The dragon sent me south, to the Isles of Ashinya. There, I was to speak with the elders, who kept an artifact they called the Dreaming Eye in a temple on the largest island. With their help, I might be able to use it, and it would open the way to the other world that I sought. I was unsure exactly how it worked, but I trusted the word of the dragon.
“You cannot travel as I do,” she said. “You are human, and you will require human guidance. Pay your obeisance to the wise women of Ashinya, and they will help you.”
I spent the rest of the winter learning the stars of this strange new land, so that I could find my way south. The archer Hualing spent many a patient hour teaching me to read a map. My people had no writing, and I asked her why she could not simply tell me the route to take, but she insisted. I learned to recognize rivers and mountains drawn on paper, but the names inscribed beside them remained a mystery to me.
I had only to journey south until I found the River Mani, which I would know by the distinctive yellow moss that grew on its banks. I could then follow it to the coast. The map went in my saddlebags anyway, when winter ended, and I would refer to it from time to time.
“I hope that we will meet again, someday,” Jin said as he and Heishiro took me through the temple’s gate, the morning after the first spring rain, “and I wish you well on your quest.”
“I’ll miss having you around,” Heishiro added. “Everyone here is boring. No offense, Jin.”
Jin’s face was stoic, but I heard the exasperated sigh. “You are always welcome here, Heishiro. As you will be, Eske, should your path ever lead you back.”
I thanked them both, and bowed deeply, and then I took Bran’s bridle and set off down the mountain path.
“If you see your man again, tell him we said hello,” Heishiro called after me.
Though he could not hear me, I promised I would.
The road south was gentler than the one I had taken a year ago, coming from the west, and as the snow melted and the land turned to emerald green, I made my way to the hill country. Rain fell through the days and into the nights. I had a broad straw hat and a waxed-canvas tent, as well as several blankets for Bran, and so we stayed tolerably dry. Still, it was a difficult path, and we slipped on the ever-present mud and wound our way through narrow, rocky passes and over trees felled by the winter’s weight. Though he was a steppe pony, used to flat terrain and dry air, Bran performed admirably. I, on the other hand, misread the map, and it took us longer than the planned two weeks to find the river.
I had not spent a winter in the mountains of the north for nothing, and I managed to keep myself and the horse fed and watered and relatively warm. The river brought a renewed sense of purpose, and it gave me fish, after I fashioned a net out of my spare shirt.
Soon after, I found a road beside the mossy bank, one that had been cleared by human hands. By what I could see of the sun between bouts of rain, I could tell it led south. It was unpaved, and my boots sunk into the mud with every step, but it was high enough above the river that it did not flood while I walked it. I began to see settlements—wooden houses with thatched roofs in small clusters, standing on stilts that suggested flooding was a frequent occurrence. The people were dark-haired and wore bright colors and straw hats similar to my own, and they fished from small canoes and planted rice in the floodplain. They spoke a language I did not know, one that sounded quite different from what I had learned at the Dragon Temple. I maintained a good distance from them, and avoided the places where they fished and planted, so as not to disturb their livelihoods.
I was becoming accustomed again to solitude, after so long in the company of others. To stave off madness, I spoke often to Bran, in the tongue I had learned from Aysulu and had spoken in Phyreios. I suppose he did not understand any more than he would have in any other language, but it was a comfort to me. I had a direction in which to walk, and a planned end to this part of my journey. I would not fall into the endless gray sky just yet. Still, I dreamed of earthquakes, and awoke in the dark believing that the earth had fallen on me as it had when the great worm had emerged from the Iron Mountain.
Forty days after my departure from the Dragon Temple, when the rain had returned after a full morning of sunshine, I saw three men on the road. I took Bran’s halter and moved him behind me, intending to walk past them as I had everyone else I had encountered, but they stood abreast, blocking the path. They carried spears in their hands and swords on their hips, the hilts emerging from their woven grass cloaks. Their hats concealed their faces.
I stopped where I was, within shouting distance of them. I took my axe from my shoulder and rested it on the soft ground, my hand on the head. The rain was cold against the exposed skin of my hand and arm.
They called out to me, in phrases I could not understand. Then, in the language of the mountains, that was spoken at the Dragon Temple: “Outlander! State your business.”
“I am going south to the port,” I said. “I am merely passing through.”
“A simple traveler does not go about so armed,” the first man said. He raised his head to get a better look at me, and he had an overgrown black beard and a sharp, hawk-like nose. The others looked to him for direction, though I could not tell any difference in his dress and composure compared to theirs.
Their spears were sharp, and their swords were well-made, judging by what I could see of their tasselled hilts. “I might say the same thing about you,” I said. “Am I breaking any laws by walking this road?”
The men all gave a brief, mirthless chuckle. “Not yet,” the leader said. “But I would be careful as I traveled farther south, if I were you.”
“Why is that?”
His mouth set into a grim line. “The imperial military is not as lenient as we are.”
“I’m afraid I know little of this land,” I explained. “I come, most recently, from the Dragon Temple, and before that, far to the west.”
The men exchanged a look, and whispered to each other in an unfamiliar tongue. They looked me up and down, noting my clothing—courtesy of the temple—my stature, and the tattoos visible on my arms and the sides of my head.
“Very well,” the leader said. “You may pass. Do not trouble the villages, or we will know.” With a nod, he signaled his companions, and they picked up their spears and moved off the road. In the blink of an eye, they disappeared into the trees.
I continued on my way. For the remainder of the day, the road was empty of other human beings, and the rain continued to fall. I set up my shelter at nightfall and relieved Bran of his portion of our supplies. His steps were growing slow, and his nose was damp even out of the rain. I worried he was ill. Aysulu would have known what to do, but alone, I was at a loss.
He rallied somewhat in the morning, and the rain had stopped, but the river was swollen up to the road, lapping hungrily at the soil. Bran and I picked our way through the thick brush on the other side.
We came to a cataract, tumbling over a cliff half again as tall as I. At the bottom, the road had washed out completely, leaving nothing but a wide, muddy maelstrom that gave me pause. I had completed worse climbs in the mountains, and with careful steps and Bran’s cooperation, we reached the bottom of the rise.
Here, the mist gathered as thick as smoke, clinging to my clothing and dampening my skin. I nearly collided with the people at the edge of the water before I saw them.
I apologized, but the man seemed not to understand me, as he placed himself between me and the others, a youth of perhaps twelve and a woman heavy with child. At their feet were buckets of early roots and a few thick slabs of crystallized honeycomb, attached with ropes to a wooden yoke. It was early spring, too early for a honey harvest, according to the wisdom of my people, but perhaps things were different in this faraway place.
I tried the language of the Dragon Temple, and the trade tongue of the steppe, but these people recognized neither. Through some gestures, and the clearing of the mist as the pale sun climbed higher, the man indicated that he was trying to return to the village that emerged from the fog on the other side of the swollen river. The bridge that he and his family had used to cross earlier had since washed out. Now, they were stranded, and the village was far enough that they could not call for help.
The river churned, but it wasn’t deep, and I had swum much more dangerous waters in my time. I retrieved a javelin from my saddlebags and affixed to it a length of rope the temple had given me for climbing. After testing the javelin’s altered weight, I threw it across the breadth of the river. It stuck fast into a tree.
I set my axe down and kicked off my boots. I was about to tie the remaining end of the rope to a branch, but the man took it from me and held it with strong, callused hands. The woman handed me another rope, and with that and the attached line as a guide, I swam across the river.
The water was cold, but I had sailed the great sea of ice, and after the initial shock I felt my instincts return to me. I cut a diagonal path through the roiling water, moving with the current as I crossed. I emerged wet and muddy, but none the worse for wear, and tied the second rope to a higher branch of the same tree.
Quick and nimble, the man climbed onto the first rope and, holding onto the second, made his way across. He bowed hastily in my direction before running up the hill to the village.
I waited. The woman held Bran’s halter, keeping him at arm’s length. He stood placidly by and nibbled on the grass at her feet. As Aysulu had promised, he truly was a gentle horse. The boy approached him slowly, and as I watched, he worked up the courage to touch the horse’s ears.
The man returned, and with him came a dozen villagers, carrying rope ladders and a small, lightweight boat. This was their river, as volatile as it was, and they knew it well; in less than an hour they had constructed a bridge out of the ladders that even Bran was willing to cross. The boat, poled by a strong young woman, ferried the man’s wife and all their burdens.
She gave me a large piece of honeycomb and three of the tubers in thanks. Though I understood none of her words, the message of gratitude—and the encouragement to continue on my way, and not expect hospitality from the village—was clear.
I moved on, following the road from where the old bridge had ended. The rain returned in the evening, but the sun came up, warm and strong, the next morning. Bran looked better, and even I felt as though at least a few of my troubles were well behind me.
The road led to a wooden palisade. Behind it stood a modest town of thatched roofs, with a water wheel turning slowly at the edge of the river. Four guards, carrying spears not unlike those of the men who had stopped me on the road some days ago, stood in front of the gate.
On one side of the town lay the river. The other had a small area of clear ground that quickly gave way to thick forest. I might have been able to go around, and find the road again later, but it would add days to my journey, at best. At worst, I might have gotten lost, falling prey to an animal in the forest or injuring myself trying to cross the river. I approached the gate.
Two of the guards left their posts and intercepted me, crossing their spears in my path. They wore long robes of deep blue silk under brigandine armor, and elegant helmets with plumes of red feathers. They spoke to me, but once more, I could not understand them. I told them so in the language of the mountains.
The man on the right, whose spear had a long red tassel attached just below the head, recognized what I said. “Your papers?” he said in the same tongue.
I did not know what he meant. I went to my saddlebag and produced the map, the only paper I possessed.
He held up a hand and shook his head. “Your traveling papers.”
The map was a paper, and it was for travel, but this was clearly not what he wanted. I put it away. “I am on my way south to the port,” I said. “I have no other papers, no books—there were books at the temple—”
“You don’t have any papers?”
The other two guards from the gate came up to me and moved to block my way on either side. I was not to be allowed through, and neither would they let me find an alternate route. Slowly, so as not to startle them, I took my axe from my shoulder.
“Give us your weapons and come quietly,” the first guard said.
This was, perhaps, a misunderstanding, and they were willing to subdue me without killing me, so I left the leather sheath on my axe when I swung at him.
Back to Chapter I: The Dragon Temple
Forward to Chapter III: Banwa Province
Thanks for reading! I promise a fight scene next time!
If you’d like to support what I do, you can toss me a couple dollars on Ko-fi. If not, you’re welcome to read for free anytime.
Space Whales Press 
2 thoughts on “Journey to the Water Chapter II: The Road South”