“Ah, yes,” Biento nodded. “And since Korastine is of the blood of Aiden, his features must be very similar to Aiden’s, wouldn’t
you say? The painting would look almost exactly like this.”
Aldo could already see the wheels turning in his father’s mind.
Saan and his companions lived for two months as guests in the great camp of the Nunghal khan before Jikaris announced it was
time to begin the procession down to the sea and the clan-gathering festival.
While learning to speak the Nunghal language passably well, the young man also participated in the sport of buffalo wrestling,
a dangerous game that depended on agility and speed rather than brute strength. Saan was wiry and light on his feet, and he
loved to confuse the buffalo bulls by flailing a bright red kerchief before them, his arm extended to one side so the animal
attacked the wrong target. He astonished the other Nunghal boys by springing onto the beast’s back and riding it briefly before
dropping off and running back to safety.
He taught himself to play their games of chance, discovering a strategy that depended more on trickery and bluffing than on
actual luck or skill. He even flirted with some of the girls his age, though Nunghal standards of beauty tended more toward
muscular and squarish women than the willowy lovelies of the Olabar court.
During these months, Imir—with Asaddan as his interpreter—spoke to Ruad and Khan Jikaris, describing Uraba’s long-standing
war against the Aidenists. Ruad in particular collected these nuggets of information as if they were coins with which he could
buy his way back among the Nunghal-Su. When Imir wasn’t discussing a possible alliance with the Nunghals, he spent his time
with Sen Sherufa.
For days before departure, the Nunghals packed their belongings and prepared their mounts, drawing lots to determine who would
stay behind and who would drive the buffalo herds down to the sea. Saan asked his new friends what was happening, and they
explained the clan-gathering festival, an annual event among the tribes, at which they would trade goods and arrange marriages
between the Nunghal-Ari and the Nunghal-Su. In addition, the separate branches would exchange young men so that nomads would
learn to sail ships, while seafarers discovered the ways of the land, hunting and herding.
Khan Jikaris would join the procession, as he always had, so he could meet with his counterpart among the Nunghal-Su, a much
younger khan who had taken the place of his dying father two years prior.
Sen Sherufa spoke to the khan at yet another banquet complete with fireworks. In slow, careful Nunghal, she said, “My companions
and I crossed the Great Desert to see your land after hearing Asaddan’s stories. I ask now for permission to accompany your
party to the south, so that we might gaze upon this vast new sea you have spoken of.”
The khan slapped his hand on the table surface, jarring the goblets and rattling plates, delighted by Sherufa’s boldness.
“You must come! I will show the khan of the Nunghal-Su these people who fly like birds in a basket, who tell of strange lands,
and whose hair is made of gold.” He reached out to scrub Saan’s blond hair vigorously, a gesture to which the young man had
grown accustomed (though he did not particularly enjoy it). Saan always found the khan’s words difficult to understand, not
because his grasp of the language was weak, but because the man had a pronounced lisp.
Imir was annoyed to be left out of the joke. He asked repeatedly, “What? What’s happened?” until Asaddan took pity and explained
it to him.
* * *
The khan’s procession was a great, slow-moving parade. The buffalo drovers left early and maintained a fast pace, but Jikaris
was in no hurry. Since the clan-gathering festival lasted for months, traders rarely offered their most valuable and exquisite
merchandise early on, preferring to wait for larger crowds so that prices could go higher.
Days after the herds were out of sight, the khan would stop at mid-afternoon to set up camp and prepare for a large meal;
the next morning, it took them hours to break camp and move out again. Scouts rode ahead to report on the terrain, the weather,
and any other clans they sighted.
Saan was walking beside Sen Sherufa when they finally crested a rise of grassy hills and saw a hazy blue expanse that spread
infinitely far to the south. The Saedran woman stopped in the middle of recounting one of her favorite tales of the Traveler.
The refreshing smell of salt air and the unexpected sea breeze stole the words from her throat.
“It’s the southern sea!” Saan blurted.
Asaddan joined them, and Sherufa said in amazement, “You didn’t lie, Asaddan, nor even exaggerate. This ocean…” She shook
her head. “This entire
continent
exceeds all the boundaries of my imagination.”
The big Nunghal looked at the expanse of water as if it were a strange landscape even to him. “You know the Middlesea’s boundaries,
but here storms come up from the south and batter the coastline. The Nunghal-Su have sturdy ships. Ruad is very proud of them,
though his own vessel was wrecked by a storm. I would rather place my faith on dry, solid land.”
Puffing, Imir joined them to stare at the sight before them. Since their time in the sand coracle, the former soldan-shah
had stopped shaving his scalp and face, and now his whole head was fringed in a fuzz of tightly curled iron-gray hair. Looking
out at the water, his expression dawned with wonder. “No Uraban has ever before gazed upon this sea!”
“Well, Sen Sherufa and I saw it first,” Saan teased.
Riding behind them, Khan Jikaris topped the hill, drew a deep breath, and let it out as a sigh. His companion Ruad seemed
transfixed as he stared at the ocean with immense longing. Saan remembered the same expression on Asaddan’s face after he
stepped from the sand coracle onto the grasslands of his clan. The khan, though, was far more interested in the hundreds of
colorful tents and stalls that filled the meadows and pastures above the beach.
The Nunghal-Ari procession trampled the grasses in the pristine meadow that the early riders had reserved so that the khan
and his party could establish their camp there.
The following day, full of excitement to see the stalls, vendors, and representatives of the Nunghal-Su, Saan accompanied
Sen Sherufa out to explore. He looked down into the harbor at a hundred strange, thick-hulled ships with stout masts and an
unfamiliar arrangement of sails and rigging. He hoped one of the seafaring Nunghals would take him aboard so he could study
the design and learn their nautical skills, which he could bring back to Soldan-Shah Omra.
The khan gave Saan’s grandfather a sack of coins to spend, and Imir told the young man in a conspiratorial whisper that he
intended to buy “something very special” for Sherufa. Jikaris also gave coins to Saan and to the Saedran woman for their own
needs.
As the morning warmed, Saan and Sherufa walked among the gathered Nunghals. Clan leaders sat across from each other at low
tables as they shared drinks and conversation. He could easily spot the seafaring Nunghal-Su by their distinctive dress, similar
to the clothes Ruad wore. Their harsh dialect was difficult to understand, but the two strangers made themselves understood.
Fishermen sold smoked carcasses of a large spiny fish that Saan had never seen before. Nunghal-Su stalls offered shells and
coral necklaces, while the nomadic clans sold polished chunks of rose quartz, finely ground crystal lenses for spyglasses,
tanned hides and worked leather goods, and barrels of salted and cured buffalo meat.
Sen Sherufa stopped at a mapmaker’s stall, intrigued by the charts displayed there. She perused the details of the southern
coastline, with arrows marking strong currents; the blank areas of water were decorated with fanciful depictions of sea serpents
and storm patterns.
“How accurate is this map?” she asked the mapmaker.
He bristled, as if she had insulted him. “Nunghal-Su navigate with these charts. Our clans have explored every inch of the
coastline, as far as we can. Our lives depend upon maps.” He had a long mustache that drooped past his chin and a stubble
of beard that had been shaved no less than a week before. “Where are you from? Your appearance is strange.”
The mapmaker scoffed when they told him about Uraba and the soldanates, how they had crossed the Great Desert and became guests
of Khan Jikaris. Facing his disbelief, Sen Sherufa remarked, “You asked us to believe in you. Now believe in us.”
With a lifetime on the sea, the mapmaker had only vaguely heard of the Great Desert. He showed Sherufa his charts, asking
her to point out its location. Since the Nunghal-Su were concerned only with the coastline and the sea, he had little information
about the land’s interior, where the nomadic clans herded buffalo. The Saedran woman used her finger to sketch out the general
border of the Great Desert, then farther north she traced the soldanates of Uraba and finally the Middlesea.
Saan, however, was intent on the contours of the southern coastline, which he had never before seen. He compared this with
what he remembered of Uraban geography from Omra’s tactical maps, extended the Nunghal shoreline in his imagination… and made
an intuitive leap. He spoke in Uraban, so the mapmaker would not understand him. “Sen Sherufa, see here. As the coastline
extends to the west, it curves northward to the limit of Nunghal-Su explorations. By my guess… isn’t our southernmost city
of Lahjar not far from here?”
Sherufa was automatically skeptical. “No one can sail south beyond Lahjar. The heat and the reefs block all passage.”
Saan gave her a wry smile. “Yes, and no one could cross the Great Desert, for that was the edge of the world. Apparently,
our information is flawed.”
Sherufa asked the mapmaker in his own language, “Why have your ships not traveled farther north, here?”
The Nunghal shook his head. “Reefs. Shoals. Bad currents.”
Saan excitedly extended the coastline with his finger. “If the southern sea is indeed the lower half of the continent of Uraba,
wouldn’t the coast connect all the way around here? To Lahjar?”
Sherufa muttered as her thoughts tried to catch up to her words. “And if this is a true representation of the coast of the
southern sea, then we know the shape of the whole continent! Think of what that means.”
Saan felt his excitement build, thinking as Omra had taught him. “If my grandfather can form an alliance with the Nunghals,
then their navies could sail up this coast, round the cape, and travel north to Lahjar. They could join us in our battles
with the Aidenists!”
“That wasn’t exactly what I meant.” Sherufa’s expression showed how deeply preoccupied she was. “It is a Saedran thing.” She
paid the Nunghal merchant his asking price for the chart, too engrossed in the discovery to haggle.
Frozen. Starving. Lost.
Hannes’s mind was as numb as his feet, as his hands. His body continued to move without conscious volition, plodding through
this forsaken wilderness. The mountains around him were like monstrous jaws ready to grind him into pulp. He did not know
how long it had been since his escape from the Gremurr mines.
The endless nights had been black, freezing, and windy; the mockingly clear days were so cold that the air itself felt as
if it might shatter. The watery yellow sun shone down without warmth. Even both blankets wrapped around him—now sodden, frozen,
and tattered—barely kept him warm.
His toes had burned for a long time, but now they were frozen. Wrapped in spare rags, his fingers were as stiff as wood; he
could bend them only when he concentrated, and with a great deal of agony. The cold reawakened his old scars, first a tingling,
then a throbbing, then excruciating pain.
Corag Reach should have been a promised land, but Prester Hannes saw it only as a land of broken promises. The slave masters
in Gremurr had been correct: Any man of lesser resolve, or with less faith in Ondun, would have perished long ago. He no longer
felt any energy or joy from the fact that he was back in Tierra. He was going to die here.
On his journey, he made his way over passes that funneled the harsh winds, then he stumbled down into steep valleys. He forded
silvery rushing streams, with water that was indescribably cold even on feet that had seemed too numb to feel anything more.
On hardy bushes he found handfuls of berries—it seemed like a miracle, and they tasted delicious, though he suffered stomach
cramps for hours afterward. For the past several days, Hannes had eaten nothing but snow and lichens chipped from boulders.
No words had passed his chapped lips for a very long time, but in his mind he uttered prayer after prayer, recited scriptures
from the Book of Aiden, begged for some sort of guidance to take him home. He staggered along, anchored by his faith, and
propelled forward by his instinct to stay alive.
He sought any way through the heart of the mountains, trying to work his way downhill. If he passed out of the snow line and
found the tundra again, and after that the forests, he might discover people in far-flung villages who could help him and
feed him. True Aidenists at last.
Finally the snow and scree and endless rivulets of meltwater gave way to patchy grasses, then expansive alpine meadows with
a riot of brilliant wildflowers. Stupefied, Hannes gazed at the colors, drawn to them. Ahead, through his tears, he saw cream-colored
dots, moving shapes that his weary and disoriented vision finally identified:
sheep!
Dozens of them.
Hannes left the rocky pinnacles behind, stumbling, falling, and sliding over a last patch of snow into the steep meadow. He
rolled onto the cushioning flowers and grasses, breathing hard, sobbing. Eventually, he got to his hands and knees and looked
up. Like a miracle, he spotted a cottage built from fieldstones. A tiny curl of smoke rose from the chimney.
Hannes lurched to his feet and stared. Surely he was hallucinating! But the cottage remained there, surrounded by languid
sheep.