Authors: Michael A Stackpole
horror to delight, suggested they saw themselves as changed as he did. Only Rekarafi
viewed it with disdain, though he did claw furrows across one flat surface.
They followed the twisting canyon down into a valley that spread out north and south as
well as further west to Ixyll. Signs of human habitation began to appear, mostly in the form
of discarded rubbish. Here and there pickaxes had chipped rock and shovels had turned
soil. At one point Keles caught the reflection of someone digging, but in the real world all
that existed was an old hole and the broken haft of the shovel.
Finally, cresting a small rise, they saw Opaslynoti. Borosan rested both hands on his
saddle horn and smiled. “It’s grown.”
The last vestige of romance died in Keles’ heart. Opaslynoti was a city, but unlike
any
city
he’d ever seen before. Nothing even hinted at its Viruk roots. He wondered what Rekarafi was seeing.
Were Moriande reduced to this, I would wish to die.
Opaslynoti most closely resembled a trash midden, with people wriggling through it like
maggots. Nestled there at an intersection of canyons two miles wide, it had been built
against the southwest wall. In the days of its Viruk glory it would have occupied land at the
conjunction of two rivers. Keles could easily imagine ships sailing down them and towers
soaring, but then the truth of Opaslynoti reasserted itself.
When human settlement was small, the rock outcropping likely would have provided some
safety against magic storms. Were water to run through the canyon, its location would
contain nothing more than a gentle eddy. From there it had grown downward. The earth
removed had been piled to the north, extending the outcropping to create a dike. The way
sunlight reflected from parts of the midden revealed it had weathered some magic storms,
but the fact that the downstream side also had been polished suggested the magic had
slopped over, and the sunken pit of Opaslynoti would have been a perfect catch basin for
it.
A closer approach did not make Keles feel any better. The diggings had been organized
into terraces, so dwellings sank back into the stone. Up around the perimeter of the pit,
looking like the caps of countless toadstools, domed buildings large and small provided
shelter. Camels and horses stood in paddocks around some of the larger domes, and he
assumed the animals would be driven inside to protect them from storms.
The odd thing about the domes was that they all had clearly been constructed of mud and
straw, but had flat grey stone plates set over them. “Borosan, what are the stones for?”
The
gyanridin
rested his hands on his saddlehorn. “The stones are dug from deeper in the pits. They contain some
thaumston
and will absorb magic. After a storm, people take the dome shields down and sell the
thaumston,
but it is very low grade and not terribly useful.”
He gave his horse a touch of spur. “Come on. I have friends in the lower reaches. We will
stable our mounts and they will take us in.”
Moraven cleared his throat. “Down is best?”
Borosan nodded. “Storms will whip around the edges, but seldom fill the Well to
overflowing. As long as we avoid the falls during a storm, deep is best. Opaslynoti, despite
what you might think, is not a place where we will get into trouble.”
Ciras, who had guided his horse off to the right to examine a separate set of tracks
leading in toward the city, shook his head. “I do not think that will be necessarily true this
time, Master Gryst.”
Moraven frowned. “What is it?”
“These tracks run to the largest dome. I know them.” Ciras dropped a hand to the hilt of
his sword. “Somehow the raiders are here before us.”
27th 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
Tocayan, Caxyan
Jorim was able to convince the warrior in the jet, jade, and gold mask to wait while they
sent a boat back for Captain Gryst. The man seemed to understand the word Captain.
Jorim dispatched Lieutenant Linor to the
Stormwolf
. The rest of the landing party took up a defensive position near the
Moondragon
and eyed the woods with suspicion.
Jorim crouched high up on the beach with the giant. Though he had rendered the greeting
perfectly, his grasp of the Naleni tongue was spotty. He introduced himself as Tzihua and,
at Jorim’s request, began naming common items in his tongue. In short order, the
cartographer learned that Tzihua’s people called themselves the Amentzutl, their nation
Caxyan, and that he was from a southern outpost called Tocayan. The
Moondragon
’s
crew had been taken there for their protection since the Mozoyan—an enemy people—
had scouts moving throughout the area.
Jorim began to pick up little bits and pieces of the language. The suffix “–yan,” for
example, denoted a place. The Mozoyan were from outside that place, which meant they
were as much outsiders as the Turasynd were for the Empire. It pleased Jorim that the
Amentzutl tongue had an orderly nature to it, since that made it so much easier for him to
learn.
Within an hour Captain Gryst came ashore, bringing with her Iesol and Shimik, as well as
the fleet’s botanical scholar. Tzihua greeted her and was content to leave the fleet’s
people at the beach while he conducted a small party inland to the outpost. He
communicated to Jorim that they should have little fear of the Mozoyan with such fine
troops in evidence. He waved a hand and summoned a half dozen young men and
women from the forest depths and left them behind to “help,” but both sides knew they
were hostages against the safety of those accompanying him.
Tzihua eyed Shimik carefully, but when the Fennych held his arms up and Iesol hefted
him like a child, his concern lessened appreciably. He led Iesol, Anaeda, and Jorim into
the forest, and within a half dozen paces the beach had disappeared in green gloom. Not
much further on, other warriors joined them on the narrow trail that wound around past the
boles of large trees. Golden monkeys and their smaller cousins screamed at them from
the thick canopies above, rushing down, screeching, then darting away again to chatter
with fellows.
Jorim and Anaeda said almost nothing, but Jorim was thinking what Iesol kept muttering.
“Oh, my, oh, my,” fell from his lips so often that Shimik started chanting “Omaiamaia.” The
Fenn wove into that some of the haunting, hooting tones of the monkeys and became loud
enough that their arboreal stalkers would pause and cock their heads when Shimik
returned their calls.
Jorim found the jungle to be a wondrous place, full of plants and animals the like of which
he’d never seen. He was fairly certain he could spend a year or more and not even begin
to dent the surface of all he could discover. Already he’d seen a dozen different varieties
of brilliantly colored blossoms that were produced by plants growing on tree limbs, their
roots hanging free in the air. The monkeys, as well as tracks of small deer and similar
creatures on the trail, suggested there must be some larger predators around, but he saw
nothing of them. This sent a trickle of fear through him, though he took heart that neither
Tzihua nor his men appeared to be overly concerned with things lurking beyond the green
walls that hemmed them in.
The trail moved parallel to the river. Jorim estimated that they traveled due east for three
miles before the river curved south around a hill. The jungle made it impossible to see how
tall the hill was, but the path broadened slightly as they climbed. Other paths fed into it,
and suddenly the trail leveled out. They emerged from the jungle onto a broad green plain
roughly five miles in diameter. The outer ring consisted of cleared fields up to the jungle
edge. While Jorim did not recognize the crops being cultivated, other patches remained
overgrown.
They practice crop rotation.
He made that observation, realizing it set them apart from the people of Ethgi. The Amentzutl had enough science to realize that purposely letting fields
rest one in five or seven seasons would mean it would never be played out. That
observation occurred in a flash, suggesting to him a level of sophistication despite
Tzihua’s lack of steel weaponry. In the next moment, as Jorim’s eyes focused beyond the
fields and he realized that what he had taken for bare hills in the distance were not natural
formations, his estimate of their sophistication expanded exponentially.
Tzihua had used the Naleni word “outpost” to describe Tocayan, but the word failed to
encompass adequately what Tocayan truly was. In the distance he saw four stepped
pyramids rising from the heart of the plain. It seemed quite obvious that the stones had
been quarried from the nearby mountains, but that meant they’d been transported a
minimum of three miles to where the pyramids were built. Moreover, the trail, which had
become a full-fledged road, showed no signs of ruts made by wagon wheels. Nor did
Jorim see any horses, though people working the fields did have with them beasts that
looked like very small camels with no discernible humps.
In addition to the pyramids, which rose to a height of nearly one hundred feet, a number of
circular buildings a third of that height dotted the landscape. They, too, had a solid stone
construction. While they lacked the ornate nature of Imperial construction, they were clean
and strong. What ornamentation they did have came in the form of carved stone blocks
with serpent and bird imagery that reminded Jorim rather hauntingly of Naleni and Desei
symbols.
“Tzihua, how many Amentzutl in Tocayan?”
The warrior held his right hand up, splaying out all five fingers. He closed that hand into a
fist, chopped his left hand at his wrist, then again at his elbow. “Do you understand? Ten
in hand. Ten more. Ten more.”
Jorim knew thirty could not be the correct answer. “I am not sure.”
Iesol spoke. “Master Anturasi, they use the Viruk system, counting by tens. The wrist
would multiply by ten, and the elbow ten again. The shoulder another ten, perhaps? He is
telling you there are a thousand people here.”
“A thousand people in an outpost?” Jorim shook his head. “How long has Tocayan been
here? Tocayan yan?”
Tzihua’s fingers flashed and hand chopped.
A hundred and twenty years?
Jorim glanced back at Anaeda. “Could they have done all
this in a hundred and twenty years?”
“Not a thousand people, not unless they were far more industrious than even the Naleni
are.” Her dark eyes narrowed. “That, or Minister Iesol might have offered a solution?”
“What?”
“If they count in the Viruk manner, perhaps they used Viruk magic.”
“That’s not . . .” Jorim fell silent and tried to reconcile two ideas he thought of as mutually exclusive truths. First, he knew the Viruk used magic and could be very powerful. The
Viruk ambassador had cured his brother, and no Naleni physician could have done what
she did. While Men had once worked hard to refine skills that would give them access to
magic, the Viruk just played with magic all by itself.
The
vanyesh
had sought use of Viruk-style magic. Their quest had proven to be a
disaster. Playing with magic had triggered the Cataclysm. That humans could practice
magic and be productive with it—all without disastrous side effects—clearly was
unthinkable.
But Jorim knew that magic was a skill that could be mastered. The
vanyesh
had some
initial success. The Viruk likewise were skilled at it. Perhaps the Amentzutl had discovered
a discipline that provided access to magic under controlled circumstances. If that were
true, then their most powerful mages would be Mystics, and that would be a sight to
behold.
Discovery of such a discipline would be worth more than all the gold and jewels we could
possibly return to Nalenyr.
The outpost and fields suggested that if magic were being
employed, its harmful side effects were controlled. Just the ability to do that, to harness
wild magic, would allow the opening of the Spice Routes to the west.
Jorim found himself becoming very excited by the prospect, so he quickly reined himself
in. Speculation was all fine and good, but he still had no evidence that these people
controlled any magic at all. Everything he saw could have been performed by massive
armies of slaves, and their dead bodies could have been fertilizing the fields through
which they walked. It could be that the Amentzutl didn’t even consider slaves to be people,
so they weren’t included in Tzihua’s accounting. But regardless of how Tocayan had been
created, for it to have been done in a hundred and twenty years was remarkable, and
Jorim meant to have the secret of its history.
As they drew closer to the city, Jorim watched for evidence of magic, but saw none. In
fact, what he did see reminded him very much of the Ummummorari. Women and men
alike wore loincloths and, save for those wearing armor, strode about bare-chested. They
wore their black hair long and braided into a single queue with brightly colored threads