Hero Risen (Seeds of Destiny, Book 3)

by Andy Livingstone

  Days without a change in the scenery distorted time and it seemed more like double the week that had been estimate when a cry from the man on the platform at the top of the mast raised even more cheer. ‘Our destination,’ a passing sailor confided, and Brann moved with the others to the bows, eager for the sight of something solid other than the ship that had become their world. They waited quietly until their patience was rewarded, but it was not a city that first greeted their eyes, but a landscape. Peaks, five in all, soared in stark clarity against otherwise fairly even surroundings.

  Grakk nodded ahead. ‘I have not visited here since the travels of my youth, when I first ventured into the wider world to seek knowledge.’

  ‘It doesn’t look up to much,’ Gerens said sourly. They were among the very few words he had spoken since having had to leave behind Sophaya.

  ‘It doesn’t,’ Grakk acknowledged, ‘from here. This is an inhospitable land, with an even more inhospitable coastline. Settlements are widespread and further inland and, because of the difficulty in travelling from one to another, they tend to be autonomous.’

  Gerens looked at him questioningly, as did Brann, but Konall cut in. ‘Each rules itself and the surrounding land, like city states.’

  Grakk beamed. ‘Excellent, young lord. That is exactly how they operate.’

  Konall shrugged. ‘A childhood of education aimed at preparation for ruling even just part of a warlord’s territory has its uses.’

  Brann’s eyes narrowed as he considered the information. ‘Not much use for trade, however, and a trip of little gain for two ships of a trading corporation.’

  Captain Rodrigo had joined them, and picked up Brann’s comment. ‘Very true, my young friend. We trade only in a few essential supplies and, in return, there is a particularly desirable type of wool from creatures hardy enough to thrive in this place. And,’ he winked, ‘they do have even more desirable gold mines, which is the reason the Empire extends its benevolent arm of care around this otherwise uninviting region. The Emperor’s troops ensure that the flow of gold is strictly controlled and specifically directed, but a little can make its way to those who take the trouble to come here to trade, if you know what I mean.’

  Grakk frowned. ‘But two ships for such little interaction?’

  The captain laughed. ‘I know, but we only stop off here before doing our main business on the east coast of the Sea. It would make more commercial sense to send only one ship to divert here and the other straight to the main destination, but these days it is always wise to travel in numbers. We are quick enough to be able to be at each other’s side before any other approaches, and two ships of this size are enough to deter most of the raiders who seem to have disrupted trade in increasing frequency in recent times.’ He stared back over the blue expanse. ‘We have been lucky, so far. Since I started sailing under these colours, we have not encountered any trouble.’

  Konall glanced at the others and grunted. ‘I am sure that will continue.’

  The captain nodded enthusiastically. ‘Indeed, indeed. I make sure we offer to the gods every morning and night, and I tell the men that as long as we do so, we shall be fine.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ smiled Grakk. ‘However, would it not make even more commercial sense not to come here at all? The gold, you say, is little and its acquisition carries danger from higher authorities, and the rest is wool. The markets you head for in the East are more lucrative by far.’

  ‘You are a man after my own heart,’ the captain said heartily. ‘I have often put forward this opinion, but, apparently, the corporation we serve has a trader’s head for business but also a priest’s heart of kindness. We must always visit here and the two ports close along this coast to do this token trade, and occasionally with a passenger or two to take one way or the other.’ He beamed. ‘They are not as good company as you, however. I must say, it has been a pleasure having some aboard with conversation as cordial as yours, almost making me feel as if you could have paid for some of your passage with companionship.’

  Konall looked at him, raising his eyebrows. ‘In that case…?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ the captain said with a smile that was as wide as it was genial. ‘Business is sacrosanct, even amongst friends, or where are we, other than lost?’

  Konall’s blond brows drew together, but Grakk’s hand on his arm stopped him before he could speak. ‘That is a conversation for another day. I am just surprised you bring passengers here at all. It is not the most enticing of destinations and was certainly not of our choice.’

  The captain nodded. ‘It is true, and they are few and seldom. Although I do believe there is one on the ship ahead. He is the most familiar of any who travel here and is a native of these parts, so I assume he cannot settle elsewhere in the world, no matter how hard he tries.’

  Grakk looked at Brann, and Brann gave him a small nod before speaking himself. ‘There must be something that draws him back. If you don’t mind, would it be possible for us to travel ashore with the trading party to see something of this land for ourselves? Maybe we will choose to stay for a small while.’

  The captain gave him a searching look. ‘I know what you are about.’

  They all froze, Brann’s hand drifting towards his knife as he caught Gerens’s similar movement.

  The captain guffawed. ‘All I can ask is that, if you survive your visit to the gold mines, you seek a different captain and a different ship as your transport away? The Empire’s soldiers guard the mines with legendary brutality, but they are as kittens compared with the natives of these parts, should they be angered.’

  Grakk clapped him on the shoulder with a smile. ‘Your discretion is so much appreciated that, of course, we will do so.’

  Accustomed as he was to coming ashore at well-crafted piers or docksides, or even the occasional sandy beach, Brann found the experience of landing from a longboat in a surging and pulling swell onto dark rocks that were as deadly slick as they were deadly jagged to be a disquieting one. His nerves were increased, rather than settled, by the casual indifference shown by the sailors towards the apparently impending doom, and it was with surprise as much as relief that he found himself still alive when he stood on dry land.

  The situation had brought one benefit, however. The journey across difficult terrain was easy, indeed welcome, by comparison. They had helped the sailors to trek with their goods a short distance inland, where they found a small trading camp had been set up. There, the captain – for a small fee – had helped them to hire the mules that were the most appropriate, perhaps the only appropriate, mounts for the terrain they would traverse, and had pointed them along the one track leading inland.

  Rutted and never sloping the same way for more than a score of paces, the track told Brann all he needed to know about the suitability of the mules, though the swaying beneath him let him understand the misery Mongoose endured at sea. He focused on the view in an attempt to divert his thoughts from his heaving stomach.

  The trail wound through a dry land, though not the sand of the desert nor the endless black rock around Grakk’s homeland. Here, dry stony ground bore hardy scrub and hardier trees, twisted and gnarled as if convulsed in their effort to push through the unyielding earth. The heat at sea level had been oppressive, beating on them as if the air were a hammer that somehow wrapped around the shape of their bodies, but as the track took them higher in altitude the temperature eased and became almost pleasant, despite the sun closing on its zenith. An eerie stillness surrounded them, though, the cries of high-circling birds and the staccato whistle of crickets the only audible signs of animal life.

  Ahead, the five mountains on the skyline did remind him of Grakk’s home, all with the same flat tops as the multitude that surrounded the secret city of Khardorul and one, the nearest, with a wisp of smoke drifting lazily from its peak.

  Brann pulled out a strip of dried meat and looked at Grakk as he tore a piece with his teeth. ‘No wonder you visited here. Do you feel at home?’<
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  Grakk smiled quietly, almost sadly. ‘This is far from my home, and very different. Look at the ground. Where I am from, the ground was made by the mountains, hard and unforgiving, sharp rock ever underfoot. Here, the mountains of fire burst from the ground in the days when the gods were children, and then fell silent.’ He looked ahead at the closest peak, concern plain on his face. ‘Fell silent until now, I fear.’

  Brann frowned, in puzzlement more than the worry Grakk projected. ‘But near your city, I saw clouds rising from the ground and they did not worry you unduly.’

  ‘From the ground, yes, and those clouds were of steam. Water underground heated by the fires of the earth. But what you see ahead is the mountain itself awakening. That is not steam, but smoke. And the mountain was not breathing forth that cloud the last time I was here, merely a score of years ago and five more.’

  Gerens was listening. ‘Twenty-five years is a long time, Grakk.’

  The tribesman’s eyes swivelled his way, then back to the scene ahead. ‘Not for a mountain.’

  The track led them along the steep side of a valley, the vegetation more lush around the silver thread of the river glimpsed far below as the sun caught fragments of it through the thick foliage.

  ‘They call it “jungle”,’ Grakk said. ‘There are trees and plants more strange and wonderful than any you have imagined, and creatures that exist nowhere else, more strange and wonderful than any you could imagine. And deadly, in many cases.’

  Konall looked down with interest. ‘The plants or the animals?’

  ‘Both.’ Grakk kicked his mule forward to hurry it along, but the animal studiously ignored him. ‘Some of the cities in this land are within great basins of the land, some so big you could ride for a full day to travel their length. There, the air is so thick with water that you can taste it, and the jungle fills everywhere. It is not a comfortable place for anyone other than those born there and knowing no other.’

  ‘I think,’ said Marlo, ‘this is a land where one should finish their business quickly and leave quicker.’

  ‘You think correctly, young Marlo.’

  A roaring ahead spoke of a waterfall, and they rounded a bend to see the water dropping in a stunning show of power, as though a river poured without cease in a vertical torrent from the top of the cliff to their right, landing to the side of the road. There it collected in a deep and wide trench cut from the rock, disappearing under the trail and emerging in a thousand streams launching themselves over great steps cut into the slope below, each one brimming with crops.

  They pulled their mules to a halt as the sight stunned them, the animals reacting instantly to the only command that pleased them. Brann looked closer at the levels below them, seeing smaller channels collecting water on the top step and distributing it along its length before dropping the excess to the next step where the process was repeated.

  ‘These people are certainly no savages,’ he breathed. ‘Far from it. Who could think to design such a thing? Who could harness nature in such power to this effect?’

  Grakk said, ‘Only those with the capacity to innovate can survive in a land as harsh as this. And when the alternative is extinction, you will find it astounding what the mind is capable of conceiving.’ He urged his reluctant mule forward. ‘Come, dawdling is not helpful to our cause. Their farmlands will, in all conjecture, not be far from the city, but not so close that we can afford to waste time.’

  Konall frowned. ‘You surmise this? You do not know? I thought you had visited here before.’

  ‘I do; I do not for sure; and I did but to a different city from this one. Does that address your points, young lord?’

  ‘It does, as a matter of fact.’

  They moved on, dropping back into silence in the face of a sight of such wonder. Brann shivered slightly, and the cool air was not the only reason. Such levels of alien intelligence were unsettling. He wondered what lay ahead. Or rather, who.

  The track had become broader and had been rendered even, in keeping with the need for carts to carry produce along the route. At one corner, a wide dent in the rock face rising to their right presented a sensation of shelter and, with the sun dipping, they took the invitation and hobbled the mules, looping a rope around a small but sturdy tree for extra security; the plant’s neighbour provided enough fuel for a small fire and they huddled around it, staring into the flames with cloaks and blankets drawn close as they ate, none in the mood for words.

  Shortly after they resumed their journey, the light of the barely risen sun offering scant respite from the chill that had seeped from their rocky rest overnight; the track curved away from the valley and gradually the terrain opened up before them to reveal, before the five mountains but beyond a relatively-short area of flatter ground, a series of sharp ridges that cut across the landscape below them at varying angles though all very roughly parallel. Below them, indeed, for he saw that the gradual nature of the climb to this point had led him to underestimate the magnitude of the height they had reached, even though the ridges ahead were each greater in size than the hills surrounding the village of his childhood.

  Brann’s eye was caught by a curious shape ahead, one that proved to be a vast round hole cut into the ground. As the track wound back and forth on itself to allow them to descend rapidly, he saw the opening to be wide enough to require four shots to let an arrow cross its diameter, with a series of circular ledges stepping down from top to distant bottom. ‘Similar to the ledges in the valley,’ he mused quietly.

  Grakk heard, and saw the line of his gaze. ‘Similar construction, but in construction it holds a different and even more ingenious purpose. Before, we saw advantage taken of a spot where nature had provided an abundance of water, but here we see an understanding of nature and man’s ability to use that understanding. They create great pits such as this as artificial climates.’

  Brann frowned. ‘Artificial what?’ He stared at the distant pit, almost expecting a magical shimmer.

  Grakk, however, leant across and plucked at Brann’s cloak. ‘You have this pulled tight around you.’

  A shrug. ‘Obviously. It’s colder up here.’

  Grakk pointed at the short plain before them. ‘And down there?’

  ‘In this sunshine? Hot, I would say, like before we climbed from the coast.’

  ‘So higher is colder than lower?’

  Brann looked at him. ‘Of course. So?’

  ‘So plants notice temperature more than you and I do. The heat is different at even small changes in height, and though we may not notice it, nature does.’ He indicated the pit. ‘Each level in that circle has more warmth than the one above, and different crops grow in different temperatures. Nature can also be fooled into thinking it is later or earlier in the seasons by being planted at a certain level.’

  Brann felt slightly overwhelmed. ‘People have thought this out, and calculated this so precisely?’

  Grakk nodded. ‘The mind responds well to challenge, especially where empty bellies are at stake.’ He swept his arm across the vista before them. ‘There are twelve such great pits, spaced around this plain, supplemented by extra farms such as the one we passed at the waterfall. Thus is a city fed.’

  Brann pondered in silence the people who could produce such advanced thinking. In Sagia, the engineering of the great buildings and the sanitation and water-supply tunnels that served them had been impressive, but while the sights were awe-inspiring at first, they were almost expected of such a city of massive size and greater reputation. Here, however, in a harsh land that was inaccessible and largely unknown to outsiders, the discovery of even just what he had already seen was stunning.

  And, he thought, chastening. Prejudging was all too often based upon no more than a meagre smattering of knowledge.

  He turned his attention to the mountains beyond the sharp ridges. The nearest, the smoking one, seemed not a huge distance away. He managed to coax his mule close again to Grakk’s. ‘The mountains? Are they far?’


  Grakk narrowed his eyes for a short moment, estimating. ‘The closest, maybe a half ride of half a day.’ He looked disparagingly at the mule beneath him. ‘On a proper steed, that is.’

  Brann grinned. ‘Although perhaps longer than that if your proper steed fell off one of those mountain tracks.’

  Grakk smiled. ‘Of course, you are correct, young Brann.’ He patted the neck of his mule, which in turn twisted round its head to regard him with a baleful eye. ‘Sincere apologies, my sure-footed friend.’

  Brann smiled and looked ahead again. ‘But if that mountain is so close, the city we seek must also be very near.’

  Grakk relaxed, comfortable again that he could be the logical one. ‘It does make sense to place your food sources no further away than they need to be. The city of Tucumala lies in a long valley at the foot of that first mountain.’

  ‘The smoking one?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Was that a wise choice of location?’

  ‘It was not smoking when the choice was made.’

  Brann grunted. ‘And now that it is, I am guessing there will be some consternation.’

  ‘More than you might think, young Brann. Those five mountains, it is believed in these parts, are home to their five gods, each one with the body of a giant man and the head and wings of one of the fantastically plumed birds of the forests – birds that they feel are the messengers and the many eyes of those gods whose image they mimic. This is a highly devout people, and if one mountain is showing activity, there will be many interpretations of the mood, intentions, and requirements of the resident god.’

  ‘From what I have seen of priests, not many of those interpretations will be of the happy variety,’ Brann said darkly.