Chapter 244 – To Zhighua

On the 241st Loop, Ibrahim met Mirian in Mahatan as she finished her routine of opening the gates. By then, both of them had acquired fresh traveling clothes and supplies. There would be no research effort in Torrviol, which simplified matters.

“Let’s go over the rules again,” Mirian said. She started ticking them off on her fingers. “No killing Gabriel.” She ticked off another finger. “Second rule: you aren’t allowed to kill Gabriel.” And a third finger: “Also, don’t kill Gabriel.”

Ibrahim snorted. “Even if he’s annoying?”

“Especially if he’s annoying.”

“You really want him slithering about in the dirt near us?”

“He’s smart, and he can help us get a feel for Akanan operations in the country.”

The dervish kept his eyes forward as he talked, never really looking at Mirian, but keeping his gaze on the people around them. “So you’ve said. I say, all it’s doing is offering up more dens for him to pilfer eggs from.”

“You’re really committed to the snake metaphor.”

That got a slight smile out of Ibrahim. Despite his sharp exterior, she could feel that he’d calmed slightly. Found at least some peace, despite his wife still dying at the beginning of each cycle.

“Besides, there will be four of us keeping an eye on him,” Mirian said, gesturing to a cloaked man and a stern-looking woman waiting for them at the gate. Her father, going by Atrah, and Song Jei.

“I still want to know what you offered the necromancer.”

“A new book of poetry,” she said.

Ibrahim gave her a startled look. “What?”

“Not really. Atrah, good to see you. You have the supplies?”

“As requested,” her father said coldly. This time, she’d been able to prepare him more extensively for his role. Having another set of eyes she could trust would be invaluable. She was particularly interested in what the other two Prophets might say behind her back.

The four of them traveling must have been a funny sight. While Ibrahim assumed a dual-form of Last Breath and Lone Pine and sprinted over the desert, Mirian and Gaius flew above him, taking turns lifting Jei along with them. Mirian had offered to carry Ibrahim too, but the Persaman warlord had far too much pride to even consider it, so she let the matter drop. Mirian practiced several necromancy spells on any myrvites that approached, with her father giving her tips.

Several hours later, they slowed down as they approached Alatishad, Mirian and her father landing, while Ibrahim changed clothes, discarding his sweat-soaked ones by the side of the road. Ibrahim made no attempt to cover himself while he did this, which led Jei to blush furiously and stare intently at a nearby sand dune. Ibrahim seemed not to notice. He looked as happy as Mirian had ever seen him.

“Nothing like running with the wind,” he said.

Alatishad was a large city, second only to Urubandar. Like most Persaman cities, it had a look of diminished glory to it. There were old walls and the ruins of houses outside the newer walls, washed up in sand. There was a ruined fortress, the stone walls half-pillaged for easy sandstone. The bright paints decorating the Isheer Sanctuaries were faded, and even the palaces had places where the stone was cracked or the sand and wind had pitted parts of the exteriors. Gaius scoffed at the worn roads. “These have to be the original ones. I don’t think they’ve been repaired since the Triarchy collapsed.”

From what he’d told her, most of Alatishad had been abandoned for centuries after the collapse, the city contracting into a small bastion that sat on the Setarab River, before finally expanding back out again as the population recovered and trade with Zhighua was reestablished. Then, fossilized myrvite had become a much-desired resource, and with the proliferation of spell engines used to help ward myrvites away from the farmlands, the city had grown again until it was nearly the same size as during its height under the Triarchy, then shrunk again as ships became the primary method of trade to Zhighua and the overland route through the Land of Spires became more disused.

They met Gabriel by one of the trading docks over by the south bank of the river. A trade caravan from Zhighua had just arrived, full of goods, but also refugees from the civil war. Gabriel was talking to the leaders of the caravan in halting Gulwenen, then gave up and switched to Adamic. Mirian had warned the other Prophet that Ibrahim was going to be joining them, so it wasn’t a surprise, but she also knew he wasn’t happy about it.

Here, Mirian got her first look at the group they’d be traveling with. Eximontar couldn’t be used on the route because they were too tempting a morsel for the predatory myrvites, so less magical packbeasts were used. The short and stout marusaurs resembled something between a tropical bird and a lizard. They had snub noses, green and white feathers along their frills, and were nearly impossible to rile up. They ate just about anything, including jungle plants that were poisonous to most creatures. Marusaurs were also, however, slow, and the same nonchalance that made them impossible to spook made them equally impossible to rush. Caravans through the Jiandzhi gave up speed for stealth.

As Gabriel caught sight of the group approaching, his gaze locked on Ibrahim. For a moment, they stared at each other. Ibrahim looked like a bull ready to charge, Gabriel, like a cat that wasn’t sure if he should fight or run.

Then, Ibrahim gave a snort of derision and looked away.

“This is going to go great, by the way,” Gabriel said cheerfully.

“The more power we can bring to bear, the better our chances. I don’t like wasting time,” Mirian said.

Gabriel shrugged. “We’ve got plenty of it to waste. Did you bring the wine? I’m noting you all have suspiciously small travelers’ packs. Perhaps you stored it in the fourth dimension next to your spellbook?”

Mirian opened up one of the sections of her traveler’s pack and pulled out a single bottle of wine.

“That’s all I brought, and you only get it on condition of good behavior.”

“My good behavior!? Just one bottle!? I’m always well behaved. It’s that brute you need to keep an eye on.”

“The only way we’ll learn to work together is through practice,” Mirian said. “The only way we’ll deepen bonds of trust is through working together.”

Gabriel shook his head sadly, but he took the bottle and said something in Gulwenen that she didn’t quite catch. One of the Zhighuan merchants perked up, suddenly looking very interested. Mirian watched as Gabriel handed it over to the man. Mirian knew enough Gulwenen now to know the merchant was thanking him profusely.

Wait, is that why he wanted them? She’d thought he was going to try to drink them all. Gabriel turned and gave her a wink, then went back to chatting with the merchant.

Song Jei came and stood by Mirian. The professor had been mostly quiet through the journey. She always withdrew when she was out of her element. “These are the people you need to save Enteria with?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Mirian said. “No, I don’t know what the Ominian was thinking either.”

***

The merchant, whose name was Han Feng, turned out to be in charge of the caravan, and was a veteran who had made the journey through the Jiandzhi hundreds of times. His face had a youthful look to it, with only a few wrinkles by his eyes, and his gait still had a spring in it. Only a few strands of gray hair betrayed his actual age.

It took a few days for the caravan to finish unloading and loading its cargo, wait for another merchant group that would be joining them, and then finally start moving back south. With most of the trade now being done by sea, it was only high-value goods that used the land-route; things like dyes, distilled magichemicals, bolts of silk, exotic spices, and conduit crystals. Each marusaur could carry about a hundred pounds of goods comfortably.

“This caravan makes it the farthest of any of the one’s I’ve tried, and Han Feng knows this route better than Ibrahim knows how to fuck rats,” Gabriel said. Then, quieter, he said, “By now, the attacks along the route have already begun, but nobody knows it yet. A few survivors of one of the attacks make it north by the 18th and start warning people, but they’re not the first group to be attacked, and certainly not the last. Most caravans don’t have survivors. As best I can tell, the attacks start around the 8th of Solem. Not enough time to make it through the whole route, believe me, I tried, and got eaten for my troubles. Ever been eaten before?”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Yes,” Mirian said, though it was more ‘torn apart by greater labyrinthine horrors’ than actually consumed. She figured it probably felt about the same.

“Oh. Anyways, I’m sure your wonderful leyline detector will help us figure out why they’re all in a frenzy, and do nothing to help us actually do anything about. I thought I’d built my own detector right, but I don’t think it actually worked. Kept giving weird readings.”

Mirian had assembled a leyline detector as they waited to depart. The pieces were now being carried along in the saddlebags of one of the marusaurs. She’d also upgraded several of the enchantments on the saddlebags to lower their ability to be sensed by hostile myrvites, with her father advising her on part of the process. One of the enchantments collected particles from the marusaurs that predators could smell, while another masked heat energy. Those, she simply made more efficient. Her new addition was an enchantment that hid the soul-energy of both the beasts and anyone nearby, using a set of bindings to create a widely dispersed field. Using tribonded sequences, she could maintain the enchantment with regular injections of mana. It would take a lot of mana, but a lot less than a fight. Feng had been fascinated as he watched her work, and asked how much she’d cost to hire full time. She’d just shaken her head.

The first three days of travel were across desert, then high desert as the road wound up a series of cliffs. There, the myrvite attacks were almost nonexistent, as the local hunters were happy to come out and track down any drakes or manticores that had been spotted and turn a tidy profit on their parts. They passed over old stone bridges, also dating back from the Triarchy, moving over scenic canyons and past gorgeous waterfalls that cascaded down from the mountains to go fill the Setarab river.

Once they’d gotten high enough, the road began to snake through one of the smaller canyons, paralleling the stream. Mirian caught a glimpse of old plinths that had once had glyphs carved on them. There were other symbols as well that Mirian didn’t recognize. Some of the logograms looked like Old Adamic script, while others looked Gulwenen to her.

“New Viaterrian,” her father said. “Or at least, that’s what scholars are calling it now. Well, they were calling it that about a hundred years ago, I sure hope they haven’t changed it. Always annoying when scholars decide to rename something when the old name was perfectly good. These are just basic instructions to travelers about the nature of the route, warnings about what hazards there might be, and so forth. For example, that one says, ‘Travel not this road before or after a great rain.’ The one we passed back there said, ‘Beware the magic life.’ Myra Vitae. That word goes on to become ‘myrvite,’ which we still use.”

“Interesting,” Mirian said.

The fifth day of travel, they stopped for the night beneath an overhang that had been reinforced with stone pillars. The whole caravan gathered itself up, Feng pulling out animal feed to keep the marusaurs happy. On the canyon wall was a whole conversation in New Viaterrian, though erosion had cut through most of the symbols. There was an active enchantment on the plinth. Mirian made Ibrahim try to charge it, which he failed to do even after a half hour. Finally, she just charged it herself.