A Secret Atlas (55 page)

and the occasional bead. Field hands’ clothing had none of the colors worn by the soldiery

or people encountered closer to the heart of the city. Certain colors seemed to denote

caste, with green common to the soldiers, red to merchants, yellow to laborers, black to

officials, and purple to individuals Jorim assumed were part of a priesthood. While a

particular color would predominate, accent colors seemed to indicate other affiliations, and

decorations woven into garments or beaten into armlets, anklets, bracelets, gorgets, and

pectorals fell into the classes of Snake, Cat, and Eagle.

Tzihua led them to one of the large round buildings, which clearly was a dwelling complex,

and into its heart. He took them to a central chamber and opened the door. “Here is

your
Moondragon
.”

Within they found the crew of the
Moondragon
looking a bit haggard, but fed and rested.

The circular room had a pool in the center for washing and waste stations around the

outer perimeter. The crew had been given woven mats upon which to sleep and enough

food that some fruits and meal breads remained stacked in a corner.

Lieutenant Minan straightened his uniform, approached, and bowed to Captain Gryst. “I

deliver myself into your custody, Captain, for whatever discipline you deem appropriate.”

Anaeda returned the bow—along with Iesol, Shimik, and Jorim. She straightened first.

“For what am I disciplining you?”

“The loss of my ship.”

“I think you will find it is where you left it. Repairs should be well under way by the time

you return.” She looked around. “It looks as if your crew is all present.”

“Save for four we lost in the storm, Captain.” Minan looked down. “And two these people

have housed elsewhere. We have seen one of them on occasion, but nothing of the

other.”

Anaeda turned to face Tzihua, then glanced at Jorim. “I wish to know where my missing

people are.”

Jorim began to relay her request to the Amentzutl warrior, but from behind him one of the

two missing men slipped into the room. Dirhar Pelalan dropped to one knee before

Captain Gryst and bowed deeply. “I have come, Captain, to be of help.”

Jorim half turned back to Minan. “The other missing person is Lesis Osebor?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

Anaeda frowned. “You had two linguists with you, Lieutenant. They took Master Pelalan to

teach them our tongue. Master Osebor has been sent north, I assume.”

Tzihua bowed his head. “Nemehyan.”

She looked at Dirhar. “Meaning?”

“Master Osebor has been sent to the Amentzutl capital, Nemehyan. His task is to teach

our tongue to the Witch-King.”

Jorim raised an eyebrow. “Witch-King?”

“The title in Amentzutl is
maicana-netl
. The
maicana
are the ruling caste, inheritors of a magic tradition of great antiquity and power. The King is the strongest among them. It is

said he can freeze the sun in the sky and shatter mountains with a word.”

Jorim smiled. “That I would like to see.”

“And you shall.” Tzihua nodded slowly. “Now that your sea princess has come, we shall all

travel north and the
maicana-netl,
wise beyond all wisdom, can decide what to do with

you.”

1st day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat

9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Opaslynoti, Dolosan

Moraven Tolo found himself no more at ease in the scavenger city after a week than he

had been when they first rode into it. He realized that while he had lived a long time, his

experiences had been largely confined to the old Imperial borders, and usually in

Erumvirine, Nalenyr, or the Five Princes. He knew a great deal about people, and his

experiences told him a lot about how they would react in certain situations. Those

situations, however, had always been within the confines of what could have been

described as a civilized area.

The very approach to the city alerted his sense of unease. He’d seen odd reflections of

himself in the smooth stones. He appeared as a child at times, but he could not recognize

himself. Another time he wore a complete suit of armor, trimmed in purple; but he’d never

seen such a thin material, much less had it on. He saw himself with a full beard streaked

with white and again as a moldering corpse with a gaping wound where his scar existed.

He wasn’t certain what he was seeing, and had no way to determine if it had significance

or not. He wanted to dismiss it, but part of him could not. Ever since the healing, he’d felt

different in an almost imperceptible way. The visions resonated with that sensation and

fed it.

If he needed a sense of the normal to quell his sense of the unusual, Opaslynoti was not

the place he would find it. Those living there took great delight in being the antithesis of

the civilized east.

The six of them stood out, and the people of Opaslynoti acknowledged this and wanted

little to do with them. Had Borosan not been with them, they would have been driven back

into the Wastes and no one would have cared had they never been seen again.

But Borosan’s presence earned them some tolerance. While most said he was still too

normal to really be one of the thaumstoneers, his skill at
gyanri
still earned him respect.

And while his manner did fit in with Opaslynoti’s denizens, even Moraven agreed that, at

least physically, Borosan was more normal than any of them would ever be.

Borosan’s friend Writiv Maos provided them accommodations in his home, which was on

the third of the eight levels in the city. The ninth level was the Well, but no one dwelt there, to the best of anyone’s knowledge. Level three was the second nicest level. Anything

above it was given over to visitors and newcomers, all of whom were viewed with

suspicion. Below level four lived longtime residents who had no luck or ambition. They

were content to grind out a meager and difficult existence working in the Well or in the

ancillary industries that had sprung up to serve the needs of the
gyanridin
.

The Well became the focal point of the city and was, at once, revered and feared. When

magic storms poured down from Ixyll, a certain amount of the wild magic would flow down

into the hole at the city’s heart. No one knew how deep it was, and various stories

suggested it opened into a vast underground complex of caverns, while others said the

hole opened into another world. All Moraven knew was that the Well was filled with magic:

a shimmering pool with shifting violets and blues that matched the curtain surrounding Ixyll

itself.

The laborers of Opaslynoti performed three major jobs. The miners dug into the earth and

produced raw
thaumston
ranging from chunks the size of a man’s head to buckets of dust.

Many of the miners worked in Opaslynoti itself, but a significant number also worked

independent claims outside the city. Prospectors roamed about looking for places where

the
thaumston
already had accumulated a charge or was relatively free of impurities.

A second class of laborers cleaned and crushed the raw ore, mixed it with water and sand

to create a slurry, then packed it into molds. The sheets were then set out in the sun to

bake. The molds turned out pieces from a finger length to slabs suitable for using in a

surface building. Most often, however, they were shaped into bricks nine inches long,

three wide, and two thick.

The ingots of
thaumston
would then be loaded onto pallets or into baskets and lowered by means of cranes and pulleys into the Well. Moraven watched men performing that part of

the operation for two days. The chargers worried about the day’s temperature, the depth

to which they lowered the cargo, and seemed to constantly grouse about how this load

would likely be the last until the storm season started.

The artisan laborers concerned themselves with fabricating a variety of devices that

consumed the magic energy in
thaumston
. Many were simple things similar to the lights

that glowed on some of the Nine’s finest buildings. Also popular were small mechanical

animals with tin flesh and gaudy paint. For some reason, when Moraven traveled with

Rekarafi through the market, an inordinate number of people offered him these small

amusements.

Rekarafi dismissed the offers with a flick of taloned fingers, but only once spoke. “Do you

not realize the Viruk no longer have children who would be entranced by these things?”

The remark shook Moraven. He had been cut off from his past, but he still had a future.
If

Viruk can no longer have children, they are cut off from any future.
He wondered if it was that the Viruk could no longer reproduce, or just chose not to.
Would I make that choice if
my people had fallen from glory?

The easily attainable supply of
thaumston
made artificial light widely available. This

allowed much of Opaslynoti’s life to take place deep in the earth. The marketplace, which

had its surface opening beneath one of the domes, descended all the way to level five.

Terraces provided permanent space for longtime merchants, while transient traders fought

for space down on the central floor. Many of the merchants even invested in brilliant

displays to attract people to their stalls, displays that could be considered works of art.

Light was not always useful, for many of Opaslynoti’s citizens had suffered horribly from

years of exposure to the wild magic. It did things to them—occasionally subtle—but even

voluminous robes and masks failed to conceal the grander changes. Worse, many of the

people seemed to revel in these.

Yet others had clearly sought them. Just as the Turasynd had inserted feathers into his

flesh so they would become part of him, some of the people here had done even more

bizarre things. One family group had four arms, one pair set below the other. The story

went that several generations earlier two brothers had been prospecting. One had broken

his legs in a fall, and the other was carrying him on his back when a magical storm poured

over them. The two men had merged into one and the change had bred true.

Others, it was said, had sewn the arms of corpses to their chests in hopes that the magic

might affect them the same way. They had failed, but people with insect antennae

sprouting from their foreheads or tiger-stripe pelts to keep them warm suggested that

sometimes the experiments worked.

Moraven found these deliberate changes more difficult to accept than the random ones.

That struck him as curious because he, too, through his discipline and study, sought to

perfect himself. He thought back to Ciras’ comment about the disaster that would result

from magic being made simple. What he saw here suggested Ciras might be correct.

He searched for patterns in the wild magic’s random effects. He saw many people who

shambled along on legs that no longer bent in the normal fashion, or dragged an arm that

had grown longer than its fellow. Some of them were barely recognizable as human. The

most tragic cases were blamed upon being caught out in a magic storm, or a fall into the

Well. Apparently some sought to commit suicide by diving into it. And while the Well never

gave up its dead, it did let the living bob to the surface from time to time—though once

they were rescued they undoubtedly wished they had not been.

He saw no formula to how people were changed, but he realized finding one might be

impossible. As he had told Nirati and Dunos, a healing would take time. But here the

magic would also use as its foundation who the person had been at the time of his

change. In the case of the brothers, had it been their abiding love for each other, and the

sacrifice of one for the other that enabled them to survive as they did? Did the man have

one arm grow longer than the other because he was greedy and grasping?

And, more importantly, could the discipline of the swordsman’s art allow Moraven to

control the magic and the change it would make in him? The tingle had grown to a

distraction. It felt as if he had been sunburned. He hated the sensation. When he could no

longer bear it, he sought distraction—and Opaslynoti had much to offer in that regard.

As with most other towns, hard work and spare money meant many recreational

occupations flourished. Plenty of taverns had been dug out of the earth. None of them

approached the simple elegance of taverns in the Nine, but this did not seem to bother

those who filled them all hours of the day and night. Two breweries served the city,

transporting kegs of beer on the backs of
gyanrigot
the size of draft horses. Houses of carnal pleasure did not seem to rely on
gyanrigot,
though Moraven would not have ruled it out. Though he did not survey the houses, he assumed that each would cater to a certain

clientele and really had no desire to visit the more venerable establishments.

The largest centers of recreation, however, were the arenas. They ranged in size from a

small pit dug in the back of a tavern to large amphitheaters capable of seating hundreds.

Their presence did not surprise Moraven, since duels between men had always attracted