Chartomancy

Chapter Three

10th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat

9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Dolosan

His horse’s rapid descent of the hill pounded Keles Anturasi into his saddle. The jolts hammered his body and started his right shoulder throbbing again. It had been two days previous that he had broken his collarbone, but it seemed like forever. Once his captors had him, they had bound his arm tight to his chest and started riding hard.

The pain had distracted him, so he couldn’t be sure of his actual location, but it seemed deeper in Ixyll than he thought they’d gone. He smiled. My grandfather would have my hide if I admitted I was lost. Such a thing would be unthinkable.

The Anturasi of Nalenyr were the unquestioned and unrivaled masters of cartography. Qiro, Keles’ grandfather, oversaw a workshop of cousins, nephews, nieces, and grandsons that turned out the finest charts in the world. Ships using Anturasi charts almost never ran into navigational problems, and returned from their voyages with treasures beyond imagining. Keles and his brother, Jorim, had engaged in some of the most comprehensive and difficult survey operations ever mounted, returning with information that improved those charts and filled the family’s coffers to bursting.

Anyone but Qiro would have been happy with the family fortunes, but the patriarch desired mastery over the world. He wanted to know everything about it, and so had dispatched his grandsons on dangerous expeditions. Jorim had sailed the Stormwolf into the Eastern Sea to discover what lay there. Keles had been sent to Ixyll, to survey the land of wild magic to see if the path west had finally opened.

Keles’ survey had been successful as far as it got. Through his mystical link with his grandfather he had been able to communicate information that expanded the maps being drawn back in Moriande, Nalenyr’s capital. Though the link hardly promoted full communication, Keles had been able to sense his grandfather’s pleasure at the information he had gleaned.

At this point, even his grandfather’s ire would have been welcome, but Keles had not been given a chance to communicate with him. His captors-admitted agents of Prince Pyrust, the ruler of Deseirion-had pushed him hard in the ride from Ixyll. They met up with other small bands-some in Desei employ, some just scavengers in the Wastes-trading for horses and supplies. The four of them had already killed a horse apiece through hard riding, and between exhaustion and the pain of his shoulder, Keles had been unable to concentrate enough to open the link with his grandfather.

Once they’d crossed into Dolosan, Keles had been able to orient himself. They bypassed Opaslynoti and turned southeast. Instead of riding straight east through Solaeth, which would have taken a very long time, they would head to the port of Sylumak and ship east. While the journey would be longer, ships made progress from dawn to dawn, as they did not have to stop for sleep.

The horses trotted onto a level, arid plain. Dalen, the leader, held up a hand. The horses, well lathered, welcomed the respite. Keles did as well. Slowly the throbbing in his shoulder grew quiet. Quiet enough that now I can feel how saddle-sore I am.

Dalen stopped his horse and waved one of his men forward. Cort-short, squat, and swarthy-rode up beside him. Dalen pointed further ahead, to where the trail narrowed and carried past a little crest into what Keles assumed was a valley. The feature was hardly unique in Dolosan, but nothing here could be taken for granted because the land had labored beneath centuries of wild magic.

When warriors, or anyone else, became sufficiently skilled in their vocation, it was possible they would become Mystics. Then they would become supernaturally better than lesser-trained men. Moraven Tolo, a swordsman who had been traveling on Keles’ expedition, had been a Mystic. In one fight he’d torn through a half dozen or more foes with less effort than Keles would use to sketch a street map of a one-road town.

When any two Mystics clashed, the display of skill would be staggering-at once beautiful and terrible. It would also leave a residue of wild magic. Circles could contain it-hence the circles often worn as charms against magic, or the stone circles outside town and villages where challenges could be fought. There the wild magic would be trapped. But, left to its own devices, it could be used for good or ill.

Over seven centuries before, Turasynd nomads from the desert wastes had gathered legions of Mystic warriors and invaded the Empire. Empress Cyrsa gathered to her the greatest soldiers and Mystic warriors in the Empire. To forestall political chicanery in her absence, she split the Empire into the Nine Principalities, then took the Imperial treasury and headed west. The nomads and her armies fought several skirmishes in Solaeth and Dolosan, but their grand battle took place in Ixyll.

By all reports, the armies annihilated each other-and the wild magic they released nearly annihilated the world. The magic changed things in wonderful and horrible ways, and its mark could most easily be seen in Dolosan or Ixyll, where it still raged. On his survey, Keles had recorded living pools, valleys that breathed, trees bearing glass foliage, and so many other oddities that it hurt his head to think of them.

His mind shifted to the journals he’d kept, now back in Ixyll with the rest of his companions. And Tyressa, poor Tyressa. Just thinking of her made him feel even more alone. With her gone, some of the color had flowed out of the world.

Cort, the man riding forward to the hillcrest, had been the one who shot her. And it wasn’t just that act that made Keles hate him, but the eager leer on his face when he’d done it. And the way he chuckled about it afterward.

I hope you die.

The man crested the hill and started to ride down into the valley. Then he reined back hard and his horse reared, but not before something had wrapped itself around the horse’s front legs. The horse came back down, squealing, eyes wide with terror, then it and Cort disappeared.

“Cort, damnit!” Dalen reined back on his horse. Asbor, the third man, drew his sword and started galloping forward, but Dalen called him back. “Don’t be foolish.”

Asbor gave him a puzzled look. “But we have to help him.”

“There’s no helping him. He never even had time to scream.” Dalen turned to Keles. “Have you seen anything like this before?”

“Tough to answer since I don’t know what it is.” Keles dismounted and would have fallen save for a quick grab at his stirrup. He got his legs under him, then started forward.

“You should ride.” Asbor glanced nervously at the valley. “You can escape.”

“Cort didn’t.” Keles kept his voice even, betraying neither his satisfaction at Cort’s death nor his fear. He began the trudge up the rise.

“Asbor, get his horse; take my reins.” Dalen dismounted behind him and quickly caught up. His eyes narrowed as he looked over at Keles. “I would not have thought you to be so adventurous.”

“Adventurous is my brother. I’m just curious.” Keles pointed toward the plant tendrils Cort had ridden over. “I think I saw something green binding the horse’s hooves. I intend to avoid anything green.”

Dalen nodded, then the two of them cut off the trail and up through some rocks. The Desei agent helped him negotiate the steeper parts, then they both rounded a large boulder and looked down into the valley.

Dalen shivered. “Who could have imagined?”

Keles shook his head and squatted. The valley had widened into a basin that he believed might once have been the home to a fair-sized pond nearly a hundred feet deep. The red rocks around it and the grey-red sediment in it contrasted sharply with the green of the plant. Tendrils-hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands-lay like webbing throughout the basin. Where they lapped over its edges they were little thicker than a finger. Deeper down, closer to the heart, they were fully as round as a man and stiff with rough bark festooned with sharp thorns.

Centermost sat a grotesque blossom, corpse white with scarlet veining. It pulsed and quivered in time with the pain throbbing in Keles’ shoulder-a fact he found rather unsettling. At its heart lay a darker patch the color of liver, which opened and closed slowly, producing a faint sound reminiscent of snoring.

They spotted most of Cort, but his horse had almost ceased to exist. Small tendrils reached out to pull the carcass forward. The sharp thorns sliced through flesh and sinew, taking the animal apart as it slowly slid toward the plant’s heart. Hunks of dripping tissue and steaming organs moved more quickly, dropping into the maw between snores.

Cort soon joined his mount in a sharp slide to feed the plant.

Keles narrowed his eyes. “No, I’ve never seen anything like this before. Not this size. My brother said there are flesh-eating plants in Ummummorar, but the samples he tried to bring back died. Even so, those were only big enough to eat insects.”

Dalen frowned as he watched the plant. “I would have been ready for monsters. You know, the things we hear about in stories-bears with six legs and mandibles, steel serpents, giant spiders. Not this.”

“This isn’t something bards would sing of. Its only prey is that which blunders into it.” Keles frowned. “That doesn’t make it any less horrible, though.”

“In some ways it makes it more so.”

Keles considered for a moment, then glanced up at his captor. “What are you going to do? I’m not sure you can kill it.”

“Kill it? No.” The man smiled slowly. “My job is to get you to Deseirion. We’ll just go around it. I can recruit more men later, so you’ll be safe.”

“You mean so I won’t escape.”

Dalen snorted. “Even if you were whole, you couldn’t escape. You could kill me and Asbor in the night, or kill our horses and take off with as many supplies as you wanted, and you’d still not escape.”

“Give me a horse and provisions and I’ll prove you wrong.”

Dalen snorted again and started leading the way back. “You may know where you are and even where you want to go, but you know the world as a map. But a map is like the world in the same way sheet music is like a song. It merely describes it. You don’t know enough about this world to survive it.”

Keles said nothing. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that criticism. Tyressa had leveled it against him on the expedition, and he had taken strides to correct the problem. In Dalen’s opinion, however, he had not gone far enough.

But that didn’t really surprise him. He’d been in pain and had been traveling swiftly, neither of which gave him the time to get to know much about the places they were passing through. More important, however, he’d shut himself off to such learning because it reminded him of Tyressa; and to think of her was to have his heart feel as if it were sliding into the plant with Cort.

Tyressa had saved his life several times over, and when he was sick in Opaslynoti, she had tended to his needs. She was always honest with him, willing to hurt his feelings if it awakened him to realities he had to deal with.

And now she is dead.

Tyressa had been pulling herself out of a crack in the earth when Cort had shot her. She had gasped loudly, then slipped from sight. The last glimpse he had of her was the flash of her golden hair.

Numbly he remounted the horse and followed Dalen as the Desei sought a new path south. Tyressa had confused Keles, because most of the time she had been brusque and gruff. That had been part of her Keru discipline. Being that tough, she had lived up to the Keru legend-implacable, unapproachable, and incorruptible.

By just being strong and beautiful, the Keru-a select cadre of Helosundian women who served the Naleni royal house as bodyguards-had long been the object of fantasy for many a Naleni youth. Everyone had heard tales of liaisons between Keru and nobles or heroes-young Keru had to come from somewhere, after all. Boys dreamed of a Keru falling for them, or even just using them; but such things were fantasy alone.

And yet, for Keles, Tyressa had shown some tenderness. It wasn’t a melting of her resolve, but as if their association had disarmed her heart. At the last, even as they crawled through the cavern and muck to reach the place where he’d been taken captive, they’d joked companionably, as if she were his friend.

Keles refused to consider the possibility that he loved her. He had great affection for her, but if he admitted to love, then the grief he was holding at bay would consume him. But as determined as he was to deny love, he couldn’t deny the possibility that it might have grown into love; and having lost that was just as bad.

Keles frowned and swallowed past a lump in his throat while his horse plodded along in Dalen’s wake. The sun would be setting soon, and what little warmth it had created would be stolen away.

It occurred to him, as Dalen signaled a stop for the night in a hollow that would shelter them from the wind, that he could have pitched himself into the plant. But, no, that would never have done. His suicide would dishonor Tyressa’s sacrifice, and he would not write that epitaph to her life. She deserved more, and he would see to it that she got it.

And suicide would have prevented one other thing. Prince Pyrust, the half-handed tyrant, had caused her death. He’d once offered Keles a new home, and the cartographer had refused. Pyrust, clearly, had not accepted his refusal. He wanted Keles’ service, and no price was too great to pay for it.

He’ll find that’s not true. Keles would travel to Deseirion and give Pyrust all the help he wanted. All the help he needs… to put his nation into the grave