At The Adreot (24)

I arrived into gloom, a grey light, not long before dawn.

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My ears popped, adjusting to the higher air pressure at my destination. I arrived into gloom, a grey light, not long before dawn. The wide courtyard of the farsenderie was surrounded on all sides by small doorways, each with signs above showing the names of far-away places in various scripts, some with murals of some building or natural wonder at their destination. 

A few lamps offered inadequate illumination. I found it odd, considering the reputation of the place, that none of these were arcane. 

Above the courtyard, vast awnings kept out some of the night chill, and muted the pre-dawn light.

I knew which passageway I needed to take, thanks to the map I'd studied, even though this was my first time in Ukunal.

Outside the vast stone farsenderie, the light was stronger. I could already see the amber colour of the sandstone the whole city was built from. The sky shone like a sapphire, and only a handful of stars were bright enough to still be shining. I spied the Moon high above the buildings, an opal half-circle.

The streets were quiet, but not deserted. There was business to be done at all hours, it seemed. 

As the light grew, I followed the unfamiliar street until it joined a canal, with lush and verdant gardens on either side. The road was supported by a low bridge. I leaned on the railing wall for a moment, looking up at the Tower, the Adreot. Somehow, it was the source of all the city's water. The topmost spire stood like a needle, and below the main tower were wide buttresses clothed in greenery. 

A cart trundled behind me, and as I turned the bearded man driving the cart waved casually to me in greeting. "Beautiful morning!" he said, in Anesaal.

Distracted by that, and the two de-horned antelopes pulling the laden cart, I managed only a nod in reply. The ancient tongue of the near-mythical Mages of Old was a living language here, not some dusty relic relegated to the dustiest tomes in the secret vaults of the Black Isle. 

I walked on, past gardens and orchards, beneath fruit trees planted along the middle of the street, past strange many-tiered houses with green terraces on every side. 

The Adreot was my destination, of course. As I approached, I passed the wide arches of shaded colonnades. The trickle of water was all around, and the air was now humid and full of fragrant scents that I didn't recognize.

The morning sun lit one side of the Tower, making the great archway leading into it all the darker. 

In the center of a great dome-ceilinged hall was a heavy ring-shaped table, and in the central hole of the table stood a man who gave me a careful smile as I approached. 

He had an impressive black beard with carefully arranged swirls of grey. His bald head was covered by a small ceremonial hat which I realized resembled the shape of the Adreot itself, but made from coils of wool or some similar fiber. 

"Greetings," he said, in Anesaal.

"Good morning. Please -- this place is the Adreot, is it not? I am — not here before." The words felt strange on my lips, and seemed to carry a strange heaviness, as if they were used to being used for magicks of great significance, and they resented how much I was mangling their power and dignity. 

"It is."

"This is a letter for Ollyna of Azillan. She has rooms here, does she not?" I pulled the letter out of my breast pocket. 

The bearded man showed no concern about my bookish accent or poor phrasing. He seemed to consider the matter of Ollyna, the idea of her, as if referring to some arcane record of things. "She does, although she is not here at present."

I had known that already, of course. She was still far away, in that place she should not be. This was another test, a couple of tests wrapped into one: the Lanstone had relayed at least some of the truth from the letter Mother had written to Alariyon, this part, about her maintaining a home here, and now this man had told the truth about Mother's absence. Sometimes the best questions to ask were the ones you already had the answer to.

"I want that she receives this letter. It can be so?"

"I shall make certain of it. She shall receive it when she returns to Kunal."

I was confused. "Kunal? Not Ukunal?"

The bearded man smiled. "It is the same. 'Ukunal' is like 'Great Kunal', or 'Kunal with the long history'. 'Kunal' is what we speak. Kunal or Ukunal, it is all the same."

It truly was a living language then, not quite identical to the Anesaal of the dusty old books. 

He held out his hand.

I believed him, or at least I believed in his calm bureaucratic competence. I handed it over.

And then the letter was gone. I detected the slightest of waves of force through the ether, and only because of my proximity. He had farsended the letter, presumably to Mother's chambers. 

I was surprised that a man, here in this place ruled by women, had such finesse to his arts, had access to the ether at all, considering how all the menial roles in this citadel were carried out by men. This man before me seemed to straddle the menial and the privileged. But then, perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that even some servants were accomplished mages, in this fortress of magicks. 

My thoughts took only an instant. I nodded my understanding, and thanked him.

His reply surprised me more than anything else had. "May the Mother guide your path."

The 'Mother' in question was 'The Mother of Light', an Eastern religion, yet here I was, directly south of Kinona. Again, a moment of consideration told me that a matriarchal religion in a matriarchal society was no oddity at all. It occurred to me that the old inn in Peledar was much more of an oddity, and now I wondered about its origins, as obviously ancient as they were — the building had subsided almost as deeply as Azillan itself, into the soft coastal soil Peledar was built upon. 

As the sun rose ever higher and stronger, I retraced my path through the pretty streets of sandstone and fruit trees, back to the hulking farsenderie. 

The lamps had been extinguished, and the awning now gave protection from the building heat. I located the particular farsender I needed, and headed across the courtyard to that doorway. I noticed that the lamp beside the door was not a natural lamp after all, but a subtle magick designed to mimic the mundane. 

I entered through the open doorway, and a disinterested clerk, a young man with barely any beard, bade me sit for a moment, if I would be so kind.

I obeyed, mainly for the expediency of compliance.

When the young man finally looked up, he registered only a momentary surprise at my white hair and strangely amber eyes. I told him my destination, and he took my payment. He left the room with it, and moments later returned to beckon me into the second room, before returning to his desk and his supposed work. 

The farsender was an ancient woman with ebony skin and hair as white as mine. She gave me an appraising look, and I imagined that she discerned a great deal in that moment. But she didn't say a word, merely indicating, with a wave of her hand, the tiled design on the floor beside her where I should stand.

I obeyed. Within moments, I felt the ether wrapping around me, and in the last moment I was still there, she looked at me, and graced me with a nod and the slightest of smiles, as if she approved of what I was about to do. 

Continue reading with Part 25.