The Wall of Storms, page 54
After a while, when the fire was big enough, he tossed torn strips of silk onto the flames. The silk burned slowly and generated a lot of smoke. He hoped that he was still close enough to land that the smoke would draw the attention of fishermen and merchants, and perhaps someone would come to investigate in a boat.
He kept the smoke signal alive for most of the day, using the fire to cook fish when he was hungry. The fire meant that even the fish whose flesh was full of tiny bones could now be eaten, as grilling the fish over the fire softened the bones and made it possible to chew the fish whole and swallow. Though he enjoyed the taste of cooked food, no ships appeared over the horizon.
In the end, he was forced to conclude that the hope he had harbored was false. He had no idea how far the land in the mirage really was, and maybe the people there did not possess ships capable of coming out so far.
But at least he had a way to make fire, and that was something. He was immensely cheered: The knowledge he had gained in his travels through Dara was still worth something. Though he was far from home, the sun and the sea still worked as before. A lens still bent light, and fire could be made by harnessing the power of the sun. He could still improve his lot through diligence and ingenuity. Though the gods could not hear his prayers, the universe was knowable.
The fire eventually went out, but hope had returned to his heart.
After the episodes of delirium earlier, Luan no longer knew precisely how long he had been on the endless sea. The new constellations in the sky made it impossible for him to tell the seasons; the persistently hot and humid days were very different from those of Dara.
The raft was now drifting east. To deal with the sweltering weather, Luan Zya turned his thick outer robe into a blanket to sleep on. The thin under-robe he wore was now grimy, tattered, and barely covered his body, so he stripped it off and walked around the raft nude. To provide some measure of protection against the sun, he made hats and shawls for himself out of fish skin and pieces of the kite itself. His hair and beard grew out, snow white in color, and sometimes when he looked at his reflection in the sea he couldn’t even recognize himself.
He dared not burn more of the raft, and so he had to painstakingly gather bits of driftwood and seaweed and dry them for fuel. He thought the presence of driftwood indicated that land was nearby, but the current never brought him within sight of any landmass or ship.
And then, one day, he realized that the current had slowed down and turned north. He tried to steer with the sail again, and the raft actually made progress against the languorous flow.
He was free, on his own.
For the entirety of the time he had ridden this current, Luan had sought to escape it. But now it seemed as if he was saying good-bye to an old friend. He hesitated for a moment, looking at Gitré Üthu, with his rough maps of the course he had taken and the new stars he had seen.
Even if there is nothing but the endless ocean out there, it’s better to die sailing my own course.
He pointed his raft east and did not look back at the current.
The sores on his body scarred over and broke open again, and he always felt weak. He could feel his teeth growing loose in their sockets and his eyesight failing—his diet wasn’t giving him all the nourishment he needed, and exposure to the elements was giving him no chance at true recovery. After continuing east for weeks, he decided to shift to a more northerly course to seek a more temperate climate. The stars once again became familiar, though the view of the ocean still didn’t change.
Tazu, I can see why you are the way you are, he thought. The sea would drive even the gods mad.
Day after day, he peered into the distance and saw only water and more water. The fishes he caught now were yet again different from those in Dara as well as the ones he had seen in the current, and he continued to record them in Gitré Üthu with diligence. At night he dreamed feverish dreams, and he argued with the gods about the nature of the world.
Tututika, is there beauty in a society of one? Could there be imperfection when the world consists of only one soul?
Fithowéo, do you think there can be warfare between the self and the self?
The weather turned chilly, and the wind now consistently blew to the north and east. He wrapped himself in the tattered remains of his heavy robe, and draped clumps of seaweed over his tent to make it more difficult for the cold breeze to find openings. After some more weeks, the temperature had dropped to the point where his teeth began to chatter, and he wasn’t sure if he preferred the hellish heat of the southern regions or this.
Then came the day he beheld a sight that he at first thought was yet another mirage: tiny dots hovering on the horizon, circling.
Birds.
He looked at the ocean around him, and noticed floating vegetation: vines and twigs and leaves that didn’t appear to belong to the sea. Where had they come from?
He steered straight toward the birds, trying to hold back his excitement lest he be disappointed once more. By the time evening fell, a thick fog had descended over everything. He wrapped himself in his robe, now so decayed as to more resemble a shawl, and, as he slept, dreamed of landing on unknown shores, where immortals dressed in rich and colorful silks welcomed him with a lavish celebration.
He woke up, and there it was: a coastline that loomed across the entire horizon, a flat, tan expanse dotted with bits of green. Luan stood up on the swaying raft, clad only in his fish-skin cap and tattered robe, unable to believe his eyes. He had found land.
As he guided the kite-raft toward the shore, he saw a few small dwellings, white in color and shaped like mushrooms, clustered on land a short distance from the surf. A few small boats of a design Luan had never seen before rested on the beach. Shaped like shallow bowls, they appeared to be woven from grass, and a few air-filled bladders tied to the rims provided additional flotation.
The raft caught on something underwater and stopped. Luan Zya crawled off and splashed into the shallow water. The cold shocked his body, and the feeling of solid land under his feet felt unnatural after so much time spent on the ocean; his wobbly legs would not allow him to stand, and he had to support himself on his knees and hands. A wave crashed over him, drenching him in ice-cold water, and he almost fainted from the shock. He saw that some men and women, pale-skinned and light-haired, had emerged from the mushroom-shaped tents to gaze at him in wonder.
“Before the sea, all men are brothers,” he croaked, and then collapsed against the beach.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
AN INTERLUDE
RUI: THE SECOND MONTH IN THE TWELFTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF FOUR PLACID SEAS.
The wintry sea was calm outside the port of Kriphi, but the sky was overcast and faint flashes of lightning could be seen deep within the clouds. As the sun gradually set, the underwater wreckage of city-ships seemed to take on various shapes in the failing light: a giant turtle, a grinning shark, a school of glimmering carp, even massive birds that had somehow abandoned the rarefied air for a far denser medium.
- Where have you been, Old Turtle?
- Away at the edge of the world, to probe at the Wall of Storms again.
- What did you find?
- Terror of the unknown; I still could not pass through.
- You know we aren’t supposed to cross it, brother. Our mother told us that Moäno created it to mark Dara apart.
- But the world beyond has come to Dara, as well as new gods.
- We have not felt the power of these new gods yet; perhaps they are still weak from their journey.
In the last rays of the setting sun, the great shadow of the turtle seemed to shake its head.
- I fear that the Wall of Storms is a barrier that only the mortals may pass through, but not the gods.
The underwater shadows held still, as though the gods were shocked to hear this unimagined horror.
But Tazu, as always, was the first to break the morose mood.
- You’re missing a great story—your favorite mortal has been on quite an adventure.
- Did I miss much?
- They’re just getting to the good part.
- Lutho, why didn’t you follow your protégé beyond the Wall when he broke through three years ago?
- I tried to help him as much as I could, but I felt my power weaken as I tried to reach beyond that barrier. Our power comes from these islands, and we cannot leave our home without becoming . . . mortal.
- But maybe that means . . . the gods of these strangers also could not leave their home. The Lyucu have left their gods behind, their prayers unheard.
The gods pondered this as they continued to listen to the tale unfolding in the halls of the Palace of Kriphi, like patrons nursing drinks by the firelight of a pub as the storyteller continued his performance.
Zomi sat between the two stretchers, one hand holding the hand of her father, the other the hand of her teacher. The two men were now asleep, their pain temporarily dulled by medicine.
“Is there any hope?” she asked.
The army doctor furrowed his brows, neither nodding nor shaking his head. “They have been severely tortured,” he said. “I’m surprised that . . . they’re alive at all.”
Zomi nodded numbly.
On the ground before her lay Gitré Üthu, whose pages had told a tale that she hardly dared to believe.
“Rest, Father,” she murmured. “Rest, Teacher.”
Behind her, the generals and advisers and soldiers waited for her to read more.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF UKYU
IN THE COUNTRY OF STRANGERS: TWO YEARS EARLIER.
Luan woke up in a tent, lying on a bed of furs and covered by another fur. The dim interior of the tent was redolent with the musk of animals, strong but not unpleasant. Light came through a single central opening in the top, which also served as the chimney for the smoke from the cooking fire, over which a pot made of animal skins bubbled.
An old woman came to him and held a bowl to his mouth, feeding him something that smelled of fermented milk. He was famished. The sour taste was strong but also felt nourishing. He swallowed and swallowed, and fell back asleep before he finished.
He dreamed that his stomach became a battlefield. Currents of lava and ice fought for dominance inside him, hissing and steaming. He woke up vomiting, and he could feel that he had soiled himself. The old woman and several other figures came to attend to him, and he tried to croak out an apology, but was too weak to get out more than a mumble.
When he woke up again, he felt even weaker, but his stomach had finally settled. This time, the herders gave him something different, a soup or stew made of meat and vegetables. He tried to eat slowly this time, to give his body time to adjust to the new foods.
He finished one bowl and they fed him another, and this time, he felt strong enough to try to hold the bowl—made out of the seedpod of some plant chopped in half—himself. While he drank, the family spoke around him. Though he could not understand their language, he did pick out a word that sounded like “Dara.”
They know about my home? He couldn’t understand how that could be. But then exhaustion and sleep overtook him again.
He was jolted awake. Looking around, he grew alarmed. There were vertical bars all around him, made of white animal bones, and above him was a roof of animal skins. The sensation of being lifted and set down made him feel like he was in the sea again. He struggled to sit up, and what he saw took his breath away.
He was inside a cage, and his feet were tied to the bars of his prison with strong cords of sinew. But he didn’t even bother to struggle to free himself.
The cage, and he, were airborne. He was on the back of some great beast with wings that slowly beat through the air like the oars of an Imperial airship. A neck extended before him like the thick vines of the jungles of Arulugi or the rearing form of a giant python, and terminated in an antlered head shaped like a deer’s, though many times larger.
Somehow, the massive beast seemed familiar. But how could that be? He was sure he had never come across any description of such a creature in his travels.
Then it struck him. They looked exactly like the strange winged and antlered beasts he had seen on the wreckage pieces that had inspired his voyage.
His heart pounded with the thrill of discovery, of having stepped through a dream into a new world.
He examined the bones in the cage he was imprisoned in—long, large, hollow-sounding—and suspected that they came from the same kind of animal as he was riding on.
The great beast flew at a height of perhaps a few hundred yards above ground, similar to the cruising altitude of an Imperial airship. Far below, Luan could see an endless, flat, tan landscape dotted with clumps of brush and grass. Herds of animals—they resembled cattle, but far shaggier and somewhat bigger—roamed beneath him. And each herd was accompanied by two or three beasts like the one he rode on. They waddled alongside the herds, their wings folded, carrying herdsmen who looked up at his mount as it flew overhead. Far in the distance, he saw the slate-gray ocean, dotted here and there with a few of the small bowl-shaped grass ships bobbing over the waves.
There were guards all around the cage, maybe half a dozen of them, secured in harnesses or saddles attached to the back of their mount. Some were men, and some were women, but they all wore simple clothing made of fur and woven grass, and wielded war clubs and axes made of bones and stones, or slingshots made from antlers and sinew. Sensing that he was awake, a few turned to look at him with curious eyes.
Recalling that the herders who had rescued him seemed to know the name of Dara, he thought he would try to see if they knew his language.
“What country is this?” he asked. “Which people inhabit these shores?”
There was no response. The guards looked at him, their expressions unfathomable.
It was useless to try to ask questions when he had so little information. He had to bide his time and understand his situation better.
The universe is knowable.
About an hour later, the beast carrying him landed next to a cluster of mushroom-shaped tents, panting heavily. Another winged and antlered beast, similar in size but freshly rested, strode over to stand opposite his.
One of the guards, the one who rode at the base of the beast’s neck and was evidently the pilot, let out a series of loud whistles.
The beast lowered its head while keeping its neck stiff and straight, like a drawbridge. Luan saw the other beast mirroring the same motion until the two heads met in the center, their necks perfectly parallel with the ground. The two heads nuzzled against each other and moaned, and then they held still.
The guards unlashed the cage from the harness on the beast’s back, heaved it over their shoulders, and stepped onto the beast’s neck. Luan gripped the bars of his cage tightly as it swayed, certain that someone would lose their balance on the knobby vertebrae of the beasts and cause the cage to tumble down to the ground.
But the guards carried the cage across the living bridge formed by the necks of the two beasts as steadily as the palanquin carriers of Dara might have borne a passenger across a city moat. They secured the cage to the back of the new beast and buckled themselves into new harnesses and saddles.
Luan had already learned something. These beasts, though powerful, did not appear to be capable of sustaining flight for long. That probably explained why the herdsmen he had seen earlier had kept their mounts waddling awkwardly along the ground instead of hovering in the air.
His suspicion was confirmed as his new ride also landed after an hour, and the process of transfer was repeated. He reached for Gitré Üthu out of habit to record his observations and speculations about the novel flying beasts, and only then did he realize that the book was no longer with him. An intense pain racked him, as though a part of himself had been cut away—and that was true, in a manner of speaking. The book had been his sole companion during the long voyage across the ocean, the mirror of his delirium and the ledger of his dreams. Now that the kite-raft was gone, Gitré Üthu was the only witness left to all that he had experienced.
After switching through twelve beasts in this manner, they finally arrived at a massive settlement, a city made up of thousands of mushroom-shaped tents, many of them far larger than the ones he had seen so far.
In the center of the city was an especially massive tent that dwarfed the others, with a diameter that rivaled the Grand Examination Hall back in Pan. The flying beast landed, and Luan saw that in front of the tent was a tall bone pole, from whose crown several furry long tails flapped like banners. Luan was shocked to see two metal helmets—the first signs of metal he had seen anywhere in this new land—also dangling and flapping from the tip of the flagpole. The helmets were familiar to him, being constructed in the style of the old Xana Empire, and he could see that inside the helmets were the mummified remains of two heads.
Something writhed in the depths of Luan Zya’s mind, the beginning of a vague answer that could explain some of the riddles around him.
The beast touched its head to the ground to form a long, gentle slope with its neck, and the guards untied Luan’s feet, took him out of the cage, and then walked him down this makeshift flight of stairs.
One of the guards went inside the large tent, and after a while, she emerged and said something to the other guards. Together, they guided Luan to a small structure next to the large tent: a circular hut whose walls were made from a bone palisade covered with a layer of woven plant fiber and mud and whose roof was made of animal skin.
Inside, the only illumination came from a small opening in the roof and a small fire under the smoke-hole to keep the enclosure warm. Besides a stack of dry animal dung meant as fuel for the fire and a large seedpod-bowl that was likely intended for his night soil, the hut was bare save for a pile of pelts and furs, very clean, and he figured that he was supposed to use them as bedding. He could not find anything hard or sharp, no instruments that could be used as a weapon.
