The Path Travelled - part 1

Part 1 – the Bleached Shelf, outside Ras

Chronicler made camp with the rest of them in the hollow ribcage of a long-dead beast. It wasn't the strangest campsite Chronicler had ever been in, though he’d marched around it more than once sketching its sky facing pillars of bone. Already, a pair of Saviudi guards had climbed two of the sun-bleached ribs and were perched there, squinted eyes scanning the horizon. The pale scarves that wrapped around their upper bodies and necks were as good as concealing them there as they were when travelling across the chalky plains of the Moon Desert.

Not that anyone’s looking for us out here, thought Chronicler. Despite the notion, he had spent enough time on the road to know that no-one was ever truly safe from predation. And if not that, well, the world herself was danger enough – electric storms, droughts, floods, dust storms, and worst of them all: Atramental lands. Chronicler was determined to never experience the latter first-hand. How that silent vow would pan out with his tenacious nature was something else he did not want to have to ever worry about, he grinned as he busied himself unpacking.

Absently his thoughts went back to the men and women they’d lost so far. The road had claimed five of them so far – two porters and a guard to a sand trap on the edge of the Moon Desert; another porter to a collapsed hollow not long after; and one of two Daazi guides fell just outside of Kalai to a bout of malaria. That last one had forced them to stop for a while: a matter of much consternation to Farad, the merchant-prince in charge of the caravan. Chronicler quite enjoyed the rest such stops afforded, as they gave him chance to write and mingle with the natives. There were always good tales to hear or legends to note down whenever the caravan came to a halt.

Not now though, he thought. It had been a long day and his arse was aching from the awkward saddles their mounts were fitted with. He was used to more sturdy saddles that wrapped around the camels’ humps, but what the locals used were little more than frilled carpets. While they did show off the skill of their weavers and the expertise of their dyers, they left a lot to be desired in terms of functionality. And comfort. He’d written some harsh words that first night after using them and would mention something at the market in Kalai if he ever returned.  

It was evening and though the sun had set beneath the empty wastes the sky to the west remained light, layers of purples and pinks blending into darker blues until, finally, as Chronicler looked over the celestial dome to the east, it darkened

and the first stars had already become visible.

Kerd and the other porters had already started a fire in the ribcage, where the great beast’s heart may once have beat. The day’s catch had been frugal – bitter-tasting lizards and aloes of some variety Chronicler was unfamiliar with – and they were busy roasting skewers laced alternatingly with the meat and leaves.

Thank the gods for herbs and spices, though Chronicler, as he remembered the sour taste. It was nothing special, but it was better than the hard biscuits, dried fruit and strips of leathery meat that constituted normal travel food.

Chronicler ate from his skewer in silence, listening instead to the porters swapping their tales. Regardless of the hardships they’d faced during the day, the Saviudi always seemed to be in high spirits. Chronicler stared at them, dark skin and features rendered indistinct in the dancing light.

Pearly teeth appeared and disappeared as they joked and ate. Eyes glinted orange in the firelight, never once losing that twinkle that seemed to reside there permanently. They slipped in and out of their native tongue frequently, and from the words Chronicler was picking up, they were speaking a pidgin comprised of a dialect of Saviudi common to Daaz, mixed with a trade tongue that was a smattering of northern Sammaean words. Chronicler was fluent in a smattering of languages and had picked up bits and pieces of as many as a dozen others during his travels.

Amongst his many interests was their etymology, from what some mythologists believed was a singular seed-tongue that had emerged during the rule of the old worker deities. Though some disagreed, it was easy to see the common root of many words, especially in a region like Saviud, with its hundreds of island-like city-states in the expansive wastes, all with their own dialects and variations, each evolved with the history of its region. Most similarities lay in the written word, which was more academic in these parts and alien to the majority of the populace, which was made up of herders, craftsmen and hagglers. It was from the spoken word, practiced everyday by those same illiterates, where variants would emerge. It was amazing, really, how much a single word might change over time and distance. Chronicler was picturing a tree, its various branches describing variations of a single root word.

He was grinning at his own pun when one of the men he’d been observing nudged him, nodding towards the others. Chronicler shook his head, indicating his obliviousness.

“They ask from where you come,” said the man, Dhesh, if Chronicler remembered correctly. The man was from Daaz, as were most of the porters they’d picked up around Kalai. They were decent men, eager to get away from the gangs that filled the streets of the lower city. Most had families back in Daaz that relied on their meagre wages. Most hoped to permanently move away from the street politics of the city, though Chronicler doubted many would manage.

“My home is the road,” smiled Chronicler. Dhesh translated, and the others grinned, nodding.

“That is not what they mean.”

Chronicler nodded slowly and smiled, “I know. But that is the truth.”

Chronicler observed as the Daazi men and women celebrated mass after eating. He enjoyed watching the rituals of different cultures – it was one of the things that had drawn him away from Lidea all those years ago – and he never tired of watching the way different people revered their gods. He was used to this particular ritual by now, and in terms of what he’d experienced in the myriad different lands he’d travelled through, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Even the most disparate places shared some religious rites in common. Perhaps there were cultural etymologies, just as there were with words, that may be traced back to the first human tribes, explaining certain similarities that had no other obvious justifications.

Chronicler mused as he watched, half asleep. There were seven of them, standing around the fire, between the points of a seven-tipped star someone had marked on the floor. Bereft of their traditional garb, they used instead oilskins wrapped around their faces as they chanted into the fire. The ritual was one of remembrance of the sunken sun. Theirs was a sun cult, and at its heart was a deity whose name roughly translated as ‘the Bronze King’. They prayed three times a day- dawn, when they honoured his birth; noon, when they revered his ascendancy, and night, when they mourned his death and prepared for his rebirth the next day. Here, the campfire was symbolic of the sun and the eyeless masks were worn in difference, as well as a sign of the sun’s potential to blind those who are not careful.

As a philosophy, those who revered the Bronze King believed in the cyclical structure of nature and of the soul’s rebirth after physical death. They enjoyed a sense of poetic justice and common folk myth maintained that good deeds beget good luck. Looking at the ritual, the alien chanting (likely an old language reserved purely for such rituals), the dancing shadows and orange lights, it was easy to mistake this for a mystery cult, but in his experience, the Daazi porters and labourers he’d encountered were cheerful people with a happy-go-lucky attitude.

The prayer culminated with a lamentation timed with the fire’s demise, after which one of them began wailing a dirge. The ritual ended, the dirge’s solemn echoes reverberating around the camp. The first time Chronicler had heard it, he’d felt no small measure of unease and sadness, but he’d grown used to it, and, having learnt more of the people themselves, he knew its upsetting tone was little more than ritual. Though looking at it then, objectively, as an outsider might, he could see how unsettling it might be. The symbolic wailing of the faithful. The morose chanting, almost like sobs, of the leader. The palpable tension that had grown amongst the others gathered there.

After the ritual everyone turned in for the night, leaving two new guards on their solitary perches atop the trunk-like ribs. The fire was shielded and allowed to die a slow death as everyone huddled in blankets and quilts, ready for the chill of night.

Snores floated throughout the camp as Chronicler tried to sleep. Though his body ached, he always found it difficult to get to sleep, even after a full day’s riding. He lay on his back looking up at the sky, fingers folded into each other beneath his head. Clouds moved lazily across the celestial dome, appearing and disappearing into nothingness before his very eyes. They done little to hide the plethora of stars. The sheer number of them never ceased to astonish Chronicler, who could easily spend a night staring at them, trying to make out their subtle colours against the halo of light. The stars were so plentiful that the constellations – normally clearly defined, even amidst the smog and pollution of city skylines – were difficult to make out. In parts the stars were so tightly clumped together that they seemed to meander across the dome like a stream of distant light. And meander they did – for whenever Chronicler kept his eyes on the horizon long enough he’d see their slow march around an unseen celestial fulcrum.

All but a few stars followed that path. Chronicler knew from the Yothshammanei Escarpment that those errant examples are siblings of Elyden – fellow planets slowly rotating around the distant sun that so many cultures foolishly revered.

He grinned humourlessly. Well, better a sun than rotting gods, thought Chronicler. He lay there for a while, his features stiffening as though under a great strain.

After a while he sighed, the effort behind the gesture greater than it warranted, and closed his eyes.

Only sleep would not come. Chronicler found his thoughts wandering to old legends and tales of the twin empires and their restless god who dominated like a nucleus, surrounded by his worshippers.

Above, the stars had moved in their ceaseless circuit, bringing the red moon over the horizon. It was low, gibbous and drenched in haze, though it would slowly grow brighter as it rose. By Chronicler’s count, it was yet four days from full and by then

the white moon – out of sight at the moment – would itself be close to new. A grim thought.

He lay in the dark for a while, eyes following meandering clouds that had increased in number. He stood finally, and stretched, knowing even as he did so that it would pry his body farther from the sleep he craved. He looked up, noticed one of the guards perched high in his bony nest nodding down at him. Was it the same one who had climbed it skilfully after they had eaten, or had the watch changed since then? Who knew? Who cared.

Chronicler wandered around the dark camp. The fire in the beast’s hollow chest had dwindled to little more than embers, which even then lay dying.

Chronicler wandered around, half-dazed, guided by the starlight. He rested against one of the ribs, feeling its parched surface against his hands. He looked out to the west where the Blood Moon was rising and saw a shooting star within its nimbus.

The night sky flashed as the star blazed, leaving a trail in its wake.

“An otherworlder is born,” murmured Chronicler without thought. It was an old saying, and not one with whose origins he was familiar. It existed in most lands he’d travelled through and no-one he’d spoken with knew anything about it either. It was just something people said.

In a moment the sky was dark once more. A fitting match for Chronicler’s thoughts.

Part 2

_____________________________________________________

Daaz: also ‘City of Brass’. Major free-city in Thamaaz, Saviud. At one point held a powerful confederacy, of which Paan was a major part, though it broke free and is now independent. Rival groups; some who want the two to remain divorced, others who want them united; have led to tense relations between the two and a rise in gang-culture, which has escalated in gang warfare on more than one occasion. Halfbloods, as well as those descended from azer and arabeali immigrants are common there. Daaz began trading with the High-empire in c. 2500 RM, though its people contracted an isolated disease carried by foreigners in c. 2700 RM, closing its borders. This isolated Daaz for a while, leading to its insular culture, though by c. 2850 RM it had begun trading East again. Its people are known for keeping pale one slaves, a practice which is rare in other lands of the Saviud; and for their fervent worship the so-called Bronze King. (Pop. c. 110,000).

Lidea: nation in Northern Sammaea, overlooking the Inner Sea. dark-skinned and hard-working, its people live under the yoke of the distant Lich King of Sammaea, who demands hefty tithes for the honour of being his subjects. Quick to smile, yet even quicker to anger, they Lideans are people of passion: everything they do, be it drink, pray, eat and love, they do without holding back.   

Moon Desert: also ‘Salith’. Desert some 150-miles North–East of the city-state of Daaz. The region is an empty expanse of sun-bleached rocks that appear similar to the surface of the Ivory Moon, from which it draws its name. The area is featureless but for ghostly monadnocks and the chalk-like huts made by nameless degenerates known in Korachani as ‘pale ones’ or ‘ammasilin’.

Sammaea: lit. ‘sothern sun’ in Mharokkan dialect. Common name for the Southernmost and largest of Elyden’s continents, encompassing all Kharkharadontid lands

Saviud: region in Sammaea, occupying a 550,000 square-mile peninsula West of the Inner Sea, South. of the Sea of Serpents and East of the Sea of Eschata. The realm is known for its many disparate city-states and cultures, as well as small demesnes of loosely allied people.

Yothshammanei Escarpment: natural escarpment running for over 200-miles long in the far North-West of the Escysium region in the Daened Sulrach in Kharkharadontis, just South of extant Ophar. The escarpment has, since antiquity, served as a natural border between the Lhaus enclaves to the South and human lands to the North. An ancient human fort, known as Gallet was constructed in c. 675 RM to guard the region, though it now lies ruined, abandoned by its original occupants for many decades.