The Map of All Things, page 7
part #2 of Terra Incognita Series
When he looked at the young townspeople, the active fishermen, the boys longing to go out to sea, he realized that many of them had not yet been born at the time of the devastating Urecari raid.
Without a word, he led Javian to the end of one of the old docks, not one of the newly rebuilt structures or the expanded wharves. Criston gestured out to the harbor opening and restless waves far beyond. He kept his voice low, musing to himself, although the young man listened with eager attention.
“I used to stand here and watch my father set off to sea every day in his fishing boat. I'd wave to him until I couldn't see him anymore. My mother would always tell him to be careful, and then she'd pray for Aiden to watch over him. But one day my father didn't come back. His boat sank, lost at sea in a storm—or maybe the Leviathan found him.”
He blinked furiously, but his eyes continued to burn. When he was younger, he had so wanted to be like his father. He had even purchased his own sailing boat to follow in Cindon Vora's footsteps, taking cargo back and forth to Calay. But that was before the Luminara… before everything.
“There were times when I'd sit here, on this dock, under the starlight with Adrea. I'd show her the constellations, and we'd talk about the wide world that neither of us had ever seen. The lands and seas seemed endless but reachable. The world was exciting.” He looked down at Javian. “So I understand your longing to sail off on the Dyscovera, I really do.”
The young man frowned and looked away. “We understand each other in many ways, Captain. But I ran away from home for entirely different reasons.”
“Are you going to try to see your father again before we depart?”
“No.”
Two bulky Soeland ships, former whalers now converted to patrol vessels, came into the harbor and dropped anchor away from the crowded docks; farther out to sea, Criston could see three sailing ships that were clearly of Uraban design, keeping station with two other Soeland patrol vessels; their colorful silken sails were patched, hulls repaired with fresh wood.
The people in town cheered the arrival of the ships. Stony-faced Destrar Tavishel himself rode in the first boat to shore. “Two more enemy vessels captured for the Tierran navy!” When he stepped onto the rocky beach, the people of Windcatch whistled. “Another Aidenist victory—and another seventy prisoners to be put to work in our camps.”
Rowboats shuttled the downcast captives to holding areas; the foreign men were tied together in strings like fish on a line, shuffling along, knowing they had no hope of escape. Destrar Tavishel had become a legend for his skill in intercepting Uraban ships, capturing their crews, and delivering the spoils of war to villages along the coast. Tavishel took little for himself, drawing satisfaction from hurting the followers of Urec, wherever he found them.
Javian looked with wide eyes at the captured ships and the many Uraban slaves, and Criston stared, trying to feel moved by the sense of celebration. “When I left here many years ago, Windcatch was a quiet place.”
Inside a new inn, he bought the young man a small cup of local kelpwine and a large one for himself, then they shared a bowl of the traditional stew of dried seaweed and shellfish. Criston recognized no one, including the bartender. It had been so many years since he'd left home, eager to sail off on the Luminara. Back then, expecting that nothing would change, he hadn't taken the time or trouble to notice his daily life. Now it was too late.
Stepping out of the inn, he looked toward the hill overlooking the town and the rebuilt Aidenist kirk. Yes, he would find Ciarlo there. “Follow me. There's someone I need to see before we go.”
The two trudged up the worn path to the house of worship. A cast-iron fishhook as tall as Javian graced the kirk's entrance. The window shutters were open wide to air out winter's leftover mustiness. In the garden beds out front, rows of seeds had been planted in newly turned soil, and fine green tendrils were already sprouting.
A man in prester robes limped out of the door, paused upon seeing Criston, then gasped. “I hoped you would come for one last visit before you sailed off again.”
Criston embraced Adrea's brother, but the sudden lump in his throat made it impossible to speak. Finally, he said, “I went away on the Luminara because I wanted to see what was out there, but I didn't realize the price I'd have to pay.” He stepped back, just looking at the other man. “This time, I have a different reason.”
“You can't fool me, Criston. This time, you think you have nothing to lose.” Then he broke into a smile. “Just greet Holy Joron for me when you see him, all right? I'll be waiting right here for Ondun to return.”
Remembering his companion, Criston introduced Javian. Ciarlo looked at the fourteen-year-old, adding the years in his mind, surely imagining how old Adrea's child—Criston's true son—would be now, if the raiders hadn't taken her. But both Adrea and the baby had probably died long ago. And Javian was much too young.
Turning to hide the tears in his eyes, Ciarlo effusively invited the two into the kirk. There, a dark-haired young boy nearly bowled them over, his arms wrapped around a half-empty cask of oil. Ciarlo reeled out of the way. “Careful, Davic! Spilled whale oil is not a mess I have any intention of cleaning up.”
The boy gulped and stuttered; he looked to be about eleven years old. “S-sorry, Prester Ciarlo, but you said that once I finished—” He caught himself, noticing the two strangers beside the prester. “Oh!”
Ciarlo laughed. “This is my enthusiastic helper Davic.”
“Pleased to meet you.” The boy steadied himself, bobbing his head toward the visitors. “I filled all the kirk's lamps, Prester, and I swept your office, like you asked. Then I stacked the books neatly.”
“Good enough. Now, put the oil back in the shed. Take a handful of dried peas and plant them in a row outside, and then you can be done for the day.” Ciarlo turned back to Criston, shaking his head indulgently. “You aren't the only one to take on a young lad who needs guidance in his life. This boy came to Windcatch six months ago after his family was killed in a Urecari raid on a nearby village. He had nowhere else to go. I found him here in the kirk, wanting to pray.” He tousled Davic's dark hair. “He assists in the dawn services each morning. Maybe one day he'll even want to become the town's prester. I could train him just as Prester Fennan trained me.”
Criston's expression hardened at the sharp memory. On the day of the Urecari raid, the town's previous prester had sacrificed his own life to give his lame apprentice time to hide.
Though the two boys were separated by only three years, Javian wanted to be considered an adult, while the other boy was more interested in play time, now that his chores were done. Davic bounded away outside, but Javian stayed with Criston.
For a late midday meal, they broke bread in Ciarlo's small parsonage adjacent to the kirk. Criston and his brother-in-law talked about nothing of consequence, basking in the shared company. Though neither man was old, both had lined and creased faces, aged more by harsh memories than by time itself.
When the low sun spilled a golden path across the sea, Criston excused himself and left the kirk. “There's one more visit I have to make.”
The graveyard on the hill outside of town had grown in the intervening years; a new section of eleven graves all dug in a single month when the gray fever swept through Windcatch. Criston went to a particular wooden post with its fishhook symbol, where he studied the weathered name of TELHA VORA, his mother. Another nearby post memorialized his beloved Adrea, though her body had never been found. Maybe she was still alive. Criston squeezed his eyes shut. He would never know.
As he sat there, saying goodbye for what might be the last time, Criston renewed his solemn promise to send Adrea letters. He would keep throwing the bottles into the sea, where he hoped the tides would bring them to their destination… wherever that was.
There was too much uncertainty. Whether Adrea was alive or dead, whether he would ever come back to Tierra, whether they would find what they sought. After the sinking of the Luminara, when Criston had been lost, he had felt like this. Adrift.
Back then he had taken refuge in his prayers, clinging to a fishline of hope that he would get home to Adrea. This time, though, he had no ties to bring him back to the known world….
He and Javian stayed the night with Ciarlo in the parsonage, then before the morning services they trudged back down to the town so they could take passage on the next cargo boat heading back to Calay. The Dyscovera would be waiting for them.
11 Corag Mountains
On their third day in the rugged Corag mountains, Prester Hannes and his companion found a place to make camp as night set in. The two men had climbed through an open cirque, over a stony pass, and down into another hanging valley. The patches of snow in the high meadow were still too thick for spring flowers to penetrate.
The place reminded Hannes very much of where he'd nearly frozen to death.
Drifting ice glazed the beautiful turquoise lakes. Late in the afternoon, Raga Var caught two small fish, which would supplement the snow grouse he had shot with his arrows. Food for another night—and the two men would push onward. Hannes believed they were close to their destination; he would know when he saw it.
After the abrupt sunset, the temperature fell like a descending ax blade. With instinct born of long practice, the scruffy scout found a good spot amid the talus boulders. Without speaking to his companion, Raga Var gathered dead leaves, dry moss, and a few twigs to start their fire.
Hannes unslung his pack and extracted a blanket, spreading it out on the hard rock so he could have a warmer place to sit. The prester had little need for conversation, and the scout had even less. Hannes liked it that way.
Soon their meal was roasting over the low flames. The blaze did little to warm them, but Hannes didn't care; he could endure any amount of discomfort. He finally broke the silence. “How much farther do you think we need to go?”
Raga Var shrugged his bony shoulders beneath the patchwork furs. “Never been this far before. Never seen these crags.” He withdrew the spitted trout and grouse from the flames, poked the blackened skin with his finger, and decided the meat was done enough to eat.
“Can we find our way through to the Middlesea?”
Another shrug. “If such a way exists.”
“It exists.” Hannes had crossed over the mountains after hisescape from the Gremurr mines, though he'd nearly died from frostbite and exposure. The cold had cost him two fingers and three toes. He retrieved the other roasting fish for himself, though Raga Var had not offered it. The men ate in silence, then divided the snow grouse between them.
Absently, Hannes touched the waxy scars on his cheek from the Ishalem fire. He had survived and spent years afterward inthe accursed lands of Uraba. After killing a woman who tainted him with Urecari sacraments, he quietly wrought havoc across the soldanates, before being captured and sent to work in the Gremurr mines. But by the power of Ondun and Aiden, Prester Hannes had escaped through the mountains, wandering lost until at last a quiet hermit named Criston Vora had saved him.
Now, years later, Hannes was determined to rediscover the path he had taken—a route that could lead Tierran crusaders to the Uraban beachhead on the shore of the Middlesea. He had pleaded his case with Prester-Marshall Rudio, who sent him to Corag on his quest. In the cliff city of Stoneholm, Hannes had hired this odd and silent guide who came highly recommended by Destrar Siescu himself.
With the spring thaw and the guidance of Raga Var, Hannes was certain he could find a route for Aidenist armies through the trackless mountains to reach the Middlesea. Such a discovery would change the war forever.
After the small meal, Hannes wrapped himself in his blankets and said his prayers before sleep. Raga Var moved about a while longer, gathering the feathers he had plucked from the snow grouse and keeping them in a pouch; later, he would use the feathers to fletch arrows or insulate his clothes.
Despite the hard rock against which he lay, Hannes slept soundly. A righteous man, untroubled by nightmares, he awoke at sunrise, refreshed. He broke the skin of ice on the pot of drinking water and splashed his face, bracing himself against the frigid slap. Then he drew out a razor-edged dagger and began to shave.
Raga Var watched Hannes with interest. The scrawny scout had a patchy beard that extended from cheekbones to collarbones; his hair was long and matted, his eyebrows thick. “I wouldn't put such a sharp knife so close to my throat. Why do you do that to yourself day after day?”
“For the glory of God.”
“How do you know God wants you to scrape your face?”
“Because I have seen paintings of Aiden. He alone among the brothers was clean-shaven.”
Raga Var frowned. “But how do you know what he looked like? There was no painter aboard Aiden's ship.”
“I do not question my beliefs.”
Finished, Hannes wrapped his blanket and his few belongings in his pack, and the two men set off once more. Since they had eaten all the food the previous night, there was no breakfast, but Raga Var foraged along the way, always keeping his bow ready in case he spotted game.
The scout picked his own path and moved at a good pace. He knew portions of the Corag mountains intimately—the passes, valleys, peaks, and glaciers. On this trip, Prester Hannes had pushed him farther than he had ever explored, and Raga Var seemed eager to learn a new landscape.
Throughout the day, the two men walked in companionable silence, climbing over rocks, switchbacking up steep grassy hillsides into the tundra. The rocks, cliffs, and peaks began to look familiar, but Hannes said nothing, not wanting to get either of their hopes up.
When two black crags loomed before them, the prester felt a powerful sense of déjà vu. The men picked their way through a notch between the peaks, and an expansive view opened up before them, another series of valleys—and beyond that, the wide deep blue of a great body of water: the Middlesea.
The scout scratched his bushy beard and stared. “I have led you where you wanted to go, Prester.”
Hannes clutched the cold black rockface next to him for balance. “You… and Aiden.” He sent a silent prayer of thanks. “I need to see more.”
He didn't rest at the top of the pass but pushed forward with renewed vigor. As they descended the rugged valleys and the Middlesea filled their view, Hannes smelled a stink in the air and recognized a smoky pall rising from the mines and smelters of Gremurr. But he had to be sure.
The two men reached the top of a defile and looked down a canyon carved by rushing seasonal streams. Ahead was the shore, the natural harbor. Shaft openings honeycombed the gray cliffsides, and Hannes could make out the antlike figures of slaves carrying buckets of rock. Out in the water, wide barges rode low, heavily laden with metals and finished weapons.
Filled with hatred, Hannes stared for a long time, then finally nodded at Raga Var. “Now we know the way. I have to return to Calay and make my report to the prester-marshall and the king.”
12 Gremurr Mines
As administrator of the Gremurr mines, Tukar held a position of some power and importance. Nevertheless, he remained an exile from his home in Olabar. He was comfortable enough, yes, but his situation was not so different from that of the workers and soldiers.
The decree of the former soldan-shah, his own father, was clear. Tukar was lucky he hadn't been executed for his mother's treachery.
So he made the best of his circumstances. Though the mines were above the Edict Line on the Middlesea coast, and therefore technically in Tierran territory, this outpost provided vital metals and weapons for the war effort. Since being sent here, Tukar had tried to make amends, prove his loyalty, and make the mines an example for all of the faithful; he owed it to his brother Omra, the soldan-shah of all Uraba.
He had grown accustomed to his eyes burning from the constant haze of black smoke, which even the Middlesea breezes could not sweep away. He no longer noticed the sulfurous stink from the smelters, the soot from the coke ovens, the rock dust that always made his mouth taste gritty. This was his life now, and Gremurr was his home, the place where he had a family. It wasn't so bad.
Even so, Tukar had not forgotten the fresh smells of the Uraban capital city, the perfumes of the palace, or the fine meals he'd once eaten.
Now, Workmaster Zadar led the weekly inspection tour of the slaves and facilities. Bald and stocky, his body a solid lump of muscle, Zadar was hard on the laborers, though not unfair. They would never love him, but they respected him. He fed the workers enough to keep them strong, and maintained harsh conditions to keep them cooperative.
For the past month, the workmaster had been particularly proud of their ambitious new rolling mills designed to manufacture heavy iron sheeting to armor Urecari warships. Inside the factory, Tukar heard the clanging of metal and the shouts of men pouring molten iron from a crucible into molds. In adjacent smithies, captives chained to anvils hammered on swords, while others stood inured to the spray of sparks from grinding wheels. In the oppressive heat, soot-covered Aidenist slaves hauled still-warm sheets of iron and stacked them into piles; their bare skin glistened with sweat.
Tukar nodded in satisfaction. “Good work, Zadar. Those plates will make our warships invincible.”
The workmaster wiped a bare palm across his forehead. “The iron sheets are here, my Lord, but the war galleys are on the Oceansea, on the other side of the isthmus.”
“Caravans can carry them overland from Sioara,” Tukar said.
“As easy as that?” Zadar gestured toward the rolling mill. “It takes two men just to lift a single plate. How many sheets do you think a horse can carry, on a cart, over rough roads? And how many plates are needed to cover the entire hull of a single war galley? And how many warships does our navy possess?”
Tukar struggled with the math, feeling deflated. He had been excited to see the added output with the new rolling mills, but he hadn't bothered to consider the difficulties of transporting the armor plates away from Gremurr. “It's like a game of xaries. I was seeing only one move ahead, while you looked farther.”
