Burning Tower (35 page)

C
lever Squirrel had assembled her working materials the previous evening. At dawn she painted her mother's portrait by drizzling various shades of sand from her fist. When the painting was done, it had a cartoonish look.

She waited. Regapisk pestered her until she sent him to find more black sand. Warriors and traders of three civilizations came to watch, grew bored, and went away.

Regapisk came back. Squirrel used black sand to outline her mother's face. From time to time, she added detail to wrinkles around the eyelids or the curve of a lip or a fall of black hair.

Burning Tower brought her corn bread. “Still nothing?”

“Do you imagine you see motion?” Squirrel's tone was acidic.

“It's a very good painting of her,” Tower said.

“Thank you. I was taught to paint the essence and leave it at that, but how can one not fiddle?
Mother!
”

The sand stirred in a fitful breeze.

The lookout post was on the tallest of a cluster of rocks. The kneeling guard was watching Squirrel's painting, not the world outside. Secklers squatted, waiting with uncharacteristic patience.

Squirrel muttered, “Call at dawn, we said. I haven't lost track of the days; I checked the stars last night. Today is Coyote's name day…. Hello, Sandry. Have some bread.”

“Thank you. I grew impatient.”

“I'm ready to kick this painting apart. Wait—did you see—
Mother!
”

Twisted Cloud's painting twisted in a delighted smile. A voice in the wind said, or perhaps only suggested, “Daughter! You still live!”

“I was worried too. Where have you been?”

“It's only just past dawn. I can't paint in the dark,” Twisted Cloud's image said. The voice was distant but clear.

“It's well past dawn!”

“Is it? Wait—now I think I understand. ‘The east sinks to reveal the sun,' my father Hickamore used to say. He taught that the world is a rolling ball. I'm west of you. The world's shadow—”

“Oh. That explains—
Yes,
Tower. Mother, Lord Sandry of Tep's Town has asked Burning Tower to wed. She needs to ask her parents.”

“Excellent news! Hello, Tower!”

“Can you see me?”

“I'll pour more sand. Tell her I'm at Road's End, but Willow and Whandall are at home, at New Castle. I will go and tell them. Daughter, we speak again in a moon or so, don't we? On your birthday?”

“Yes.”

“I'll visit them then. What other news? How goes your voyage?”

“Green Stone should be arriving in Condigeo even now,” Clever Squirrel said.

“With great wealth! New trade!” Tower shouted.

“And Burning Tower reminds me that we have discovered new items to trade. There is wealth on the Golden Road.”

“Whandall Feathersnake will be pleased. And the birds? But why are you not with Green Stone?”

The images rippled.

“The manna is falling,” Squirrel said. “Mother, we pursue the source of the birds, but we've cleared the Hemp Road for at least this next year. We've seen two moons of nothing much happening, and one to go before we reach Sunfall Crater.

“That is a place of high manna, and we can talk as long as we like there.”

“And fight a god,” Sandry said.

Squirrel waved him away. The portraits were losing animation; they looked like sand. “Mother, we will magic a wagonload of old talismans at Sunfall and come home rich. We've seen more of desert than we care for. There's water enough, most days, and forage for the bison. We eat mostly prairie dogs. Every so often a terror bird turns up, and then the Crescent City soldiers get some practice and we get soup. I've gotten good at finding mustard greens and such.”

“Oh, daughter, you're seeing territory I never will!”

“Well, yes. Huge piles of sand shaped like crescent moons. Great squared-off mountains of red rock. A rim that stretches across half the world. We climbed it. Wonderful plants, like huge pincushions trying to become trees. The maguey plant that may be more useful than hemp. Things to remember the rest of my life. Oh, and yesterday was interesting—”

“
There
you are, Tower. Hello, dear! Is Sandry with you? Let me paint him as he was on the boat.”

“Hail, Twisted Cloud! Not green, please!”

“He says, ‘Hail, Twisted Cloud!' and requests that you don't turn him green.” Squirrel grinned. “And yesterday, Mother, we found a stone man wading neck deep through the earth. We saw only the head and the churned wake from his passage. I talked to him. He's running away from two disasters, running very slowly. Fire falling from the sky almost got him, he says, but that had to be thousands of years ago. He's running away from a god's rage to come. Given who he is, it might fall any time in the next ten thousand years.”

“Do you know what god?”

“No. Only that the stone man fears him.”

“With good reason,” Sandry muttered, but no one was listening.

 

Another moon passed.

S
andry wrote:

About midmorning, Fur Slipper pointed with the prow of her nose, right of their course and dead east. “There!” She waved her arm to catch Ern's attention on the lead wagon. The Crescent City wagons began to turn.

Sandry rode up in his chariot. “I don't see anything,” he said. “Just more desert. The ground rises a little?”

“Yes, but follow the road around. Expect guards.”

“I see a tower. There's someone in it.”

“There would be,” Fur Slipper said. “I'm blinded. I see a line of light glowing in a sea of nothing.”

Off in the distance, several terror birds watched them. One was the rooster they'd come to know. The birds didn't approach, but they watched.

“That's more than we have ever seen on this road,” Sandry said. “Be ready, all!”

“This close to the Fallen Star? Birds will never attack there,” Ern said.

 

They came to a gentle rise of ground gradually curving off to their right. The road the caravan had followed since Crescent City continued around it. A league of following the curve of the road revealed that the tower stood seven or eight manheights, with an armored man on the platform at its top. A little farther and they could see over the rim of the crater.

There were buildings below the tower: blocky squared-off structures, housing for more than a hundred people, Sandry thought, set down into the pit itself.

This must be the Emperor's main trading post. The main gate and the buildings it served were just below the crest. There was a wall of logs and maguey plants around the post, but the plants were not thickly planted, and the wall in places was lower than a man's height. This post did not depend on walls for defense.

Above the walled town, and around the part of the crater rim that Sandry could see, there were odd statues, man-high and higher, of grotesque heads stacked one on another. They were made of bright colored—wood? No, it was stone, though it had the texture of wood. The eyes of these monsters were jewels, and they glowed brightly. The statues were set about a hundred paces apart, ringing the trading post, then extending along the crater rim in both directions.

“Protection stones,” Ern said. “You would not wish to pass between those without permission!”

The ground was rocky and dangerous, but Regapisk drove his chariot off the road and over to one of the stones, carefully staying outside the ring they formed. “Ugly!” he shouted.

The road led to a gateway wide enough for wagons bigger than these, and the big double gates stood open. A pair of the ugly protection stone statues faced each other across the gateway opening, multiple carved faces with bulging eyes and protruding tongues staring at each other.
And at us?
Sandry wondered. The eyes seemed to follow them as they approached. An illusion?

Sandry watched a handful of men assembling: a force of twenty, four groups of four men, and another group of four officers.

They wore bright armor and carried bows. The armor was thin plates of polished bronze over leather. The bows were simple wooden bows and probably couldn't penetrate that armor. Sandry smiled to himself. His bow would outrange those things by double, perhaps more, and even at long range his arrows would penetrate that feeble armor. With a chariot and fast horses, he could fight all twenty and win. Fifty Lords with chariots and a thousand Lordsmen and Lordkin could defeat any number of such men.

If this was the best of the Emperor's army, why would anyone fear the Emperor?

 

They followed the road uphill. On the flat, the road continued, but greatly changed. Thenceforth it ran straight as a spear's flight at a constant width of about nine paces, and a line of logs ran right up the middle.

Fur Slipper shouted, and all heads turned. “Nothing must profane the High Road! Set foot on it only at the invitation of the Emperor! Beasts are not to touch the High Road at all!”

They followed the—low road?—up the gentle rise. Ahead were the main gates into the town itself. There was no more to be seen until they neared the top of the crest.

Then the crater seemed to appear magically out of the desert. It was a bowl hundreds of paces across, tens of manheights deep. It was all rubble, barren of life. To Sandry it looked weird beyond understanding…

“A mountain fell out of the sky.” Clever Squirrel whispered in his ear. “It smashed this hollow into the earth. See here, where rock melted and splashed, where a fiery wind lifted the surface and peeled it back. Pristine magic, never drained by the world's gods or wizards. Can you feel the power? It's making me drunk!”

Burning Tower said, “I don't feel a thing.”

Sandry shook his head.

Regapisk and Arshur rode up. Reggy shielded his eyes from the crater. “It's bright!” he shouted.

Arshur laughed.

“You can see the manna?” Clever Squirrel asked.

“Sure, can't you?” He cupped his hands around his face to shade his eyes, then peeped out to examine the crater. “There,” he said. He pointed to discolored rocks near the crater floor. “That's a really bright spot.”

Arshur laughed again.

“You don't believe him?” Sandry asked.

Arshur shrugged. “Lord Reg is learning the craft of Tras Preetror, and learning it well,” the giant said. “Since I have known him, he's seen a lot of things I didn't.”

Regapisk looked hurt.

“He's right about that spot,” Clever Squirrel said. “I don't see it as brighter than the rest, but I can feel the manna flowing.”

And Reggy probably saw where you were looking,
Sandry thought.

Ern brought his wagons to a halt. The twenty bowmen blocking their path stepped to left and right. Other men and women waited beyond. Sandry glimpsed a formal garden of amazing extent, but Clever Squirrel exclaimed at sight of a blocky house. “They've got sweatbaths!”

 

The governor was a woman named Hazel Sky. Her dress was awkward and beautiful, with a huge and spiky headdress. “Fox,” Squirrel whispered, though the woman didn't look much like a fox to Sandry. But the burly man next to her was unmistakable in his costume. “Terror bird,” said Squirrel.

Hazel Sky squinted, then smiled thinly. “Greetings, Ern of Crescent City. We have met before. It has been too long since your city brought the Emperor his due.”

“The way was closed, Great Mistress. Our city was besieged and was nearly destroyed. Has it not been long since any wagons came from the west?”

“It has. We have noted this, but my Master has sent no instructions.” She shrugged. “So we have done nothing.”

“Did you tell Emperor no wagons long time?” Sandry asked.

Hazel Sky frowned. The Terror Bird man hid a smile.

“Great Mistress, this is Lord Sandry, of Lordshills,” Ern said. “He comes from lands far to the west of Crescent City, lands that lie on the Great Western Sea. He begs your pardon. He does not know the proper forms of address.”

“Let him learn them,” Terror Bird said. “One does not slight a Great Mistress!”

Sandry bowed.

Hazel Sky nodded in acknowledgment. “I see stallions, and the great one-horn. It has been long since a one-horn was brought to Aztlan! We thank you. And the stallion is splendid. What other gifts have you brought for the Emperor?”

“We have the customary gold, Great Mistress,” Ern said. “And we beg the privilege of provisions, and the customary gifts of manna.”

She nodded. “The Supreme One will be greatly pleased with gifts such as those,” she said, indicating Blaze and Spike with a wave. “Have you counted out the customary tribute?”

“Yes, Great Mistress.”

She smiled. “Then nothing else is needed. Welcome to the place of the Fallen Sun! In the name of the Supreme One, I bid you welcome.”

 

The Great Mistress and the other costumed priests retired. Lesser officials were sent to welcome them. Ern explained his caravan's needs. Fodder was brought. The wagons were led down a steep road into the crater itself. No water supply was to be seen, but when Regapisk asked about that, there was general laughter.

The women made it clear that they wanted to bathe. “At once, Mistress,” a servant girl said. She was no younger than Burning Tower, but she knelt to her. “At once. I will go to heat the stones myself.”

 

“Best welcome I ever had,” Ern said.

Burning Tower looked to Sandry, with both question and fear. Sandry nodded. “Not the time to talk about it,” he said quietly. She looked unhappy but nodded agreement.

There was plenty of room for visitors. Only about forty people were in the fort.

They spoke the Crescent City tongue with a raspy accent. Twenty were warriors armed with spears or simple bows, led by a Captain Sareg. Six were officials of the Office of the Emperor's Gifts.

The chief of these was called Regly. Tax man, Sandry thought. Toronexti.

Ern laid out a blanket and covered it with goods. There was some gold, but there were other items, manufactured in Crescent City. Fruits and melons preserved by Fur Slipper's spells. Pots and dishes. Sandry frowned. Except for the gold, little of this would have brought a decent price in Peacegiven Square, and most would have been worthless in Condigeo. Aztlan was rich! Why did they want crude goods?

Regly examined the items. “Acceptable. When will you deliver the stallion and one-horn?”

“Soon,” Ern said. “All our beasts are needed to draw the wagons and chariots into the pit, and I think you have no one here who can harness the one-horn.”

“That may be true,” Regly admitted. “Good. Your gifts are acceptable.”

Ern explained after Regly left. “There is no trade with the Emperor. We bring gifts, and the Emperor gives gifts in return. His gift is the privilege of using the crater.

“Over there are traders, with goods.” He pointed to a line of stands, like any market. “They buy and sell. There will be stonewood, every kind of stonewood, carved and crude, charged and depleted. There will be jewelry talismans of turquoise and silver. And rain arrows, to make the trip back much faster. With rain arrows, we do not have to follow the streams.”

“Are the arrows expensive?”

“Not very. But each is accounted for, and its use is taxed, and all of that takes time.”

Nine officials and six clerks belonged to the Office of Rain.

Rain was a good deal of the post's business. Hundreds of rain arrows with turquoise heads were stored, waiting to be used here or carried away to other lands. The luxuriant vegetable garden was testimony to their effectiveness. Rain arrows, charged in the crater, traveled all over the Empire. Each one was accounted for by documents meticulously kept by the clerks.

The Office of Rain was a circular sunken room, a
kiva,
inside a blocky building that wasn't much bigger. The head of the Office of Rain was Thundercloud, a burly, powerful man in middle age—he who had been dressed as an archetypal terror bird. He looked more comfortable in black robes.

Ern said to him, “We are ready for water now, Lesser Master.”

Thundercloud stood and summoned a clerk, who produced a document. The clerk asked questions, got answers from Ern, and wrote. Then he asked more and wrote more.

It took most of an hour. Finally the clerk was satisfied.

Thundercloud selected an ornate arrow tipped with turquoise. He brought that to the clerk, who recorded something on the document. Thundercloud took his seal cylinder from his wrist and rolled it in fresh clay dripped at the bottom of the document. The clerk did the same.

“One gold bit,” the clerk said.

Ern produced the gold, not much larger than a speck. The clerk noted that on the document, and dropped the gold bit down through a slot on his desk. “All in order,” the clerk said.