Chapter Four
At midday they docked in another city. It was just as impressive as the last. Not that Ethyr could tell for sure, because he was not allowed to leave the boat.
The attendants left instead, and returned with stacked containers of food tied into little towers.
They plated some for Ethyr and Yorith, taking the others into the back, and the boat was let loose again down the river.
The days passed with agonizing sluggishness and monotony.
Eating lessons; writing lessons; etiquette lessons; wine pouring lessons—because even that had a ridiculous set of rules and methods.
He didn’t make the mistake of gorging himself again, though the food remained uniquely delicious every meal.
He was allowed walks around the boat, but never off to enter the cities they stopped at each day.
The cities somehow became grander: beautiful, creamy stone replaced gray ones, thatched roofs were replaced with red interlocking rectangles that Poyut called ‘shingles,’ and the buildings became even taller.
In the streets, between the endless crowds of milling people, he caught glimpses of stalls selling an impossible variety and color of textiles, or beautiful jewelry, or exotic animals, or items he couldn’t even identify.
Alongside vendors was the occasional entertainer: juggling, playing instruments, telling stories.
Sometimes he caught sight of statues, larger than any person and painted in vibrant colors.
Yorith said they were statues of the gods.
When Ethyr asked if they were that big in person, the priest only chuckled.
None of it prepared him for the capital city.
A blare of horns stopped Yorith in the middle of his sentence and, for the first time, a genuine smile spread his lips. He stood and left the room. Ethyr glanced around, then hesitantly stood as well, assuming the etiquette lesson was over.
“Your Divinity,” Poyut beckoned, and he followed her to the deck.
His jaw dropped.
An archway stretched the width of the river, its columns carved into two statues larger than any of the towers Ethyr had seen and made of an even purer stone than the cream-colored ones of city buildings.
They weren’t painted, likely a result of their location and size making it too difficult to maintain.
One was a woman, pouring a pitcher from which water sprouted like magic.
The man held out a bowl, catching the poured water before it could fall onto the boats passing below the archway, redirecting it to fall lengths and lengths through the air along the side and splash into the river with sprays of white mist.
“Gnaeus and Catocus,” Yorith told him. Gnaeus, the god of health and hearth, and Catocus, the god of protection and justice.
Ethyr stared hard at them as the boat drifted past, wondering if that was truly what they looked like.
The other statues he’d seen had been too far away to catch many details, but these, enormous and up close, he took the opportunity to study.
He’d heard all the stories and legends of the gods, but they were rarely described, and only superficially when they were.
Gnaeus’s soft curves were as beautifully rendered in stone as Catocus’s hard muscles, her curly hair falling freely over her shoulders while Catocus’s was straight and short.
They certainly demonstrated a striking contrast to each other that made them each stand out.
Behind the Gnaeus and Catocus archway, the city rose up like a mountain—no, it was a mountain, culminating at the top with an enormous round building, wider than it was tall, that Ethyr could see clearly even miles away.
It was pale cream, almost like butter, that stood in stark contrast to the dark rocky mountaintop.
The columns surrounding it were curled with leafy vines, and jutting from its side was a courtyard bordered by two streams of water that cascaded down the air to join a massive waterfall just below it.
“Ethyr,” Yorith said, voice swollen with pride. “Welcome to Mahyria, your new home.”
Ethyr couldn’t close his mouth, could hardly blink, as the river wound them through the lower streets.
The roads were paved with the same cream stone Ethyr had thought lavish for houses, while the buildings were of pristine white that almost glistened in the sun.
The lack of nature or farmland was made up for by potted plants on stairs or next to doors, most with colorful flowers blooming vivid against the white backdrop.
He assumed those were the source of the sweet, pleasant fragrance filling the air.
The buildings weren’t as numerous or tall or close together as in the other cities, yet they were much, much grander.
A rope was thrown from shore and the boatmen caught it, winding it around a post. Together they and the men on shore wound it tighter until, gradually, the boat made it to the side of the river and was fastened to the dock there.
Dozens of people lined the path leading from the dock, most of them guards, some looking like the attendants he had grown accustomed to on the boat. The rest of the street was crowded with ordinary people, their shops and chores abandoned as they gathered for the spectacle.
A walkway was rested on the side of the boat, with another going down into it. The priest headed towards it but Ethyr remembered and whipped around, startling Poyut.
“My things! Where are my things?”
“Be calm, Your Divinity,” she soothed. “The servants will bring the basket. Do not worry.”
“I want to bring it.”
“I’m sorry, you cannot.”
“Why not?!”
“Because you are the king,” she reminded him. The word stabbed icy panic through his heart and stopped up his throat. “Kings do not carry their own possessions.”
He was the king.
Poyut gestured for him to go ahead. He turned back around and walked numbly to the ramps, taking the hand that was held out without registering who it belonged to, letting them guide him off the boat.
He was king.
Yorith was already walking up the path, hands tucked into his sleeves.
Ethyr followed after him, Poyut close behind.
The line of guards closed around them and kept them in their own bubble as they made their way to a waiting carriage that looked much the same as the one from before.
The civilians weren’t intimidated at all by the guards, pressing as close as possible and jostling each other to try and get a better look at their new king, so that the surrounding guards were constantly holding and pushing them away.
They didn’t try to keep their voices low and Ethyr couldn’t help hearing what slipped through the clamor.
“He’s a peasant!”
“He’s stunning.”
“Why do the gods want a dirty village rat?”
“I’d bed him too if I had the chance.”
He pressed his hands over his ears and stared at the swishing hem of the priest’s robe as they climbed the perfect stones of the street.
He could breathe again when he dropped into the carriage, surprised at how happy he was to be in it. To be somewhere familiar and closed off. It may have even been the exact same one, as its interior was no different at all. With a lurch, it started up the mountain.
He stared moon-eyed out of the lattice, unable to help himself.
Everything he saw was more unbelievable than the last. They passed other grand carriages, stalls selling silk fabric and gold jewelry, statues of gods at every corner, enormous artificial ponds that spat water up into the air, sections of land that held no buildings nor farmland, but opulent gardens without a vegetable or herb in sight and people wandering through them like they had not a care in the world.
And the people: they wore not just expensive clothing but belts made of ivory and pearls, necklaces and bracelets and armbands of gold and jewels, shoes of silk or leather sandals wrapped up the legs with silk straps.
Ethyr didn’t stop gawking until the buildings were left behind and manicured greenery filled the sides of the street.
Then they reached the palace and he gawked more.
It was not the round building at the top of the mountain, but it was equally staggering to behold.
It was the same color as the other buildings they had passed.
Yorith said its walls were made of several different materials, but didn’t elaborate beyond that.
Ethyr had to strain his neck back to see the top, its flat roof decorated around the edges with carved vines and leaves and animals.
Surrounding the palace were more manicured gardens, though they didn’t have the seats and roofed structures like those they had passed in the city.
He wasn’t given much time to take it all in.
As soon as he stepped from the carriage, two attendants whisked him through the front door, up a staircase, around a corner, and into a room hazy with steam.
Through the haze, he could make out tiny, smooth stones coating the walls and floor, with a pond of milky water in the middle.
The entire room had the same scent as the pitcher water on the boat, floral and delicate.
His tunic was yanked over his head and pulled off before he could comprehend what was happening. He recoiled and held on to his undershirt as the man in front of him tried to pull that off, too. It was the attendant from the boat, whose name Ethyr had learned was Gionan.
“What are you doing?!”
“Your garments are filthy, Divine Ethyr, you’ll never be clean with them on.”
“Well I can undress myself, you know!”
The man stepped back. “Very well, Your Divinity, please do so.”
He started to, then paused and looked between the man and the two women there. “Are you… just going to stand there?”
“No, we will be washing you.”
Ethyr’s lip curled. “I can wash myself.”
“We must make sure you are well and thoroughly cleaned.”
“So I can’t even be trusted to wash myself now? I’m not a baby.”
“Of course not, Divine Ethyr, but palace standards are a bit higher than where you’re from.”