the rolling waves, teetered, then crashed down into the troughs. Spray washed over the decks. Most of the crewmen huddling belowdecks were knocked against bulkheads or beams. Barrels and kegs broke loose from their ties and rolled across the floor. Loose objects became projectiles.
Up in the lookout nest, strapped to the mast so he wouldn't be flung to his death by the tossing vessel, Criston tried to peer through the sheeting rain and upflung spray. Despite the limited visibility, he kept watch for swaths of white foam that might indicate reefs or rocky shoals, but even if he sighted something, he doubted his warning shout would be heard above the din.
Lightning crackled overhead, flashing like a momentary torch across the churning waves. The ship's masts swayed like inverted pendulums, dipping toward the water until he was sure the Luminara would capsize, but each time her well-built hull righted itself, and she pushed on for her very survival.
Since clouds had blocked the sky for two days, Sen Nikol had not been able to use the stars and his instruments to determine their position. During those two days, the current had whisked them along in one direction, while the breezes pushed them at an angle. At times they had made enormous speed, while at other times Criston thought they were being pushed back the way they had come. They had sailed in a great circle--west, then south, and now east again. As the bad weather continued, crewmen had struggled to cast nets overboard for the daily catch--but inexplicably all the nets came up empty. It was as though all the fish in the Oceansea had vanished.
Pelted by rain and shivering, Criston remembered tales the sailors had exchanged about the Leviathan, a single creature so enormous and deadly that even Ondun had feared to create a mate for it. According to legend, all fish fled in terror when the Leviathan was near.
Down on the deck, spray continued to gush over the rails and a limited crew of deck workers held fast to their ropes. Captain Shay clung to the wheel, trying to keep the Luminara under his control, wrestling with the course. The frightened sailors sent Prester Jerard topside, so he could pray to Ondun for their safety. The old man did so with great vehemence, but Criston saw no slackening of the ferocious weather.
Sen Nikol staggered across the deck, the winds blowing his pale robes. Holding one of his navigation instruments, he struggled toward the captain's wheel, where he studied the magnetic compass to get his bearings to north, then the Captain's Compass to align their direction to Calay. But the Luminara was thrown up and down so wildly that both compass needles wavered, making them virtually useless.
With his instruments, the Saedran chartsman made his way to the side of the ship and tried to find any star that might provide a position. A tall curling wave capped with a crest of white rose silently, like a predator, smashed across the deck of the Luminara, and swept Sen Nikol overboard into the turbulent waves.
Criston screamed down to the wheel, and Captain Shay bellowed for help. But none of the sailors could leave their ropes. Sen Nikol was gone. A smaller wave curled over the rail where the Saedran had stood, washing away even his lingering footprints from the wet deck.
The deck crew was in a panic at the loss of the chartsman. Without Sen Nikol, they would not know where they were or where they had gone.
Captain Shay held fast to the wheel, soaked, battered by the driving rain. Criston heard a loud crack, and saw the top of the mizzen mast snap, then tumble over in a tangle of rigging. The bunched sails sagged, and under the weight, the second yardarm broke free.
I

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 191

The ship heeled about and bore the brunt of the waves amidships. The captain could no longer steer. Criston had to tighten his lashings to keep from being thrown out of the lookout nest; at any moment even the mainmast could break in half, and he would crash to his death--or vanish into the water.
Terrified, he suddenly understood what his father must have felt just before his fishing boat sank. He thought of Adrea and hoped she was safe. :
But in his instant of greatest despair, Criston saw a glimmer of light off in the distance. It grew brighter, then dimmed, then brightened again... like a beacon. The dazzling light stabbed through the furious storm, and Criston pointed and shouted, "A light! A light!" over the howl of the wind, but he didn't think anyone heard him.
Could this be the Lighthouse at the end of the world, from the story Prester Jerard had told? Where the cursed man kept endless watch for Ondun's return? If the Luminara could reach that place, they would be saved. The island with the Lighthouse was not far from Terravitae!
He called out again but could not make himself heard. Captain Shay needed to know about this. Criston unlashed himself and swung down, clinging to ratlines that were slick from the pounding rain. With hands that were strong and callused, he worked his way to the first yardarm, hooked his arm through the ropes for stability, and looked out again. Yes, the beacon was still there--and brighter now. Surely other crewmen had noticed it! He stared, yearning for that light, knowing what it represented. He wasn't looking down at the sea. Even if he could have sounded an alarm, it was far too late.
The monster that rose from the black depths was impervious to the storm, greater than ten sea serpents. Its bullet-shaped head was as large as the Luminara's prow, and when it opened its
¦
maw, Criston saw row upon row of sharp teeth, each one as long as an oar. It had a single round squidlike eye in the center of its forehead, and spines like a mane around its neck and ringing its gills. Armfuls of tentacles sprouted from each side, lined with wet suckers, each with a barb in its center. The tentacle ends were blind sea serpents, opening to show fang-filled mouths.
For a moment, Criston could not speak, could not breathe. He found his voice and bellowed with all his strength and all his soul, projecting his voice with enough power to call the attention of the sailors on deck. "Leviathan!"
Alongside the Luminara, the Leviathan rode the waves as though they were mere ripples. Lightning lanced out, flashing an otherworldly white glow upon its scales. The monstrous tentacles smashed into the foremast, breaking away the yardarms with unreal ease, plucking the white canvas sail like a petal from a flower before casting it into the water. The tentacles' fanged mouths snapped down, splintering the ship's rail. Two snakelike appendages snatched hapless crewmen and tossed them into the Leviathan's maw.
Captain Shay charged to the prow and grabbed a harpoon from its hooks. While other sailors were screaming, Shay stared at the monster as though mentally cataloguing its interesting aspects, then hurled the harpoon directly at its single eye. Criston had seen him throw a harpoon many months ago, skewering the Uraban pirate Fillok, but because of the ship's lurching, his aim was not true. The harpoon's jagged iron tip struck the side of the milky eye and glanced off, skittering along the scales with a flash of unexpected sparks. Captain Shay cursed the beast, raising his fists in the air.
The Leviathan reared high, opened its great mouth, and bit down, splintering wood, taking the Luminarah bow--and swallowing Captain Shay along with it.
if
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 193
Fighting for balance, desperate not to lose his grip, Griston struggled down the mast. Belatedly, sailors on deck sprang back into action. They ran to the other harpoons to attack the Leviathan. The monster's fanged tentacles lifted crew members into the rain-whipped air and tore them apart.
When a hastily thrown harpoon stuck in one of the Leviathan's heaving gill slits, the creature let out an unholy roar, halfway between the sound of thunder and the bellow of a hundred dying whales. It submerged, but it did not go away. After a few tense seconds, it rose again, this time smashing the Luminara from below, fatally breaking her keel and lifting the entire hull from the water. Planks sheared off like chaff in a thresher.
% Crewmen screamed. Many fell overboard, while others, still struggling up through the hatches to join the fight, were smashed or seized by tentacles. First Mate Willin finally made it to the deck, only to be crushed by a falling yardarm.
Criston could barely hold on. He grabbed a rope, still trying to make his way down to the deck, while the monster continued its attack.
Water poured into the large holes in the hull. The ship's foremast was uprooted like a weed. The Leviathan broke the deck and folded the mortally wounded Luminara in half. The great sailing ship fell into pieces on the sea.
Finally losing his grip on the rain-slick rope, Criston was thrown into the churning waves, which lifted him high and pounded him back down again. Choking, spitting water, he struggled to the surface, but the rushing sea whisked him far from the wreck. He could still hear the other crewmen screaming.
A yardarm floated by, tangled with thick rope and a scrap of sail. Criston clung to the wood, holding on with the desperate instinct of survival, but he knew he would be dead soon. As the
Luminara sank and the Leviathan hunted the last few screaming, struggling sailors, the currents and the storm swept him away.

38

Off the Coast of Tierra

With sixteen armored war galleys and hundreds of angry warriors at his command, Zarif Orara launched the raiding party from the docks in Khenara. All sails were set to show the vengeful Eye of Urec. Their journey past the blackened scar of Ishalem only served to motivate the fighters further. When they entered Tierran waters, the fighters continued up the coast in search of Aidenist fishing villages. They attacked every one they found.
With such an overwhelming force against undefended towns, each Urecari strike was more a massacre than a military engagement. Their scimitars were invincible and their victories dramatic, and the zarif learned that his most effective weapon was despair. The Aidenists could not deny that the followers of Urec were far stronger, that their faith was an anchor that held Omra and his men, while the rival religion was cast adrift.
After two easy conquests that left smoking towns and destroyed harbors behind them, Omra had lost only five fighters, and their bodies had been wrapped up and cast overboard with proper ceremony. The murdered villagers were simply left behind to rot. Captive Tierran children already filled the hold of one of the war galleys. The crew of that ship complained about babysitting when they should have been fighting, but a stern reprimand from Omra silenced their talk.
Gliding farther up the coast, the war galleys encountered and
attacked two fishing boats. Omra put every Aidenist crew member to the sword, then scuttled the boats before sailing onward. He left no one alive to spread a warning as his fleet moved along like hunting sharks.
Omra spied an opening in the coastline guarded by a low K wall of rock that formed a small natural harbor. With the breeze in his face, the zarif could smell the lingering stench of rotting seaweed. As he stared at the village nestled within the cove, he ordered the war ships to blockade the harbor. According to the questionable maps Uraban traders had provided, the name of this place was Windcatch.

From the broad open windows of his kirk, which sat on a small rise on the outskirts of the village, Prester Fennan spotted the approach of foreign war galleys. He grasped the rope and furiously clanged the bronze bell normally used to call worshippers to his dawn services.
Urecari attack boats swarmed into the harbor, and raiders disembarked at the town docks or sloshed onto the shingle beach. The men set fire to overturned dinghies, slashed fishing nets hung out to dry, then surged into the small village.
Fennan continued to ring the bell, hoping that some of the people would stand and fight, knowing that others would flee into the hills. Either way, he had raised the alarm.
That morning, Ciarlo had been studying with the prester inside the kirk, helping him prepare for the next dawn's prayers. Immediately upon seeing the sign of Urec on the raiders' bright sails, however, they both knew the Aidenist kirk would be a target. Fires had already been started down by the wharves, and black smoke rose from boathouses and the harbormaster's office shanty.
From the hill, Ciarlo watched dock workers grabbing boat
poles or oars to defend themselves, but the attackers struck them down with scimitars and moved onward, attacking everyone from old women to overweight shopkeepers. "They are coming here, Prester. We have to fight for the kirk!"
"The Urecari will not respect the fishhook, boy. They'll burn this place down," Fennan said, still panting from his bell ringing. "You have to survive. We can rebuild the kirk, but they can't destroy our faith." Frustrated, Ciarlo moved away from the altar with an exaggerated limp. "I'm not going to be running very far." "Go into my office. Look for a trapdoor beneath my writing table. We keep our service wine there and some precious artifacts down in the root cellar. You will be safe enough." "No--I will fight with you!"
"This is not a fight we can win, boy. And you"--Fennan glanced at Giarlo's damaged leg--"you are not a warrior." "You aren't a warrior, either--you're a prester! I'll stand with you and die with you, if we both must die." "But we both don't have to die. Go and take shelter."
"You don't have to die either."
Loud shouts rang out in the yard in front of the kirk. Fennan ran to the wooden main door and pressed his shoulder against it just as heavy fists began pounding. He threw his weight to stop the raiders from crashing inside, but it wouldn't hold long. As a kirk, it did not have a crossbar to lock the door. "Go! Ciarlo, go now--I can't delay them more than a few minutes." Wrestling with his thoughts, Ciarlo lurched toward the door to help Fennan, but the prester roared at him. "Do as I say! I am giving you a chance." "No!"
Fennan strained against the door that rattled and shuddered
as the Urecari men threw themselves against it. One of the planks cracked. "I command it! You are my acolyte--obey me!"
Biting back a useless response, Ciarlo staggered off, still defiantly trying to show that he could run, but failing miserably. Prester Fennan was right. He got to the back room, found the hidden trapdoor underneath the table, and used the fingerholes to lift it.
The Urecari raiders hammered the door with the hilts of their scimitars and smashed the colored windows, hurling curses in their looping, glottal language. Prester Fennan yelled as the kirk doors splintered open, and a swarm of Urecari men rushed inside, bowling him over. Terrified, Ciarlo ducked into the back room just in time, as a freezing chill washed through his bones. Those men would murder Prester Fennan, and they would destroy the kirk.
We can rebuild the kirk, but we can't rebuild our faith. '; Fennan was still trying to buy him time, knowing that Ciarlo could not move swiftly. In the back room, struggling to get into the hiding place, the young man cursed himself, cursed his old injury.
Backing to the altar, the village prester seized his thick Book of Aiden and lifted it as a shield, but one of the foreign invaders struck him down with two brutal blows of a scimitar. Then they began to ransack the kirk.
Terrified, Ciarlo understood now that fighting the Urecari here could serve no purpose and would only get him killed. He dropped into the dark root cellar beneath the kirk and pulled the trapdoor shut, praying he wouldn't be found.
He heard battering sounds above, the clomp of booted feet, shouts, smashing glass and splintering wood. After a long moment, they fell silent.
Then Ciarlo smelled smoke.
Running through the streets of Windcatch, Adrea pulled Cris ton's mother with her toward their home, hoping to barricade themselves inside. The raiders were smashing into shops, setting roofs on fire, seizing screaming children and dragging them back to their boats, killing virtually everyone else.
Her pregnancy was showing now. It would be another two months or more before Adrea delivered her baby, and her swollen belly made it difficult to run or fight. Telha was a scrappy woman, yes, but she would be easy prey for these awful men--Adrea had just seen well-muscled fishermen and strong dockworkers fall under a flurry of flashing swords. She and the old woman had no chance.
And the invaders kept coming. Another boatload of raiders landed on the beach, and large warships bottled up the harbor.
Ciarlo was with Prester Fennan, and the kirk was one of the sturdiest buildings in Windcatch, but as she reached the house, Adrea looked up the hill and saw the kirk burning. She felt a stabbing pain in her heart, knowing her brother was probably trapped, and he might already be dead. Telha abruptly pushed her daughter-in-law into the shelter of their house. "Whether he's alive or dead, you can't do anything for Ciarlo now." She slammed the door, and Adrea helped pile furniture against it. They built additional barricades by the windows, breathing heavily, listening to the sounds outside, looking at each other's fearful eyes.
Summoning her determination and hatred against these strangers who had come like a storm to her village, Adrea took up a heavy cast-iron pan and a long gutting knife. Telha grabbed another pan and a broomstick that she could wield as a club.
They waited together, praying that the raiders would lose interest and return to their ships. But parties of men were systematically going through the streets of Windcatch, smashing
doors and murdering everyone they found. At the beginning of the raid, Adrea had seen villagers abandon their homes and flee into the hills; now she wished that she and Telha had done the same, for the raiders were on all sides.
Adrea brandished her makeshift weapons as men hammered on the plank door, shouting in a language she didn't understand. Hearing no answer, the raiders crashed through, splitting the 11 hinges and pushing their way inside.
Telha thrust her broomstick into the gut of the first one, knocking the wind out of him. As he staggered forward, she used the I heavy pan to split his skull, and he dropped to the floor. Three I more men surged in, raising their scimitars. Emboldened by her first victory, Telha let out a yell and swung the pan at another man's face.
But this seasoned warrior had no compunction about killing an old woman. He thrust the sword point directly into her chest, just below the heart, paused, then rammed the blade all the way through, up to the hilt. He jerked the sword free and let Telha drop to the floor.
Adrea let out an animalistic scream, vowing to sell her life dearly. She flailed with the pan, slashed with the gutting knife, and cut a severe gash in a man's arm. A fighter wrenched the pan out of her hand, and she whirled to cut him as well.
Another Urecari man entered, and she saw he was dressed in the finery of a prince, but he too was spattered in blood-- Windcatch blood. Blinded by her rage and despair, Adrea thought only of killing him.

Omra had witnessed enough death and destruction in one day to make him stop seeing it all. He had decreed that these people must die, and he moved methodically to witness the purge of this Aidenist village. He didn't count the deaths; instead, he counted
the number of children taken away as trophies, but he felt only a faint glimmer of satisfaction. It had been a long time since he'd felt any real passion. Not since the death of Istar.
As his fighters burst into one particular home, he saw a young woman, her old mother killed before her eyes. She fought like a desert cougar, her fear abandoned. His soldiers overwhelmed her, wrested the cast-iron pan from her hand, and ducked her slashing knife (though two men were cut).
Something about her spirit moved him--and when he suddenly realized that she was pregnant, and further along than Istar had been when the miscarriage had claimed both her and his unborn son, Omra was stunned into unexpected paralysis. He could not drive away the bright image of sweet Istar and their lost child.
"Stop!" he shouted before the raiders could kill her. The woman wielded her knife and had raised her chin, ready to die. "Stop, I said!" Omra moved to intervene. "Take her with us." They had already gathered a few other women from the previous raided villages, either to be sold as slaves or to tend the captive children.
One of his men, a brash soldier from Soldan Attar's army with adrenaline-bright eyes, challenged him. "She is one oithem. She's already cut--"
Omra wasted no time with hesitation and no breath on threats. He drew his own dagger and in a swift arc, as if slicing open a fish, he slashed the other man's throat, opening wide a second mouth beneath his jaw. The man staggered back, eyes wide, palms going to the wound as if he could catch the gushing scarlet fluid and push it back into his veins.
"Who else questions my orders?" Omra glared at the others.
The dying man collapsed with a wet thud on the floor, still twitching, still pouring out blood. The pregnant woman did not
I
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 201

stare in shock at the murdered raider. Instead, her gaze was cold but uncertain; she didn't tear her eyes from Omra's.

KHe looked at her face rather than her rounded belly, confused as to why he had done this. "This woman is to be spared, I said. Take her back to the boats with the other prisoners."
As the raiders seized her, the woman struggled. As far as Omra could tell, she was not particularly pleased that he had saved her life.

39

Calay

As reports of Urecari depredations reached Calay, Anjine realized just how unprepared Tierra was for war. The Iborian shipwrights had only just begun to construct a full-fledged navy, and all seasoned soldiers were being rushed aboard any military ship that Tierra could muster.
Four coastal towns had been attacked, people slaughtered, homes burned, boats sunk. Survivors claimed that the Urecari had taken many children and some women as prisoners, dragging them off to their war galleys. Some believed the children would be roasted and eaten in heathen rituals, since the followers of Urec were said to love the taste of tender young flesh. Anjine had never heard such stories before, despite reading the Book of Aiden and listening to the sermons of presters. Now, however, those tales had become common knowledge.
After Mateo departed on a riverboat for his military training in Alamont Reach, Anjine had too much time to herself, and she missed having Mateo around to keep her company. No more adventures disguised as Tycho and Tolli, no more childhood.
King Korastine wanted to spend many hours patiently instructing her in statecraft, but one emergency after another sapped his energies. Every day, her father looked more weary and red-eyed as he planned his response to the latest Urecari outrages. He was convinced that the world had only begun to see the first droplets of a much larger storm.
Anjine made her way through the castle looking for her kitten. "Tycho!" But he did not yet know his name, and the castle offered a wealth of rooms and crannies for him to explore. The kitten had become extremely energetic, and he discovered countless hiding places. Each time she found him, he let out a thin, delighted meow and sprang toward her with gold-green eyes bright, ears pricked, and tail aloft. As she held him and petted him, Tycho set up a loud purr until he became restless again, squirmed out of her arms, and raced off to play.
Now she couldn't find him, and she worried he might have gotten hurt. "Tycho!" she called again, heading up the steps to the higher levels of the castle. Each riser was tall, but the kitten could bound up one step after another, until he reached the next floor, where he would find new hiding places.
Anjine discovered Tycho in the tower room where she'd once met with the king, Sen Leo na-Hadra, and Prester-Marshall Baine, when they had decided to send a reconstruction crew to Ishalem. "There you are, little mischief-maker!" She gathered the kitten, scratched under his chin, stroked the top of his head. Tycho looked at her with a curious expression, as if wondering why she had taken so long to find him. Anjine laughed at how silly he looked.
Then her gaze lifted to the shelf, where the detailed sympathetic model of the Luminara rested. The replica lay destroyed, smashed to splinters.
Tycho squirmed in her arms and jumped down to the floor, wanting to play, but Anjine stared dumbly at the model. Everything was broken apart. The Luminara had been wrecked!
She raced from the chamber and bounded down the stone stairs three at a time. She had to tell her father the awful news.

40

Olabar

Recovering his strength by faith and sheer force of will, Prester Hannes had healed sufficiently that he could get out of bed. But he did not let Asha know how strong he had become. Every day trapped in Olabar, and tended by the soldan-shah's wife, pained him like a knife tip worrying at his wounds.
Asha treated him like one of her pets: coddling him, feeding him. She prayed over his bed, expecting Hannes to join in as she attempted to sell his soul to a false god. He bided his time.
When she left him alone in the beautifully appointed chambers of her residence (along with three cages of birds that would not stop singing), Hannes climbed out of bed and found a loose green robe among other garments in the room. Hissing in pain but clamping his lips together to stifle any sound, he struggled to get dressed. He had no thought for what he would do beyond escaping. Nothing else mattered now.
Hannes whispered a heartfelt prayer, asking Aiden for deliverance from this place, then grasped the bedpost and swayed, gathering his energy. Yes, his body did function. Yes, he could get out of here.
Then Asha bustled into the room, saw what he was doing, and
let out a gasp of worry and delight. She rushed forward to take his arm. "Let me help you! I'm so glad you're up. Come with me to the balcony."
Despite his reluctance, he leaned on her, and they walked with small, slow steps across the tiled floor. He felt his muscles reawakening from long dormancy. His vision seemed blurred by the burns and the healing salve; his left upper eyelid had healed awkwardly, heavy with scar tissue, but it worked well enough.
Asha tugged the loose hangings aside to let Hannes step into the bright sunshine and fresh air. Much too bright. From her private villa, he gazed at the foreign city's towers, cupolas, and minarets, the winding streets that led down to the crowded marketplace near the docks, the long low ships that filled the harbor. The many-turreted palace of the soldan-shah stood not far away. Immediately beneath the balcony, Hannes saw Asha's personal gardens, colorful flowers and a small orchard of mulberry trees.
"You are still such a mystery to me. We found you in Ishalem, but we don't know where you came from." Asha paused, waiting for him to answer, but Hannes remained silent. She continued to chatter. "You've been through a terrible ordeal, but you're so much stronger now. What is your name? When do you think you can tell me more about yourself? I want to know it all! Soon Soldan-Shah Imir will invite us to the palace. I told him about the man I rescued--a holy man." She beamed at him, her dark eyes sparkling. "All the priestesses are praising you for rescuing the amulet of Urec. You have done a great service to the church."
What foolish assumptions Asha was making--or perhaps it was all part of a carefully planned deception. Hannes seethed, barely able to control himself; his vision turned red.
Suddenly Asha looked worried, as if she sensed his volatile mood. "The joy of Ondun must be filling you right now, but
please do not strain yourself. Let me take you back to bed. After the sunset services, I will return with your meal. We'll talk some more then." She guided him back across the floor.
He didn't want to collapse onto the cushions piled on the bed;
he wanted to strike Asha and curse her for what she had done to
him. "Until evening," he managed to say. His words came out
in a croak, and he suddenly realized that speaking Uraban had
become even more natural to him than his own Tierran tongue.
She left him a pot of sweet mint tea and a dish of cut oranges with rosewater. "This afternoon the soldan-shah has asked me to attend him as he tells of Zarif Omra's wonderful raids against the Aidenists, and after that we will attend the sunset services. In the meantime, a sikara could read with you, pray with you. Shall I send one to minister to you?" Oh, Asha was so devious!
Hannes could be devious, too. "No. Only you," he said, and Asha brightened at that. He lay back to lull her suspicions. Without revealing any important details about himself, he tricked her into telling him things about Olabar, about the Urecari preparations for war. Unfortunately, the soldan-shah's wife knew and cared little about politics, and she could give him few specifics about what had happened in far-off lands.
After she departed, he had several hours to plan.
At sunset, he heard shrill bells ringing from the many churches in Olabar. He was surrounded by enemies, perhaps the only faithful Aidenist in this entire city. This must be a test of his faith, an ordeal he would have to endure. And he vowed to show his strength and do what was necessary. Even now, he knew that the soldan-shah and his wives would be finishing their heretical worship services.
When Asha returned, she wore colorful scarves draped around formal garments; her face had been painted, and a smell of sandalwood incense clung to her. Looking breathless, as if she
had rushed, she entered the room carrying a golden plate upon which rested a goblet and small strips of translucent paper. A tray of food sat on the side table.
"I wish you could have gone with me," she said. "Ur-Sikara Lukai wants to give you her personal blessings."
Hannes sat up in bed as Asha curled onto the sheets, setting the golden plate next to him. The balanced goblet was half full of a dark red wine. Hannes looked down suspiciously, and she explained. "I've brought you the Sacraments. How fine it will be to have you awake for them! You weren't aware of what was happening, all those other times."
All those other times?
From a bedside table, Asha withdrew the ever-present copy of Urec's Log and flipped open its illuminated pages. She ran her fingers down the lines of looping Uraban text until she found the verses she wanted.
"What did you mean, I wasn't aware of what was happening?"
Asha blinked at him, then smiled once more. "Oh, while you were unconscious, we had to minister to you. We prayed over you. Though you slept, we presented the Wine and the Name." Asha read her verses and picked up one of the pieces of tissue thin paper, upon which had been written the name of Urec. "Swallow this, and take the spirit of Urec inside you."
A thrill of disgust went up Hannes's back like a line traced by a hot spike as he realized what she had done. While he had lain writhing in delirium, struggling through the pain of his horrific burns, she had pried open his lips, forced the abominable thing into his mouth, made him swallow. "You gave this to me while I was.. .sleeping?"
"Four times," Asha soothed gently. "We were very diligent;
fear not. We did not let you miss any of the holy days." She lifted the goblet of wine to him. "We safeguarded your soul."
Rage overwhelmed him. He wanted to vomit out all of the hateful corruption she had forced into his body, but he was already damned. She had stolen his soul during his nightmares.
He slapped at the goblet, splashing its contents in her face. Startled, Asha drew back. Her hair and swirling scarves dripped with bloodred wine. "What is it? What have I done?"
Hannes had tested himself that afternoon, lifting objects, walking around the room, flexing his muscles. He was much stronger than Asha suspected, and now he knocked aside the platter with the scraps of paper bearing the name of Urec. He threw himself upon Asha, grabbing her scarves and wrapping them around her thin, smooth throat. "You defiled me!"
She beat at him with hands that fluttered like the birds in their cages. He needed to kill this demon masquerading as a benevolent woman. She had tricked him, forced him to participate in rituals that were anathema to him.
He twisted and tightened the scarves until Asha's eyes bulged and her tongue protruded from her mouth. Her wine-damp hair clung to one cheek. She shuddered, her struggles more feeble now. Just a little more. Her right ankle twitched in a last spasm, faintly jingling the tiny silver bangles there.
Hannes's heart pounded, and sweat trickled from his pores. I The songbirds were agitated in their cages, chirping, fluttering
I;
around. He had listened to their incessant noise for too long. They never stopped--never. He opened the cages and killed each of the birds, strictly out of spite.
The time had come to leave Asha's villa and get away from Olabar. Hoping that no one had heard the noise of their struggle, Hannes quickly dressed himself, then ate the food Asha had
brought with her. He had to hurry, and he had to be smart. He would need money to survive.
With a vicious yank, he tore off Asha's silver anklet, searched her body and stripped away her jewels. With one of her scarves that lay loose by her head, he formed a makeshift satchel, which he filled with other useful items from the chamber. The balcony butted up against a low hill that descended into the gardens. With slow, painful moves, Hannes swung himself off the balcony and stole away into the shadows of the mulberry trees. Finding an unwatched gate at the garden wall, he darted through. Soon, he found himself in the tangled streets and anonymity of the Uraban capital. By the time he heard the first wails of grief and cries of alarm ring out, he had already reached one of the many alleys. Asha's pet hounds set up a loud baying. Hannes glanced at the commotion and smiled, content with what he had done as he vanished into the city streets.

41

Position Unknown

Drifting among the wreckage, Criston awoke coughing and shaking, soaked in salt water--but alive.
The sky above him was mockingly clear and blue. The waves were calm, as though the storm's fury had been spent once the Leviathan destroyed the Luminara. Apart from the sloshing of waves and slap of water on debris, the world around him was utterly silent. He was alone.
Criston clung to a splintered yardarm tangled with ropes and
I

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
209

I
a scrap of sail. All around him the water was cluttered with flotsam and jetsam from the smashed ship: hull planks, sailcloth, leaking crates, bobbing kegs. And bodies. His shipmates.
"Hello!" He listened in the watery stillness for any response. "Hello?"
The debris was spreading apart, drifting away, and Criston realized that if he was to survive--even for a little longer--he had to gather whatever he could. Something out there might be vital.
Releasing the yardarm that had held him afloat throughout the stormy night, he swam to the nearest crate, grasped it and, kicking and splashing, pushed it back toward the yardarm, to which he secured it with a length of waterlogged rope. He swam out again, farther this time, and retrieved a keg of salted meat. Next, to his great relief, he found an intact cask of water; thirst would be his worst enemy out here... unless the Leviathan came back.
Criston kept calling out as he swam in wider and wider circles, but he heard no answer.
The corpses floating facedown were sailors with whom he had worked during the long months of the voyage. Many bodies were smashed and battered, their faces bloated; a few had already been gnawed by predatory fish. Unfortunately, he recognized all of the men.
He retrieved another yardarm and another long tangle of rope, to which a grappling hook was secured. He brought everything back to his ever-growing cluster of salvage, including a waterlogged package wrapped in oilcloth. Back on his meager floating shelter, Criston gingerly unfolded the coverings and found a leather-bound book: the journal in which Captain Shay had made his notes and drawings of sea serpents.
Criston stared at the smeared ink on the pages, not even real
izing that he was sobbing. He rewrapped the volume and set it among the pile of rescued possessions. Then he set out on his search again.
At last, he did find one survivor--Prester Jerard. The old man was caught in a torn sheet of sailcloth and a splintered spar just buoyant enough to keep his head above water. Jerard was stunned, groggy, but he responded when Criston clasped him. "Prester! You're alive!"
The old man coughed, spat out water, and ran trembling hands through his tangled gray beard. "For now."
Criston wrapped his hands under the prester's arms and stroked back toward his makeshift raft. After Jerard balanced himself aboard two adjacent crates, he gazed about, taking a long time to realize where he was. "Where are the other survivors?"
Criston hung his head, "/am the other survivor."
Jerard touched the fishhook pendant at his neck and uttered a quick, automatic prayer. The old man came out of his daze long enough to note--in a distracted way--that he had a broken wrist and a deep cut on his forearm. With a strip of cloth, Criston bound the prester's wound and set the broken wrist as best he could.
But the scent of blood and bodies had sent out a silent call in the sea, and sharp gray dorsal fins appeared among the wreckage. With splashing and tearing sounds the circling sharks continued to devour the floating corpses of the Luminarah crew. They had plenty to feed on. Criston and Jerard could only huddle together, and watch, and listen to the sickening sounds as darkness began to fall. The makeshift raft drifted along throughout the endless night.
The Luminara had sailed far beyond all known charts. Criston and Jerard had no hope of returning to any place they knew, even the empty island of skeleton warriors. In recent weeks,
the swift currents had carried the ship in a great circle, and the storm winds had driven them blindly eastward. But they were still nowhere. Their only chance was to stumble upon another shore.
At the height of the storm's fury, Criston had spotted a beacon
that might have been the Lighthouse at the edge of the world,
but he had seen no further sign of it since. He had no way of
finding it again... if indeed the vision had been more than his
I. imagination.
The two ate sparingly of the food Criston had recovered. The next morning he lashed the components of the raft together securely with pieces of frayed rope. The grappling hook tied to I a long, loose cord proved particularly useful, for he could cast it to nearby pieces of wreckage and haul them in, like a fisherman. With so many sharks circling now, he did not want to swim about as he had done the day before.
For his own sanity, Prester Jerard told stories and recited from the Book of Aiden as they huddled under a makeshift shade that Criston fashioned from a piece of sail and a thin spar. The wound in his arm continued to soak the salt-encrusted bandage. Criston changed the dressing, but the prester was in such pain from his broken wrist that he could not pull the bindings tight.
As the sun dazzled overhead, Criston kept an attentive watch over the waters around him, looking for any sign of land on the distant horizon, maybe some last miracle from the Luminara. Most of the flotsam had drifted far away by now, but Criston spotted a reflected glint floating in the water that was probably something made of glass. He stared for the better part of an hour, but the intriguing object drifted no closer, apparently pacing them.
Finally, curiosity so consumed Criston that he dove off the raft and swam toward the object. Jerard kept a sharp eye out
for triangular dorsal fins, while the young sailor retrieved the object--a glass bottle, firmly corked. He grabbed it and stroked back toward the raft.
The prester cried, "Shark! Shark!" Criston swam faster, not daring to look, until he finally reached the questionable safety of the raft and threw himself aboard, swinging his feet onto the wet crates and thick yardarms. Panting, blinking bitter water out of his eyes, he glanced back to see a large shark veering off, having lost its quarry.
As his heartbeat slowed, Criston picked up his prize, hoping it would be something useful. The glass was dirty. Drops of water sloshed around inside from a leak where a piece of the cork had broken off. He uncorked the bottle, withdrew a tightly rolled letter: one of the messages he had written to Adrea and cast into the sea. The last time he had thrown a letter in a bottle overboard had been the day before the storm... and it had drifted back here.
Criston extracted the golden strand of her hair and just stared at it, longing for her. He still had the remnants of her lock of hair tucked into his pocket, secured there with a brass clip. He was sure now that would be all he'd ever see of her again
Over the next two days, more sharks gathered, their knifelike fins gutting the surface of the sea, endlessly circling. Criston and Prester Jerard could do nothing more than watch.
He read the water-stained letter again and again, thinking of Adrea, remembering what he had thought when he'd written it. Everything was different now. He would not be coming home as he had promised
On the fourth day, most of the circling sharks disappeared, their fins vanishing into the depths. Criston stood on their wobbly raft, scanning the water, wondering what could explain this odd new change.
Suddenly, with a tremendous splash, the dragonlike head of a sea serpent rose up, scarlet fins extended, spines outthrust. It snapped up a large gray shark that wriggled in its fang-filled jaw like a minnow seized by a pelican. The sea serpent tossed the H shark into the air, opened its maw wide, and gulped it down.
B; Looming high, dripping runnels of water, the creature looked down upon the raft and the helpless men, but it did not attack. I After a blast of steam from its blowhole, the serpent gradually submerged. Criston andjerard blinked at each other in awe.
For the rest of that day, no shark returned, but a second sea serpent rose up to regard them. It was joined by a third, then a fourth. The scaly monsters hissed and hooted at one another, contemplating this intriguing object. With an ache in his chest, Criston thought that Captain Shay would have taken copious notes in his journal. The serpents circled the raft, drawing closer.. .just like the hunting sharks, but worse.

42

Urecari Slave Ship

Despite her circumstances and her despair, Adrea refused to think of herself as a captive. But that did not mean she was free. The ruthless Urecari raiders had shouted at her, threatened her. They tied her arms and threw her aboard one of their longboats, along with many captured children from the village. They rowed out to the war galleys waiting at the mouth of Windcatch Harbor. The children wailed and shuddered, cowed into submission after having seen their parents murdered. The few female cap
tives from other villages were frantic, begging their unresponsive captors for mercy. Adrea, though, didn't say a word. She didn't think she had any words left in her, so she sat back with her lips pressed together, refusing to make a sound. When the whole world was out of control, this was one thing Adrea could control. She would not give them the satisfaction of hearing her say anything.
The Urecari men didn't seem to notice, or care, whether or not she spoke.
Watching her village recede, Adrea recalled how the day had dawned so brightly. Now it ended in smoke, blood, and pain. She saw the smoldering kirk on the hill, and realized that Ciarlo must indeed be dead along with Prester Fennan. She had watched these men murder Telha, and if it weren't for the baby she carried, she would rather they had killed her as well. She would live for the child, but even if she escaped, even if she returned home to wait for Griston in the ruins of Windcatch, how could she ever tell him that his mother had been slain? She could have done more, fought harder, run faster.
The men put all the new captives aboard the nearest war galley, where Adrea again saw the haughty Uraban prince who had killed one of his own soldiers and commanded that she be taken alive. He shouted orders from a captain's platform. Only a few women had been taken from other villages, and none but herself from Windcatch. She didn't understand why he had singled her out, why he had taken her alive, but Adrea did not let herself believe that she was safe; the man must have something far worse in store for her.
With the colorful sails stretched taut and the oars pulling against the current, the war galleys moved off. Adrea trapped a silent moan at the bottom of her throat. When Criston returned, he would never be able to find her
Satisfied with the destruction they had caused, the Urabans turned south again. Seeing the ruins of Ishalem, Adrea realized that they had left Tierra and entered enemy territory. Now she truly knew that she would be a prisoner forever.
The other captive women whispered to one another, imagining worse and worse fates. Adrea held her rounded belly, felt the baby there; the thought that her child would be born in enemy hands terrified her more than anything else. Criston's son or daughter would either be killed at birth, clubbed to death because the Urabans didn't want it, or raised among the enemy. Adrea wasn't sure which was worse.
She couldn't understand why the Uraban prince wanted so many captive Tierran boys and girls. With their light complexions and blond, red, or brown hair, they would never fit in among the other Urabans. She feared they were all doomed to a life of slavery.
The mysterious prince had come to see her only once. He stood tall over her and spoke in Uraban. Though Adrea recognized a few words derived from the old language, which Prester Fennan had taught, and caught the gist of his expressions and sentences, she did not answer him. She gave no sign that she comprehended. She refused to speak.
Later, one of the swarthy crewmen spoke to her in a gruff voice, using heavily accented Tierran. "Zarif Omra demands to know your name."
Adrea merely stared at him, renewing her resolve. arifOmra. So that was the prince's name. She clamped her lips shut.
"Name!" he shouted. She turned her head away. He slapped her. Her head jerked to one side, but she gave him only a murderous glare in reply. She actually welcomed the pain, which was trivial compared to the suffering the rest of her village had endured. She had survived relatively unscathed. So far.
The crewman raised his hand to strike her again, and seemed disappointed when she did not flinch. "Omra says you must live, but he did not say I can't hurt you." The sailor gave her a cold smile. Adrea turned away, ignoring him. He struck her on the back of the head so hard that her teeth clacked together. She clamped her jaws and refused to speak. Angry, the sailor stalked off. The other captives stared at her, but Adrea focused only on her own thoughts.
At night, she huddled close to her miserable companions, listening to them moan and beg. She expected the raiders to drag the women one by one to an open area of the deck, rape them repeatedly, then throw their abused bodies overboard. But they did not touch the women, or the children.
Making sure none of the Urecari men saw her, Adrea lowered her voice to a bare whisper, trying to find out who had been taken from Windcatch, which other villages had been raided. Already, her voice sounded hoarse and strange to her. She learned little from the other women, and sailors came by, growling at the captives to keep them quiet.
During the fifth day out of Windcatch, one of the women threw herself overboard, taking a young child with her, and both vanished into the water. From that day forward Zarif Omra ordered all the women and children to be tied together and secured to iron rings on the deck. Adrea hunkered down and returned to her defiant silence.
The war galleys finally docked in a coastal city south of Ishalem. Adrea heard the name Khenara spoken, a place out of exotic stories. Now she was actually seeing it. She hated the sight.
The buildings were strange and foreign-looking. The people spoke a language she could not understand, though again she recognized a few words. Shouting sailors ordered all of them to disembark from the war galleys. Standing with her fellow cap
tives on the sandy beach of Khenara, Adrea wondered if they would be sold here in a slave market, until she realized that this city was not their final destination. The raiders hastily built an extensive camp and prepared for a much longer overland journey.
The air was warm and dusty, and the women and children slept out in the open on grassy slopes leading down to the beach. They rested for a day while Omra and his men rounded up horses and pack animals for a caravan.
]- Looking at the sea, Adrea wanted to call out to Criston, who was out there, far beyond the horizon, but her voice would not come. She simply sent her beseeching thoughts out to him.
The next day their captors led them away from the Oceansea, away from Tierra, and hopelessly far from anything Adrea had ever known.

43

Olabar Palace

Since Asha was preoccupied with her latest project--not a bird with a broken wing or a stray cat this time, but an injured man she'd recovered from Ishalem--Soldan-Shah Imir had his choice of returning to the quarters of his second wife, Villiki, or spending the night alone.
While Villiki was pleased to have more of his time and attention, she often found excuses to avoid his physical advances, suggesting a game of xaries or just conversations about court gossip (along with her advice on how he should handle certain political matters). Still, it was better than spending the night alone in a cold bed.
Imir went to her quarters and lounged on the cushions while Villiki ordered her handmaidens to bring him tea, which she would probably lace with soporific herbs so he would be too sleepy to attempt a drawn-out seduction. Villiki was still a fine looking woman, despite her age. (Imir knew he wasn't being entirely fair, since he himself was seven years older than she.) She took great care to maintain her beauty, preserve her skin, and wear perfectly fitting clothes.
Before he could relax in her presence, a servant came to the door, delivering a letter with due deference. The soldan-shah frowned to see that it was the latest missive from Lithio, brought in by a horseman from Missinia.
Seeing the letter from his first wife, Villiki turned cold, and Imir felt his chances for sex vanish in an instant. With a sigh, he read the letter, knowing what Lithio would say--how much she missed him, though she had never much cared for his company when she had it. She asked again when he would come to visit her and bring their son, Omra. Imir knew she really didn't want to see him, and she knew he wouldn't make the journey; by making her request, she merely made him feel guilty. Her letter went on for more than two pages with descriptions of her thorn hedges and flower gardens, a fountain that had broken, new well-blooded yearlings that had just been brought to the Arikara stables. None of the news was the least bit interesting to him.
When Villiki rubbed his shoulders invitingly, he knew that she wanted something. Maybe he could negotiate a better night after
allBut before she could utter her request, a red-faced guard
burst into the chamber. The last time Imir had seen one of his soldiers so distraught, Ishalem had been on fire.
"It is Asha! Lady Asha! She's been murdered!"
Imir lurched up from the cushions, not sure he'd heard properly. "Asha? But she's--"
"Strangled. Someone murdered her in her villa, then fled."
Disbelief erupted in his heart and mind. He felt as though someone had struck him in the head with a heavy club. Who would kill Asha? Why would anyone want to hurt Asha--sweet, beautiful Asha, who cared only about everyone and everything else, every lost cause? "Who? Who has done this?"
"We think it was the man in her care, Soldan-Shah. The burned man who came from Ishalem."
Imir moaned, knowing only too well how she took care of her pets. Asha would have wanted to tend the man herself, as though he were the child she had never had.
"Oh, Asha!" He fell back on his automatic response, not daring to think further. He was the soldan-shah of all Uraba; he should be able to solve any problem. "Call Kel Rovik--call all of my guards! I want horsemen in the streets, men to search every house, door to door! Who was this man? What does he look like? What is his name?"
"We have no description, Soldan-Shah. He told no one his name. Even the doctors only saw him burned, covered with salves, bandaged. Asha gave him the Sacraments herself, and fed him."
No name, no appearance... the man had been a nameless victim from the city fire. A sudden chill went through his heart, freezing even the horror and outrage. "What if he is a shadow man, an evil spirit unleashed in the burning of Ishalem? What if he still wanders Olabar, seeking other victims?"
Villiki strode over and yanked a cloak about herself. "I will go immediately to the church, have all the sikaras write and burn prayer strips."
A second thought fell into place for Imir--not supernatural, but just as frightening. "Or he could be an Aidenist assassin, sent to infiltrate us so he could kill my wife--my wives. How many
disguised murderers did King Korastine unleash among us after he killed Ambassador Giladen? We must find them!"
Kel Rovik burst into the room, accompanied by ten of his guards, all with scimitars drawn and ready.
"Hunt him down, Rovik!" Imir's voice cracked. "Hunt down the murderer, bring him to justice! But don't kill him--I must question him." After pacing around the room, Imir sank back to the cushions and placed his hands over his face as grief thundered through him. "Oh, my Asha!"
Villiki was at his side with a whisper in his ear. "My love, my Imir. I am not afraid. You still have me. I will always--"
It took every scrap of his control to keep from striking her. Imir pushed her roughly away, then staggered out of her quarters. He needed to be with his guards, hunting through the streets for the murderer.

44

Position Unknown

During a brief squall on their fifth day adrift, Criston feared that another horrific storm would whip up and smash the makeshift raft to pieces, that the Leviathan itself would chase away the sea serpents and devour them in a single gulp. A drenching rain fell. Pockets in the bunched sailcloth captured water, with which they refilled the small keg. Criston and Prester Jerard scrambled to fill an empty cask--and even the glass bottle that had held Criston's letter to Adrea--with fresh water. They turned their faces to the sky, mouths agape like hungry hatchlings, soothing their parched throats and drinking their fill. The rain passed by midday.
The men ate the last of the food Criston had retrieved, then created makeshift nets from pockets of cloth to catch a few small wriggling fish, which they ate raw and whole. Jerard even dangled his fishhook pendant over the side of the raft with a scrap of bloodied bandage as bait. Though the symbolic hook was not sharp, they caught several fish that way, but when the thread grew frayed, the prester feared he would lose his beloved pen, dant and placed it back around his neck.
The old man's face was gaunt, his eyes shadowed with ever worsening pain; Jerard shied away from changing the bandages, but Criston finally removed the cloth and saw that the wound was swollen, bulging with pus and black strands of gangrene working their way up Jerard's arm. Griston said nothing, nor did the prester, but they both knew the old man would not survive long.
Keeping his face turned away from Jerard, Criston tightened the ropes because parts of the raft had begun to loosen, leaking water. He still had the rope and the iron grappling hook, but nothing to fasten it to. To distract himself and the old prester, he took out Captain Shay's journal and studied the sketches and descriptions, but they offered no help, merely a reminder of the captain's thoughts and dreams.
Criston could see nothing in any direction as baking sun reflected off the waves, and the monotonous light began to make him delirious. He tried to sleep, but the cool shelter of night seemed far away. He came back to his thoughts, confused and disoriented.
Fumbling with one hand, Prester Jerard slid the fishhook pendant over Criston's head. The old man patted him, pressing the symbol against his chest. "Take this. I don't want the Leviathan to have it."
"The Leviathan? What do you mean?" Criston blinked. "What are you doing?"
Jerard muttered a brief benediction. "You have a long journey ahead, but mine is at its end. I have longed to see Terravitae all my life, and now I realize that I cannot get there by any earthly ship. I will find a different route to the land of Holyjoron."
He rolled himself off the side of the raft and into the water.
With a shout, Criston lurched after him and nearly fell off the creaking structure.
"May the Compass guide you," the old man called as he stroked away. Reeling, Griston prepared to jump in and retrieve him.
As though Jerard had summoned it, a huge black sea serpent rose from the water, mottled with swirling patterns of golden scales. It opened its mouth and made a sound that was partly a bark, partly a bellow. Steam whistled from its blowhole. Jerard raised his hands from the water as if to fend it off--or to pray.
Griston yelled, trying to draw the serpent's attention, but it had seen its prey. Like a striking viper, the sea serpent flashed down to the water, mouth open wide. It grabbed the prester in its jaws and swallowed the old man in a single gulp.
Crying out in horror, Criston hurled the glass bottle, which shattered against the black scales, making the sea serpent flinch. The monster twisted around, its gills flaring, its sharpened fins rising like bristling fur on the back of a cat.
Seeking something else to use as a weapon, Criston seized the grappling hook and twirled it over his head, letting the rope play through his palms. He threw the sharp hook at the serpent, hating the creature for what it had done to his friend and companion.
The serpent turned away, and the sharp iron hook caught and snagged in its blowhole. Startled, the serpent thrashed, which only set the barbs deeper--then bolted, trying to flee. With the hooks in place, dug into the opening on the back of its head, the creature could not submerge.
The rope paid out, burning Criston's palms, but he could not hold the serpent back. Astonished, Criston recalled the story of Sapier and his sea serpent
Working urgently, he found the other end of the rope and secured it to the yardarm at the heart of the raft, gambling all his hope on this one perilous possibility. If he were going to die, he might as well choose the time and place. The slack in the rope suddenly ran out, slamming tight and making the whole raft shudder. Criston grabbed the edge to keep from being thrown overboard.
The frantic sea monster reared up out of the water, keeping its blowhole above the surface, black and gold scales glittering in the afternoon sun. With a great roar, the serpent plunged forward, churning up a furious wake and tugging the raft along at breakneck speed.

45

Calay, Sacdran District

Returning from the high mountains of Corag Reach, Aldo looked with a new eye upon the once-familiar buildings, waterways, and bridges of Calay. He had not previously realized how seeing new landscapes could give him a different perspective on everyday things.
When he arrived in the Saedran District with his crated navigational instruments, Aldo gave a young boy one of his few remaining copper coins and told him to go find Biento and Yura na-Curic with the news that he had returned from Corag.
Knowing his main duty, he set off for the Saedran temple, eager to deliver the new instruments to Sen Leo. Inside, the
scholar came forward with a gleam in his eye. "So my young chartsman has passed the first test. You reached your destination, found workers to do your bidding, managed the project to its culmination, and... paid a fair price, I presume?"
Sen Leo led them through the secret doorway, down the narrow steps, and into the vaulted underground chamber. Once they were in the Mappa Mundi room, he helped Aldo to pry open the small crates, pulled aside the packing, and looked at the fine devices. "I see the Corag craftsmen have outdone themselves. Again."
"The fabricators wouldn't allow me to look over their shoulders to monitor their work. They said I was disturbing them."
"No doubt you were." Sen Leo removed the first delicate instrument, adjusted the hemispherical gauges, and aligned the Saedran markings. "Mmm, the armature moves smoothly. The calibration lines match perfectly." He adjusted a lens, sighted along a graduated line, and nodded. He set down the instrument and chose the sealed clock instead. "We will test this one against our own perfect clock in Calay for months before we allow a chartsman to take it aboard a ship."
Just then, his father bustled through the door of the upper temple. Glad to see his son, Biento threw his arms around Aldo, patting him heavily on the back. "I missed you! Wen and Una have been constant pests since you've been gone. Your mother could barely keep her sanity."
"I missed all of you, too, but I saw many wonderful things, and now I can add my observations to the Saedran library." He looked up at the great map of the known world drawn on the temple walls and ceiling. Aldo saw the sparse details of Corag Reach, where the sketched mountain peaks were symbolic rather than topographic.
Very pleased with himself, Aldo unslung the cylinder, deftly worked the combination seal, and reached inside to pull out the
rolled paper on which he had drawn all of the known mountain peaks, gorges, valleys, passes, and villages. "These are new details. Let us compare them to the Mappa Mundi."
His map of Corag was exceptionally beautiful, perhaps even worthy of gilding. He had scribed the labels in perfect penmanship, the artwork so detailed it looked like a painting of the landscape. He was sure his father would be proud of his artistic skill. :'..' Aldo offered the paper to his father. "I took careful measurements, aided by the Corag destrar. I spoke to the people in the mountains and learned the names of every peak." Grinning, he pointed to the Mappa Mundi on the wall. "This is not accurate enough. I have filled in the blanks."
Sen Leo frowned, deep in thought. "It's true, Saedrans have sent explorers far out to sea, hoping to find some sign of our sunken homeland, but we have not given equal attention to looking inland." He tapped the mountains Aldo had drawn with such lush detail. "This could be vital information."
'"Knowledge is always vital,'"Aldo quoted. "Isn't that what you taught me in one of our first lessons?"
The scholar chuckled. "So you were listening even then."
Biento traced the details of Aldo's map with a fingernail, committing everything to his perfect memory. "Aldo, you haven't even made your first seagoing voyage yet, and already you have added to the Mappa Mundi." He pulled over a stepstool and a measuring line, then used a charcoal stick to sketch in the topography his son had brought back. He did not need to refer to the drawn map again.
Aldo beamed. He could tell Sen Leo was pleased with what he had accomplished, both in obtaining the instruments and making these observations. The old scholar took the paper with the meticulously drawn details and lavish artwork. He rolled it up, handing it back to Aldo. "There. It has served its purpose. Now
take it to the brazier over there." He pointed to a brass dish on a thin pedestal. "Burn it."
Shocked, Aldo thought of how much time he had spent, how much effort he had put into capturing all the lines and details. The art, the calligraphy, the landscape details, the perspectives. "But I worked--"
Sen Leo cut him off. "Do not forget that the chartsman is the map. It must reside in your head and nowhere else. If we leave items such as this"--he pushed the map into Aldo's hand--"others might gain access to our knowledge. We commit nothing permanently to paper. The knowledge is what matters, not the... frippery."
Aldo hung his head. "I understand."
Sad and disturbed, he went to the empty brazier, where he crumpled the map and used a sulfur-tipped match to set fire to the edges. While the yellow flames turned the paper brown, Aldo could not tear his gaze away as the paper curled and the ashes fell away.

46

Olabar

After killing Asha, Prester Hannes moved like an oily shadow through the streets of the Urecari capital. His heart pounded, and his instincts screamed at him to run.
But nobody knew his name, and few people could identify him. The soldan-shah's wife had kept him in a separate part of her villa; the physicians and sikara priestesses had seen him wrapped in bandages. Asha had tended him herself, washing him, applying salves and perfumes, administering the vile Sacraments. Hannes had never felt so filthy in his life.
Fortunately, she was dead now. Her soul would face Aiden and the truth before being sent to damnation.
Hannes slipped through the bent and twisted alleys. Most of the people were asleep, but some came to their windows to see the cause of all the commotion back at the villa, where lantern carrying guards hunted through Asha's gardens. Two riders clattered past on the cobblestoned streets, heading to the soldanshah's palace.
Hannes hoped the death of Asha would be a great blow to Imir, but he doubted it. Heretical Urecari beliefs allowed a man to own as many wives as he liked, as though they were no more than pairs of shoes. Hannes had done Asha a favor, freeing her from that sin.
He found a street of merchant shops that were shuttered for the night, their awnings withdrawn, their flimsy doors barred. At an olive seller's stall, Hannes splintered the weakest plank so he could undo the door latch. Inside the dark shop, clay jars full of olives lined the shelves. He scooped out handfuls and ate ravenously, spitting out the pits. He took some preserved lemons from a large jar, then a handful of dates from another tub, eating a few now and filling his pockets; he also carried off a small jar of olives. A ragged brown robe hung on a peg beside the door, and Prester Hannes took that as well, adding to his disguise.
Leaving the broken door wide open, he scuttled through the streets, ducking into doorways whenever he heard approaching voices or footsteps. He kept moving, though he had no idea where he might go. His knowledge of the world's geography-- particularly here--was sparse. He did not know the city's layout, which sections were dangerous, which would be safe places lo hide.
The alleyway opened into a wider street, from which he had a good view of Asha's villa. All the windows were alight, and he
saw figures moving about. The soldan-shah's palace was also lit up, as the alarm was sounded.
Prester Hannes found a sheltered stone step and sat out of sight, where he could watch. Asha had shaved him every day, but now he scratched the stubble on his chin and decided to grow a beard, made patchy by the waxy burn scars on his cheeks. Feeling content and safe for the first time since he'd awakened, glad to be free from the clutches of that woman, Hannes ate a few more dates, then casually plucked olives from the jar, sucking the tender salty flesh and spitting out the sharp pits.
He didn't think about the charity Asha had shown in rescuing him from the fires, in nursing him back to health. He had not asked to be placed under that obligation, and he knew that Asha must have had some devilish scheme in mind. She had given him the Urecari Sacraments when he could not fight back, when he could not defend himself. He felt no remorse over killing her.
Ever since Prester Baine had taken him as an acolyte and taught him his mission in life, Hannes had attempted to be pure and devout. Now, though, in the eyes of Ondun, he was corrupt. He cursed Asha for contaminating his soul.
A rider clattered by in the street outside the alley where Hannes hunkered on the stone step, wearing his nondescript stolen clothes. Nobody noticed him. He ate another olive. He wanted to flee Olabar, make his way out of this cursed land, and return to Ishalem and Tierra. He and Prester-Marshall Baine could pray together and begin the work of cleansing his soul.
Suddenly Hannes realized that he wasn't seeing the greater picture. Such grand events did not happen by accident. There must be a purpose. Ondun and Aiden would not have made him suffer so unless they had a plan for him.
He straightened in the darkness as he realized that, yes, there must be a way to redeem himself. Aiden loved him. Prester
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THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 229

Marshall Baine had set him on this course, explaining how he must infiltrate the enemy and understand them to improve the fight for Aidenism. His heart swelled with joy.
Maybe the role he was meant to play did not bring him immediately back to Tierra after all. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that Ondun had an important mission in mind for him here.

47

Position Unknown

As the frenzied sea serpent pulled him across the waves, Criston lay lashed to his makeshift raft. Like a wild bull dragging a broken cart, the black-and-gold creature hurtled along at great speed. The hook caught in its breathing hole still prevented it from submerging--thankfully, or else it could have dived deep, taking Criston with it. He hung on, helpless, and the journey went on endlessly, throughout the dark night and the next day And he endured. ¦ Criston was sickened, bruised, and also starving. He had a little fresh water left in one of the casks, and when he fumbled himself free enough to move, he drank it. As the raft surged and crashed along, frightened fish were thrown onto the tangled wreckage--and he grabbed them and ate them raw. When it rained that afternoon, he captured a little more water. He thought of Adrea, and when that became too painful, he thought of nothing at all.
He lost track of the burning days and black nights. The sea serpent continued its headlong plunge toward the rising sun, growing more and more sluggish, obviously exhausted, maybe dying, but it could not dislodge the grappling hook.
Finally, so unexpectedly that Griston was not sure what had happened, the hook tore free, leaving a bloody gash down the monster's back like a sucking wound. The sea serpent thrashed and splashed, glad to be free; then it dove far out of sight beneath the waves, putting as much distance as possible between itself and the raft.
Criston untied himself from the raft and collapsed, weeping. He had no idea where he was or how far he had corne, and now without the sea serpent pulling him along like Sapier in the legend, he was cast adrift, still in the middle of the empty Ocean sea, with no land in sight.
And this time he was entirely alone. He had hated the blackand-gold creature because it had killed Prester Jerard, but now that it was gone and he sat becalmed, Criston almost longed for the serpent to come back.
The breeze picked up, and he realized he was in a current, still drifting in the direction the sea monster had taken him. He used the cloth that had shaded them from the sun and rigged a sail to catch the wind, pushing him onward
He slept.

The raft continued to drift, caught in a current that pulled him silently along. On the open water, Griston had no reference point, no way of judging how fast he drifted or where he might be heading. He was lost.
He pulled in the rope and grappling hook and saw a gobbet of flesh torn free from the edge of the sea serpent's blowhole. Ravenous, Criston devoured the meat, but it was pungent, salty, and unsatisfying. His queasy stomach tried to reject the meal, but he managed to hold it down, knowing he needed the meager nutrition. He cast out the hook once more, letting it trail behind the raft. He yanked and jerked, in hopes that he might be lucky. The
hook snagged a few strands of seaweed, which he ate, remembering the annual harvest at Windcatch
He drifted into nightfall and looked up at the sparkling stars that pierced the darkness in diamondlike patterns that, he realized with a start, were familiar again. The constellations hung lower in the sky, but he recognized the Fountain, the Compass Needle, and the nebulous patch of Sapier's Beard. Maybe he was drifting closer to home after all... or maybe it was some sort of cosmic trick.
He remembered sitting with Adrea on the beach after they'd built a fire and baked a bucketful of fresh-dug clams. Content in each other's company, they had walked along the rocky shore, then out onto one of the empty Windcatch docks. They let their feet dangle as they stared up into the night sky. Criston had pointed out the constellations to her, explaining how the stars were guideposts for sailors. "They can always bring you back home." As she'd stared upward, he was more interested in the stars sparkling in her eyes.
Like a chartsman with a carefully plotted course, Criston had set his sights on Adrea. He had known her as a gangly girl in the village, along with her good-natured but limping brother. Criston had never paid much attention to her until one day he noticed she'd matured into a young woman. Thunderstruck, Criston realized she was the most beautiful girl in all of Windcatch.
Adrea's father had been a crewman on a merchant ship, and fie spent many months away from home. When he did come back from his trips, he often fought with Adrea's mother... and then one year, he simply didn't return home. The village gossip was undecided as to whether he'd been lost at sea or simply chose a different port--and a different family--for himself. Whatever I lie answer, Adrea's mother was always miserable when he was home, and also miserable now that he was gone.
To make a living, she baked bread and sold it to the villagers, but only intermittently. She barely had enough wherewithal to feed herself and her children, which basically left Adrea and Ciarlo to fend for themselves.
As soon as he was old enough, Criston worked aboard local fishing boats, sometimes with his father, sometimes by himself. After they came back at sunset, Criston sorted through the catch. One evening, realizing that the catch was more than his family needed, he took the two best fish to Adrea's home. Holding them like trophies, smiling with embarrassment, he offered them to Adrea. "We had extra. I thought maybe you could use them."
A frown creased her brow. "Are we beggars now?"
"No, but you're practical. You need to eat."
And she had smiled. "Yes, Criston Vora, I am practical." She thanked him, took the fish, and Criston had found himself standing outside with the door closed in his face, not sure whether to feel elated or discouraged.
As often as he dared, but not so often as to make an obvious habit of it, Criston brought fish to Adrea's family. As far as he could tell, her mother never knew where the meals came from. The older woman drank too much kelpwine in the village taverns, and Adrea prepared the meals for the family. Her mother merely accepted the fish as part of "Aiden's bounty."
Before long, though, neither Adrea nor Criston could deny the obvious fact that he was courting her. And she let him continue.
One day, a merchant ship sailed into Windcatch, unloading its goods for the villagers. Seeing that the vessel was one of the ships on which her husband had served, Adrea's mother ran out to greet the crew. But he was not aboard, and none of the crew even remembered the man.
Afterward, her mother grew deeply depressed and drank more than before. Two weeks later, during a storm, she left their
house in the middle of the night, and next morning was found floating facedown in the harbor, tangled in a few early strands of migratory seaweed. Nobody knew what had happened to her, though many had their guesses.
A week later, Griston had asked Adrea to marry him. She understood him, understood what he had to offer, and knew he would be a good husband. But she also recognized the call of the sea in his eyes and knew he would forever look outward. Adrea had always known what she was agreeing to. Criston was sure of that.
Until now, Criston hadn't seen how brave she was to stay home and wait for him, never knowing whether he would come back. Criston had always been so confident, so cocky, giving insufficient deference to the dangers of the sea. And now he was floating, lost, a sole survivor in the middle of nowhere
His heart ached as he thought of Adrea looking out to sea every day, just as her mother had done, hopeful each time a ship came to port. Would she wait and wait... for years?
Because Criston did not believe he would ever hold her in his arms again, he became resigned to knowing that the merciless sea would be his last embrace. He forced himself to think of Adrea as he closed his eyes, hoping she would come to him in his dreams.
But he slept the sound sleep of exhaustion. If her spirit kissed him while he slumbered, he did not wake to it.

The following dawn, as he leaned over the side to splash salty water on his face, he looked up and saw the tiny but distinctive shape of a sail in the distance.
Criston stared in disbelief for many minutes, before he stretched his makeshift cloth as tight as he could, catching the breeze, and used a flat piece of plank as a rudder to steer toward the sail. When he tried to shout, his voice was so hoarse that
I
¦I

I
sound barely came out. But his raft did move closer, and the sailing ship was no illusion. He prayed to Aiden that someone would notice him, that his course would intersect that of the other vessel.
He could tell that it was a large black-hulled whaling boat rigged with a bright sail. He flailed a scrap of white cloth to and fro, still trying to shout, hoping one of the whaler's crew would see him.
At last, he discerned tiny figures on deck. He saw them set the sail and turn toward him, and Criston collapsed to the uneven surface of the raft, having no further energy. Soon he could hear the answering calls of shouting crewmen. Three burly whalers jumped overboard and swam toward him.
It had been so long since Criston had seen another human being that they seemed strange to him. "Who are you? What ship are you from?" one of the sailors asked as he pulled himself up onto the raft, speaking Tierran with a strong Soeland accent.
The men had brought a flask of water with them, and Criston drank deeply, gaining strength. "I am Criston Vora... all that's left of the Luminara expedition."
The whalers were shocked to hear this. After he was taken aboard and fed an indescribably delicious fish stew, Criston gained enough strength to tell his story, and listen to theirs. He showed them Captain Shay's journal with the drawings of fantastical sea serpents; these men had seen enough on their own voyages that they did not doubt him.
They were a long-range whaling crew, sailing beyond the boundaries of Tierra, past the last islands in Soeland Reach and heading south in search of rich waters. They had a hold full of rendered blubber, barrels of whale oil, and had been about to turn back when they saw the drifting raft.
I

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 235

Criston closed his eyes and touched the fishhook pendant at his throat, seeing the hand of Aiden in it all.

While he rode with the whalers, seeing that their course would take him to the southern coast and Windcatch, Griston borrowed sheets of paper from the captain, torn from his cargo ledger. He wrote, My name is Criston Vorafrom the village of Windcatch. I am the only survivor of the Luminara expedition.
He filled the pages with descriptions of places they had sailed, the island with the battling skeletons, the new sea monsters, the months of empty ocean as they sailed for league upon league, and how the Leviathan had destroyed them all... then, as with Sapier himself, how the sea serpent had pulled Criston back into local waters.
"Please have this delivered to King Korastine." He handed the folded sheet to the whaling captain. "That is all the information he needs to know. Someday, I may go to Calay to tell the story in person, but I cannot promise it."
He could not promise anything, until he saw Adrea again.
"He may not believe you," the captain remarked. "/ find it improbable, and I've seen your raft. I've looked into your haunted eyes."
'Just tell the king where you found me adrift. Let him draw his own conclusions."
I!

I

48

Alamont Reach

Mateo rode with his fellow soldier-recruits on the river barge for the trip upstream to Bora's Bastion, the central city of Alamont Reach. As they traveled toward the destrar's capital and stronghold, he admired the lush grassy hills dotted with grazing sheep. Cornfields spread out in long rectangles, the orderly stalks nearly chest high. He saw fruit orchards, nut orchards, even a few vineyards. Alamont wine had never been particularly prized, since the best vintages came from Uraba; now, however, this wine was all Tierrans would have to drink.
These were the lands he must defend.
When they neared Bora's Bastion, the recruits grew restless to see their new home. Around the destrar's city, large areas of fertile cropland had been cleared to serve as training fields for practice maneuvers, marching exercises, and military parades. As the boat eased past, Mateo saw soldiers in matching uniforms with swords at their sides marching in perfect ranks around the empty fields. Rows of archers followed foot soldiers, while cavalrymen rode in the front. Mateo realized this performance was likely for the benefit of the new recruits, to let them see how well the Alamont destrar ran his contingent of the Tier ran army.
Overlooking the river, Destrar Shenro's main house had high battlements and thick walls, though Mateo could not conceive of an attack occurring so far inland. Blacksmiths with riverside forges fashioned more swords with a constant rhythmic clang. Leatherworkers stretched hides over wooden frames for shields,
then added metal plates for protection. All of the workers glanced ¦ up as the barge pulled up to the main dock.
The recruits began to disembark, led by their training instrucH tors. The destrar had come down to greet them, wearing a military uniform of his own. Standing on the dock, Shenro measured the trainees with a calculating eye, then leaned over to whisper questions to the training instructors. The destrar walked the lines of new recruits, assessing them. He stopped before Mateo B and regarded the young man for a long, uncomfortable moment, then said, almost accusingly, "You are the favorite of King Korastine?"
"I am a soldier-recruit for the Tierran army," Mateo answered.
"Good. Then I am happy to receive you, soldier-recruit." The destrar turned away and issued orders for the quartermasters and supply sergeants to direct the young men to where lines and lines of tents had been pitched on the open cleared fields. One of those would be Mateo's home for the next year.

For the next two weeks the soldiers exercised until their bodies ached, then they exercised more, since recruits needed to have physical strength before they could acquire skill with weapons. For hours each day, they observed the older soldiers fighting mock combats; they watched the play of master swordsmen. In the evenings, Mateo tried to find time to write letters to Anjine, but so far he had completed only one; he was simply too exhausted to think of anything interesting to say.
In the rare times when the recruits were allowed to go into I he town of Bora's Bastion, some of the older soldiers introduced Mateo and his fellows to the drinking establishments, places for musical performances, interesting local games; several strikingly
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238 Kevin J. Anderson

lovely young ladies caught Mateo's eye, but he had never been very good at flirting.
Destrar Shenro also insisted that a good soldier needed to know the details of military history, to memorize the significant battles that had taken place in Tierra's history. Shenro taught this portion of the curriculum himself. Instead of discussing tactics and time lines as concise facts, he related the historical events as though he were a prester or storyteller, enamored of adventure tales.
In Tierra, occasional feuds had occurred between reaches, destrar fighting destrar. Alamont and Erietta in particular shared a great deal of rivalry. But the first major skirmish--a genuine insurrection against the king in Calay--had happened many centuries ago, when the Corag destrar attempted to declare independence from the other reaches and from King Yaradin.
"The other destrars were horrified," Shenro said from his open-air teaching platform. "They viewed Corag's rebellion as a mutiny against the captain of their government. Such a thing had never occurred before, and King Yaradin knew that he must change the relationships between the destrars and their fealty to him. He was a strong king, and he took on the mantle of captain, reminding them of his direct blood connection to Aiden."
Mateo and his fellow recruits stood in ranks, sweating and weary under the hot sun. By now, they had learned to remain at attention for hours without being restless, just waiting.
Shenro leaned forward, engrossed in his own story. "Yaradin unified the destrars, so that they all marched on rebellious Destrar Olacu and ousted him, replacing him with his nephew Miros, who swore loyalty to the king, to Calay, and to Aiden. To prove his sincerity, Miros ordered his uncle hurled from a cliff, so that his body was dashed on the rocks far below. Afterward,
as added insurance, many of Destrar Miros's family members were sent to live among the other destrars as hostages. No further trouble occurred."
Shenro nodded to himself as if thinking through his lecture. "King Yaradin was wise enough to study the root cause of the Corag destrar's rebellion. Olacu was not just a power-mad man who had flagrantly abandoned centuries of tradition and law. Corag Reach was isolated, receiving little benefit from the taxes it paid to the rest of the kingdom. Olacu had not considered the ruler in Calay to be necessary or relevant. And he was not entirely wrong--Yaradin saw that.
"The king decided to increase trade among the reaches. He concluded--correctly--that if all the destrars were prosperous, they would want to maintain the status quo. Thus, Yaradin forged a much stronger kingdom, rather than a loose collection of allied regions."
As he listened to Destrar Shenro's lecture, Mateo realized he had never heard such a blunt interpretation of history before. He knew the facts, and the legends, but had never looked for the subtleties or underlying principles. Mateo had always been taught that the king was a royal personage whose throne came by divine right, but Shenro had a compelling way of describing the concepts. Mateo decided he needed to think about it for a while.
When the destrar finished his tale, he gazed out at the recruits and raised his voice so that even the back rows could hear him clearly. "I have told you a story. You all know many stories, and you will hear plenty more during your instruction. But your training is no longer a theoretical exercise.
"You must be the first of a new breed of soldiers. The threat to Tierra is real. The followers of Urec have demonstrated their brulality. We watched them burn Ishalem, and we know how they

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240 Kevin J. Anderson

martyred Prester-Marshall Baine." He paused to shudder, then continued in a hoarser voice. "Understand that as soon as you are trained, you may be called upon at any moment to spill the blood of the Urecari. And you must do it without hesitation."

49

Windcatch

Resting and recovering aboard the Soeland whaling ship, Cris ton finally felt human again. At last, the big vessel arrived at a fishing village well north of Windcatch. After suggesting once again, unsuccessfully, that he go directly to King Korastine with his story, his rescuers bade him farewell. Criston could think only of Adrea, and his duty was to her first. With a wry smile, the whaler captain gave him a small amount of money--a fraction of the profits from the catch--to help him book passage home. They all wished him luck.;
Criston's heart tugged him southward. Though battered and weary, he drew strength from thoughts of Adrea, Telha, and Ciarlo.
When he arrived at Windcatch, though, everything had changed. Half of the familiar buildings were gone. Some were only burned-out shells; others had been torn down completely, and no attempt had been made to reconstruct them. Something terrible had happened here.
A sick dread filled Criston as he disembarked from the small ship that had given him passage; he hurried along the docks, past the oddly subdued and quiet merchant wharves. He ran, breathless, not wanting to waste a second. He stopped no one on the streets, couldn't bear to ask for an explanation. As he
approached the whitewashed half-timbered home where he had lived much of his life, he called out.
Finding the door of his house broken and hanging off its B hinges, he rushed inside, trying to see in the dimness. "Adrea! Mother! Ciarlo!"
The house was silent. Cupboards had been smashed. Some of the shelves had been torn down and scattered across the floor. Hi He saw bloodstains, dust, but no sign of his family. Nobody had _ been here for a long time.
¦ He stumbled back out of the house and walked away in a daze, making his way through the strange streets. Belatedly, he noticed that the kirk had burned down as well.
On the outskirts of town, covering an area more than twice its former size, the village cemetery had sprouted dozens of new grave markers. He stopped, stunned, to look at all the new stones, reading names that he recognized--friends and acquaintances, shopkeepers, fishermen, wives, bachelors--people he had always known. All of the new grave markers bore the same date.
Criston could not grasp what he was seeing--so many dead at once? He could only think that it must have been a horrific plague or a fire. But that wouldn't account for the additional destruction he had seen, or the blood.
One of the markers bore the name of Telha Vora. The sight of 1 it hit him like a physical blow to his stomach, and his shoulders sagged. He found it hard to breathe, and words would not come out of his mouth. His mother was among the dead. After losing all of his crewmates on the Luminara, and Captain Shay, and Prester Jerard... he had come home to this.
His heart began to pound in panic. He looked around frantically, scanning the additional markers and dreading what he would find. Name after name, some of them scrawled with paint, some lovingly chiseled into the rock. The graves were staggered
and haphazard, as if the burials had been rushed, the diggers overwhelmed. Too many bodies.
Then, at the edge of the cemetery he saw a group of wooden posts set too closely together, without enough room between them to bury a body. A fishhook had been carved into each wooden post, letters scratched but not deeply, as if the carver had grown too weary of a seemingly endless task.
On one post, the letters spelled out Adrea's name.
He stopped there in the dirt, his legs as stiff as old masts, and after what felt like hours, he crumpled to his knees. Though tears washed in like the tide, even his blurred vision did not change her name on the marker.
Other people noticed him now, and several came up from the town to see him. The cemetery held many mourners who walked among the markers, reciting the names of the fallen as if afraid to forget them.
After his own ordeal, Criston had changed as much as they had. His expression was drawn, his face etched with many lines. He had trimmed but not shaved his beard. Even so, several people recognized him; his return from the long voyage seemed no more impossible than the events that had already taken place around them. "What happened?" he finally brought himself to ask. He raised his voice to a shout and demanded answers. And they told him of the Urecari raid in scattered recollections, disjointed snippets.
"Ciarlo is alive," said an old woman who had been a friend of his mother's. "Up at the new kirk. He can tell you more."
Leaving the graveyard, Griston ran up the hill toward the foundations of the ruined kirk, to where a small new building had been erected. A man limped out, wearing the robes of a prester, though they fit him poorly. He looked up--a young man with very old eyes--without recognition.
1
"Giarlo, it's Criston." He stood there, his knees locked, but still swaying. "The Luminara was shipwrecked, but I made it home." When Ciarlo merely blinked at him, Criston could not hold his questions inside any longer. "Where's Adrea? What happened to her? What happened toyou?"
The young man took a deep breath. "I'm Prester Ciarlo now. Prester Fennan was killed in the raid. He made me hide in the root cellar, and now I'm the only one who knows the services. I do the best I can." He absently touched the patched loose robes. "These were Prester Fennan's old robes that he had stored in the cellar. I didn't have any of my own. Windcatch had nobody else. So I became the new prester. I had to."
Griston seized Ciarlo by the shoulders. "Tell me." He felt his voice grow dead, afraid to hear the answer. "Tell me, Ciarlo--what happened to Adrea?" Her brother nearly collapsed, but Criston held him up, hugging him. "Tell me," he said again in a hoarse whisper. Ciarlo began to sob.

50

Uraba

The caravan made slow progress as they left the port of Khenara and followed a track up into the hills, passing across the isthmus from Outer Wahilir to Inner Wahilir. The younger children were placed on pack animals or in carts that jostled along the well-traveled road; the older ones had to walk. The few women and all of the children had been fed, but Adrea's pregnancy often made her feel ill, sluggish, and clumsy.
As they moved onward, day after day, she maintained her silence whenever the captors could hear her. She would not give
them the satisfaction of hearing her beg... or hearing her speak at all. While other women moaned in fear and despair, Adrea just felt angry. These raiders had destroyed or taken everything she knew. She would never see her husband again, nor her brother, nor her home. Even if she survived long enough for the baby to be born, Criston would never see his child.
Twice more, the gruff Uraban sailor tried to talk with her on the zarifs behalf, but she gave no response, further infuriating him. The sailor asked other prisoners about her, but apart from the young captive children, Adrea was the only female prisoner from Windcatch in their group. Because she had not shared her name or background with her fellow captives, no one could tell him who she was, and Adrea hoped the rude man would receive punishment for his failure to learn more. Before long, though, Zarif Omra apparently lost interest in her.
As they traveled overland, she listened intently and learned what she could. When she could safely whisper to the other women without being observed, she tried to make a connection, but most of them were paralyzed with despair. The children, having lost everything, huddled in shock. Adrea turned her attention to her captors, watching them, gleaning information. She quickly picked up words in their strange language, though she gave no outward sign of understanding.
After journeying inland for five days, the track began to wind downward, and the terrain opened up. Looking ahead, Adrea saw a broad blue expanse of water that had a different color and character than the Oceansea. The Middlesea.
The shoreline was white and sandy, the water turquoise. At another port town--Sioara, she heard someone call it--the Urecari soldiers herded their captives into a large enclosure that had obviously been built for horses. When strangely garbed people from Sioara came to stare at the Tierrans--cursing, spitting,
throwing things--Adrea ignored them. The prisoners slept out B in the open, without shade, and she forced herself to rest.
Next morning, when faint colors of dawn tinged the sky, guttural-voiced soldiers rousted the prisoners out of the corral enclosure and led them down to the harbor, herding them toward another group of ships, single-masted galleys that looked entirely different from the normal sea vessels with which she was so familiar. The Middlesea ships had a shallower draft and a broader deck made to carry people out in the open rather than heavy cargo in the hold.
Their captors marched them double file up the gangplanks, filling first one galley, then two more, mingling the children and women. Adrea followed without speaking and found herself on the same ship as Omra. The zarif had bathed and obtained fresh garments in Sioara; she still felt filthy, her dress torn and stained. Whenever he looked at her, she glanced away so he would not see the poison in her blue eyes.
Uraban men took their places on benches, each grasping an oar, and rowed the galleys away from Sioara. Once they reached open water, they unfurled the sails, the center of each showing the Eye of Urec. Gentle easterly breezes pushed them onward. When she looked over the side into the Middlesea, Adrea saw fish darting alongside the hull.
They never left sight of the coast. With each stroke of the oars, each gust of wind, they were propelled farther and farther from Windcatch, and from Criston
After three days' voyage, they reached a large and beautiful city boasting tall towers and white buildings constructed of limestone and marble, rooftops that were tiled instead of thatched. The sunshine was so bright that the foreign skyline seemed to sparkle with haze.
The galleys slid toward the docks and tied up against wait
ing wharves. The prisoners were herded out, destined for a slave market, Adrea was sure. But Zarif Omra separated her from the rest, keeping her on deck after the others had left. He stood at her side and pointed to the city and the tall palace in the center. "Olabar," he said. "Olabar. Your home now." She comprehended what he said, but didn't respond to him, refused to break that bargain with herself.
"You will work in the palace. Do you understand? In the palace." He searched her face, but Adrea averted her eyes. She flinched with a twinge of surprise as the baby kicked inside her. Omra saw it, and showed a glint of something that seemed almost like compassion. "You are home now," he repeated.
Adrea would not acknowledge him.;

51

Windcatch

Criston felt as hollow as an abandoned ship.
He stayed in Windcatch and tried to sleep in his own home, but nightmares haunted him. After surviving the Leviathan attack and being preyed upon by sea serpents, the silence and shadows and ghosts inside his house were too much to bear. Ciarlo had explained what he remembered, what he knew. The Urecari had attacked the village without warning or mercy, burning buildings, cutting down men and women with their scimitars. Telha's body had been found in the house, alone, without Adrea. "We never found her, not for sure, but there were so many burned ones in the streets and inside buildings, we didn't always know who..." Ciarlo hung his head. "Many people ran into
the hills and escaped, but Adrea never came back. So we put her name on a post and said the evening prayers for her. The worst part is all the missing children, dragged off to the Urecari warships." "Why would they take children?" Criston asked, but all of the horrors now blended together, sounding like thunder rumbling in the distance. "Nobody knows, but they're gone. Maybe the Urecari cap1 tured some of our women, too, but... I don't know."
Criston caught his breath. "Could Adrea have been one of them? Could she still be a prisoner?" He knew how achingly i beautiful she was. The thought of those monstrous men taking her--
1 "Idon't know! "darlo's ragged cry showed he had been haunted by that question for a long time. "I don't know... And would that have been better? It's more merciful to think that she's not alive. At the time of the raid, her pregnancy was showing. Maybe they wanted the baby." "Baby?" Criston lurched to his feet. "She was with child?"
Ciarlo began to sob again.

Windcatch was empty for Criston. His home was no longer home. How could he make a life in this place again? He wished I he Leviathan had simply swallowed him as well. He heard that the predatory war galleys had ventured up the coast, and several other fishing towns had been ruined. In Calay, King Korastine was using Tierra's resources to build his navy and arm his soldiers, launching patrols to stop further Urecari raids. The stricken villages scrambled to rebuild. By now, Criston knew that the Soeland whalers would have delivered his letter, telling King Korastine of the Luminam's fate, hut he felt no desire to go to the capital city. The king would
be preoccupied by the war, and Captain Shay's voyage seemed irrelevant now. All of Criston's dreams to see exotic far-off lands had turned to ash.
As a seasoned sailor, he considered enlisting in the Tierran navy, to fight against the Urecari, but he wasn't driven by vengeance or bloodlust. The people of Windcatch were trying to rebuild, struggling to recover from their shock and grief in the smoky wake of the raid. They tried to put the nightmares behind them, to erase the scars of the attack, and move forward. They wanted him to do the same. He looked at the once-familiar faces, now all stricken.
While Ciarlo toiled daily to finish the small kirk, Criston helped him, though neither man spoke much. A third of the town's population had been lost in the massacre. Most of their supplies were gone, and they had little with which to pay visiting traders. Eleven fishing boats had vanished that day, presumably sunk by the Urecari, and the daily catch was drastically reduced. Windcatch was on its own, and the people required his help. They needed the extra set of strong arms. He had to stay here, at least for a little while.
When the villagers offered him a boat free and clear and asked him to take up his old trade, Criston realized how much had changed inside him. He had gone to the edge of the world and back; he had survived by clinging to his love for Adrea--all for nothing. He didn't dare to imagine that Adrea could still be alive.. .but it was the only hope he had left. The call of the sea that had once been so strong, the tug that made him look out to the water, had vanished within him. Criston was no longer a man of the ocean; he was immune to it.
Nevertheless, he and a small crew went out fishing each day, bringing back a catch to be distributed to the villagers. On land, workers tore down the wrecked shops and dock buildings, then
reconstructed them. Whitewashed walls were repainted; roofs were rethatched. His boat returned each sunset, and men hauled out the nets. He always had enough to eat. He remembered his courtship, when he had brought fish to feed Adrea, Ciarlo, and their mother.
B How could he ever have thought that sailing the uncharted sea was more important than staying with his beloved wife? He had gone away for adventure, to secure his future with Adrea... only to lose her entirely.
He lay awake at night, staring into the darkness, dead to the sea. He felt like a piece of driftwood that had once floated on the waves and now lay discarded by a high tide, cast up on a shore.
Day after day, he did the same thing, beginning to fall into a routine. After several months of hard work, the villagers managed to rebuild Windcatch. To a casual observer, the town looked the same as it always had. Life was getting back to normal. The people--his friends and acquaintances--had an aversion to talking about the raid, as if they wanted to forget it all.
Criston found himself falling into the same trap, and one night he woke in a cold sweat, shouting into the empty house. Never! He would never forget!
The next morning, packing only a few possessions, he trudged off to the kirk to say goodbye to Ciarlo. "I'm going inland. The ocean has nothing for me anymore. Windcatch doesn't need me."
Ciarlo was shocked. "But this is your home!"
"No... not anymore. Give the fishing boat to the crew. They know how to use it."
He needed solid ground under his feet, not a swaying deck. I Ie needed to be far from the waves, from the smell of salt, from the cold winds and storm clouds that blew in from the ocean. He did not care if he ever looked upon the waves again. The sea had
lured him away and taken everything from him--his home, his hope, his love
Criston shouldered his pack and looked eastward to the hills that extended as far as he could see, knowing that he could find open land there, unexplored mountains, a place where he could be by himself, to heal... or at least to survive.
The rutted road out of town was dotted with puddles from a thunderstorm that had passed two days earlier. He stopped once to look back at the harbor and ocean for the last time, but he felt no glimmer of regret, no need to reconsider. He was still a young man, with his whole life ahead of him, but his heart felt incredibly old.
Woodcutters and farmers brought laden carts down to the Windcatch markets. Word had spread inland, and producers brought supplies to the coast, hoping to help. On the lonely, winding track Criston encountered a man riding a cart full of apples, pulled by a shaggy horse. Criston felt obligated to stop and talk with him, though he was in no mood for conversation. He answered the man's questions, told him that Windcatch did indeed need the food. "But I am leaving," he said. "I'm going far into the mountains, to find a place somewhere for myself."
The farmer seemed sad to hear this. "All alone?"
"Yes... I'm all alone."
Brightening, the man reached behind him to pull aside a woolen blanket that covered a basket in which four puppies had curled up together. Exposed to the light, they blinked and lifted their heads curiously. One gave an extraordinarily large yawn.
"If you're a man alone, you need companionship. I was planning to give away these puppies in town, but you need one. I can see it in your eyes."
"No. I have a long way to go."
"You said you didn't know where you're going."
I

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 251

The puppy that had yawned got to its feet and wobbled, leaning forward to sniff Criston's hand. Then it began to wag not just its tail, but its entire body.
"No man should be alone," the farmer reiterated. "Trust me. This puppy will make all the difference now, and the dog he grows into will be a more faithful companion than you've ever had. They're fully weaned--you won't regret it." The farmer scooped up the puppy and thrust it into Criston's arms, refusing to hear any protestations.
Criston reluctantly held it, and the puppy licked his face. He tried to hand it back, but the dog seemed to call to him. With his life spent on boats, going out to sea every day, he'd never owned a pet, and now he didn't know quite what to do.
"He is obviously yours," the farmer said with a nod. "You just don't realize it yet."
For some reason, this observation made perfect sense to Criston, and he found himself agreeing. "I'll take him." Criston thanked the man, who clucked at the shaggy horse, and the cart rolled slowly down the path toward Windcatch.
Holding the puppy in one arm and his satchel of belongings over his shoulder, Criston walked on, turning his back on the village, on the shore, and the sea.
1 I
part III

Four Years Later

Five Years After the Burning oflshalem
52

Ondun's Lightning

Four years after his return from Gorag Reach, fully accepted as a Saedran chartsman, Aldo na-Curic set off on another sea voyage--his twelfth. The young man had proven himself to be a reliable navigator; he understood the workings of complex astronomical instruments, and his mind held a detailed map of all known ocean currents. Once he knew the captain's desired destination, Aldo could plot the best course far from shore where the ship would find favorable winds and swift currents, trimming days off their expected travel time. Merchants bid for his services, and he guided their ships to far-off ports.
He would always return home to his parents, his brother, and his sister. By tradition, Saedran chartsmen remained unmarried until later in life. It was their duty to serve aboard ships for many years, guiding numerous voyages and adding wealth to the treasury. Given the respect Aldo earned with his wide travels, many young women had taken an interest in him, flashing flirtatious glances in his direction, though they'd never looked twice at him before. Someday, he supposed he would choose a wife and have a family, but for now, he wanted to see the world.
Currently, rather than exploring unmarked territories and expanding the Mappa Mundi, Aldo drew his excitement from running dangerous waters and avoiding Uraban pirates. He assisted brash Tierran captains who dared to sail below the Kdict Line and trade illegally with the coastal cities of Outer Wahilir.
For this twelfth voyage, Aldo served aboard a small fast ship,
Ondun's Lightning, loaded with leather goods from Erietta, finely worked jewelry from Corag, and mammoth ivory and scrimshaw work from snowy Iboria. Such items commanded a premium in the distant south, since they could be obtained only from privateers and blockade runners willing to ignore the Edict and risk the wrath of Ondun. A single successful voyage could make a captain and crew fabulously wealthy.
The Lightning's, captain, Jan Rennert, had already returned from two successful voyages, but wanted more. He had a contact in Ouroussa deep in Uraban territory, a merchant who was just as hungry for the easy profits, and the two men had an arrangement to distribute a shipload of luxury items.
But a ship that hugged the shoreline could easily be seen and attacked by Uraban corsairs. Therefore, Captain Rennert needed a chartsman's help. Taking the risk again, Rennert had offered Aldo an extravagant amount of money to guide him, to plot a clever course safely far away from coastal raiders. Ouroussa was halfway down the coast of Outer Wahilir, well beyond any journey Aldo had ever made.
"Because it is so far away," Captain Rennert pointed out, "our profits will be larger. I've already laid the groundwork--you'll see."
So Aldo guided the Lightning out to sea, following currents he had memorized from the Saedran records. Many leagues below Ishalem, the winds became hot, and the ocean turned silty and shallow. Over the next week, four sailors fell sick with a fever they were sure came from poison fish, strange ugly things that had supplemented their meals. Heading farther southward to the fabled city of Lahjar would have been unconscionable, even to Rennert, despite the obvious profits.
Aldo directed the captain to tack east toward shore where, if his calculations were correct, they would catch a swift current
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 257

to bring them in to Ouroussa from the south. As expected, and to the cheers and thanks of the crew, the ship did approach the reefs on the outskirts of the foreign city at dusk, and Captain Rennert contemplated how best to go ashore and sell their valuable cargo. The crew was in a celebratory mood.
Two swift Uraban war galleys appeared unexpectedly, bearing down on them with long oars extended and drumbeats pounding. Captain Rennert sounded the alarm. "I had hoped to be discreet about this," he said, his expression tight. "My merchant friend must have sold us out." He ordered the sails set, planning to run out to sea. "Can you get us out of this, chartsman?"
"Those warships are between us and the best course, Captain, but I'll try to find another way." Aldo closed his eyes and summoned up his knowledge about the reef hazards around the Ouroussa coastline, but details were sparse. He didn't see a way out. The obstacle course of shoals now cut them off. B» Another warship came toward them, dispatched from the city harbor itself. Then two more. Ondun's Lightning tried to beat a hasty retreat, but came up against a line of submerged rocks that even Aldo hadn't known about, and only a frantic heeling to port kept them from shearing open their hull.
Familiar with the local hazards, the Uraban corsairs boxed them in against the reefs. With a sick feeling in his stomach, Aldo watched the vessels closing in, cutting off all hope of escape. Captain Rennert ordered his men to arm themselves and stand ready. As the sun sank to the horizon, the outcome seemed inevitable.
It was nightfall by the time the ships came together in the anticipated clash. Uraban rowers brought their war galleys alongside Ondun's Lightning, and fighters threw grappling hooks to secure the vessels. "They don't look as if they intend to take prisoners," Rennert said, seeing the curved silver scimitars. Before
the first enemy boarding party could leap onto their deck, the captain howled for the battle to begin.
Corsairs swarmed aboard, their colorful outfits making them easy to differentiate from the drab garments of the Lightning's crew, even in the fading light. With swords, clubs, axes, and harpoons, the Tierrans fought furiously to protect their cargo and save their lives.
But the numbers against them were overwhelming. Instead of running for safety belowdecks, Aldo seized a sword from a dead sailor's hand and brandished it to defend himself. The bloody mayhem on the deck of the ship was the most terrifying thing he had ever seen.
One of the corsair captains spotted Aldo and bellowed in Uraban, which the young man had learned in his studies, "Save the Saedran chartsman--he's valuable!" Aldo swung his borrowed sword gracelessly from side to side, trying to keep them at bay. He called out for help, jabbing and slashing at the men as they advanced on him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Captain Rennert go down, clubbed unconscious by a crowd of fighting men. In dismay, Aldo let his attention flicker for just a moment, and the largest Uraban fighter struck the confiscated sword, numbing his wrist. The hilt slipped out of his fingers, and the sword clattered to the deck. He balled his fists to fight, but the pirates surged forward to grab his arms and tie him up.
Dragged to the side of the boat and bound to a rail, Aldo was forced to watch as the attackers hauled a groggy Captain Rennert to his feet. Without ceremony or accusations, one of the Uraban captains ran him through with a scimitar, then tossed his body overboard. Aldo vomited, then tore his gaze away as the first officer was also executed and dumped unceremoniously into the water to feed the fish.
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 259 A few closely guarded and terrified Tierran deckhands were
i
forced to wash the blood from the deck, and a small crew took control of Ondun's Lightning. After being put in irons, the rest of the Aidenist captives were transferred to one of the Uraban galleys, where they would be sold as slaves.
¦ But it seemed the Urabans considered Aldo a prize even more ; significant than the Tierran ship. He felt dazed and miserable as the Urabans dragged him aboard their lead war galley and separated him from his companions.

53 Uraba

The Teacher stood as tall as Zarif Omra, but opaque black robes covered his entire body, black gloves wrapped his hands, and a featureless silver mask sheathed his face, leaving only slits for eyes and mouth. Since disguise was the nature of his work, the Teacher shielded his identity from everyone. But the students in I his isolated camp would wear no masks; rather, they would hide in plain sight until it was time for them to strike.
The Teacher's voice was muffled and genderless behind the mask. "They are prepared for their first test, Zarif."
Omra stood with the dark figure on the outskirts of a hidden settlement an hour's ride outside of Olabar. "It has been four years, Teacher. Time for more than a demonstration."
"Patience is a weapon as mighty as the sword. Observe." The ' I eacher gestured with a gloved hand, and one of the male tenders down in the village let out a shrill whistle.
The village was a perfect replica of a Tierran town. The I louses were half-timbered cottages with white plaster walls,
¦ I
brick porches, thatched roofs. A stone-lined well stood at the middle of a gathering square. The bell inside the town's Aidenist kirk began to toll in response to the man's whistle.
Figures emerged from doorways to stand in well-practiced lines out on the dirt streets. All were children, many of them teens, laughing and joking with one another. Their Tierran clothing was a motley of browns, blacks, and even a few dirt smeared whites; most of the children did not wear shoes. Tousled blond, coppery, or brown hair hung moplike from their heads, though a few of the girls had tied their hair into ponytails with strips of cloth. They spoke perfect Tierran. For four years, the captives had remained here in a world that the Teacher kept carefully separate from the rest of Uraba.
"Have they completed their exercises for the day?" Omra asked.
The Teacher nodded again. "And they were exceptional. I am confident in how they will serve you."
Two lagging boys fell into a tussle in the dirt, then sprang to their feet and ran to meet the others in the square. The older teenagers kept the younger children in line, scolding the rambunctiousness; all were perfectly aware of the Teacher's presence. When the black-robed man lifted a gloved hand, they all fell silent, as though in awe.
The Teacher called out to them in his own language, "They are your first test. Are you ready?" Laughing, the children shouted their answer, and the Teacher turned his silver mask toward Omra. "You may call your guests forward now, Zarif."
Guards on horseback ushered in four Tierran sailors who had been held out of sight of the village, pulling them by ropes bound to their wrists. Omra explained to the Teacher, "These are surviving crewmen from an illicit trader recently captured off the coast of Ouroussa. The captain and officers were slain, but we
did manage to seize a Saedran chartsman. My father will make use of him." Omra smiled coldly as he turned to watch the proceedings. "These sailors, though, are for you. Show me what you have achieved."
When the beaten and exhausted captives saw the familiar looking village, they brightened. One man praised Aiden, and the offended guards cuffed him. Omra's men slashed the bonds around their wrists and pushed the men forward.
The four captives hurried into the village, where the pale skinned children greeted them enthusiastically, calling the men i farther into the square. The captured sailors, laughing or weeping with joy, threw their arms around the Tierran children and stood, heaving great breaths. B The Teacher shouted a single order in Uraban.
The children moved like a dance troupe, their reactions perfectly coordinated. From their ragged clothes they produced knives. Each child, down to the smallest boy and girl, was armed.',¦¦,
The captive sailors were surprised, perplexed. One blurted out a question. The children fell upon them in a frenzy of stabbing, pushing forward, flashing their knives, each one wanting to feel the bite of a sharp blade into flesh and bone. Before long, the four dead sailors were no longer recognizable as human.
"No hesitation," the Teacher pointed out. "They are completely loyal, completely trained. They may have been born in Tierra, but their hearts belong to Urec. Your plan will succeed, Zarif."
Unable to tear his eyes away Omra felt great satisfaction. "We will call them ra'virs." Omra took the name from a rare bird, the ra'vir, which had a habit of laying its eggs in another bird's nest, so that its offspring would be raised among other species. But ra'virs often killed their fellows to eliminate competition.
"An excellent name."
Omra's ra'virs, these captive children, would look and act exactly like Aidenists, but would always be loyal to Uraba, ready to perform destructive missions when they received orders.
"I'm pleased with this demonstration, Teacher. Continue your work. Soon we can start sending them north to infiltrate Tierran society."

54

Olabar Palace

Inside the Olabar palace, Adrea worked silently, unobtrusively. Some days, the guards let her out into the gardens to scrub flagstones and pull weeds. Today, she toiled in the spacious quarters of Soldan-Shah Imir's third wife, Villiki. Using rags and brushes, she scoured dust and dirt from cracks in the tile floor. She polished statues, cleaning the stone faces of arrogant-looking men whose names she did not know. She used her spit to moisten the rag. A fresh dove dropping stood out on the man's sculpted head, and she took pleasure in smearing it all over the implacable face before wiping the filth away.
Uraban handmaidens with gaudy clothes and ripe perfumes twittered as they moved from room to room, fawning upon the soldan-shah's wife. Imir's second wife had been murdered four years ago, not long before Adrea was brought here, and the first wife -- Omra's mother--had lived apart from her husband for more than a decade.
Like creatures settling into a fresh tide pool, a group of scheming handmaidens surrounded Zarif Omra's only wife, Cliaparia.
Gliaparia was Adrea's age, dark-haired and beautiful, though with an arrogant self-absorption that diminished her charm.
As a mere palace slave, Adrea was immune to all politics. To the members of the court, she was invisible, a disguise she had carefully cultivated during her years here. When she was first captured, she had expected to be raped and abused, passed from I one Uraban soldier to another, regardless of her pregnancy. At the very least, she had been sure she'd be forced into Omra's , personal harem, since a Urecari man could supposedly take as many wives as he pleased. But to her surprise, she had not been harmed; in fact, Adrea had been given her own simple quarters, and was fed and clothed.
K When it was time for her baby to be born, a Uraban mid wife tended her, spoke soothingly, gave her medicines and herbal tea to ease the delivery. Without Griston at her side, Adrea had given birth to a baby boy, whom she named Saan. She had even been allowed to keep him, to raise him. Adrea didn't understand these people. > Saan was now four years old, a perfect blond-haired, blue eyed boy, and his face showed hints of her beloved husband. Every time she saw her son, she ached for what she had lost in Windcatch--Griston, her family, her life. By now, he must have long since returned home from his voyage. She imagined the Luminara sailing into Calay Harbor in triumph. Criston had likely received a fortune for serving on such a brave expedition... only to come home to a devastated Windcatch, his mother dead, Adrea gone. In the fire and slaughter and confusion, she doubted anyone had seen her captured. If anyone had seen it, they had probably perished that day as well. y
How could Criston not assume she was dead? Her heart felt heavy as she wondered if he had married again. Criston would
I
still be young and handsome. He would probably never learn that she had carried his child--much less that the boy was alive
Now, as she worked to make the marble of the statue gleam, tears sparkled in her eyes, but she wiped them away before anyone could see. In all her time here, she had refused to let her Uraban captors see a hint of emotion from her, and she had not uttered a word to them. They all believed she was mute, nothing more than a beast of burden--and a rather stupid one at that. Such attitudes worked to her advantage, and she clung to her shield of silence while she did her tasks in the soldan-shah's palace.
Although Adrea had no desire to please her captors, she worked hard because she couldn't risk being punished. She had too much to lose. In her precarious position, if anything happened to her, then Saan would pay the price. Adrea knew she could no longer count on Zarif Omra's help; over the past several years, he had paid little attention to her. By eavesdropping, she had long ago learned that Omra's first wife died during a miscarriage, and she concluded that a moment of weakness had caused Omra to protect her. Perhaps he had felt some empathy for her and her unborn son. But not anymore.
Each morning before Adrea left her quarters, Saan was taken away to a nursery school in one wing of the palace. She could not object, but it disturbed her to know that her son was being indoctrinated in Urec's Log, taught things that she found hateful.
Her own protective silence had laid a trap for her. Though Adrea longed to teach him his own language and heritage, Saan spoke only Uraban. The four-year-old did not understand his situation. Even when she held him in their quarters at night, clinging to him like one last possession that couldn't be taken from her, she feared that if she gave him words in his own language, told him the name of his father, described the village of Wind
265

I catch and the wonders she had seen in Calay, Saan might blurt something to his teachers, and her secret would be exposed. So when she whispered to him in the night, soothing him r making him feel loved and comforted, Adrea spoke in Uraban,'
I but made him swear never to tell anyone that she could talk. The
I boy had given her his word with all the earnestness of a child and for four years she felt as if she had been holding her breath.
Each day, when she finished her work in Villiki's quarters and most Urecari were preparing to go to their churches for sunset ceremonies, Adrea waited for Saan to be released from the school and led back to their quarters. Out in the long, open-air corridor, she moved on to the next statue, polishing it in the daylight that filtered through the corridor's vine-covered windows. Bees buzzed around the trumpet shaped yellow flowers. She looked up, hearing a rustle of sandals and robes. While Adrea disliked ambitious Villiki, the mother of Imir's second son, she had come to resent the Urecari priestesses even more. Ur-Sikara Lukai flaunted her superiority over any Aidenist captive, but since Adrea did her assigned tasks reliably, the sikara heaped scorn on her merely out of habit Today, red-robed Lukai herself brought the boy out, clutching his small hand. Adrea knew something was wrong. The priestess smiled at her with a face as hard as the statues Adrea had seen all day. Out of habit, Adrea lowered her head respectfully. Ur-Sikara Lukai spoke in broken Tierran, sure that Saan couldn't understand her. "Your son...soon he will change.
When he is five years old, we take him from you. We train him."
Adrea looked up, suppressed an involuntary cry of alarm, bit
I >ack the words she wanted to hurl after her.
Lukai seemed to enjoy her reaction. "He have the honor of being trained among ra'vir." Adrea didn't know what that meant,
but she grabbed Saan and pulled him close. The sikara laughed. "Soon now, he is old enough."
The priestess turned with a sweep of her red gown and stalked away. Saan had no idea why his mother was so emotional. She held him, her thoughts in turmoil, at a loss as to how she could protect her son.

55

Corag Highlands

High in a mountain meadow at the edge of Corag Reach, Cris ton Vora sat on a lichen-spattered boulder. The black and gray peaks above the meadows were frosted with thick snow that would not melt even at the height of summer.
He watched his small flock of sheep graze contentedly on the lush spring grasses. Magenta, white, and yellow flowers splashed color like daubs of paint across the greenery. Silvery meltwater streams trickled down from the highlands, gathering into larger brooks, all of which flowed into valleys and eventually to the sea.
But he no longer thought about the sea. Griston preferred the solidity of the mountains to the rocking deck of a ship.
His dog, full grown now, bounded after a rusty-furred marmot. The pudgy rodent clambered up a lump of rock, out of reach, while the barking dog circled. The marmot slipped into a crack to safety, though the dog would persist for hours, without losing hope or interest, though still remaining aware of the sheep all around the meadow.
At the edge of the sparse forest stood two enormous talus boulders beside a cozy cottage built from fieldstone, timbered with
wood he had cut from the patchy trees below. On sunny days like this, he left the plank door and window shutters open, so the breeze would air out the lingering smoke from his fireplace.
Criston sat in silence, comfortable and reasonably content. These days, he asked for nothing more. He no longer expected to I be happy. The world seemed quiet and still around him, and that I was enough.
He whistled. "Jerard! Come!" The dog let out a disappointed bark, looked back at the boulders where the marmot was hiding, then bounded across the meadow to his master.
For the first year, Criston had called him nothing more than "Dog," but since this steadfast creature was his only friend here in the wilderness, he eventually decided the animal deserved a name. So he named it after Prester Jerard.
Now an experienced sheepdog, Jerard came up to him, tongue lolling. Criston patted the dog's head and rubbed his muzzle, then turned him loose to circle the meadow once more, ensuring that the aimless sheep did not stray.
In the four years since leaving his old life behind, Criston had become skilled at avoiding his thoughts. He walled off his memories and could sit for hours watching his sheep, thinking of nothing. Now he pondered only what he would have for dinner. Perhaps he could go down to the stream and catch a trout or two; he had discovered that freshwater fish had an entirely different taste, and many more bones, than ocean fish. Criston kept a vegetable garden near the cottage, and knew where to find mushrooms and wild onions nearby. The dog might even catch that marmot, which would provide gamey but satisfactory meat.
With the nearest village a day's walk away, Criston's routine was unharried and unambitious. He had stepped off the path of life and now watched the rest of the world from the sidelines.
Sitting on his favorite boulder, he took up his knife and
began to whittle a chunk of wood. The sunshine was warm, and his fingers were nimble. When he first began carving his small sculptures, he had let the shape of the twisted wood determine his subjects: his dog, birds, indistinct humans. Soon he branched out into sea serpents, mermaids, fierce-looking sharks, and the exotic fish that Captain Shay had studied. He based many of his designs on sketches in the captain's battered scientific journal, which he kept close at hand to read in the long, solitary evenings.
Eventually, Criston's creativity drifted toward the creation of small ships. He carved models of boat after boat, though he didn't know why. He did not want to think of those days, but the wood seemed to speak to him. He crafted little vessels that reminded him of fishing craft from Windcatch, or of the Cindon. Getting more ambitious, he re-created the Luminara, adding twigs for masts.
When he finished another small carving, he realized it was already late afternoon. He whistled for the dog, which expertly rounded up the sheep. Criston had completed more than a dozen new carvings; it was time to make a trek to the village
The following morning, with his whittled sculptures gathered into a square of cloth, he set off with Jerard trotting beside him, leaving the sheep to graze in the open meadow. They would be all right for two days until he returned.
The high mountain village in Corag Reach was isolated and self-sufficient, located beside a deep, cold glacial lake that sparkled an uncanny shade of turquoise in the sunlight. During his first year, the villagers had regarded him with suspicion, not knowing why Criston was there or where he had come from. But he was quiet and friendly, offering no threat, and eventually they accepted him. He obtained a handcart, with which he carried wool sheared from his sheep to trade in the village. He also
269

began trading his carvings for salt, flour, and other essentials. He had enough to get by.
Now, when he arrived in the village, people came forward to see what he had to offer. The children stared at his wood carvings with delight as he produced them from his makeshift sack and handed them out for inspection. Since the villagers had spent their entire lives far from the sea, surrounded by mountains and trees, the ships were strange, exotic objects to them.
Griston distributed his carvings, and the boys took the boats to the lakeshore to set them afloat. The dog also splashed in the water, barking happily, chasing some of the floating craft and scaring up water birds.
The villagers traded Criston the supplies he needed. Though only yesterday he had felt a need for human company, after a few hours Criston needed to be by himself again. And so he whistled for Jerard, took his pack with the items for which he'd traded, and set off for home once more.

I
56

Iboria

The northern ice fields of Iboria stretched out in front of Mateo. Fog curled from his mouth when he exhaled. The sky was an empty, crackling blue. Everything else was painfully white, in spite of the landscape's rugged lines, fissures, and hills. The only breaks in the monotony were pale blue shadows in the deep ice, the sparkle of blown dry snow.
Somehow, he and his fellow soldier-recruits kept their bearings. Mateo still didn't know where the group was going, but they followed hearty, bearded Destrar Broeck, who seemed far
more at home out on the frozen wasteland than back in Calavik, his stockade-surrounded town nestled in the dark pine forests.
Broeck raised a mittened hand, and the trainees stopped their slow march. The destrar sniffed the cold air, squinted into the bright sunlight, then grinned, showing teeth nearly as white as the snow. "We are close. I can sense the ice dragon." He trudged off in fur-lined boots toward a distant line of sheer ice cliffs.
Many trainees gasped in awe, though the destrar had made similar claims four other times. Mateo saw no difference in the landscape they had been looking at for days.
He was seventeen now, much tougher and stronger than when he went to Alamont Reach in his first year of service. After twelve months with Destrar Shenro, he spent his second year at Farport in Soeland Reach, where he served on different islands, facing cruel storms that blew across the Oceansea, learning how to swim in cold waters, how to perform sea rescues. He had stroked his way from one island to the next as his final test. Three of his fellow trainees had drowned in the passage, but the rest had emerged more prepared for naval warfare.
When any of the young men grumbled about the hazards of the training, Destrar Tavishel had reminded them of what the Urecari had done to the reconstruction crew in Ishalem. He remained unrepentant about how he had responded to the soldan-shah's ambassador.
After Soeland, Mateo went to mountainous Corag, learning to scale cliffs and find his way across rugged alpine passes. Then he spent a year in the scrubby rangeland of Erietta, best for raisins cattle where he learned horsemanship, how to find water in the desert, how to survive the heat, and how to make rope from the tall, woody-stemmed species of hemp, since the demand for strong rope had increased so sharply during the hostilities between Tierra and Uraba.
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Over the years, he sent regular letters to Anjine, telling her of his progress, expressing his admiration for Tierra's military, though he left out certain harsh parts of his experiences, such as the time he caught a severe fever and lay delirious for four days, or when he received a long gash in sword training and needed to grit his teeth while a surgeon sewed up the cut. He didn't want her to worry about him.
During his year in Soeland he had fallen deeply in love with a fisherman's daughter--every girl in the islands was a fisherman's daughter, it seemed--and he had spent his days in a dreamy state, thinking about her. Uishel. Long, light brown hair that hung to her waist in thin, tight braids like fine ropes, a funny smile, bright blue eyes. He had daydreamed about her so much that his training had slipped, his fighting skills plummeted, and he broke his wrist in a stupid accident because he could not focus on his work. The training commander, recognizing the debilitating symptoms of a first love, had restricted Mateo to the military camp during the entire time it took for his wrist to heal and until he caught up on his training. Afterward, when he came out to find her, Uishel had already set her heart on someone else.
Devastated, Mateo had written Anjine all about it, pouring out his heart. He didn't ask for her advice, but she wrote back and consoled him anyway. He had eventually gotten over Uishel and found another young woman who caught his fancy in Erietta, and again in Gorag.
When Anjine's missives found their way to him, he devoured the words about home, imagining her voice when he read the letters. She spent more time talking about the cat Tycho than she dwelled on the politics of the kingdom. She also explained that, without him there to keep her company, she had taken it upon herself to turn a few of her handmaidens into true companions, particularly Smolla and Kemm, but that the girls had very lit
tie curiosity for its own sake. They didn't see how learning new things would ever help them marry a young guard. He could tell that Anjine was frustrated.
Mateo had two months left in Iboria, the northernmost reach, where much of the wilderness was covered with dense pine forests. Since Iboria was in no danger of Uraban attack, Destrar Broeck used the soldier-trainees as a ready labor force. Instead of training with his sword, Mateo wielded both ax and saw, cutting down the tall trees, which were then dragged downslope to the rivers.
The Iborians had domesticated woolly mammoths from the open steppes to the north, and the gigantic russet-colored beasts could haul even the mightiest trees down to the frozen water; when the ice thawed in spring, the logs floated downstream to the open bay. From there, "log herders" used coastal currents to usher timber rafts down to the lumber markets in Calay.
Now Mateo was one of a dozen young men chosen to accompany Destrar Broeck far to the north, on what the bearded leader called a "vision quest."
"I have been on twelve of these in my life," Broeck had stated. "There's nothing like it. Out in the emptiness, you are forced to depend on your own skills and strength." He grinned at the trainees. "I have chosen you, because I think you will relish it as much as I do."
Mateo and his companions wore thick furs and carried heavy packs; each young man grasped an ivory-tipped spear for hunting. After years of training--especially the months of hard labor in the dense Iborian forests--he had developed significant body strength.
Broeck had provided them with the best furs, tools, and weapons before they set off from Calavik. In the settled forests of Iboria, the people rode plodding musk oxen, but after the destrar
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 273

took them up to the edge of the snow fields, they used large sleds pulled by dog teams, which carried them many, many miles beyond the trees. The sled drivers let them off at the edge of a crevasse, then turned and raced back home.
Mateo had never felt so alone, but over the next few days of I plodding and shivering, he realized that he did feel exhilarated. During the few hours of darkness each day, the aurora sparkled '>: overhead, shimmering silken curtains of light that danced hypnotically as the constellations circled around their cosmic pivot point.
Broeck taught the recruits how to find stable ice. They crossed a deep blue lake by riding on broken ice floes to the opposite shore, from which point they could see a herd of wild mammoths thundering across the distant tundra. Even Destrar Broeck seemed intimidated by the immense beasts.
They hunted seals and ate the fresh meat, which Mateo found disgusting but nourishing. With no fuel to build a fire, they were forced to consume everything raw and cold. Water sacks inside their thick coats melted ice to provide liquid water.
Broeck had raised his left hand to show that two of his fingers were gone. For some time, the trainees had imagined the battles or monsters that had cost him his digits, but finally, as though revealing a grand joke, Broeck admitted that he had lost his fingers to frostbite while out hunting narwhals.
"Dangers don't have to be exciting to be dangerous," he said. "And don't underestimate the cold. The blowing snow here is hungry, and the wind can eat you alive. I lost my wife in a snowstorm that came up on a clear blue day. She went out to pick frostberries in the bogs and didn't see the blizzard coming. She never came home"
Mateo looked at the white expanse all around him, thinking of how swiftly the weather could turn. The bleakness offered little shelter.
I
He knew some of his companions were miserable, but he was enjoying the adventure himself. Destrar Broeck sensed it and spent more time with him. Even so, Mateo was greatly looking forward to returning to Calay, where he would volunteer to serve a final year in the city guard. He also wanted to see Anjine again
Now, as the group neared the line of blue-white cliffs, the destrar stepped more cautiously, holding his ivory-tipped spear in one hand. He knelt and spread his other palm flat to the ground as if he could sense vibrations.
"Yes...yes, the ice dragon is nearby." He raised his voice to shout a challenge. "Raathgir! We have come to see your horn!"
The young soldiers muttered. One rapped the butt of his spear on the snowy ground. "We have all been trained in fighting, Destrar. Together we can kill the ice dragon and take a fine trophy to the king!"
Broeck turned in quick anger, his bushy eyebrows drawn together; frost lined his beard. His chapped lips showed no hint of a smile. "You want to kill the ice dragon?" He let out a loud laugh. "Nobody has ever killed an ice dragon. Don't be a fool--the ice dragon provides protection. His horn is blessed, and he shields Iboria. Do they not teach you the stories down in Calay?
"Raathgir was once a sea serpent who came close to Aiden's ship, but Aiden reached out from the prow and touched the monster's horn, saying, 'Do not delay me in my voyage. If you leave the sea and do not harm me and my people, I will give you a new land.' So Raathgir swam away and came up here to the ice, where he swims inside the frozen glaciers rather than the oceans. And because Aiden touched his horn, it still carries his magic. Some say that Raathgir's horn could protect any ship from sea
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THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 275

monsters... but I would rather keep this protection in Iboria. We certainly aren't going to kill him!"
"Then why have we brought these spears? Why were we trained--"
"The spears are for you to protect yourselves, and to hunt. But the ice dragon... no, we won't be killing him. Save your bloodlust for the Urecari, when you get your chance to fight them."
As he studied his surroundings, Mateo saw light glinting in the smooth ice of the cliff face, possibly a reflection from high scudding clouds. Mateo wasn't entirely convinced that the ice dragon existed at all, suspecting instead that it was just a story Broeck liked to tell.
The ground beneath their feet began to vibrate, building to a larger rumble. The soldier-trainees scattered, looking to the destrar for answers or orders. Broeck had a childlike smile on his face. "I was right!"
The shaking grew more intense, and Mateo feared the ice would split at their feet. Heavy chunks of petrified snow calved off of the frozen bulwarks, dropping in a slow roaring avalanche that sprayed snow crystals like mist to expose a clean, unblemished vertical sheet of ice like a watery window.
Broeck stepped back and raised his mittened hand. His voice sounded small, blanketed in awe. "Behold what few men have ever seen."
Behind the prismatic wall of ice, Mateo saw a glint of silver and white, a flash of green scales. The angled planes of the frozen cliff might have distorted the view, but he did discern an enormous slithering body behind the ice wall.
"A tunneling ice dragon!" Broeck cried, "and a big one at that!Ho,Raathgir!"
None of the trainees now suggested killing the creature. The
rumbling stopped, and the gliding serpentine form slipped away, leaving a hollow cavity in the wake of its passage. The packed ground became still, and no further ice chunks sloughed from the cliff.
"Even I have seen that only once in my life," Broeck whispered. "Consider yourselves blessed."
The thirteen of them remained silent for a long time; then Broeck turned abruptly, coming to a decision. "Gome. It is time to go home."

Back at Calavik, they passed through the towering gates in the stockade wall, where villagers greeted them in their complex northern dialect, which Mateo still did not understand even after almost a year in Iboria. A domesticated mammoth stacked trimmed logs outside the fence to replace those that had been damaged by heavy snow drifts the previous winter. Barking dogs ran up and down the muddy streets. Blue-gray woodsmoke curled from the stone chimneys of the closely packed cottages inside the stockade wall.
The destrar's main house was a structure of dark lapped wooden shingles and rough planks carved with an intricate repeating pattern of fishhooks. A rustic steepled kirk had been built beside the main building. Destrar Broeck strode toward his home, leading the select trainees on their triumphant return.
The dark plank doors opened, and Broeck's daughter, Ilrida--a beautiful young woman, twenty-seven years old-- came out smiling. Ilrida had hair so fair and blond it looked like silvery snow. Her skin seemed translucent, her eyes the palest blue, like the glacier wall behind which the ice dragon had tunneled.
For her own part, Ilrida could not speak standard Tierran, and Mateo didn't at first grasp the news that had made her so
excited, but Broeck was certainly grinning. Mateo heard the others talking, picked up something about Calay and the king, and finally the destrar raised his voice so that all the soldier-trainees could hear.
"We announce a betrothal!" Broeck raised his daughter's ; delicate hand in the air. Ilrida's silvery-blond hair blew in the faint breeze, and she looked very content. "Six years after the death of Queen Sena, King Korastine has finally agreed to wed again--and he has chosen my beautiful daughter to be his wife." The destrar wrapped his arms around the young woman, swallowing her slim form in a large hug. "King Korastine is kind and wise, my dear. I know he will make you happy."
Broeck stalked toward Mateo and pounded the young man on the back. "It is time for you to go back to Calay. Your training here is finished. As your last duty, I ask that you be part of the escort to bring my dear Ilrida to her new home in Calay."

57

Olabar, Asha's Villa

After four years of living a shadowy existence in Olabar, Prester Hannes knew all the back streets, tangled alleys, and souk labyrinths. He had found the best places to steal food and beg, the public wells and fountains that provided fresh water. Most of all, lie remained invisible.
Though he could have stolen finer clothes, he preferred the rags and hood that let him pose as a beggar or, worse, a leper. The patches of healed but slightly waxy burn scars on his hands ;ind cheek furthered that impression. Few people looked twice at a miserable man they did not particularly want to see.
111
Obligated to demonstrate charity, the devout Urecari gave him brass coins, even an occasional cuar, and he gladly took their money. He made a habit of showing his scars, adjusting his filthy hood so that the burned part of his face showed, while carefully hiding the unblemished skin, and he silently mocked the Urabans for their gullibility.
Each day he hoped for a sign from Aiden, while he watched for weaknesses that he could use against the enemy. No other Tierran knew so much about the followers of Urec, their cities, their culture--or their blind spots--as Hannes did. Part of him wanted to rush back to Calay to tell Prester-Marshall Baine everything he had learned. But not yet. He still felt that Ondun had far more important work for him to do.
His favorite spot to sleep, both for its abundant comforts and for the sheer irony of it, was Asha's abandoned villa. He bedded down under the overgrown mulberry trees where she had once kept her tentworms.
After Hannes killed her and fled, the grieving soldan-shah had ordered her private villa boarded up, and Imir had never set foot in the place again. The superstitious Urecari now believed the place to be a haven for ghosts and evil spirits, and even squatters avoided it. Asha's home would never be purged of its demons... and Hannes felt he might never be clean, either, after what that woman had done to him.
Hannes had always tried to lead his life as Aiden would have wished, but it was difficult in this foreign place, with the entire culture against him. Asha had contaminated him with Sacraments that he could not vomit out, though he had tried--finding emetics in an apothecary shop and puking until he was so weak he could barely stand. He still felt the stain from within.
All alone in the moonlit mulberry orchard, he tore a thorny branch from one of Asha's dying rosebushes and shed his cloak to
bare his back. Breathing hard, he leaned forward and thrashed with the thorny branch. He winced and hissed and struck harder, whipping repeatedly. He could feel the blood running down his back, but he thrashed again and again. By flagellating himself, he could at least show his heartfelt desire to be cleansed.
In all these years here, and previously in Ishalem, Hannes had
i been quiet and furtive, as Prester-Marshall Baine had instructed
; him. But now he wondered if he had truly done enough to improve the world by the grace of Ondun, as the Book of Aiden's Rule of Rules instructed.
¦ He whipped himself until blood flowed so freely and the pain was so great he became delirious. Even then he did not stop.
I Feverish, swimming in his thoughts, listening to the pain and silent screams in his head, Hannes continued to beg for forgiveness. He hoped that his dripping blood would purify this ground, make Asha's villa a tiny foothold for Aiden against the heresy of Urec. Hannes knew he remained tainted. If he was so corrupted, maybe his blood was poisoned too, and Ondun would never accept this sacrifice.
But he could try, and he could hope. Somehow he would know. When he was weak almost to the point of unconsciousness, Hannes cast aside the mangled rose branch and sank into a pain-filled stupor beneath the mulberry trees. Fearing sleep but needing it, he clung to his faith and hoped that one day he would fulfill his mission and serve Ondun in the way he was meant to.
I

58

Olabar Palace

I
Tukar, the half-brother of Zarif Omra, watched his mother's glee when she sank his ship. "Diagonal move," she said. "War galley rams cargo ship." She snatched an intricately carved piece from the game board. "You need to watch more carefully, my son. You always fail to prepare for the unexpected."
"I didn't know that move was allowed," Tukar said, abashed.
"Then you should spend more time learning the rules. Spend more time learning everything. You're the son of the soldan-shah, not a normal man."
Tukar assessed his remaining pieces: He had his captain, six sailors, and a small dromond warship, but Villiki still possessed her coveted sea serpent, a rogue piece that could attack whatever and whenever it wished.
Xaries had complicated rules, and though Tukar had played dozens of games with his mother, he had never won. She scolded him for his lack of strategic prowess; she had even slapped Tukar once when he dared to suggest that xaries was only a game, and that winning and losing mattered little. "It is not a game. It is a test--which you keep failing miserably."
Tukar would rather have been outside watching Uraban soldiers drill, the mounted warriors racing about the field in mock skirmishes. Soldan-Shah Imir continued to build his armies against the Aidenists, though thus far he had been reluctant to launch them all in a full-scale crusade. Shipments of armor plating, spear heads, arrow tips, and sharp swords arrived regularly from the Gremurr mines on the north coast of the Middle
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t
sea. This morning, when the heavily laden barges had docked, Tukar had gone to help unload the swords, planning to take one weapon as his own. But the curved blades with rough hilts were brutish weapons, mass produced by the hundreds and "utterly unbefitting a prince," his mother said.
Afterward, Tukar had spent the morning on a hunt in the forested hills south of Olabar, running with the hounds he had claimed as his own after Asha's murder. Tukar liked to occupy himself away from the palace... away from Villiki. His mother had expectations and demands for him that he did not have for himself.
"You still smell like those dogs," she said, finding something else to criticize. "And you're sweaty. From now on, before you play xaries with me, please bathe yourself."
"Yes, Mother."
Before marrying Soldan-Shah Imir, Villiki had been a sikara dedicated to the church of Urec. Priestesses often took many anonymous lovers, calling it a part of rejoicing, but they rarely married. In deciding to take Sikara Villiki as his third wife, Imir had caused something of an uproar. Everyone knew that sikaras were almost certainly not virgins, and by tradition the soldan-shah was expected to take a virgin bride. But Imir had found something intriguing about Villiki, so he insisted. And when the soldan-shah insisted, that was the law. Deaf to the protests of his advisers, he pointed out, "My wife is not getting a virgin husband, either, so we approach this marriage on equal footing." The Urecari Church had blessed the union, mainly because the priestesses acquired greater influence by having a sikara wed the soldan-shah.
In the years since the burning of Ishalem, the sikaras had been using their leverage to demand a violent response to the Aidenists. Now they complained--primarily through Ur-Sikara Lukai but also through Villiki--that Imir was not prosecuting I he war with enough enthusiasm.
282 Kevin J. Anderson

III
The soldan-shah had responded by requesting clear guidance from God, and the sikaras scribbled a flurry of questions on strips of paper, which they set blowing through the streets and out to sea. They wrote bold inquiries to Ondun and Urec on long ribbons, which they flew from the towers of the churches, so the ribbons could flutter in the brisk winds to be read by divine eyes. Though Tukar had dutifully studied Urec's Log and listened to the sikaras, he didn't recall that any such question had ever been answered directly and clearly. Priestesses were good at raising questions, but offered few answers. Imir must have realized the same thing.
By sending His two sons to explore the world, Ondun had meant to test them. Aiden and Urec had been ordered to accomplish a certain unknown task... which apparently had not yet been achieved. Had Ondun sent the brothers out because He was disappointed in them? Had He wanted the two to find something--a new Terravitae, perhaps? The Key to Creation? What had their goal been? For generations, the Urecari had seen signs everywhere, in an oddly shaped cloud, a freak storm, or an unusual fish pulled up in the nets. But no one really knew the answer.'
Now, studying the xaries board with more intensity than he felt, Tukar picked up his dromond warship and aligned it to protect his remaining captain and sailor pieces. He planned his next several moves and developed an excellent strategy, but Villiki grew bored and impatient. She picked up the sea serpent piece and devoured his captain, abruptly ending the game.
"Learn that you cannot plan for disasters." She always found a way to lecture him. "Though some disasters can work to your advantage. Be prepared to become the next soldan-shah, no matter what."
"Zarif Omra will be the next soldan-shah," Tukar said.
"As I said," Villiki retorted, her voice as harsh as a desert wind, "you cannot plan for disasters."
H It was no secret that the time rapidly approached when Imir would hand over the rule to his elder son. Since Omra's wife, Cliaparia, remained childless, the political machinations inside the Olabar palace were becoming more intense. Even Tukar had noticed the shift, though he remained assiduously aloof from such things, despite his mother's demands. Tukar did not want to become soldan-shah, and took no part in his mother's scheming. He admired his half-brother and felt that Omra would be a good leader.
Weary of her constant berating, Tukar stood from the game table, ignoring the scattered pieces on the xaries board. "I know who I am, Mother, and I accept my place. I am content with my
: lot. Why can't you --"
m Villiki lurched to her feet and slapped him, a sharp, vicious
1 strike that made a sound like cracking wood. "Only the lower
classes can afford to be content. As the son of the soldan-shah,

i you are not meant to be content. You are meant to strive. I have i
done so much for you, and yet you continue to fail me!"

P Villiki knocked the xaries board to the tiled floor in disgust. The bejeweled pieces clinked and bounced away as though flee: ing her wrath. "While you amuse yourself with hunting dogs, I am planning great things on your behalf. Someone has to do it, ; or you will never get your due." Her eyes were smoldering coals fanned to life by a gust of wind. "And you, Tukar, better be ready to act when it is time."
59

Iboria

At the mouth of the wide river near Calavik, Kjelnar and his dedicated shipwrights worked to adorn a special wedding ship for Destrar Broeck's daughter. Using chisels, mallets, and rasps, the Iborians carved a benevolent bearded face on the prow: Holy Joron. The wondrous stories about Ondun's last son and the tropical land of Terravitae had always been Ilrida's favorites.
Since Mateo and his fellow trainees were neither skilled woodcarvers nor artisans, Broeck recruited them to tie ribbons on the masts and yardarms, sweep sawdust and wood shavings from the wedding ship's deck, paint the balustrades and cabin doors, and polish the stylized fishhook anchor.
Wood-cutters from the thick forests cut hundreds of pine trees and floated the logs downriver to the Calavik bay and the waiting wedding ship. Log herders would guide the cluster of Iborian pines to Galay as his daughter's dowry.
When the wedding ship was decorated to his satisfaction, the destrar walked the decks and inspected the well-appointed cabin where Ilrida would spend the passage and the clean but crowded berths reserved for the returning soldier-trainees.
When Broeck pronounced the ship ready to depart, his daughter came forward, preceded by five young female companions. Bearded Iborian men pounded on round-bellied kettle drums, making a thunderous sound like charging mammoths. Broeck proudly took Ilrida's arm and accompanied her across the gangplank to stand on deck. The young woman expressed her delight in the beautiful ship, the colorful ribbons, and the painted carv
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ings, talking quickly in the northern dialect, still unable to speak formal Tierran. In Calavik, Ilrida lived among locals who were fluent in the Iborian tongue, and she had never found a knack for languages.
Mateo, placed in charge of the young soldiers who would return to Galay as the wedding escort, let out a sharp whistle and marched his men on deck. In short order, the ropes were cast off, the sails were unfurled, and the barge rode the current out of the bay into the cold northern sea, with a train of pine logs in its wake. The strong southerly current would sweep them down to Galay.
As they entered the Oceansea, a brisk wind gathered gray clouds that presaged rain, turning the coastline into a dim blur. Mateo stood on deck with the destrar as cold droplets splashed down on them. Mateo pulled up his hood for warmth, but the big destrar let his hair blow back in the breeze and smiled into the sloppy sleet. Ilrida joined them, watching the gray-shrouded shore slide by. Though at first glance she appeared as delicate as an ivory carving, the cold and wet didn't bother her, either.
The ocean remained choppy for three days, and the rocking of the ship made many of the recruits sick. Broeck urged them to come out in the open, but they huddled belowdecks, vomiting and groaning. When the weather calmed as they sailed past Erietta Reach, the recruits finally emerged on deck looking gray and shaken, breathing gulps of fresh salt air in an attempt to recover. Unafflicted by seasickness, Mateo preferred to be out in the cold open breeze, rather than in the close vile-smelling hold below.
Kjelnar, who had also accompanied them aboard the wedding ship, kept an anxious watch on his raft of logs. After the days of rough seas ended, he lowered a rope ladder over the side and dropped down onto one of the floating logs. From there, he skipped from one floating trunk to another, inspecting the chains
that held key logs together. Mateo watched him incredulously, knowing that any slip would bring the shipwright between the logs, where he would be crushed. But Kjelnar did not slip.
During the storm, some of the outlying pines had broken loose and drifted free, and Kjelnar barked instructions for Iborian workers to lower the ship's boat over the side and row out to retrieve them. Not only were these pines valuable, but any rogue logs would pose a sailing hazard for future ships. Besides, he intended to use all the wood for constructing new warships in Calay Harbor. After what he had seen the Urecari do to PresterMarshall Baine and his crew in Ishalem, Kjelnar did not ever want to stop building attack ships.
Ilrida stood on deck all day long, her pale blue eyes wide with wonder. Broeck's daughter was twelve years Mateo's senior, yet she seemed more innocent than he was, having lived a sheltered existence in Calavik... possibly because the destrar was afraid of losing her, as he had lost his wife in a snowstorm.
Broeck told Mateo to keep her company, which Mateo did awkwardly, since he was not fluent in the northern dialect. "Talk to her in Tierran," the destrar suggested with a shrug. "She'll have to learn it sooner or later."¦'¦< ¦ j
And so the young man stood with her on the open deck, telling her stories, describing Calay. He talked about the kitten he had given Anjine as a going-away present. He also shared snippets from Anjine's letters about how she had raised Tycho as a veritable feline prince. Most important, Mateo told Ilrida how kind and generous King Korastine was. He described how Korastine had given his word to Mateo's dying father and had never turned from his vow. "He will be a good husband, I promise you."
Looking wistfully at the coast, Mateo smiled. "And wait until you meet Anjine. She will make you feel at home. I'm sure you'll be great friends." He told her the stories of the things the two of
them had done together as younger children. He laughed aloud at the memories.
Ilrida smiled at him, but Mateo could tell by her puzzled expression that she didn't understand much of what he said. Still, she seemed to enjoy his company and his voice, and he knew she picked up some basic words. Telling these stories had increased Mateo's own homesickness. He watched the coastline and knew they were almost home.

60

Olabar, Saedran District

1
Under house arrest in Olabar, Aldo na-Curic was considered a particularly valuable captive. The barred windows of his small, sparsely furnished cottage afforded him a view of the soldanshah's palace and the nearby Urecari church. He still didn't know what would happen to him or what the Urecari wanted from him. Two guards were posted outside the main door, another in the rear, although Aldo had made no attempt to escape. Where would he go?
Each day, as he paced his room, his thoughts knotted as well as his stomach, he listened to the sikaras sing their call to the sunset services. He heard a cacophony of merchants shouting to customers who were bidding against one another, which made Aldo conclude that he must be near the main souks. He missed his parents, his brother and sister, and stern old Sen Leo.
No one seemed surprised that Aldo could speak passable Uraban, and he concluded that Saedran chartsmen were so rare here on the foreign continent that they seemed like sorcerers. As he brooded in his locked home, Aldo considered how to use that
perception to his advantage. Maybe he could bargain his way home, or at least to freedom.
After a week of not-unpleasant captivity, during which Aldo realized he was more curious than terrified about his future, he resigned himself to learn what he could from his strange situation. Even in Sen Leo's large library, descriptions of Olabar and the Uraban interior were sketchy at best, the details unverified. After his ordeal, if he did get away, Aldo was determined to return to Calay with a useful report. It would make all his tribulations worthwhile if he could sketch in another blank area on the great Mappa Mundi.
On the morning of his sixteenth day, after being fed a lovely breakfast of papaya and fire-roasted eggs, Aldo was surprised when a quartet of flatulent-sounding Uraban horns blasted a fanfare in the street outside his house. The guards yanked open the door for a bald, plump man who wore orange robes, decorative golden chains, and a bright yellow sash tied across his belly.
"I am Imir, Uraba's soldan of soldans," he said. "Welcome to my lovely city of Olabar. It is not often we have Saedran charts men as our guests."
The soldan-shah's words took Aldo aback, and he could not stop himself from blurting, "Your guest? My ship was attacked, my crewmates killed by Uraban pirates, and I was kidnapped. We were just peaceful traders!"
Imir's expression turned sour. "Your captain was a black marketeer running cargo in our territory south of the sacred Edict Line. You're no fool, Saedran. If a Uraban ship were to sail north and secretly trade with Tierran coastal villages, King Korastine's navy would attack us, capture or kill our crews, and sink our ships." He took a seat at the small table, sliding aside the dishes that held the remnants of Aldo's breakfast. "We could just as easily have let you join the others, but you can help us." His
full lips curved in an ingratiating smile. "We'll make it worth your while."
Aldo was too upset to be tactful. "My services aren't for sale."
"Of course they are. And I am your new customer. We need to have a conversation, you and I." A servant hurried in from the street, carrying an ornate silver tea set and left again just as quickly. "As a Saedran, you have no stake in the religious clash between Urecari and Aidenists. Why show them any more loyalty than you would to me? I wish to hire you as a chartsman. Help our merchants and sailors, maybe even our navy. As a Saedran chartsman, you should be objective." ft Flustered, Aldo sat at the table. Imir regarded the tea service as if wondering whether to wait for some servant to fill their cups, then picked up the silver pot and splashed steaming minty liquid into the cups, serving himself first. "Although Uraba has plenty of wealth, we do not have a large population of Saedrans. Very few are chartsmen. You know about Tierran waters, the coastline, the cities, the winds, the currents. You'd be very much appreciated among us. Why not settle down here? We'll find you a wife, pay you well, give you anything you need."
Aldo reached forward to take his cup of tea, unconvinced. "I'd rather go home to my own family."
Imir's brow wrinkled. "You already have a wife? You seem quite young."
"I have a mother and father, a sister and a brother."
The soldan-shah made a quick, dismissive gesture. "They will be fine without you."
"They must be worried sick about me! Everyone knows what the Urecari do to their enemies."
Imir slurped his tea, burned his tongue, and quickly set his cup down on the table. "You aren't the only one who has endured tragedies, young man. Tierran pirates have attacked coastal vil
lages in Outer Wahilir. They sank our ships, stole our cargoes." He stopped himself and sighed. "Ah well, I thought you might be intractable, so I brought someone who can tell you more about us and our lands, and our needs." He signaled to the guards at the open door.
A broad-hipped woman stepped tentatively into the house, wearing a Saedran-style dress and traditional scarves tied at her neck. In her late forties, with curly sepia hair that fell to the small of her back, she had generous lips, kind eyes, and a studious demeanor.
With a warm smile and a bow in her direction, Imir said, "This is my dear friend and companion, Sen Sherufa na-Oa, one of Olabar's most prized scholars and a chartsman, though an untraveled one. I'm one of the few who recognizes both her intelligence and talents. I cannot fathom why men do not line up at her door with marriage proposals."
"I turned them down," Sherufa said. "I've got too many other things to do." She turned her attention to Aldo. "However, I am delighted to see a fellow Saedran chartsman. I may not have made voyages of my own, but I have read plenty of books. We can learn much from each other."
"I'm more interested in what you can learn from him, my dear." Imir leaned forward to kiss Sen Sherufa on the cheek, and she flushed. The guards studiously turned their backs, staring into the street as though an invasion might be about to happen. "I'll leave you two alone." He pulled out a chair for Sherufa. "Have some tea, get to know each other. Offer him anything... within reason. He could be very useful to us."
The soldan-shah strode out, leaving the two Saedrans together, and Sen Sherufa seemed as embarrassed as Aldo. "This is interesting," she said.
"And unexpected." Aldo cautiously studied her to see if he
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could read any hidden agendas. "I have nothing against you, ma'am, but after watching them capture my ship and murder my captain and crew, I am not... objective about the Urabans." "Oh, you've got nothing to fear from me." Sherufa picked up the soldan-shah's half-finished cup of tea and drained it. "And Imir is right in one respect--Saedrans don't have to choose between Aidenists and Urecari. We do have a lot to learn from each other."v:

61

Olabar Palace

Saan was gone.
On his fifth birthday, her son was seized and taken away, exactly as Ur-Sikara Lukai had threatened. The priestess arrived with six palace guards, all of them armed, as if they expected her to resist, but Adrea knew how useless that would be. Turning her head aside, Adrea bottled up her tears and allowed herself one last wordless embrace with her son before they pulled the surprised and upset Saan away with them.
"He will be taken care of," Lukai promised in heavily accented Tierran. "He will serve the followers of Urec. Be proud of him."
With great effort, Adrea held her tongue and kept her expression stony. Ur-Sikara Lukai swirled her red gowns and followed the guards ushering the boy away. Adrea could hear the echoes of Saan crying down the halls¦

In the following days, from the blank expression on Adrea's face, no one in the Olabar palace could have guessed the depths of her fury. For more than five years of slavery, she had endured in
silence, remained in her place, and performed her duties--all to keep her son safe.
Now, given the slightest opportunity, she would have poisoned them all, from the soldan-shah himself to the lowliest Uraban servant. She considered stealing a knife from a serving tray and going from room to room in the dead of night, slaying as many Urabans as she could before someone stopped her.
Only the slender hope of doing something for Saan restrained her. Without Adrea, the boy would be utterly lost. She needed to find some way to fight back, or he would be forever trapped in his fate.
She had failed him, and she had failed her beloved Cris ton. Saan might even be turned into a soldier against Aidenists--unless she could find a way to free him. If anything happened to Saan, if she learned that he'd been harmed in any way, then nothing would stop her. Adrea would kill them all.
For now, she would bide her time, always alert, playing the role of the silent servant.
Adrea entered Villiki's quarters carrying a tray with the evening meal: skewers of roasted songbirds smothered in honey and sesame seeds and a salad of bright flower petals. She was tempted to spit on the food before bringing it to Imir's scheming wife, but if she were caught doing that, she would be severely punished. Adrea was not afraid to surrender her life if it meant freedom for Saan, but she wouldn't do it for an empty gesture. No, she would act only when she was certain she could accomplish something.
Inside the chamber, Villiki and Ur-Sikara Lukai lounged on cushions, facing each other across a low table. Intent on their conversation, the two women began to eat without so much as acknowledging Adrea. She unobtrusively went on with her work, tying back the silk hangings around Villiki's bed, preparing Villiki's pillows for evening, watering each of Villiki's eleven pot-

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ted ferns, whose fronds unfurled in a perfect embodiment of the Urecari religious symbol. The two women continued to speak in low tones, hushed but intense, and quickly forgot her presence.
"It will be easy to administer the poison," Lukai said.
Bending over a potted fern, Adrea froze, then forced herself to keep going through the motions of her task.
"Gliaparia's so desperate for his affections that she continues to buy aphrodisiacs, hoping to ensnare Omra's love." The ursikara's tone was rich with scorn. "She'll administer our poison without even realizing it. She'll think it's another love potion."
Villiki lounged back on her cushion, chuckling in her rich, deep voice. "Wonderful! That way, Cliaparia will be blamed for Omra's death since she will give him the poison, an added benefit. But we've got to move soon. Any day now, she could claim to be pregnant, and then Tukar's challenge to become heir would be even weaker." She snorted. "And it is weak enough as it is."
The two women ate their meal, crunching the delicate bones of the skewered birds. Villiki looked up and took notice of Adrea. "You, slave! Bring us some figs."
Adrea blinked unresponsively, pretending not to understand. Lukai let out a loud disgusted sigh, muttering in Uraban. "She is as stupid as a stone." She raised her voice in rough Tierran. "Figs! Bring them. We command it."
Adrea hurried toward the door of Villiki's chambers.
"When Omra returns from Yuarej in three days, Cliaparia I will insist on spending the night with him," Villiki said. "Can I you do your part by then?"
The sikara chuckled. "Oh, that will be a simple matter. She has already asked Fyiri for assistance. I had Fyiri tell Cliaparia that this new love potion must be added to every dish of food."

r Adrea slipped through the door, ostensibly to fetch figs from the kitchens. She had heard everything she needed to know, and
it gave her a spring in her step and hope in her heart. She had a weapon.
This was going to be a dangerous game. Villiki would murder her if she discovered what Adrea had in mind--but Adrea would take the gamble. She did not intend to be caught. These women had much to learn about the lengths to which a desperate Tierran mother would go. Their schemes were amateurish in comparison.

62

Calay

On the day the wedding party was due to arrive from Iboria, Anjine was glad to see excitement in her father's face for the first time in years. Though he had previously seen only a small plate 11 Ipainted with Ilrida's likeness (in the pose of a young female crew-
II Iman on Aiden's ship, naturally), Korastine was infatuated with
Iher. Destrar Broeck had described his daughter with any proud father's lack of objectivity, and the king trusted him.
This was not strictly a political marriage, Anjine knew; Korastine honestly wanted to be happy. After her mother's death, he often asked Anjine to sit next to him by the fire and read aloud from the Book of Aiden. When he thanked her with tear-filled eyes, she could see the heavy hunger of loneliness within him. While they waited for the wedding ship to pull into the har Ibor,
Anjine helped to finish the banquet preparations inside the castle, inspecting the platters of roast sturgeon, the herbed root vegetables, soups made from dried peas, and dozens of sweet quince tarts. Her cat, Tycho, insisted on following her, wanting her attention--as well as some of the fish. Her two handmaid
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ens, Smolla and Kemm, fussed about with colors and banners and flowers.
The flagstoned floor of the banquet hall had been swept clean, and lace-edged linen tablecloths were spread out on the long plank dining tables. The tables were set with a wedding gift from the Corag destrar, new pewter goblets that bore the specific crest of each destrar.
The Iborian wedding ship arrived on schedule, trailed by a raft of valuable pine logs. A runner came to inform King Korastine that the passengers had disembarked and were making their way through the Royal District. Her father came to fetch Anjine, grinning and anxious. Side by side, the two emerged through the castle's arched gates, where they waited to receive the wedding party.
Tumblers and jugglers rushed out for an impromptu show, followed by musicians with flutes and tambourines. Nothing about their performance was coordinated, but the diversions were colorful and entertaining. Each of the entertainers longed to be singled out as a court performer.
But King Korastine had eyes only for Ilrida as she approached, holding the arm of her bearlike father. The destrar's ethereal daughter looked captivating and sweet, halfway between Anjine's age and Sena's. Korastine went forward to greet his bride-to-be, bowing deeply.
Behind them, Anjine saw a familiar but barely recognizable face--Mateo, tall and mature. His dark hair had recently been shorn, and his Iborian-style uniform looked a bit small for him. Why, he looked grown up! Anjine realized that she herself had flowered into womanhood since she had last seen her best friend. She was no longer an eleven-year-old girl, and he not a young boy. The gulf of years and puberty had changed them greatly. I Anjine drew herself up to look as regal as she could, while Mateo stood at attention at the head of the soldier-trainees, his
face unreadable. Their eyes met and locked, and Anjine could no longer contain herself. Her lips curved in a grin, just as Mateo smiled, showing her a flash of his boyhood again, and it warmed her heart.
The group moved inside the castle amidst a welcoming chatter. While the party members were escorted to their rooms by castle retainers, the returning soldiers set off for their barracks in the Military District, where many of them would be fitted with the uniforms of the city guard for one last year of service. Mateo had already written her that he'd decided to opt for enlisting in the city guard, anxious to stay closer to home.
Anjine whispered in her father's ear, pulling his attention from Ilrida. "May I have Mateo help me with preparations for this evening? The city guard can get by without him for an afternoon."
The king was startled, as if he hadn't realized who the young man was. "Mateo! Welcome back to us. Military service has certainly matured you!" He embraced the young man. "Go with Anjine. I'm sure the two of you have much to talk about."
The pair slipped away from the hubbub of visiting dignitaries. Mateo looked around him, as if seeing the castle's familiar halls and chambers for the first time. "So much has changed in Calay. When was the old Tinkers' Bridge torn down?"
"It collapsed when a barge full of cut limestone hit the pilings," Anjine said. "People have had to walk all around the bay or take ferry boats for months, but it'll be rebuilt in the next year."
Mateo continued in a rush of words; he seemed to have so much to say. "And when our ship sailed in, I saw that the military barracks have expanded all the way up the spit of land. Looks like they'll soon edge out part of the Butchers' District. And I've never seen so many warships on patrol at the mouth of the harbor!"
"With good reason." Her voice turned hard. "You know what the Urecari have done to our villages." She led him into a west facing upper room where afternoon sunlight streamed in to warm the velvet-upholstered window seat. There she found Tycho sprawled out to sun himself. The cat lifted his head, glanced at Mateo, and gave a curious meow, obviously not remembering the young man from so many years ago. Nevertheless, Matteo went over to scratch Tycho's chin.
"It'll be different now," Mateo said. "While I'm serving in the city guard, at least we can talk in person, so we don't have to write so many letters." She had enjoyed his letters, though... read each one dozens of times.
"Unless you go out on a patrol boat. Some of the city guard are being assigned as crew."
"Makes sense. There's more trouble on the sea than in Calay."
She hoped, though, that he would stay here in the city.
The two fell into an awkward silence. They hadn't seen each other for five years--during which Mateo had served in all five reaches, and Anjine had learned more about politics and leadership than most men learned in a lifetime. There was so much to tell that neither of them could think of how to begin.

In the weeks after the wedding, Queen Ilrida adapted to her new life and happily settled in as the wife of the king. Korastine adored the Iborian princess from the moment he first saw her, and Anjine was glad to see that her father seemed young again, as if a hard decade had melted off his face.
Destrar Broeck remained in Calay for as long as he could make excuses to do so, but eventually he had to head north before the weather changed. Kjelnar remained behind with the new shipment of logs, and King Korastine put him in charge of the entire shipbuilding district for constructing naval ships.
I

Anjine took her new stepmother under her wing, making sure Ilrida felt welcome and comfortable. Although the Iborian woman was full of wonder and definitely wanted to please, she had great difficulty speaking the Tierran language. Anjine knew that while children acquired languages easily, many adults were not so adept at it. She asked Smolla and Kemm to work with Ilrida on her letters (secretly hoping that the two handmaidens would learn something as well). Anjine longed for more intelligent conversation in the castle.
Right away, she helped Ilrida memorize a few key words and phrases, and sat with the other woman in her own rooms; while her Iborian ladies-in-waiting snipped lace or sewed garments, she told stories about Queen Sena, assuming that Ilrida would want to know more about Korastine's first wife. The Iborian ladies were already fitting into their new home, a few even flirting unabashedly with the castle guards.
One day, when Anjine joined her in a private drawing room, Ilrida reverently opened a locked wooden chest, rustled among fabrics and garments, and withdrew an object that she obviously valued greatly. The pale Iborian woman held up a round icon in a frame the size of a small plate. The image had been assembled from minute pieces of colored tile and polished stone, a detailed mosaic of a bearded man, his head surrounded by a golden halo, his face filled with peace and compassion.
"Holy Joron... is my favorite story," Ilrida said. The words sounded rough and unnatural when she spoke them, but she seemed proud of her ability to communicate. She had worked hard to memorize the names of the tales.
"You like the story of Holy Joron and the land of Terravitae?" Anjine asked.
Ilrida smiled and nodded. "He wait for Ondun."
"I know many Joron stories--the Silver Waterfall, the talking
storm, and the lost flock of sheep in the whispering grove. Let me tell them to you to help you learn our language."
Ilrida listened with rapt attention as Anjine related the familiar descriptions of the calm animals, the orchards laden with fruit, the streams so full offish that a person could cross by stepping on the backs of trout. She didn't think Urida's eyes would ever stop sparkling.

63

Olabar, Saedran District

Though he was released to accompany Sen Sherufa na-Oa, Aldo found it hard to believe he was no longer a prisoner. He glanced about furtively as Sherufa guided him through Olabar's Saedran District, sure there must be eyes watching him, to inform Soldan-Shah Imir of his every move. If Aldo bolted toward the harbor and stowed away on a ship bound for the far shores of the Middlesea, would they cut him down in these strange, foreign streets?¦:, But nobody paid him any particular attention. The guards were gone.
Aldo couldn't believe it. "I won't be going back to the prison house?"
Sherufa's brow furrowed. "Why, no. Imir released you to me. He wants me to talk with you and learn from you."
'Just like that?"
'Just like that. Imir trusts me." She chuckled. "Besides, if you run, where could you go? You're on a different continent, among strangers. Since you're a chartsman, I assume you are an intelligent and logical person. Your best choice is to stay here with me.
I always have a spare room. Everyone in the district knows it, and I've had more than my share of unexpected guests."
"Other captives like me?"
She laughed. "Oh, no! More often it's angry wives who stay with me to leave their husbands with a cold bed for a few nights. Sometimes it's out-of-town travelers with nowhere else to stay. They're always welcome, so long as they're courteous and can offer some interesting conversation."
Sherufa strolled ahead of him as though this were any other day and she had simply gone to the market--to pick out a Saedran chartsman rather than fresh fish or a sack of grain.
"Is there a library here? " he asked. "I'd like to study your volumes. They must be different from the ones that Sen Leo used to teach me."
"It wouldn't be much of a Saedran District without a library, now, would it?" She shrugged and he sensed that she was slightly introverted and quite a bit more curious about him than she wanted to show. "All of the volumes belong to me, however, so you can read them from my own shelves. I'd love to share them with someone. Chartsmen are rare here, and the soldanshah needs them for his warships. Most are taken overland to the Oceansea. Chartsmen don't stay here in Olabar--except for me."
; The streets and dwellings around Aldo had a familiar look of Saedran architecture and decorations: apothecary shops, alchemists, portrait painters, physicians and astrologers, all of the usual professions. The people wore familiar garments, as well.
"I have the perfect memory, and I've studied records, charts, and tales of the Traveler, but I've never actually left Olabar. I prefer to travel in my imagination, safe at home."
Remembering the dreams from his youth, Aldo could not understand a person uninterested in seeing the wonders of the
world. Why, he had practically begged Sen Leo for his first assignment. But perhaps Saedrans were different here in Uraba, surrounded by an altogether different culture.
Seeing Sherufa in the street, groups of children ran toward her, calling out together in a good-natured harmony, asking for sweets. Aldo didn't know what to do, but the children were uninterested in him. From pockets hidden in the folds in her skirt, Sherufa brought out wrapped candies and tossed them into the air with flickering birdlike movements. The children jumped and scrambled to catch them. She beamed contentedly.
Aldo's people kept a culture unto themselves, and the Saedrans in Uraba were as insular as they were everywhere else. Here, they lived in the shadow of Urecari churches rather than Aidenist kirks, but their situation was similar. It was true--as the soldan-shah had declared--that Saedrans had neither Aidenist nor Urecari sympathies. The goal of all trained Saedran scholars was to complete the Mappa Mundi. By fulfilling that destiny, his people would be allowed to return to their sunken homeland that had vanished long ago.
They reached the door of a small stuccoed house with a tile roof, her residence. On her stoop, someone had left a basket of bread and three fresh eggs tucked into a folded cloth. She picked up the food without wonder or surprise and opened the door to her home, stepping aside so Aldo could enter first, as an honored guest. He had nothing of his own.
"You have no garments? No belongings?" she asked.
"I didn't have much chance to pack while the Urabans were attacking my ship," he said with a bitter edge in his voice.
"I'll put out the call. Don't worry. We'll find everything you need. We take care of our own."
Sen Sherufa certainly seemed warm-hearted, charming, and well liked, though she had never married. When he asked her
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302 Kevin J. Anderson

about it, she said, "I spent too much time with my nose in books, documents, and chronicles. I rarely looked up long enough to take notice of a potential husband, and I never felt the need to have children."
Aldo chuckled. "You don't need a family of your own. Everyone here treats you like a favorite aunt."
Inside her home, Sherufa showed him her library, the valued books she kept on her shelves. Aldo studied the spines and read the titles. Sen Sherufa owned quite an eclectic mix of tomes, and he knew he could offer her a great deal of information... if he decided he could trust her.
"Because I kept to myself, always studying, but never flaunting my knowledge, no one discovered until relatively late in my life that I had the perfect recall," Sherufa explained. "Belatedly, I memorized maps, constellations, and stories. My mind is full of details about things I've never seen, places I've never visited." She smiled--wistfully, it seemed. "When the soldan-shah learned of my skills, he brought me into his palace."
"Why did he need a chartsman in the palace?" Aldo slid another volume back onto the shelf and removed the next one, which was not a proper book at all but merely a ledger of all the merchant ships that had come into port over a five-year oeriod.
"Imir wanted to hear my stories. He would sit back with his eyes closed, a goblet of wine in his hand, and ask me for one tale after another after another." She took a seat, turning her chair so she could look at him. "I'm good at recounting other people's adventures. I just don't wish to have any of my own."
"It's not the same," Aldo said in a low voice. "I promise you that."
"Maybe so, but so it is."
"And that's how you came to be friends with the soldanshah?"
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Sen Sherufa's gaze was distant. "He wanted to take me as his wife--his fourth, I believe--but I refused."
Aldo didn't know whether to be more surprised that the soldan-shah wanted a Saedran wife or that Sen Sherufa had turned him down. "Was he angry with you?"
"Oh, Imir still maintains his hope, and I let him keep that hope, but my calling is elsewhere. Because I remain a virgin, the sikaras find me laughable, but what does their derision matter to me? They'd have no respect for a Saedran woman even if I were promiscuous!"
Aldo could see how Imir would find her attractive, though Sherufa did not bother to make herself traditionally beautiful. Her skirts were trimmed with color and fitted just tightly enough to show some of her generous figure, but not in a seductive way. The fact that she was exotic and unattainable had probably made her even more intriguing to the soldan-shah.
"Imir grants me anything I ask of him... but then, I've never made any difficult requests. He knew that I'd love to speak with another chartsman. I think he was more glad for your capture because it would put the two of us together, and make me happy, than because of any strategic knowledge you might have."
"But he does expect you to pump me for information." It wasn't a question.
"Maybe." Sen Sherufa walked into the kitchen, where she poured them each a drink from a water pitcher in which floated sliced lemons and flower petals. "He wants you to tell me stories, so I'll have more tales to entertain him."
"I'd like to learn something as well," Aldo said cautiously. "We can exchange information. Do you have... any maps of Uraba?"
"Maps." Sen Sherufa's eyes lit up. She met Aldo's gaze as she handed him a glass. "Oh, you mean the Mappa Mundi?"
"You know of the Mappa Mundi? The great project?"
"I'm a Saedran, am I not? A chartsman, even if I don't travel--I told you that. Because we are so isolated, I'm sure my poor map is quite out of date. I have little opportunity to gain more information."
Aldo's heart pounded. "Now you have that opportunity. We both do."
Sherufa went to one of her cupboards and furtively removed a stack of fired clay plates and bowls to expose a wooden backing. "Nobody else knows about this.. .well, not many. Since I'm the only scholar and chartsman here, I keep my own copy so that I can make tentative additions and corrections as I read my books."
She slid out the thin boards so she could unfasten a broad sheet of yellowed paper. On it, Aldo saw the outlines of the world, intricately detailed landforms, the coastline, rivers and hills, Uraban villages, the boundaries of all the soldanates. In one quick glimpse, Aldo learned more about Uraba than he had ever known before.
The northern half of the map, however, showing the continent of Tierra, was both sketchy and inaccurate. Some features of the coastline were exaggerated, others nonexistent, particularly in the isolated reaches of Iboria and Soeland.
Aldo drank in the lines and markings, reading the Saedran characters, committing every detail to memory. He followed the outlines of the Middlesea, and was surprised by the especially thorough mapping of the northern coast, which was blocked from Tierran exploration by the rugged Corag mountains, as he had seen himself. Aldo marveled as he meshed these details with what he already knew.
The soldan-shah had hoped Sen Sherufa would make Aldo want to stay in Olabar and offer his services. Seeing this version
305'

of the map, however, produced the opposite reaction. He felt a fiery determination to get back to Calay. He had to bring this knowledge to Sen Leo!
But he also had an obligation to Sherufa, to share his knowledge with the ultimate goal of completing the Mappa Mundi. Aidenist and Urecari politics did not matter to them.
"I can help you fill in the blanks," he said. "Together you and I can make the most complete map of the world that Saedrans have ever produced."

64

Olabar Palace

Though Adrea averted her gaze, as a slave should, her heart was determined. She carried a lacquered tray bearing a bowl of cool yogurt mixed with mashed mango to the zarif's chambers. Few people in the palace recalled that Zarif Omra had shown her favor years ago during the raid on Windcatch, and he had paid no special attention to her since then.
Now, though, she prayed that he remembered. She was risking everything.
She walked forward with silent grace, maintaining the appearance that she belonged here. It would be a long while before anyone noticed that she had abandoned her regular tasks.
Having just returned from an expedition to the Yuarej soldanate where he inspected military encampments and staging fields, Omra now sequestered himself in a private chamber to look over military maps and tally his troops, ships, and weapons. Adrea knew that Cliaparia planned to hold a private feast for him that evening. The zarif's wife would oversee the prepara
tions and had given very specific instructions to the kitchen staff. This would be Adrea's one chance.
She entered with the tray and set it on the low table beside his desk. Without looking up, Omra merely gestured her away as he scribbled his figures, added his sums, but she remained, her throat working, her lips moving as she tried to remember what it felt like to form words and speak openly after so long.
Omra glanced at her, his dark eyes narrowed with impatience; then he paused as recognition flickered across his face. After five years, he still remembered her.
Before he could say anything, Adrea astonished him by speaking in perfect Uraban. "There is a plot to kill you, Zarif Omra. You will die tonight, unless you listen to me." Her voice sounded completely foreign to her, but it strengthened with every word.
Omra stared at her and stroked his dark, pointed beard. "So you can speak, after all."
"More importantly, I can listen. A slave overhears things. I know all about the plot."
Omra seemed more amused than frightened. "Very well, tell me."
Adrea shook her head. "Not yet. I will reveal what I know only if you grant me something in return."
His brows lifted in amusement. Really?" He laughed. "I remember how scrappy you were when we captured you. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that your spirit was never broken, no matter how well you've cooperated during your time here."
"I require something from you, Zarif," she repeated coldly. "If you don't agree, then they can kill you, for all I care. You have the blood of my friends--my family--on your hands."
Intrigued now, he leaned back, pushing his papers aside. "Then why bother to save me at all?"
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"Because I do have a great love for my son. He has been taken away, and I want him back. You can help me. I want your guarantee that he will stay with me. Is that worth your life?" He crossed his arms, regarding her, but Adrea didn't flinch.
"Tell me what you know," Omra said. "Then I will decide."
"No. Your word first."
"And how much is my word worth, if it is given only to a slave?"
"The word of the soldan-shah's son should be worth a great deal to whomever it is given."
"Very well, then I give you my word." He smiled thinly. "But I will decide whether to keep my promise after you reveal what you know." He seemed to be toying with her, but not in a cruel way. He was amused by her boldness. Dismayed, but knowing this was the best promise she was likely to get, Adrea had to push forward. So she explained how Villiki intended to poison him that evening, how the drug was to be administered in a "love potion" his wife, Cliaparia, would put into the food. She watched Omra's expression darken, for her words had the ring of truth. "I know of Gliaparia's love potions, because they often make me ill. I also know how much Villiki wants her own son to take my place." Omra fell silent as thoughts rushed through his head, colliding, making him more and more angry. "Which priestess was she scheming with?" "Ur-Sikara Lukai." She answered without hesitation, without regret. Though the lead priestess had taken too much pleasure in tearing Saan away from her, Adrea did this not for revenge, but for her son. He nodded. "And is Cliaparia involved? Does she want me dead?"
"I saw no evidence of that. What would she have to gain? I
think the others mean for her to be blamed, if their poisoning plot succeeds."
The zarif rose, his expression dark. "It's best you leave now. I must speak with my father."
But Adrea made no move. She waited, silent and expectant. Preoccupied as he was, it took Omra a few moments to remember her request. He took a breath and nodded. "Yes. If this is true, then it is indeed worth the price of your son."

65

Uraba, Abilan Soldanate

Improving the world, by the grace qfOndun.
Prester Hannes had lived those words all his life: the Rule of Rules that God had given his sons, and that they in turn had given their followers. Such a task would never end, and all good Aidenists had to look for ways to follow the rule, to please Ondun.
But for all his contemplation on that command, Hannes had never before understood the breadth of the charge. He, hadn't felt the genuine meaning of that instruction--improving the world--until now. It had become his mission in life.
After so many years in Olabar, preying upon the enemy in small ways, he slipped out of the capital city and made his way along the southern coast of the Middlesea, following a path that would eventually take him back to Tierra. But he was in no hurry. He had work to do on the way.
The Urecari were willful heretics. Before the burning of Ishalem, Aidenist missionaries had traveled across the isthmus to Urecari settlements to spread the word. But these people
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knowingly followed the wrong path, stubbornly refused to listen. Why, then, should Prester Hannes have any sympathy for them? Though the Book of Aiden was widely available, they ignored the truth, and so they had to face the consequences. The world could not be pure again while so many followers of arrogant Urec lived, and Ondun would not return until the blight was removed.
It was so obvious.
After walking for days on a stony road across an open grassy landscape, Hannes arrived at a small coastal village. The locals were tanned, the men shirtless, and they all moved about in an unhurried fashion, gathering mussels and oysters from beds along the breakwater. Fishing boats plied the calm shallow seas, their crews spearing sharks or netting sardines. In evenings, with a festive air they roasted their catch in great ember-filled beds, with smoky dry-seaweed fires right on the beach.
At the small church in the center of the village, the old half blind sikara spotted Hannes as he entered town at dusk. She moved forward, favoring her left leg, and asked him to join them in the communal meal on the beach. He hesitated at first, but he was very hungry and finally came forward to accept a pile of black mussels from the ash bed. The shells yawned open, and as soon as they were cool enough to touch, he slurped out the rubbery meat.
He explained that he came from Olabar, but refused to answer more, though the sikara pressed him for details. She offered him shelter, saying that he could sleep in the church if he wished, but Hannes was not willing to do that. In this temperate climate, he would be comfortable sleeping outside.
He was sure that the compassion of the half-blind priestess was just an act, and he detected a buried hauteur beneath her manner. Like any sikara, she probably wanted to corrupt him. As Asha had done. He kept his distance.
The village housed its consumable stores inside a large permanent tent. Salt and spices were sealed in clay jars. Casks of lamp oil were stacked high.
Hannes watched these people furtively for more than a day, but the community was so small and tight-knit it was hard for him to remain unobtrusive. The sikara invited him to join them for their sunset services, but he begged off, pretending to be polite, knowing what the woman really wanted.
The sikara sang out her call in a reedy voice that projected far. The fishermen had tied up their boats and joined their families, and everyone came to the church building that was made of clay, stones, and driftwood. The sikara announced that she would provide the Sacraments that night.
Hannes knew what he had to do. Improving the world, by the Grace qfOndun.
When everyone had entered the church and the old woman began intoning memorized passages from Urec's Log, Hannes stole one of the barrels of lamp oil from the storage tent and broke it open. When the unison prayer began, he used it to cover the noise of his actions as he barricaded the door from the outside.
He splashed the fragrant oil around the windows, the door, and soaked the driftwood and porous walls. With his niit and steel, he set a spark that caught on the lamp oil, and his eyes glowed as he watched the eerie blue ignition corona race across the oil's surface, all over and around the church like holy fire. Hannes stepped back from the rising heat and listened to the crackle of the flames.
The blaze grew more vigorous at the door and windows, climbing the structural walls, until it reached the sun-dried wooden roof. From inside he could hear cries of alarm that changed to frantic screaming as the people tried to get out. But with the lamp oil and the dry wood, the structure went up like a
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torch. In addition to the barricades he had made, flames sealed off the windows and the small back door.
The fire grew so bright that it reminded him of Ishalem. Hannes rubbed the waxy skin on his arm and cheek. His old burns were tingling again, but this time he realized that it no longer hurt. The Urecari church had become a roaring inferno, and by contrast the screaming seemed faint, almost ethereal. Hannes thought it sounded like a choir singing praises to Aiden. As the fire reached its crescendo and began to fade, he ate some of the stored food and sat back to watch. In this one act, he had exterminated virtually an entire Urecari village, cleansing the world of these heretics. Improving the world, by the Grace qfOndun.

66

Calay

Yal Dolicar played the role well, having bought fine clothes with a goodly portion of the money he had pocketed from his last success. People were more inclined to throw money at a man who looked respectable. Wearing a dyed purple waistcoat and black breeches, a belt with a large silver buckle, and a wide-brimmed hat to complete the disguise, Dolicar strolled down the gangway of a newly arrived ship in the Merchants' District of Calay. Assessing the men for hire sitting around the docks, he held a coin between ihumb and forefinger, flashing it so that it glinted in the sun. "I need a porter to carry a very precious package." A broad-shouldered man strode forward, knocking the others
aside, and reached for the coin, but Dolicar deftly pocketed it. "After the job is finished. I've been cheated before." On the deck of the ship, where his belongings were stashed, sat a small oak chest held shut with iron hinges and leather straps. "There, my good man. Carry it for me. I need to go to the market square."
The porter wrapped his arms about the chest and lifted it with no sign of strain. His footsteps were heavy as he clomped down the gangway, following Yal Dolicar, who strolled along, head held high. Dolicar had worked these docks many times before and knew the best places to set up. With his beard shorn and hair tucked beneath the hat, no one would recognize him.
A mason's cart loaded with cut stone groaned by, pulled by a plodding ox. A cobbler had set up a stand where he patched holes in boot soles or mended leather stitching. Laughter and shouts came from a crowded tavern in which a halfhearted brawl was taking place. Iborian furs were for sale, Corag metalwork, long coils of Eriettan rope, woven baskets, rolls of ribbon, and swatches of lace.
Dolicar told the porter to set his burden down at a corner of the market square outside a wine merchant's shop, where four stained, empty barrels sat waiting to be scrubbed and refilled. The empty barrels provided a ready table for Dolicair's wares. He paid the man, who took his coin and walked off, not in the least bit curious about what the chest contained.
Other people began to show interest, though, as Dolicar produced a long-shafted key from one of his pockets with a flourish and made a great show of working the lock, then unfastening the strap buckles. He pretended not to notice his audience pressing closer, concerned only with himself. He lifted the chest's lid and surveyed his treasures, intentionally blocking the view; then he looked up in feigned surprise to see so many eager onlookers.
"Ah! Would you like to see? Come close."
Refuting his own invitation, Dolicar stood with his back to the open chest, hiding the contents. With painstaking care, he reverently pulled on a pair of thin calfskin gloves as if to imply that touching the objects in the chest with his bare fingers would be a sign of disrespect.
"I am a pilgrim, just returned from the ruins of Ishalem." He raised his voice so that more people approached. "This chest contains relics I obtained at great peril to myself, for the evil Urecari have a habit of stringing up pilgrims by fishhooks." He heard the gasps, noted the shudders. He knew exactly how to play a crowd.
Bending over the chest, Dolicar removed a lump of charred wood and held it in both hands as if it were a sacrifice for the altar. "These blackened remnants come directly from the Holy Arkship--Aiden's ship, burned by the followers of Urec. Only these few scraps remain, and I've brought them here, so that good Aidenists may give them a proper home."
The people stepped back with awe. Dolicar set the first piece of wood on a barrelhead and picked up a smaller one, then a third gnarled chunk. He had seven in all, as well as ten small glass bottles filled with gray ash. "I gathered these relics and hurried back home. My five companions were killed on the journey, and only I escaped. Trust me"--he swept his gloved finger around at the onlookers with an intense, passionate gaze--"these precious objects belong in Tierra."
Of course, he had said exactly the opposite when he made his way through the soldanates of Uraba, but the Urecari were less generous--or perhaps just less gullible--than the followers of Aiden. Here he didn't even have to encourage the onlookers to begin bidding. They dug into their pouches and pockets for coins. He made a great show of distress to part with such hard won holy trophies, but in the end he sold them all, leaving him
self with an empty trunk and a fat purse. Even after running out of the real artifacts, he could always sell his ash and his charred wood as quickly as he could manufacture it.

67

Olabar Palace

¦
Soldan-Shah Imir felt only deep sadness upon learning of the plot. He had expected as much from Villiki, though he had tried to convince himself that she would never do something so dangerous, so fatal. After Omra reported Adrea's information, the soldan-shah demanded that the slave girl be brought discreetly before him for confirmation. He chose Rovik, the kel, or captain, of his palace guards to deliver her. Loyal and tight-lipped, Kel Rovik stood outside the door, discouraging any eavesdroppers. When the young woman repeated her story, Imir felt a pang in his chest, knowing that he had lost another wife, this time to stupidity and ambition. "I must have proof," he said finally, his voice thick, "though I do not want it. I have to know. This is my wife we are talking about." "Proof is easy enough to come by, Father. Cliaparia awaits me in our quarters, and the meal will be served soon."
The soldan-shah had a heavy heart. By now he felt much too old to search for other wives. How he wished that Sen Sherufa had agreed to marry him... especially now. They could have been quite a pair.

Pretending that nothing was afoot, Omra returned to his chambers. Though Cliaparia constantly tried to win his heart, ho
felt no genuine affection for her. She had given him no children, but that was primarily his own fault, since he took her to his bed so rarely. His father lectured him about his duty to continue the dynasty and suggested that he take an additional ; wife to increase his chances of having an heir. But as yet, Omra had found no one who interested him. He still could not forget Istar
Maintaining a bland expression, while he entered his room, E" Omra observed Gliaparia as she sat across from him on a mound of plush cushions. She had lined her eyes with dark kohl. Fragrant--too fragrant--incense burned in the corner of the room. Solicitous as always, she smiled and tried to be seductive. "What can I do to please you?"
Such a large question, he thought. Such a broad topic. "Is there food? I've had a long trip."
She brightened. "I chose the greatest delicacies and made a special tea."
He did not ask questions, could not bear to. "Have them served."
Gliaparia called for servants to bring in numerous small dishes filled with special treats that she imagined he would like. When the slaves departed, he sat cross-legged on his cushions, looking at the dishes. The food did indeed look delicious. She waited for him to take the first bite, as was traditional. But he didn't move. "You prepared these yourself? "
She faltered, then nodded. "I was there in the kitchens. I assisted. Nothing was done without my direct guidance."
Still he did not reach forward. "Please eat first."
"But..." she began in confusion; then a shy smile lit her face. "You do me great honor, my husband." She leaned across the (able and stretched her hand toward a bowl of olives in front of Omra.
"Stop!" He pushed her hand away from the bowl, let out a heavy sigh, then raised his voice. "Guards! I need you."
Cliaparia's pleased smile faded to a look of hurt as armed, muscular men rushed into the room, hands on the hilts of their curved swords.
Omra said in a flat voice, "Is my father nearby?"
"Yes, Zarif. He waits in the next chamber."
"Have him come in. Also call for Villiki and Tukar, as well as Ur-Sikara Lukai. Tell them they are urgently needed, but do not tell them why. If they refuse to come, drag them." The astonished guards rushed off.
"How have I displeased you?" Gliaparia was distraught. "And what need do we have for guards tonight?"
"My food is poisoned."
Cliaparia gasped, but before she could respond, the soldanshah entered with sweat glistening on his shaved scalp. His skin looked gray and his expression sagged, as though doubts consumed him.
Gliaparia finally found her voice. "Husband, what is this accusation you make? I could never poison your food--I love you!"
"I did not accuse you. Be silent now. Not a word." His look made her slump back into her cushions, where she )s>at like a statue, her kohl-lined eyes wide with fear.
Within moments, Villiki and Ur-Sikara Lukai ran into the zarif s quarters flushed and breathless, followed by a befuddled looking Tukar. The two women, wearing manufactured expressions of distress, ground to an awkward halt as they saw Omra glowering at them, alive and unharmed. They recovered quickly, but not quickly enough. All the proof Soldan-Shah Imir needed had been in their faces. They had arrived fully expecting to see Omra writhing on the floor, his tongue swollen, his skin blotched. The slave girl had been right.

I
Tukar was genuinely confused. "Has something happened? Why did you send guards for us?"
"Is it not enough that I wish you to dine with me?" Omra gestured to the bowls of untouched food out on the table.
Neither of the women made a move, though Tukar took a seat. Villiki said, "We should not interrupt your private meal with your wife." "I insist. This special feast should be shared."
Villiki took a step backward. "I have already eaten," UrSikara Lukai protested.
Tukar sat at the table and inspected the dishes as if to choose the most appetizing one, oblivious to the throbbing tension in the air. When he reached out for a cube of bright orange papaya, Villiki bit back a hiss. Before his half-brother could eat, Omra stopped him and stated in a loud and clear voice, "My food is poisoned, Tukar. We have uncovered a plot to kill me." The other young man dropped his piece of papaya and wiped the juice from his fingers onto a cushion. In a panic, Gliaparia vehemently denied any involvement, but Omra already knew his wife had been duped.
Ur-Sikara Lukai looked strong and stony before him, while Villiki acted indignant. "And how do you know this? Who is the poisoner?" "It might be you," Zarif Omra suggested, and Villiki drew back with a shaky gasp. "Or Ur-Sikara Lukai. It is clear you both are reluctant to taste my food." "Who dares accuse me?" the priestess said.
The old soldan-shah, his face dark with wrath, clapped his hands, and Kel Rovik escorted Adrea in. She did not avert her gaze from Villiki and the Ur-Sikara, but looked satisfied, proud, "/accuse you," Adrea said in perfect Uraban. "Both of you."
Ur-Sikara Lukai laughed out loud, a scornful bray. "A slave girl? Who can trust the word of a slave girl? I didn't even know she was capable of speech."
"The charge is easy enough to prove or refute," Imir said coldly. "Villiki, I know you and what you're capable of. UrSikara Lukai, you bring shame upon the church of Urec, if the slave girl speaks the truth. I believe that the two of you plotted to murder my son with this food, and that is why you refused to eat it, even before he suggested that it might be poisoned."
"My position in the church is proof enough that I could never be responsible for such a plot." A bit of perspiration sparkled on Lukai's face.
Imir looked like a changed man, as if something inside him had broken... or turned to stone. "When the life of my son and heir is at stake, I'm afraid I need more proof than that. If you did not poison the food, then the food is safe. Eat it and prove yourselves innocent."
"That proves nothing. Perhaps your precious slave girl poisoned your dinner," Villiki said. "Or your wife."
"The slave girl was under guard all afternoon, and both my wife andyour son plainly were willing to eat. They suspected no danger, so they are guiltless."
"If you are innocent, you can eat without fear," Imir said. He waited.
They all stood frozen in intense silence. Tukar looked at his mother with an expression of mingled disgust and panic.
Finally, playing her part with all the composure she could muster, Ur-Sikara Lukai methodically took a sample from each enameled dish and ate, glaring first at the soldan-shah, then Omra, and finally at Adrea. She poured a cup of the tea, drank it with a flourish, stood back, and looked defiantly at the soldan-shah.
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The truth would have come out whether or not Villiki and Lukai cooperated, of course. Soldan-Shah Imir could have made a household slave eat the food as a demonstration, and if it was poisoned, Ur-Sikara Lukai would have been executed after a long session of torture. She understood exactly what she was doing; Omra saw it in her eyes.
Within moments the priestess began to choke and vomit. After a few minutes she collapsed in spasms on the floor, and Zarif Omra said, "I believe the evidence is incontrovertible."
Cliaparia clung to her husband's arm. "I knew nothing of this! I was not involved!"
"We know." Omra roughly brushed her aside.
Tukar looked almost as sick, as if he too had consumed poison. "Mother, what have you done?"
Villiki threw herself at the soldan-shah's feet, but Imir turned his back on her. "I wash my hands of you, Villiki. You are no longer my wife." He had dreaded the words that he knew he must speak, but his voice was steady as it boomed the pronouncement so that all the guards could hear. Criers would carry it through the streets. "You may keep none of your possessions. You are to be stripped naked and turned out into the street with nothing."
Villiki shrieked in desperate horror. The guards grabbed her and methodically ripped her clothes, tore away the silks, snatched off her jewels. Soon, she knelt pathetic and naked on the tiled floor next to her ruined garments, debased and shamed.
Now the soldan-shah turned to Tukar with one more terrible duty to do. It seemed clear that the young man had not been involved, but the murder had been planned for Tukar's benefit. Imir could not allow such a threat to continue. He had to be the soldan-shah, not a father. He had to harden his heart--to the breaking point, if necessary. The compassionate part of him said
it was unjust, but the leader in him knew that as soldan-shah he denned justice in his own way. As he did now.
"Tukar, my beloved son, the life you once knew is forfeit. From this day forward, I order you exiled to the Gremurr mines. You will spend your life there. Your mother wanted you to be a leader. You may rule in that hell."
Tukar reeled, as if someone had struck him with a club.
The guards dragged Villiki sobbing from the room and out of the palace. Imir could hear her wailing for a long time afterward as they drove her into the streets of Olabar. After Tukar was also led away, handlers came forward to drag the ur-sikara's corpse out of the room.
Throughout all this, Adrea simply stood, looking vindicated. She clung only to the fact that now she would have Saan returned to her.
When the crisis had passed, the soldan-shah stood before Omra and hung his heavy head. "I am broken and weary to the base of my soul. What sort of ruler am I, who cannot even control his own household? How can I protect my land in times like these, when I cannot protect my own son?" He had expected to wait a few more years, but now he knew it had to be tonight.
Twisting the large garnet ring of office, he removea it from his finger and set it on a table next to Omra. "Enough... I have had enough. As of tonight, I am no longer the soldan-shah. I will retire. Uraba needs you now, Omra. You are my successor."
r

68

Olabar, Saedran District

While Olabar was in an uproar, Aldo saw his chance. After the shocking events in the palace, no one was paying attention to a lone Saedran from a captured Tierran ship, and Sen Sherufa agreed that this was a perfect time for him to escape.
They had already spent several weeks fleshing out her copy of the Mappa Mundi with his knowledge. After generations of minimal progress toward completing their great map, the Saedran quest had taken a giant leap forward.
In the meantime, Sherufa had introduced him to the craftsmen and shopkeepers in the Saedran District. Knowing he was her guest, the children in the streets pestered him for candies, as well, until Sherufa insisted that he make a habit of carrying treats in his pockets. Each night for dinner, a seemingly endless succession of neighbors came by with meats or pastries, and all the guests sat in her main room, letting Aldo or Sherufa tell stories. Everyone was eager to hear about exotic Calay, the mountains of Corag, the rough waters of the Oceansea. The more Aldo talked about his life, the more homesick he became, the more he missed his family, and the more he wanted to leave Uraba. For Aldo, the turmoil at the palace could not have come at a better time. I "It will be a long and dangerous journey," Sherufa warned. "Are you sure you want to go? You would be safe here--and welcome."
"Calay is my home" he said. "My mother and father must think I'm dead by now. How can I do that to them, to my brother and sister? I don't care about the danger. I've got to make my way
back to Calay. I've got to." The young man's dark eyes glistened with his passion. "Can you help me?"
And so Sen Sherufa spread the word from apothecary to physician, from moneylender to merchant, asking for assistance. She had always helped her neighbors when they asked, offering her advice and knowledge, so when she asked for a favor in return, the Saedrans in Olabar responded without question.
Several nights later, after a filling dinner of noodles, vegetables, and sliced sausages that an innkeeper brought to Sherufa's house, she and Aldo worked together to clean up. A knock came at her door, and Aldo recognized the thin, brown-bearded man as a cabinet maker from two streets over. Nodding at Aldo, but speaking to Sen Sherufa, he looked grave and serious, as if someone had given him a very weighty responsibility. He handed Sherufa a message written in the coded Saedran language. "This is the plan. Everything is in place."
As she scanned the scrap of paper, her lips were drawn, and the cords in her neck stood out with anxiety. "This sounds like exactly the right thing. Thank you." The cabinet maker ducked away into the dark streets.
Aldo read the letter, memorizing the names of volunteers, the route he must take, the ships that would be waiting for! him at various ports, the helpers along the way all across the Abilan soldanate as he worked his way to the isthmus and back up into Tierran territory, whereupon any captain would happily take him aboard and give him passage to Calay. It might take him months, perhaps a year, but Aldo had no doubt he would eventually arrive home, see his family again, and report to Sen Leo na-Hadra. He could not hide the growing smile on his face and the joy in his heart.
Sherufa went to a cupboard, removed a dusty jar, and dumped out a small stash of coins. She wrapped them in a small cloth
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and handed it to him. "We can provide you with money for now. In other villages along the way our people will give you food and shelter."
Over the next two days, the neighborhood people obtained nondescript Uraban clothing for him, and he shed his traditional Saedran garb. The loose, cool robes felt strange, but comfortable; he even learned how to wrap a cloth olba around his head.
Sherufa inspected his disguise, smiling in approval. "You will pose as a metalsmith and ring maker traveling to Yuarej to visit a relative. You will carry a few appropriate tools and inexpensive rings in case you need to display your wares, but nobody should bother you. No one should notice you."
"I'll make sure that I'm not the least bit interesting."
Her expression grew more serious. "Please don't call attention to yourself. With Imir gone into seclusion, he's got no further interest in the politics and workings of Uraba. He might even forget about your existence altogether. But you still need to be careful."
Sherufa helped him pack as they waited anxiously for nightfall. In the full darkness, she and Aldo made their way down to the harbor, where he met the short-haul captain who would take him on the first leg of his journey. On the dock, before boarding the Uraban ship, Aldo turned to embrace Sen Sherufa. "Thank you for taking care of me."
With tears in her eyes, Sherufa squeezed him tightly. "And thank you for reawakening our spirit of exploration, Aldo naCuric. Until now, I had forgotten the reason why I'm here. Now T know that the Mappa Mundi is not just a thing of academic interest."
Lanterns had been lit on the small ship, and the crew prepared to depart with the outgoing tide. The captain whistled lor him to come aboard, and Sen Sherufa slipped away so that
no one would recognize her. As a "Uraban metalsmith," Aldo should not let himself be seen with a Saedran woman.
Aboard the ship, he took a long breath and looked back to the sparkling city lights of Olabar. A few other travelers snored softly in out-of-the-way places, and the sailors ignored him, having their own tasks to do. Containing the excitement inside him, he found a comfortable spot at the stern and sat down beside a coil of rope. At last, he was on his way home.

69

Calay

As soon as he had made up his mind, King Korastine set the wheels in motion to create a special reminder of Ilrida's home, something that would show her how much he adored her. Yes, as Tierra's king, he continued to build warships and send out naval patrols to guard the coastline, but here he would spare no expense to make his new wife feel happy.
After consulting with Sen Leo na-Hadra, he commissioned a Saedran architect to design a traditional Iborian-style kikk, mimicking the appearance of the small chapel she had left behind inside the stockade walls of Calavik. He hired Aidenist artisans to provide appropriate religious trappings, symbols, and details. When complete, it would be marvelous.
Because so much construction was always taking place near the castle and in the adjoining Shipbuilders' Bay, Korastine did not find it difficult to keep Ilrida from noticing the work, but as the structure took shape, he enlisted Anjine's aid to keep the secret. Happily joining in the plot, the princess accompanied Ilrida on her trips into the city, careful to steer her away from the site of the kirk.
Following Iborian tradition, the kirk was assembled from seasoned pine, each log stained dark to enhance the grain and knots. Lapped wooden shingles covered the steep roof like the scales of a great sea monster. The shipwright Kjelnar provided two of his best wood-carvers to depict scenes from the great story along the kirk's outer walls, Ilrida's favorite tales of Holy Joron's adventures. As they set to work constructing this familiar structure, the Iborian shipbuilders began to grow homesick for the dark forests and huddled towns of the north.
As an added extravagance, King Korastine told his carpenters to use iron nails rather than wooden pegs for the entire construction, as his way of showing the permanence of his feelings for Ilrida. He couldn't wait to see the expression of delight on his young wife's face when he finally revealed the surprise.
Ilrida had not yet learned to speak Tierran very well, but the king was patient with her and managed to make himself understood. Longing to communicate, she had tried to teach him the northern language, but he found it just as baffling. Now he wished he had insisted on continuing to learn other languages despite Queen Sena's disapproval of the suggestion. Ah, how different sweet Ilrida was! Sena had been able to talk with him as much as she'd liked, and she had said little of merit; even with her few words of Tierran, however, Ilrida could express volumes of affection. Korastine learned how to tell his Iborian sweetheart that he loved her, in both languages, and that was enough. I When the kirk neared completion and the wood-carvers erected two obelisk trunks by the front door, the carpenters finally allowed King Korastine inside to view their work. Dark paneling covered the interior walls; candles stood in iron sconces, illuminating the interior with an orange glow. Traditional Iborian kirks had slit windows to block out the wind, which also denied sunlight.
Korastine had engaged the services of a well-known Saedran portrait artist, Biento na-Curic, to create icons in lustrous colors by mixing powdered gold and silver with the pigments. From above the altar, the image of Holyjoron seemed to glow in the candlelight, smiling down at the private worship area.
The king brought in the new prester-marshall, Rudio, to bless the kirk. The successor to Baine was not quite the firebrand visionary the younger man had been. After the martyrdom of the volunteers in Ishalem, a convocation of presters chose Rudio--an older and much more traditional man than Baine had been, someone not as keen to espouse experimental new ideas, preferring instead to reinforce the old ones. At the time, Korastine had realized that the man's selection was not so much a backlash against Prester-Marshall Baine as it was a retrenching, a return to the basics of the religion. However, because Baine had died horribly for his faith, no other prester dared to dispute his controversial call to explore the world, though the distractions of the war focused Tierran resources elsewhere.
After Kjelnar completed an inspection of the new structure, he gave his wholehearted approval. "This is a true Iborian kirk, Majesty. It is as though Destrar Broeck uprooted the'building whole and shipped it here. Ilrida will be delighted."
The next day, Korastine felt like a boy waiting to open his gifts on Landing Day as he took her hand and led her out of the castle. He felt as though his heart could not contain any more love for this young woman. His mood was infectious, and she gripped his arm, snuggling against him as they walked through the castle gates and down the path. She could sense his excitement.
At the base of the hill, Korastine led her along a street adjacent to the castle, rounded a corner--and Ilrida stopped with a
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look of astonishment on her face. Her ice-blue eyes widened, and her snow-silver hair blew about in stray breezes.
"For you." Korastine gestured toward the distinctive building, then to her. "A kirk to remind you of your home." Then he repeated it in her own language, a sentence he had worked hard to memorize.
Ilrida pulled on Korastine's hand, insisting that he come with her. "Wonderful," she exclaimed, adding many words in the northern dialect before she found another Tierran word. "Beautiful!" She paused to touch the carved obelisk posts on either side of the door, then rushed inside, delighted.
In the middle of the kirk was a wide altar made of thick pine planks held together by crossbars and iron nails. The beautiful painted icons with Holy Joron stood on display, but subordinate to the kirk's main treasure: a twisted, burned fragment of wood from the original Arkship, perhaps the most valuable object in the entire Royal District, which had recently been purchased at great expense from a pilgrim trader in the streets of Calay.
Ilrida turned to Korastine, beside herself with happiness. "Beautiful!" she said again, shaking her head with an obvious wonder far more eloquent than words. She threw her arms around his neck to kiss him. "Wonderful!" Her Iborian ladiesin-waiting would also want to come see the structure.
She took his arm again and drew him to the plank riser before the altar. When she knelt, he bent beside her, their shoulders touching. Ilrida gazed upon the benevolent face of Holy Joron in the icon. She closed her eyes, Korastine did the same, and the two of them prayed together, each in their own language.
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