael showed me several other maps, all of which were more or less familiar. There was one that was a far more detailed map of the continent south and west of mine, and one that showed all the continents laid out on a single map, and some that showed countries I didn’t recognize.
Finally Terrael gave up, and I felt awful at keeping that secret, he looked so disappointed. I’m sure he was hoping to have some great success in front of Audryn, though she didn’t seem disdainful of his failure. Her curiosity about me aside, she seems like a nice person. Then they talked for a minute, technical stuff I couldn’t follow, and after that Terrael brought me back to my room, for which I was grateful, because I’m still not good at telling the doors apart. I wonder if it would be all right for me to mark mine—but that might make me seem weak, and not all these people might be as nice as Terrael and Audryn.
My hand is sore from writing. Terrael showed me how to disable the automatic light dimmer when he was here earlier, so I don’t have to worry about finishing before the light goes out, but writing all of this hasn’t clarified anything. I’m feeling guilty, now, about not telling Terrael the truth. I promised to be honest, and I broke that promise. It’s just that it felt like such an important thing—
Damn. I’m going to have to talk to Sai Aleynten and his smug face. I hate the thought of confessing to him that I wasn’t totally honest, but if he’s the leader of the Darssan, he’s the one who ought to know what I couldn’t tell Terrael. I wish there were another option.
Chapter Four
19 Senessay
I had breakfast this morning in the room with all the tables, eggs with funny orange yolks and some reassuringly familiar bacon and a glass of pink juice that tasted bitter, but grew on me over time. They don’t seem to have coffee here—I don’t know if that’s just the Darssan, or if their country hasn’t discovered it—and while I dislike drinking it, I miss the comforting smell.
No one came to sit with me, and I didn’t see Terrael or Audryn, and while I didn’t exactly feel lonely—I’ve traveled alone for too long to let solitude bother me—it meant I had no one to talk to but the inside of my own head, and that made me increasingly nervous about the upcoming conversation with Sai Aleynten.
It felt like I was coming at it from a position of weakness, since I’d made a mistake, and I hated—still hate—the thoug
ht of giving Sai Aleynten any power over me. I don’t know why that is; he only used magic on me to defend himself, and he seemed more concerned for my welfare than Terrael was with the whole Cap of Death incident, even if that was only because he sees me as a puzzle he doesn’t want damaged until he can solve it. I just don’t like him, that’s all.
But all last night, before I finally fell asleep, I kept going over the day’s events and I was increasingly sure Sai Aleynten needed to know about the map. So when I finished eating, I went in search of him. It took a while. Nobody stopped me poking around the cavern, and I didn’t give them a reason to by prying into their conversations.
Though I did find out, in looking at the walls, that I can’t read their writing. I was so disappointed. They have a lot of books in the cavern, not just in the shelves surrounding the gold circle but on shelves here and there next to the walls, and they’re the old kind I love because you’re practically guaranteed to find something mysterious and maybe even magical within their pages. Maybe I can get Terrael to read to me, though I don’t know how we’d figure out which of those books would interest me. All of them, maybe.
I wandered around for a bit and smiled at everyone. Nobody talked to me, and although they didn’t stare either, I felt awkward. I don’t think anyone, myself included, knows what to make of me. After I’d made the circuit of the room three times, Sai Aleynten came out of one mouth of the corridor. I know he saw me, but he didn’t come to me immediately; he stopped to talk to a little knot of gray-robes, then was handed one of those wooden tablets by someone so tall he made Sai Aleynten, who isn’t short, look like a dwarf.
I stood and waited. Eventually he finished his business and came to where I stood, and said, “Can I help you with something?”
Have I mentioned how much his tone of voice bothers me? I kept my irritation under control and said, “I need to show you something, and I think it should be private because I don’t know what you’ll want to do with it.”
“Cryptic,” he said, raising one eyebrow and HOW THE HELL DOES HE DO THAT? Is it something they teach in Sai school?
He followed me to the map room and watched me choose the first map Terrael had shown me, then helped me take it down from the stand. “Is there room enough in here to spread it out?” I asked.
He looked around, gestured, and two of the stands rolled back, leaving a big empty space in the middle of the floor. I’m so jealous. Maybe if I keep practicing, I’ll be that good with the mind-moving pouvra someday. He unrolled the map and stepped back. “Well?” he said.
I said, “Is this your country? Castavir?” I knew it was, but I hadn’t given much thought to how I was going to explain this strangeness, so I decided to stall. Or lay the foundation for my revelation. That sounds better. More noble.
Sai Aleynten squatted beside the map and traced lines with his forefinger. “This is the Castaviran Empire,” he said. “Here, the central country, Castavir. East is Helviran, bordering on the ocean. Northeast, Endellavir, and southwest, Viravon.”
“They all have ‘vir’ in the name,” I said, once again stalling for time learning useful information.
“The names come from a much older language than the one we are speaking now,” Sai Aleynten said. “‘Vir’ means ‘land’ in that tongue.” His words were patient enough, but his tone said he wanted me to get on with it already.
I squatted next to him. “The lands on this map look exactly like my homeland,” I said.
He went completely expressionless, his green-gray eyes fixed on mine. He stared, and I fidgeted, until he looked back at the map and said, “You don’t mean they are similar.”
“I mean I’ve seen maps like this many times in my travels,” I said, “and with a few exceptions, this map is identical to those.”
“What exceptions?” he said.
I pointed at the places where in my world there were cities, at the places where they have cities that in my world are empty, and at the ridge of mountains where the tiny dot of the Darssan sat. “And this should all be plains,” I said, spreading my fingers to encompass the area around the Darssan.
Sai Aleynten went even stiller than before, enough that he might have been carved of stone. “Tell me,” he said, extending a finger, “in your world, what is in this place?” He pointed at a spot where the borders of Castavir and Viravon met. “No, wait,” he said, interrupting me. He stood and walked to the back of the room, where he rummaged around a bit and returned with a roll of tan paper, or parchment, or something, and a handful of smooth rocks.
He rolled the parchment out over the map; it overlapped it a bit on two sides, and was thin enough that the lines of the map showed through it. Then he set the rocks on the corners to keep it from rolling back up. They weren’t ordinary rocks, but stones carved to look like animals, fat little turtles and low-slung horses, and I had to wonder why anyone would put so much effort into something that would only be used to hold paper down. Or maybe they have some mystical significance and only Sai Aleynten would use them for something so prosaic. I don’t know.
Sai Aleynten reached inside his robe and took out what looked like a pencil, though it was fatter than the one I’m using, and when he started tracing the outlines of the land, what came out was a thick black line, more like ink than lead. He kept sketching until he had drawn the coastline and the major geographical features. He didn’t include the country borders or the cities and he didn’t include the Darssan. When he finished, he handed the pencil/pen to me and said “Draw what you know of your land.”
Again I fought down my irritation and concentrated on remembering how my maps looked. I said before I could probably draw the map out myself, but I felt certain Sai Aleynten would want more detail than the general sketch I was capable of producing quickly. I drew in country boundaries and cities, and labeled the cities, and then I put in all the ruins I’d explored over the years, since I thought they were strange—all of them roughly the same size and shape, all of them in remote locations.
Sai Aleynten just watched me. He was able to keep on squatting long after my thighs started to ache and I had to get on my knees, which was cold and uncomfortable since the floor of the map room was the same uneven, rippling stone as the cavern. I became more impatient with Sai Aleynten’s refusal to give me answers the more I drew. Once again he didn’t seem surprised or shocked by something I could do—first the magic, and now the revelation that his country and mine were identical. I wanted to ask him which of my list of suppositions was correct, but I couldn’t do that and concentrate on drawing, so instead I just let my impatience rise.
Finally, when I’d drawn as much as I could remember, I sat back on the cold stone and handed the writing tool to my silent companion. He squatted there, looking at the map, and when I started to speak he held up a hand for silence and, damn him, I shut up. Again I wonder if that’s something he learned in order to be whatever-it-was, Wrelan, I think, or if it’s just part of who he is, like his stupid smug face.
When I was nearly ready to explode with impatience, he said, without looking at me, “You’re certain of this.”
“Yes,” I said.
He took hold of the parchment and rose, rolling it up as he stood. “I realize you are impatient,” he said, “but there is one last thing I want to do. I promise you will have answers soon.” He set the parchment aside, squatted again, and began making marks all over the map. I was shocked at that, because it looked like an old map and not one people ought to be drawing on, but I suppose when you’re Sai Aleynten you can do anything you like and no one will criticize you. He worked rapidly, with no indication of what he was marking, just two quick slashes to make an X at spots all over the map.
Then he put the writing tool away and unrolled the parchment. “Help me line this up,” he said, and I helped align the maps along the coastlines and what in my world is the Myrnala River, and then I had another shock, because those X’s matched up almost perfectly with the ruins I’d marked on the parchment. I
say “almost” because it wasn’t a one-to-one correspondence; there were a few places I’d marked that he hadn’t, and vice versa, but almost every X had a ruin overlaid on it.
“What does it mean?” I said.
Sai Aleynten stood and looked down at the map. “I dislike guessing,” he said. “But it may explain how you came to be here, and why.”
“So tell me!” I said. I might have sounded shrill, but the whole experience had me on edge. I’m still on edge, honestly, probably because he put me off again after assuring me I’d have answers soon.
He shook his head and said, “I must perform two kathanas before I am certain. If I’m wrong, well, I would prefer not to tell you something that may not be true.”
Damn. I hate his logic. Because he was right; I much prefer knowing the truth than somebody’s guess, even though (I can’t believe I’m writing this) Sai Aleynten’s guesses are probably more accurate than other people’s truths, if only because I imagine he’s the kind of person who hates being wrong.
Anyway, he rolled up both the maps and took them with him. I followed him until he came to a door on the sitting-room side of the hall and said, “This is not something for which I need an audience.” I bristled at his sarcasm, but I couldn’t think of anything to say in return. Nothing’s coming to mind now, either. And I used to think I was so clever and witty.
So I tried a few doors until I found my room—fortunately I didn’t come across any more naked couples—and now I’ve written it all down, and now I’m waiting. I can’t decide what to do next. It’s too soon for a meal, I don’t want to bother all those people in the cavern, I refuse to go hunting for Terrael to entertain me, and there’s nothing to read—oh, hell, there isn’t going to be anything to read until I go back to my own country, is there? Just this book, and I know I’ll get sick of my own writing sooner rather than later.
The Summoned Mage (Convergence Book 1) Page 5