“But profitable,” Barkus continued smoothly. “We can buy very cheaply indeed out there.”
The captain laughed, unaware of the emotional storm gathering around him. “For which my friends in the city will pay greatly, I suppose.”
“That’s the essence of trade,” Barkus said. “After all, we do travel at considerable risk.”
“Well good luck to you, Barkus. But I am responsible for the safety of Makkathran, so I must request that you keep your beasts on a leash within the city walls. They won’t be used to civilization. We don’t want any unfortunate accidents.”
“Of course.”
“You might want to get them accustomed to the idea as soon as you reach the plain.”
“I’ll see to it.”
“Jolly good. And no trading to the denizens of the Sampalok district, eh?”
“Absolutely not.”
The captain and his men turned round and rode off down the road, their pack of ge-wolves chasing along behind.
Barkus saw the caravan start off again, then urged his ge-horse back to Edeard and Salrana. “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” he said.
“They’re not all like that in the city, are they?” Salrana asked anxiously.
“Sweet Lady, no. Officers in the militia are usually the younger sons of an old family; little idiots who know nothing of life. Their birth provides them with a great deal of arrogance, but no money. The militia allows them the illusion of continuing status, while all they actually do is search for a wealthy wife. Thankfully they can do no real harm patrolling out here.”
Edeard was almost shocked by the notion. “If they need money, why don’t they join a Guild and develop their psychic talent, or begin a new business?”
To his surprise, Barkus burst out laughing. “Oh Edeard, for all the distance you’ve travelled with us, you still have so much further to go. A nobleman’s son earns a living!” He laughed again before ordering his ge-horse back to the next wagon.
***
After Clipsham, Edeard just wanted to take a horse and gallop across the Iguru until he reached Makkathran. Surely it would take no more than a few hours. However, he managed to keep his impatience in check, and dutifully plodded alongside the wagons helping to soothe the ge-wolves who were unused to being on a leash.
It was warm down on the plain, with the gentle constant wind blowing a sea-humid air which Edeard found strangely invigorating. Winter here was a lot shorter than he was used to in the Rulan province, Barkus explained, though those months could see some very sharp frosts and several snow blizzards. By contrast, summer in the city was very hot and lasted for more than five months. Most of the grand families kept villas in the Donsori Mountains where they spent the height of the hot season.
The Iguru’s farmland reflected the climate, with luxuriant growth covering every field. The road was lined with tall slender palm trees cloaked in ribbons of cobalt moss and sprouting tufts of scarlet and emerald leaves right at the top. Crops were different to those Edeard was used to. There were few cereal fields here, but plenty of citrus groves and fruit plantations, with acre after acre of vines and fruiting bushes. Some cane fields were being burnt back, sending black smoke plumes churning up high into the clear sky. It was volcanic soil underfoot, which contributed as much to the healthy verdant hue of the vegetation as did the regular rain and sun-soaked sky. Armies of ge-chimps bustled about over the land, tending to the plants, with supervisors riding among them on horses. The farmhouses were grand whitewashed buildings with red clay tile roofs, as big as the Guild compounds back in Ashwell.
For all they spent hours rolling forward that morning, the panorama on both sides of the straight road remained unnervingly similar. Only the volcanic cones offered landmarks by which to measure progress. Edeard could see veins of silver streams running down their slopes before vanishing into the dense skirts of dark-jade trees. But there were no caldera crowns; they rose to simple rounded crests.
Many of them had cottages built on narrow ledges, compact yet elaborate constructions which his friends explained were little more than pavilions for the city’s wealthy to spend languid days enjoying the fabulous view; more common was to install a favoured mistress in one.
Traffic began to increase as they neared Makkathran. Terrestrial horses were now more common than ge-horses; their riders wearing expensive clothes. Wagons piled high with produce from the farms and estates of the plain lumbered towards the markets and merchant warehouses. Fancy carriages with curtained windows rattled past. Edeard was surprised to find them shielded from casual farsight by a mild variant of his own concealment ability; their footmen radiated sullen anger discouraging anyone from prying further.
The final approach to the city walls was home to an astonishing variety of trees. Ancient black and grey trunks sentried the road on either side, sending gnarled boughs overhead to form twined arches that were centuries old. At first Edeard thought there had been some kind of earthquake recently. All the trees, no matter their age and size, leaned one way, their branches bowing round in the same direction. Then it slowly dawned on him that the constant wind had shaped them, pushing their branches away from the shoreline.
For the last quarter of a mile, the ground was simple flat meadow, home to flocks of sheep. When they left the shelter of the trees, Edeard was awarded his first sight of the city since they’d descended out of the foothills. The crystal wall faced them, rising sheer out of the grass to a height of thirty yards. Although transparent, it possessed a gold hue, distorting the silhouettes of the buildings inside, making it impossible to gather a true impression of what lay within. It formed a perfect circle around the city, the same height all the way round except for the port on the eastern side where it dipped down to allow the sea to wash against the quays. Querencia’s gentle tides had no visible effect on it; the stubborn crystal was as immune to erosion forces as it was to all other forms of assault. Neither bullets nor pickaxes could chip it, glue didn’t stick to it. As a defensive barrier it was nearly perfect.
Its only known susceptibility was to telekinesis, which could gradually wear down its strength. That was how Rah opened the city to his people; a powerful telekinetic, he systematically cut through the crystal, shaping three gateways. Legend said each one took him two years to carve out. His followers fixed the huge detached segments to giant metal hinges, transforming them into tight-fitting gates. In the two millennia since, they had only ever been shut eight times. For the last seven hundred years they had remained open.
The caravan passed through the north gate. It was seven yards wide at the base, arching up ten yards above Edeard’s head. The gate itself was hinged back flat against the wall on the inside. He found it hard to believe the huge thing could actually still move; the hinges seemed wondrously primitive contraptions, all bulbous iron joints and girders studded with rivets. Yet they hadn’t corroded, and the pivots were kept oiled.
Directly inside, to the left of the road, was a broad swathe of paddock land named the High Moat, which followed the wall’s curve round to the Upper Tail district next to the port. As horses were prohibited from the main districts many families maintained stables here, simple wooden buildings that had been added to over the centuries; there were also stockades for cattle and traveller pens, even a couple of cheap markets. On the opposite side of the road, the similar crescent of Low Moat led round to the Main Gate. Running along the inner edge of the Moats, was the North Curve Canal, lined with the same whitish material from which the majority of the city was fabricated, resembling icy marble yet stronger than any metal which humans could forge on Querencia.
Edeard stared enchanted at the gondolas as they slid along the canal. He’d seen boats before, Thorpe-By-Water had them in abundance, as did many other towns. Yet those were coarse workaday cousins compared to these elegant black craft. They had shallow keels, with tall prows rising out of the water carved into elegant figures. The cushioned benches of the midsection were covered from the hot sun by
white awnings, while the gondolier stood on a platform at the stern, manipulating a long punt pole with easy grace. Each gondola was home to at least a couple of ge-cats. Edeard smiled happily at the traditional genistar forms, which were swarming in and out of the salty water. Unlike the bloated creatures he had shaped back in Ashwell these were streamlined aquatics, with webbed feet and a long sinuous tail.
The surface of the canal was alive with ripples as they continually chased after nimble fil-rats and chewed on strands of trilan weed to keep the canal clear.
“Oh my great Lady,” Salrana gasped, gawping out at the city.
“We did the right thing,” Edeard said with finality. “Yes, we did.” Now he was inside the crystal wall, the true aura of the city was washing against him. He’d never sensed such vitality before, the kind of exhilarating emotional impact that could only come from so many people pursuing their hectic lives in close proximity. Individuality was impossible to distinguish, but the collective sensation was a powerhouse of animation. He felt uplifted simply by standing and drinking in the sights and sounds.
The caravan turned off the road. Barkus had a quick conversation with a city Travel Master who assigned them three pens on High Moat where they could set up to trade. The wagons rumbled along the narrow track to their final destination.
Edeard and Salrana walked their ge-horses over to Barkus’s wagon. An act rich with association to that time back in Thorpe-By-Water when they’d come to the caravan master for help. The old man’s family had been setting up the awnings on either side of the ancient wagon. They’d all been strangers back then, curious and suspicious. Now Edeard knew them all, and counted them as friends—which made this so very difficult. Salrana’s thoughts were subdued and morose as Barkus turned to face them.
The old caravan master eyed the packs they were both carrying. “You’re really going to stay here, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
He hugged both of them. Salrana had to wipe some tears from her eyes. Edeard was fighting to make sure the same thing didn’t happen to him.
“Have you got enough money?”
“Yes, sir, we’re fine.” Edeard patted at the pocket inside his trousers. Along the route he’d sold enough ge-spiders to pay for weeks in a lavishly appointed tavern; and he was dressed respectably again.
“If it doesn’t work out, we’ll be here for a week. You’re welcome to come with us. Both of you. You’ll always have a home on the road with us.”
“I will never forget your kindness,” Edeard said.
“Nor I,” Salrana added.
“Go on then; be off with you.”
Edeard could see in the old man’s agitated thoughts that this was just as painful for him. He gripped Barkus’s arm and squeezed tightly before turning away. Salrana threw her hands round the caravan master’s neck, and kissed him gratefully.
***
The road which had brought them into the city ended just short of the North Curve Canal. They walked beside the waterway for a little while until they found a bridge over. It was made from a tough ochre-coloured variety of the ubiquitous city material, a simple low arch to which wooden railings had been added on either side. Edeard had to clutch his shoulder bag tightly there were so many people using it, bustling against him. But no animals, he realized; not even ge-chimps. The bridge took them into the Ilongo district, which was made up of small box-like buildings, two or three storeys high with vaulting lierne roofs, and walls which often leaned away from perpendicular. Windows followed no pattern: there were angled slits, crescents, teardrops, circles, ovals, but never squares; they all had panes of a thick transparent crystal which grew, shaped, and replenished itself in the same slow fashion as the structures themselves. Entrances were simple arched oblongs or ovals cutting through ground floor walls; it was the humans who’d added the wooden doors, fixing hinges into the structure with nails hammered into place with telekinesis. Over the years the pins would slowly be ejected by the city material as it repaired the puncture holes they’d made, necessitating re-fixing every decade or so. The constant sedate renewal of the city’s fabric made the whole place look fresh, as if it had only just been completed.
The gap between the buildings was narrow. Sometimes, beside a canted corner, there was barely a couple of feet left between walls, forcing Edeard to turn sideways to squeeze through; while other passages were broad pavements allowing several people to walk side by side. They came across little squares and courtyards without warning, all of which were provided with fountains of fresh water bubbling up through the top of a thick pillar.
“Does nobody work?” Salrana asked in puzzlement after they’d been thoroughly jostled for ten minutes negotiating the narrow pavements. “The whole city must be walking about.”
Edeard simply shrugged. The district was a confusing maze. It was also where he discovered the city material was almost opaque to farsight. He could only sense the murkiest of shapes on the other side of the walls; and he certainly couldn’t perceive right through a building. He wasn’t used to having his perception cut so short, it unnerved him slightly. Eventually he summoned his ge-eagle, and sent it soaring above the roofs, mapping a way for them.
He wanted to get to the Tosella district where the Eggshaper Guild had its Blue Tower. It was the district to the east of Ilongo, separated by the Hidden Canal. Despite it being so close, they took forty minutes to negotiate Ilongo before crossing the thin canal on a small wooden bridge.
Tosella’s buildings were on a much larger scale than the ones they’d seen so far. Long rectangular mansions with tall slit windows stacked on top of each other up to six storeys high and topped with concentric ring domes that intersected each other like waves frozen in mid-swirl. The ground directly outside their walls was fenced off with high slender pillars, separating the public pavement from emblemata mosaics of glittering primary-colour flecks. Their ground floors were arched cloisters enclosing central quads where prim gardens grew in long troughs under the cool tinted light shining through the roof skylights high above. For the first time in the city, he sensed the minds of genistars. A ground floor in one of the mansions had been converted into stables for them. He even glimpsed apprentices and journeymen scurrying round the quads, their thoughts anxious and subdued as they tried to keep in their Master’s good graces. It brought a smile to his face as he recalled some of Akeem’s more outrageous stories of an apprentice’s life in Makkathran.
“I know everyone asks this,” Salrana said as they tarried beside one of the huge mansions, admiring the subtle rainbow shades refracting off its glittering snow-white frontage. “But I wonder who built this place?”
“I thought it was the Firstlifes. Isn’t that what the Lady said?”
“It doesn’t actually say that in any of her teachings. All she says is that the city was left by those who came before.”
“They couldn’t have been humans, then.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Oh we can use it well enough, the concept of shelter is universal, I suppose. But nothing here is quite right for us. For a start, there were no gates until Rah arrived.”
“So the builders sailed in and out via the sea; that certainly ties in with all the canals,” she answered with a smile.
“No.” He couldn’t match her light humour. His gaze swept along the length of the mansion. The root of architecture was species-based, from the basic functionality to the aesthetic; and Makkathran just didn’t fit human sensibilities. He felt out of place here. “Humans never built this place, we just adapted to it.”
“Aren’t you the know-it-all; and we’ve only been here an hour.”
“Sorry,” he grinned. “But it is intriguing, you have to admit that.”
“They say Eyrie district is the really weird one. That’s where the Pythia has her church, which is the only building ever formed for humans. The city granted it to the Lady so her flock would be close to the towers when the Skylords finally return.”
??
?Towers?”
“Yes. That’s where the Skylords alighted the last time they were here, the day they took Rah’s spirit to its rest in Odin’s Sea.”
“Oh. Hey wait, you mean humans designed the Lady’s Church?”
She gave a mock sigh. “See? If you’d ever bothered to turn up to church you’d have known that. It’s right there in the Lady’s scriptures.”
He gave the mansion another suspicious look. “That’s like shaping genistars but with buildings. I wonder if the city builders brought the defaults to Querencia.”
“If the Geography Guild turn you down you could always apply to the History Guild.”
“Cheeky!” He took a swipe at her.
Salrana danced away laughing, and stuck her tongue out. Several passers-by gave her a curious look, unused to seeing a Lady’s novice behave in such a fashion. She pulled a contrite face and held her hands demurely behind her back, eyes and mind still sparkling with amusement.
“Come on,” he said. “The quicker we get to the Blue Tower the quicker we get you locked up in the novice dormitory where you belong—out of harm’s way and not causing any trouble.”
“Remember our promise? I’m going to be Pythia and you’re going to be Mayor.”
“Yeah,” he grinned. “It might take a couple of years, but we’ll do it.”
Her smile faded away as her thoughts grew sober. “Edeard, you won’t forget me, will you?”
“Hey—of course not.”
“I mean it, Edeard. Promise. Promise we’ll still talk each day, even if it’s just a longtalk hello.”
He held up a hand, palm towards her. “I swear on the Lady, I won’t forget you. Such a thing is just not possible.”
“Thank you.” Her impish smile returned. “Do you want to kiss me again before we both get locked up in separate dormitories each night?”
He groaned in dismay. “Maybe I should just leave with the caravan.”
It was Salrana’s turn to take a swipe at him.