Authors: Michael A Stackpole
Everything else, you will see. A Desei hawk, a Helosundian dog. Do you know why you
won’t see a dragon?”
The Helosundian snorted. “Because your vaunted Anturasi hasn’t found one?”
“Oh, I daresay that if I asked Jorim to find me one, he would. He would find me a dozen
and bring them all.” Cyron lowered his hand and let his cloak close about him. “It is
because I would not cage a dragon. A dragon would wither and die in a cage. A dragon
cannot be caged, for a dragon has larger concerns.”
“So does the dog!”
“Ha.” Cyron reached out and grabbed Eiran by the front of his cloak. He dragged him
forward a dozen stumbling steps, then tossed him against a cage. “There’s your
Helosundian dog. He’s magnificent.
My
Keru take very good care of him. He is their pet.”
The dog, which had been huddled with his tail curled up to warm his nose, stood and
shook his thick winter coat. Black with a white band around the eyes and white stockings,
the long-haired animal had enough size and bulk to take a wolf. The Keru, when entering
combat, painted a white mask around their eyes to honor their nation’s emblem.
The dog sniffed at Eiran, then backed, baring his teeth.
“The only thing a Helosundian dog cannot tolerate is cowardice, Eiran.” Cyron let his voice
drop into a deep whisper. “If what you reported as passing between Jasai and Pyrust in
Meleswin is true, then she accepted him as her husband without duress. Some would
dispute that, saying she bought your life so you will be able to succor her. They would
make her captivity a cause around which to rally support and send an invasion force
north.”
“That is exactly why she agreed.”
“Look at him, Eiran; he still growls at you. He knows you are terrified of Pyrust. Your sister
knew it, too. She knew you would never come for her. She knew you would use any
excuse possible to avoid that. She’d seen your army slaughtered.
“No, she accepted Pyrust’s offer knowing exactly what it was. It affords Helosunde a
degree of autonomy and relieves it of oppression. There will be no more war in
Helosunde. I will continue to maintain the Keru and the other Honor Guards, and I shall
even allow you to parade some of them about, but fear not. You are a hound that shall
never go to war.”
Eiran levered himself away from the bars of the cage. “You will keep my people caged as
you keep this dog, then?”
“In a cage you will be safe. Like this beast here, I shall find you a cousin of mine to marry
and you shall produce children. One of my children by whomever I choose will marry one
of your nieces, linking our houses. Your children I will have married into the Five Princes. I
will make you useful, but not a threat, so Pyrust will not feel the need to have you
murdered.”
The Helosundian stared at him, shock widening his eyes. “You can’t do that. I am not in a
cage. I am not a pet.”
“No, you are not. You are just someone who is walking after he should be dead.” From
deeper in the sanctuary came the piercing cry of the Desei hawk demanding to be fed.
“Even it knows you should have died in Meleswin, and you likely would have died save
that you cause me more trouble alive than dead. If Pyrust had slain you, I could have
countered by forcing the Council of Ministers to make a new choice—someone who was
tractable—or to make no choice at all. By sending you back, he gives me the choice of
killing you or not. Which reminds me, when we see the tigers, try not to stand too close to
the edge of their pit.”
Eiran shivered. “You wouldn’t!”
If he had any intelligence at all, he’d know he just saw past your bluff.
“Not today, for the tigers have already been fed. You would do well to make certain you do the things I desire
in the future, lest I invite you to walk again in my sanctuary.”
The Helosundian Prince’s face closed and he looked down. Little puffs of vapor were the
only sign he lived. Then his head came back up, his eyes dull. “My life is over, then?”
Cyron shrugged. “Tell me, what was it you thought when they elected you Prince?”
“I thought . . . I thought I would look very heroic in the robes of state.” He sighed, exhaling two plumes of steam.
“Even the most resplendent robes will not a prince make, nor will mud-spattered rags
unmake a prince. You were chosen, Eiran, to be manipulated and controlled. Those who
followed you to Meleswin did not know that. They accepted your authority.” Cyron’s eyes
tightened. “I am going to give you a chance—less because it will benefit me than because
it will give Pyrust something else to worry about.”
The young man’s spine straightened. “What?”
“I am going to budget for you enough gold to buy a hundred thousand
quor
of rice. I want you to spend it on things to benefit the people who expect you to lead them. I want you to
live with them, learn from them, determine what they need—not what they say they want,
but what they
need
. I want you then to provide them the means necessary to attain those ends.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If that is the case in a year, I will find you a tower that will become a gilded cage. You will never need, want, nor fear in that cage, but you will never be allowed out of it.” Cyron
reached a hand through the cage bars and scratched the Helosundian dog behind his ear.
“Learn your duty, do your duty, then we will truly be brothers. Make yourself useful to me,
and you will find that my resources and gratitude know no limits.”
13th day, Month of the Tiger, Year of the Rat
9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Stormwolf,
off the Mountains of Ice
“Thank you for making the time to see me, Captain.” Jorim bowed in her direction. “I asked
Iesol to confirm what I have discovered.”
Anaeda cleared her desk. “You’ve brought charts, so this is a problem of navigation?”
“Yes and no.” Jorim set the rolled charts on her desk and unfurled the first one. “This is a
map of our progress. I’ve been incorporating data as best I can, from what we have
learned and from the Soth map. I’ve already drawn in the coast of the Mountains of Ice, at
least as much of it as we have been able to survey.”
Anaeda studied the chart for a moment, tracing a finger along the line the fleet had
traveled. Their course had come down south and curved to the east, skirting the empty
vastness of the ocean to discover the islands and to confirm the existence of the
Mountains of Ice. “This looks accurate to me. What is the problem?”
Jorim drew in a deep breath and attempted to quell the fluttering of butterflies in his
stomach. “You’ll recall how the islands on the Soth map were further apart than we
expected? And you’ll remember me telling you that they’d drawn Cartayne smaller than it
should be?”
“Something to flatter the Viruk, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. That bit of lore about the Soth is wisdom handed down to me from my grandfather,
and I have no clue as to where he got it, but I know he believes it. He’s worked with Soth
charts and, based on measurements, he’s made some determinations. He knows the
world is a globe. Based on the measurements he’s been given, he’s even managed to
calculate the diameter of the world.”
The captain nodded. “I am well aware of the hopes that by sailing east we could reach the
western shore of Aefret. The logic of such a passage is inescapable, and the question is
which path is shorter, sailing east or west? When you are on the sea enough, you also
hear stories of those who claim to have found the place from which True Men sailed—the
land of light eyes. Some think we came from another world, sent here after fulfilling some
destiny. Others think we were just blown off course. Given the storms down here, I think
that’s most likely.” She folded her arms. “I still fail to see what the difficulty is.”
“The difficulty is, captain, that my grandfather’s calculations were wrong.” He unrolled the
second chart. “The art of measurement is not wholly accurate. Nautical miles and statute
miles are not the same. Each of the Principalities uses a slightly different distance to
define miles, and most people don’t worry about it. Other towns are a day’s travel, or a
week’s, or just too far. Even the surveys my brother and I have undertaken are flawed.
The further we go from Moriande, the greater the error, and it compounds.
“Now, the device your cousin created has allowed for more accurate measurements, but I
realized I was making a mistake in calculating based on statute miles, not nautical miles. I
communicated erroneous things to my grandfather, and when I corrected, suddenly the
Soth scale for Cartayne made sense.” He turned and rested a hand on Iesol’s shoulder. “I
asked the minister to check my math, and he put his students on it as well.”
Anaeda’s eyes narrowed as she studied the new chart. “How big a mistake?”
“Twenty-five percent.”
Her head came up fast. “A quarter of the world unaccounted for?”
“Yes.”
She sat down hard and rubbed a hand over her eyes. “So sailing east will bring us to
Aefret, but it will take far longer than we expected.”
Jorim leaned with both hands on the desk. “That’s if we ever get there.”
Anaeda sat back in her chair, steepling her fingers. “Explain.”
“Currents. We’re south of the equator, and the current is running from right to left. Water
warmed flows toward the south pole. North of the equator it goes in the opposite direction.
If the world were of the size we thought it was, then the southern circle would carry us to
Aefret. The upper current would have carried us to lands at the other end of the Spice
Route. The difficulty we have is that the world is much bigger than we thought. We know
water is cooler away from land and hotter close to it. I think if there were nothing in the
unknown quarter, the current coming across the equator would have cooled too much to
have the force it does coming in to our coast.”
The ship’s captain smiled slightly. “I am pleased your time aboard the
Stormwolf
has
conferred upon you the information you now possess. Your knowledge of currents is
admirable, but faulty. All that is required is for the west coast of Aefret to be shaped so
that it intercepts this polar current, warms it, and directs it back west along the equator.”
She leaned forward and studied the vast expanse of ocean to the east of the Principalities.
“Even as I tell you all that is required to invalidate your idea, I don’t believe it. In every
quarter of the world—every quarter up to this point at least—earth and water are in
balance. To assume nothing but water exists out here is as absurd as to think it could be a
solid wall of stone reaching to the stars. And then there is the mystery of the land from
which True Men came. We also might well wonder after the sea devils and what they call
home. Is it possible some new world lies in the heart of this emptiness? Of course, but this
leaves us another question.”
Jorim cocked an eyebrow. “And that would be?”
“Why didn’t this emptiness or whatever is there appear on Soth charts?”
Iesol bowed his head apologetically. “Permission to speak, Captain?”
“Please, Minister.”
“The Soth were subject to the Viruk. They served them in all ways, including as educators
and keepers of information. Perhaps they chose to hide this knowledge so that any
peoples in this place would remain out of Viruk hands.”
“That is certainly possible, Minister, but the Viruk were capable sailors and explored much
of the world. The idea that the Soth bureaucracy could keep knowledge of a quarter of the
world from them is unsatisfactory.”
Jorim straightened up. “I have another idea, Captain.”
“What would that be?”
“Perhaps this quarter of the world did not exist when the Viruk Empire was its most
powerful.”
Anaeda frowned. “The idea of bureaucracy sounds better at the moment.”
“No, think of it for a moment. We know how much the Cataclysm changed our world, but it
really was very little compared to what happened when Virukadeen sank into the Dark
Sea. The Viruk fought a war with magic—magic so powerful even our greatest legendary
magicians could not begin to match it. Imagine, if you will, that the war changed what sank
into something akin to
thaumston
. Anything could happen. We’ve seen volcanoes add to
coastlines, so perhaps hundreds of volcanoes were triggered and were able to expand the
world.”
“And you would then suggest, Master Anturasi, that the Soth chart you saw on Cartayne
made the island smaller than it really is to reflect the fact that the Soth had determined the
world had expanded?”
Jorim shook his head. “I don’t know, Captain Gryst. I make maps, I find animals. I am, as
you said at our first meeting, an adventurer. I don’t care what would have put a landmass
here. It could be the gods. It could be Viruk magic, it could have been hidden by sloppy
Soth cartographers. All of that is immaterial. I would just like to get there and see what we
find.”
Anaeda stood, then bowed to him. “I appreciate your scholarly approach to this problem.
We have one duty for certain, and that is to survey the Mountains of Ice. I mean to