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edenfalling---------------------------------------------
Ashes, part 10
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[Riam laughed. "Of course. Until tomorrow."
Then he hurried to catch up with the others.]
Zalir had snuffed the candles when they'd left the map room before supper, which meant that Tir opened the door onto darkness broken only by the faint sheen of indirect moonlight through the windows in the far wall. She reached up toward the candle in the hallway sconce beside the door, but Morgalen held up her hand as if cupping water, and a flame burst to life, burning in midair with no visible fuel.
"Heat is more than a weapon," she said, her flicker-flash smile briefly escaping her eyes to curve her lips.
She walked into the room, the flame leaping higher as she held her hand out before her. It curved and bent like a living thing, stretching serpentine over her head to ignite all the candles around the walls. Riam pulled four more candles and their heavy clay stands out of the rack beside the door and set them on the table. Morgalen lit those as well. Then she closed her hand; the flame licked over her fingers and vanished as eerily as it had appeared.
"Thank you," Tir said formally. "Zalir is fetching the rest of the council-in-residence to hear your story. Until they arrive, why don't you and Riam look through the maps and set out the most useful ones. Zalir picked some out earlier, but since you hadn't given your name or your origin, she was only guessing."
Riam helpfully picked up the rolled maps Zalir had left on the table and held one out to Morgalen. "This is Zerlon and the immediate surroundings," he told her. "Then we have" -- he paused and flicked through the tags on the other maps -- "a pre-miasma map of the western coast of the Jyavati Sea, a not-quite-to-scale map of the living lands and trade routes within a hundred miles to our north, and a very old map of the far northwest. Would Shani be on an old world map, or did it become independent after the miasma?"
"On an old world map, you should look for a principality called Yavad. Its ruler, Feyla Sher, was deposed and killed shortly after the miasma crossed the equator. The clans didn't like his plan for apportioning binders and territories," Morgalen said as she unrolled the map of Zerlon, her thin fingers pressing the curling edges of the thick, rough paper to the table. Tir set a handful of lead weights by her side, and Morgalen used them to flatten the corners. "Shani was the northwest province of Yavad, along with Sigores and Luntebarad. Somiri and Riyasi belonged to Geltarin Shera, whose principality was centered on Atnumnesh."
Riam unrolled the old world map, careful not to tear the fine, dry paper, and weighted it flat. It was always strange to look at the way the world had been before the miasma -- to remember that people had once lived spread out over most of the land, and drawn boundaries based on whims and battles rather than the clear-cut knife of a binding. It was even stranger to think that the north was still like that in some ways.
Yavad lay near the northwestern coast, half in and half out of a mountain range. The far northwest was clearly separated from the rest of the country -- a narrow, spider-limbed valley isolated by a spur of the main range. It was easy to see how Morgalen's ancestor had carved his lands away from his former master.
Atnumnesh seemed to be a coastal city circled by a ragged loop of tributary lands, a few of which stretched northeast into the mountains to touch Yavad. The city itself was most likely much smaller these days, if not abandoned altogether. The sea was little use as a source of food anymore -- a binder couldn't hold enough territory on both land and water to make either much use, though perhaps in the north with its force-trained binders, one person could hold enough of the coastal waters to make shellfish and seaweed farming viable, while another held the towns on the shore. Fishing was still pointless, though, since even if a stretch of water could be kept clean, nothing stopped the fish from swimming out into tainted waters and poisoning themselves by inches. And oceangoing trade was surely cut to the bone, since taint-twisted beasts must infest the sea the same way they prowled the tainted lands. The miasma must have struck Atnumnesh like a wasting fever, even if the land itself was kept pure. It wasn't surprising that its outer provinces had been peeled away.
Morgalen's home was all in the mountains and that valley with its narrow, wandering arms, Riam assumed -- maybe spilling down into the foothills at some point, but mostly high and sharp and cold. He wondered what it was like to live there, wars and blood inheritance aside. Nothing like Zerlon, where the river valley was merely a broad and gentle dip in the dry, rolling plains, and there was nothing to stop the endless sweep of the wind.
Morgalen moved around the table to his side and peered down at the faded colors of the ancient map. "From there," she said, pressing the tip of her finger to the region Riam had guessed as her home, "all the way down to here." She traced her finger along a slanting route, skipping from river to river until she reached the southeastern corner of the map. "That took me six months. In some ways, it's easier to travel the tainted lands than to cross from one principality to another. Often there are wars, and even in peacetime there are tariffs and questions and bribes and long delays while people ponder one's motives and connections and wonder about spies and assassins."
She shrugged at Riam's questioning look. "Such worries are not always unfounded. But after another month, I realized I could introduce myself only as a wandering magician and not name my home or family. That was simpler. No one wonders at a magician wanting to leave his home and find a quiet place to experiment, and no border guard wants to anger a magician by delaying his passage."
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1) Right, so, next chapter I will -- using Morgalen as a mouthpiece -- explain the plot. But not tonight. Tonight I am going to review my life history via the lens of my identity as a Unitarian Universalist, in preparation for talking to the middle school group at church tomorrow morning. That will be more than enough thinking for me.
2) Geography, geology, and climatology are not my strongest points. If I'm being obviously stupid here, please tell me and I will do my best to fix things in December.
3) 1,025 words today, 13,850 total.
Ashes, part 10
---------------------------------------------
[Riam laughed. "Of course. Until tomorrow."
Then he hurried to catch up with the others.]
Zalir had snuffed the candles when they'd left the map room before supper, which meant that Tir opened the door onto darkness broken only by the faint sheen of indirect moonlight through the windows in the far wall. She reached up toward the candle in the hallway sconce beside the door, but Morgalen held up her hand as if cupping water, and a flame burst to life, burning in midair with no visible fuel.
"Heat is more than a weapon," she said, her flicker-flash smile briefly escaping her eyes to curve her lips.
She walked into the room, the flame leaping higher as she held her hand out before her. It curved and bent like a living thing, stretching serpentine over her head to ignite all the candles around the walls. Riam pulled four more candles and their heavy clay stands out of the rack beside the door and set them on the table. Morgalen lit those as well. Then she closed her hand; the flame licked over her fingers and vanished as eerily as it had appeared.
"Thank you," Tir said formally. "Zalir is fetching the rest of the council-in-residence to hear your story. Until they arrive, why don't you and Riam look through the maps and set out the most useful ones. Zalir picked some out earlier, but since you hadn't given your name or your origin, she was only guessing."
Riam helpfully picked up the rolled maps Zalir had left on the table and held one out to Morgalen. "This is Zerlon and the immediate surroundings," he told her. "Then we have" -- he paused and flicked through the tags on the other maps -- "a pre-miasma map of the western coast of the Jyavati Sea, a not-quite-to-scale map of the living lands and trade routes within a hundred miles to our north, and a very old map of the far northwest. Would Shani be on an old world map, or did it become independent after the miasma?"
"On an old world map, you should look for a principality called Yavad. Its ruler, Feyla Sher, was deposed and killed shortly after the miasma crossed the equator. The clans didn't like his plan for apportioning binders and territories," Morgalen said as she unrolled the map of Zerlon, her thin fingers pressing the curling edges of the thick, rough paper to the table. Tir set a handful of lead weights by her side, and Morgalen used them to flatten the corners. "Shani was the northwest province of Yavad, along with Sigores and Luntebarad. Somiri and Riyasi belonged to Geltarin Shera, whose principality was centered on Atnumnesh."
Riam unrolled the old world map, careful not to tear the fine, dry paper, and weighted it flat. It was always strange to look at the way the world had been before the miasma -- to remember that people had once lived spread out over most of the land, and drawn boundaries based on whims and battles rather than the clear-cut knife of a binding. It was even stranger to think that the north was still like that in some ways.
Yavad lay near the northwestern coast, half in and half out of a mountain range. The far northwest was clearly separated from the rest of the country -- a narrow, spider-limbed valley isolated by a spur of the main range. It was easy to see how Morgalen's ancestor had carved his lands away from his former master.
Atnumnesh seemed to be a coastal city circled by a ragged loop of tributary lands, a few of which stretched northeast into the mountains to touch Yavad. The city itself was most likely much smaller these days, if not abandoned altogether. The sea was little use as a source of food anymore -- a binder couldn't hold enough territory on both land and water to make either much use, though perhaps in the north with its force-trained binders, one person could hold enough of the coastal waters to make shellfish and seaweed farming viable, while another held the towns on the shore. Fishing was still pointless, though, since even if a stretch of water could be kept clean, nothing stopped the fish from swimming out into tainted waters and poisoning themselves by inches. And oceangoing trade was surely cut to the bone, since taint-twisted beasts must infest the sea the same way they prowled the tainted lands. The miasma must have struck Atnumnesh like a wasting fever, even if the land itself was kept pure. It wasn't surprising that its outer provinces had been peeled away.
Morgalen's home was all in the mountains and that valley with its narrow, wandering arms, Riam assumed -- maybe spilling down into the foothills at some point, but mostly high and sharp and cold. He wondered what it was like to live there, wars and blood inheritance aside. Nothing like Zerlon, where the river valley was merely a broad and gentle dip in the dry, rolling plains, and there was nothing to stop the endless sweep of the wind.
Morgalen moved around the table to his side and peered down at the faded colors of the ancient map. "From there," she said, pressing the tip of her finger to the region Riam had guessed as her home, "all the way down to here." She traced her finger along a slanting route, skipping from river to river until she reached the southeastern corner of the map. "That took me six months. In some ways, it's easier to travel the tainted lands than to cross from one principality to another. Often there are wars, and even in peacetime there are tariffs and questions and bribes and long delays while people ponder one's motives and connections and wonder about spies and assassins."
She shrugged at Riam's questioning look. "Such worries are not always unfounded. But after another month, I realized I could introduce myself only as a wandering magician and not name my home or family. That was simpler. No one wonders at a magician wanting to leave his home and find a quiet place to experiment, and no border guard wants to anger a magician by delaying his passage."
---------------
---------------
---------------
1) Right, so, next chapter I will -- using Morgalen as a mouthpiece -- explain the plot. But not tonight. Tonight I am going to review my life history via the lens of my identity as a Unitarian Universalist, in preparation for talking to the middle school group at church tomorrow morning. That will be more than enough thinking for me.
2) Geography, geology, and climatology are not my strongest points. If I'm being obviously stupid here, please tell me and I will do my best to fix things in December.
3) 1,025 words today, 13,850 total.
