The Edge of the World

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The perfect scale replica of the Luminara was held in this secure tower room--a detailed copy down to the last rigging rope and sailcloth, every piece made from counterpart materials on the ship herself so that it was connected by sympathetic magic. The wood of the model's hull had been cut from the same planks; the sails were swatches trimmed from larger sailcloth; the ropes were strands taken from the thick rigging ropes. Through careful observation of the model, Korastine's advisers would have some inkling as to what was happening to the actual ship. The model was a thing of beauty in itself.

  Anjine knew all about chasing dreams. In Calay, with its mixture of cultures from the five reaches, as well as being the cen

  ter of trade for exotic Uraban goods, her upbringing had been asparkle with myths and stories. Anjine had always seen them as possibilities. Sometimes, Mateo lured her away from her tutors and diplomatic teachers so the two of them could explore the city. "Practical learning instead of book learning," he'd told her with a grin. "A queen needs both."

  Wanting to see the city as average people did, without anyone recognizing Anjine as the king's daughter, Mateo had scrounged a drab but comfortable outfit from one of the serving girls; a smudge of hearth soot on Anjine's left cheek and a yarn hat pulled down over her golden hair completed her transformation into a scamp. After Mateo picked suitable clothes for himself, the two appeared to be street urchins out running errands or causing mischief.

  To amuse them, one of the washerwomen had spun tales of two lovable scamps, an orphaned boy and girl named Tycho and Tolli, who had all sorts of adventures: being shanghaied aboard Urecari ships, running afoul of pickpockets, discovering buried treasure along a riverbank, or rescuing children even less fortunate than themselves.

  Whenever the two of them went out into the sunny streets of Calay, Mateo and Anjine took those names for themselves. Tycho and Tolli. It was a perfect disguise because, Anjine later realized, the washerwoman had modeled her stories after the two of them anyway.

  She remembered their first secret outing so clearly. Jewelers called out their wares, offering abalone pearls of the darkest luster, web-fine golden chains said to be spun from undine hair, masculine pendants crafted of gold-plated sharks' teeth. Scruffy merchants offered pilgrims' badges from Ishalem, so that any worshipper could pretend to have made the journey to the holy city.

  The disguises worked so well that most of the traders had chased them away, sure the two were thieves. Anjine sat down on a crate in an alley, wiping sweat from her brow and adjusting her yarn cap. She said with a sniff, "What I'm looking for won't be set out among all the other wares. If it existed, then everyone would know about it." "Oh? What are we looking for?"

  "Aiden's Compass," she said in an awed whisper.

  "That was lost centuries ago!"

  "It was broken centuries ago. But Ondun created it to guide Aiden on his voyage. Do you really think it can't be fixed?" His brow furrowed. "If it could be fixed, wouldn't somebody have done it by now?"

  b "Maybe it's just been hidden away, waiting for the right time. Maybe Aiden locked it away somewhere, left it for some later generation... like us." Though intrigued by the idea, Mateo remained skeptical. "Like Tycho and Tolli, you mean? And how do you expect to find it?" "By looking, of course. You can't expect to accomplish something difficult the first time you try. We'll just have to keep sneaking out of the castle and exploring." Mateo had completely agreed with her. Not the first time you try...

  Now, bringing herself back to the discussion in the castle tower room, Anjine turned to Korastine. "You don't want to be known only as the king who reigned when the city burned, Father. If you rebuild Ishalem, you will become a legend." The king turned away, but not before she saw unshed tears sparkling in his eyes. He said, "Tierra will throw its resources into the holy city. I will command all destrars to send workers and materials to Ishalem. And to show how important this is,

  Prester-Marshall Baine, you will lead the construction mission. Maybe Soldan-Shah Imir will see what we are doing and help us rebuild the city to the greater glory of Ondun, rather than continuing strife between the brothers."

  22

  Calay, Saedran District

  Though he had already spent months studying volumes and maps in the Saedran libraries, Aldo still waited to be assigned his first mission. Whenever Aldo expressed impatience to go off to sea, the old scholar simply sent him back to the tomes. "Before a Saedran chartsman can leave home, he must build a perfect map of the known world in his mind."

  When he wasn't studying books, Aldo took it upon himself to acquire knowledge in other ways. Down in the Merchants' District he watched arriving vessels tie up to docks and unload their cargoes to a flurry of eager merchants and curiosity seekers. Aldo studied the ships' profiles and forms, the length-to-beam ratios, the varying arrangements of rigging, the square-rigged or lateen-rigged sails, or a combination of both.

  He talked to sailors returning to port, whether they were captains or regular seaman, pumping them for information. He became an astute observer of human expressions, watching how the men's eyes would light up or flicker away. He learned to distinguish when they were telling the truth from when they were deceiving their listeners. He did not forget how Yal Dolicar had duped him with his fake map. When he smelled the salt air, watched the shifting tides, and saw seabirds wheel

  ing overhead, Aldo felt the invisible currents and tides of the Oceansea.

  He waited with all the patience he could muster, longing for the day when Sen Leo would send him out on an exploration of his own. Finally, one morning the old scholar came to him in the underground temple vault with rolled-up hand-drawn blueprints. "I have a mission for you."

  Aldo was diligently reading the last few books he had not yet memorized in the Saedran library. His face lit up, already imagining forgotten shores and exotic seaports.

  "I am sending you inland," Sen Leo said. "I have work for you in the mountains of Corag." The scholar spread his drawings on the table, moving the open books aside. Aldo could not hide his crestfallen expression, but Sen Leo gruffly kept his attention on the matter at hand. He tapped the blueprints, which showed intricate gears and graduated metal arcs, angles and dials to be calibrated and set by the stars. "These are new navigation instruments for Saedran chartsmen. The workings are complex, and the manufacture must be precise. There is little tolerance for error."

  He revealed another drawing, a set of gears, springs, and spinning counterweights. "This is a sealed navigation clock, vital for determining longitude. A variation and improvement on our other models. If our designs are followed properly, the clock will be accurate enough for a chartsman to pinpoint his position, latitude and longitude."

  Aldo could not make sense of the designs, but Sen Leo dropped a bag of silver pieces next to the blueprints. "Sophisticated metalworkers in Corag Reach can make these instruments with the required accuracy. If you promise not to spend this money on another silly map of imaginary lands, I entrust you with this

  mission to Corag Reach. See that these instruments are made precisely according to design."

  Though he was disappointed that he would not be going off to sea--yet--Aldo turned his mind eastward, looking at the rivers, imagining the open lands of Tierra. For Aldo, the whole world, not just the sea, was unexplored territory. He resolved to fill his mind with sights of cliffs and crags, rather than islands and waves.

  His mother helped him pack for the journey, while his younger brother and sister seemed more excited than he was. With his satchel in hand, Aldo followed his father to the shallow interior basin at the far end of the Butchers' District, into which one of the primary rivers emptied. There, upon locating a flat riverboat designed for hauling both cargo and passengers, Biento bargained with its bearlike captain, who smelled of cloves and sweat, booking passage for his son. Aldo said goodbye to his father and stepped aboard with his pack of clothes, the drawings Sen Leo had given him (rolled up and sealed inside a special locked cylinder),
and carefully hidden coins to pay for the instruments.

  Grinning, Aldo found a spot for himself on the wide deck. With all the space belowdecks reserved for cargo, the handful of passengers had to spend their time out in the open air or under fabric awnings. At this time of year, though, the weather was fine, and he didn't mind. When he was settled, he turned to wave farewell to his father; Biento stood on the dock, waving back.

  The itinerant rivermen pledged loyalty to no particular destrar and claimed no individual reach as their own. They plied their trade up and down the rivers, always moving; their homes were their boats. The flatboat was broad and sturdy, its construction entirely different from the oceangoing vessels Aldo had studied.

  A mast and sails could be set out to take advantage of a favorable breeze, or the muscular men could use long oars to row against the current. In shallow waters they could push the craft with long poles.

  Every man wore a beard; all the women covered their heads with scarves that were dyed and embroidered in a riot of colors, and the women looked just as powerful as the men, bred for heavy labor.

  Aldo stared at everything, drinking in details as the boat pushed off and began to make its way upstream. It did not take him long to notice that the rivermen laughed a great deal more, and over more trivial things, than Saedrans did. They broke into song for no reason whatsoever, and each riverman carried some sort of musical instrument, either a jangling tambourine, a raucous-sounding squeezebox, a shrill flute, or a fiddle. They played whenever they felt like it, whenever a tune struck them. They made no attempt to coordinate as a symphony, but the conflicting strains of music made a song all their own.

  Over the next hour, Aldo watched Calay diminish into the distance, vanishing as the river curved around a line of hills. Never in his life had he been away from the great city, and now the open lands of Tierra swallowed him up.

  After speaking with them, Aldo learned that the rivermen were bound by family ties. The barge captain was a man named Sazar, a leader of several interconnected clans. A bearlike dark bearded man with a gold ring in each ear, he called himself the "destrar of the River Reach." The big captain took Aldo under his wing, chatting with him during the slow voyage.

  "We don't often get a Saedran chartsman on the river. Some would say you're going the wrong way." Sazar laughed. "My clan has mapped all the rivers and streams, the tributaries, the (ixbows and the mud shoals, just like you Saedrans know the way

  of the oceans. If you tell me all your secrets of the sea, lad, I'll tell you the secrets of Tierra's rivers."

  Aldo had seen the serpentine blue lines drawn on the Mappa Mundi, so he knew that Saedrans had already charted the inland rivers. "This is the first time I have ever left Calay. What makes you think I know any secrets of the world?" As a chartsman, he had sworn to keep their proprietary knowledge from falling into the hands of any outsider.

  The burly river-destrar let out a booming laugh. "Because you're a Saedran. And Saedrans know everything." He lowered his voice and leaned forward. "Except how to lie. Lad, the truth is as plain as a mud smear on your face."

  Destrar Sazar had his own violin, and he stood at the bow of the barge gazing upriver. He sawed his tunes--sometimes mournful and beautiful, other times reminiscent of a tortured cat. He launched into a deep-throated song, making up words that rarely rhymed, with a tune that did not match the music he played. Sazar sang about the wealth of the people of the River Reach, about mysterious stashes of treasure that the clans stored in uncharted swamps, caches of supplies that only a river man could find. Aldo didn't know whether to believe the tales, though, for Sazar sang with equal gusto about the beauty of their women, and so far Aldo had seen little evidence of that.

  At night, the barge pulled into a calm oxbow; crewmen lit lamps around the barge, and food was served--cold smoked fish, beets, and a mush of overcooked greens. Aldo didn't care for the peculiar spices, but he ate and listened and watched.

  Sitting alone under one of the awnings, he worked the intricate seal at the end of the watertight cylinder that held the blueprints. The lock was keyed to Saedran symbols and could be opened only by someone who understood the code. Aldo unrolled the drawings of the navigation devices and leaned forward to study

  them by the light of a lantern, intent on grasping the secret workings. This would be a very complex task for even a highly skilled metalworker, but his brow furrowed as he tried to understand the design.

  Though Aldo had studied numerous Saedran treatises on mathematics and mechanics, he could not fathom the reason for half of the gears and curves and angular measuring levers. He understood the Saedran notations marked on each gauge, but they didn't make sense to him. He traced with his ringer, imagined how the pieces fit together, which component did what.

  With a start, he realized that the mechanism had many extraneous and needlessly complicated pieces--intentionally so. The added components served no purpose, except to confound anyone else who might try to copy the design. Now it all made sense: merely another way for the Saedrans to maintain their secrecy.

  Aldo rolled the blueprints again and huddled under a blanket that Destrar Sazar had given him. Listening to the slow lap of the river, Aldo fell into a contented sleep.

  ' Three days later, the riverboat made its way into the highlands, lighting through narrower channels and swifter waters. They arrived at the outskirts of Corag Reach. The barge had stopped at river villages along the way, unloading cargo, dispatching passengers, taking on new items. An hour after daybreak, the barge pulled up to a wide wooden wharf that ran along the bank. Nine people stood waiting with their packs for passage back downstream to Calay.

  Aldo rubbed his eyes and stretched. He looked past the landing to the stark and towering mountains beyond, a wilderness of black and white and gray, crowded crags that looked impassible.

  "This is as far as the river can take you, lad," Sazar said. With a thick finger, he pointed past the landing to a dirt path

  that wound through grassy meadows and up into the forbidding peaks. "From here on, you are on foot."

  Thanking the riverman, Aldo shouldered his pack and stepped onto the wharf. Nobody else disembarked from the barge, so he would have no walking companions. Setting his feet upon the narrow path, he trudged away from the boat and the river.

  23

  Uncharted Seas

  Once past the fringes of Soeland, the Luminara sailed along without seeing any sign of land. Criston, with his sharp eyes, took many shifts up in the lookout nest, gazing at the endless water in all directions, clouds scudding through the vast open sky overhead. For more than two weeks, the sea remained unbroken and unending.

  Criston couldn't remember the last time he had seen a bird. This ship had voyaged much farther than any Tierran had ever sailed, and he could not imagine how much more distance they had yet to cover. Captain Shay anticipated a journey of one full year, and they had been gone from Calay barely a month.

  All alone atop the mainmast, Criston had hours to let his thoughts wander, with Adrea prominent in his heart and mind. He wondered what she was doing now, whether she was thinking of him, how she and Ciarlo were managing without him. If he continued to think like that, he knew he would drive himself mad, so he concentrated on the waves, keeping watch... until his thoughts drifted back to Adrea again.

  Other times, Criston helped Captain Shay with his experiments. An amateur naturalist, the captain kept dozens of pot

  ted plants, herbs, and flowers that grew in baskets rocking back and forth as the ship swayed in heavy seas. Every day, the captain gave orders for the men to cast nets overboard and bring up the haul, dumping a variety of unusual fish onto the deck. Like a child playing a game of marbles, Shay would bend over the creatures, prodding with a toe or finger, sometimes using a stick if the fish looked particularly fierce. He sketched any unusual specimen in intricate detail. Some of the smaller oddities he preserved in jars; the rest of the catch he turned over to the cook, a portly man of few wor
ds named Orico, who added any fish that looked and smelled edible to the stewpot. He dumped buckets of offal over the stern, and sharks began to trail the Luminara, looking for a free meal.

  Once, when Criston helped empty the bucket of guts and scales, the sharks suddenly scattered. A green-scaled sea serpent rose up, it's head as large as a cargo crate, to snatch a mouthful of chum, then dove under; its sinuous form rolled and curled in the wake for several long minutes until it finally vanished. The crewmen let out such a cry of alarm that Captain Shay rushed onto the deck, disappointed to have missed the spectacle. He insisted that Griston describe the serpent as best he could, then asked Sen Nikol na-Fenda to add more specific detail as he took notes for his journals.

  Over the next two days, they sighted three more serpents, each with a distinctly different appearance. One red-and-copper specimen had spiky fins and long whiskers about its fanged mouth I ike the barbs of a catfish. A blue-and-silver one had a rounded, stubby head and a small vestigial dorsal fin, making the creature look like a very large earthworm. The third serpent was black with gold spots and two large frontal fins that extended to the sides like wings as it reared out of the water. All of them had I >lowholes, which they evacuated upon breaching the surface.

  Though these monsters unsettled the crew, the sea serpents simply swam around the ship, more curious than ferocious. Captain Shay, intrigued, offered a gold coin to the next man who saw a new species of sea serpent

  At sunset in calm seas, Criston assisted the captain inside his cabin. "Why are you so interested in drawing sea serpents?" he asked.

  "When we return, I intend to publish a book. On this voyage, we'll see more wonders than we can possibly catalogue, but I have it in my mind to develop a naturalist's guide to sea monsters. If King Korastine launches more long voyages, such a book could be of great practical use to other captains."