Chapter 7
Journey to Parwys
As the … and decay of … civilisation has made clear, when … liberated from self-sustenance, the outcome is [not] … alienation, but an outpouring … and of stranger arts. The need [of] a sapient mind … Rather, that need, for better or for ill, turns towards abstractions.
The journey from the graves of Fola’s would-be captors to the seaside principality of Alberon, and thence by ship to the kingdom of Parwys, consumed nearly a month.
She spent the first weeks reading through volumes of regional history purchased in Alberon—once you saw through the propaganda there were fascinating bits of truth to be gleaned from such stories, and they were fabulously entertaining in their own right—but soon exhausted that source of stimulation.
After a few days watching sailors scurry about the rigging, or gazing at the horizon in hopes of sighting a whale, she found herself battling a persistent, gnawing boredom and a flailing desperation for amusement.
First, and most difficult to resist, was the urge to drink too much: a battle she lost some evenings, and woke ruing the day she left the City.
Amberwine had badly prepared her for the hangover brought on by ship’s rum.
Second, she fought the more reasonable-seeming but obviously stupid and dangerous impulse to conduct magical experiments.
A productive use of her time, yes. Also certain to draw precisely the kind of attention she wanted to avoid until she was well clear of the Mortal Church’s influence.
Third, and most annoying, was her lingering gaze on Colm.
They spent a great deal of time together—being the only two people aboard without meaningful work to do—much of it leaning on the gunwale and gazing at the sea while Colm regaled her with stories of his numerous adventures.
He had been often hired to accompany caravans of wagons, or to stand outside a wealthy man’s house to deter bandits and thieves.
Occasionally his work proved more interesting—hunting down a strange beast with the body of a bear and the head of a viper in southern Galca, for instance—though he had a way of turning even the boring episodes into amusing anecdotes.
Or, maybe, that was just a product of her attraction.
He asked about her life, and she told him as much as she could, focusing on the wonders of the City and skirting around the embarrassments and frustrations that had driven her into the wider world.
She talked at length of the great Library, with its endless aisles burrowed deep beneath the city, not yet fully mapped after a thousand years.
‘How could so many books exist?’ he mused, tossing crumbs of a biscuit for Frog to snatch from the air. ‘That must be lifetimes upon lifetimes of work.’
‘What is a lifetime to someone who will never age and die?’ Fola said. ‘A better question is what the books contain. We hardly know anything of the First Folk language. A few artifacts have let us discern certain words and structures, but most of the books remain totally unintelligible.’
He studied her while Frog landed on the gunwale and stared, impatient for the next piece of biscuit. ‘Oh? Then what are you doing here? The ghosts of Parwysh mortals can little help you read ancient First Folk books.’
They were drifting close to old, deep wounds now. Parts of herself she would rather not reveal—to anyone, let alone Colm.
‘The ways of the Library are difficult to grasp,’ she said. ‘It would take decades of education for you to comprehend the mysteries that underlie my quest.’
She smiled mysteriously at him and sipped her flask of ship’s rum. He rolled his eyes and, thankfully, changed the subject.
All through these days of lounging and conversation, she battled the thought that taking him to the pitiful little cot in her cabin would be quite a pleasant way to pass the time.
The taut arch of his waist when he stretched.
The fascinating muscular geometries where his lower arms met his torso, about where an ordinary person’s floating ribs would be.
The thought of those arms and those broad upper hands closing around her own shoulders, while his delicate, lower hands traced down the line of her hip …
In her own awkward adolescence, she had learned to navigate such feelings according to the City’s sexual mores—which were, in a word, relaxed.
There, she might simply mention to Colm that she found him attractive and would be willing to do various things with him, and then discover his opinion on the matter—to either her disappointment or delight.
But in the world beyond the walls, sexual expression had proven far more complicated.
First, by the twin risks of pregnancy and disease, and second, by that loathsome concept of currency.
Fola was not only Colm’s companion, but his employer, a word that carried with it the dynamics of power, of money.
Of wondering whether he would say yes because she was paying him or yes because he really wanted to.
A conundrum only made worse when she occasionally caught his eyes on her.
Studying her face while she read one of her books, or tracing the curve of her hip while she leaned over the gunwale to watch the horizon.
Lingering glances that might have been clear indicators in the City, but his eyes always darted quickly away.
The complexities of their relationship discouraged her from pressing the issue.
So she didn’t ask, but couldn’t help staring herself from time to time.
Which only made her want to ask him more, which made her feel guilty.
Guilt she assuaged by drinking a great deal more of the ship’s supply of rum than was strictly healthy—a habit that left her vomiting over the gunwale more than once.
After three days of this, the captain cut off her access to alcohol, regardless of what she offered to pay. Which seemed to undercut the entire point of currency, from her perspective. But what did she know?
Bored on her own, made problematically libidinous in close quarters with Colm and no longer able to muddle through with the help of an alcoholic fog, she sought stimulation and company in her place of last resort—making a long-neglected report to Arno.
She waited until near the appointed time for what were supposed to be their regular, monthly check-ins—gauging by the sun and some quick calculations to translate its position above her to its position over the city—then locked herself in her cabin.
Years of practice had made drawing the complex circle for astral projection simple enough, even on the dim, mildewy boards of a rolling ship at sea.
Finding her centre was somewhat more difficult, but after what felt like an hour of slow breathing in the close confines of her cabin, seated at the nexus of the circle’s design, she felt a sudden inward-falling.
She opened her eyes on the familiar tiled mosaics that lined the walls of Arno’s study.
‘Fola!’ Arno yelped in astonishment. His bird, a diminutive heron with feathers the pale blue of a robin’s egg, squawked and leapt to the far corner of the room in a flutter of wings that scattered a handful of papers.
She stood slowly, careful not to touch anything, hovering weightless in her astral body—a projection of her mind given hazy shape, not unlike that of a ghost, and sent by the careful design of her spell to visit Arno.
This was not so complex a projection as to allow the transmission of physical sensation, only sight and sound.
Touching anything could overwhelm the spell’s limited capacity and shatter her connection, with nauseating results.
Arno sat behind his desk. The latest of the Library’s tomes he was attempting to decipher lay open before him.
A glowbulb grafted onto the wall behind him stood open, casting its steady illumination throughout the room.
Its light glittered on the faceted tiles of the mosaic.
Beside it, Arno’s heron preened in agitation.
‘By the Tree and all its birds, Fola, you startled me,’ Arno muttered, peering over the top of his spectacles. His smooth chin disappeared into the folds of his neck. ‘Are you all right?’
‘It’s nothing, I’m fine!’ Fola snapped—letting perhaps a bit more of her frustrations regarding Colm show through. ‘You ought to have been expecting me.’
‘Once an agent in the field starts missing appointments, I begin to expect their bird to return alone.’ Arno sniffed in annoyance, depositing his pen on the desk and carefully marking his place in the First Folk volume with a slip of paper.
‘I’d assumed I would have to wait at least a full gestational cycle, plus a few years for your memories to reconstitute, before I’d get any explanation for your absence. ’
‘I’m sorry,’ Fola said. ‘I was in Ulun.’
His bushy eyebrows shot up at that.
‘Fola, the rumours out of that country …’
‘I know.’ Fola shivered in her astral form. She was not the first Citizen to venture there, but had been the first to stay for any length of time. Those who had gone before her brought back tales of the dread engines, of monstrous armies and eternal war.
‘Everything we’d heard was real,’ she said. ‘The sorcerer-kings used their people like toys. Sacrificed them to those towers of bone. Made monstrosities of them to wage a pointless domination game.’
‘What could you hope to learn from such horrors?’ Arno asked, his voice gentle, but not free from an accusation of recklessness.
‘I had no choice. Every other lead ran dry. I thought, maybe, something of how the dread engines twist body and soul …’ She shook her head. ‘How could the First Folk—the same people who made the City—have made such a thing?’
‘Not the same people, presumably,’ Arno pointed out. ‘Just as we are not like the sorcerer-kings. It is a mistake to assume all the First Folk were aligned. You did not find what you had hoped, I take it?’