The Pilgrimage

 They rode south past peasants working the belts of cultivated land around fortified villages, over trackless wastes that in morning were concealed under thick fog such that the mounts appeared to run over clouds and in evening rippled with golden light where the sun played over the wild grass. The next day a long procession of silhouettes threaded over the world's rim, men and pack animals heavily laden as they traveled the opposite way. The groups met at the edge of a temporary lake created by the downpour and they drew water and cleaned themselves before watering the animals, which rolled in the mud and lay panting at the edge of the little oasis. A stranger broke from the caravan and approached. He was a lean, sinewy man whose calloused hands and leathery skin attested to a lifetime of hard labor outdoors. He sized them up.

“Howdy,” said Tex.

“My brethren would like to know if you will join us for supper.”

“Sure,” Tex answered for them. “Nothing like a good potluck. Though we haven't got a lot with us.”

“Your presence will be enough,” the man said and left.

“Not too chatty, is he? Well, free food is free food.”

Soon the air filled with the rich smell of wood smoke and cooking meat. The travelers were pilgrims from the distant south and were attired in the voluminous robes and light cotton headscarves of desert nomads. A venerable prophet of theirs had told them of an impending disaster that could only be forestalled if they carried their idol to a place in the north where the sun never set and a mountain stood alone in the sea, split down the middle like a tree struck by lightning. They were to build on one peak a tower for sky burial and on the other a shrine from which their god would await the coming darkness and parley with it on behalf of man. He had described the vision with such vividness that they had fashioned a palanquin for the idol and departed at once, selling their possessions and abandoning what could not be carried with them. Neteth asked what lands they had passed through.

“First we traveled through the kingdoms of Alkwacha and Rhasoum, where the land is rich and the going was easy,” said the man they had spoken to earlier, who was called Naftan. “Then the tribal lands of the Lavunae, the Fuantsi and their kinsmen, the Carnascan plains, Outer Nitogarn and the mountains beyond. We came out of the passes into the plateau where Narakur once was, then descended through the necropolis of Horon into Zannu, then the Pellian League, and now here, with a long journey yet before us.” When he had finished the prince leaned forward, hungry for more information.

“What do you mean by your remark on Horon? I was told it is the largest city left to Nar,” he said.

“If so they're in a sad state. It was deserted when we passed through.”

“Deserted? How recently?”

“I couldn't say. We had no desire to linger there.”

“You'll have to humor me, but I don't see what the big deal is,” Tex whispered to Neteth. “I get that nobody likes these people, but...”

“The land itself is cursed. Ever since their empire's downfall it's been an abode of demons. Nothing good has ever crawled out of those ruins.”

“I see,” said Tex. “We have one of those too, except we call it St. Louis.”

“What of the countryside?” Neteth asked their host.

“What few people we saw kept their distance.”

The pilgrims brought out the food in the dishes in which it had been cooked and each person ladled as much as they wanted into their bowls. Their hunters had taken an aurochs the day before and the stew they made from it was thick with meat, carrots, onions, and mushrooms. Cloves of garlic bobbed in pots the contents of which seemed inexhaustible.

Neteth looked at the palanquin on which they bore the idol, covered with a blue and white sheet fringed with golden tassels. Naftan said that it had to be covered lest mortals look upon the ineffable and be struck dead and that in their home country they had always kept it sequestered in an inner sanctum, tended to by blind priests. It was an unfathomable honor to come so close to the divine, but no honor is without price, he said. Those who seek the greatest glory must always make the greatest of sacrifices.

They parted the next day, each wishing the other well in his endeavors. Though Neteth would not say where they were bound, he thought the older man knew, for he offered the blessings of his heathen god and repeated his injunction that what is worthy is accompanied by pain. The way ahead led into the Pellian League, rough country dotted with the clifftop citadels of city-states that distrusted one another nearly as much as outsiders and banded together only out of a sense of grudging necessity. The Pellians had a fearsome reputation in battle yet rarely ventured beyond their own lands, paranoid that any foreign adventure would be punished by their rivals at home. It was an uneasy peace, maintained according to the locals' maxim that one sword brings tyranny while two bring peace.

The land rose slowly to imposing heights so that when they looked back the way they'd come it seemed small and void of detail, the way it must have looked when the gods shaped the earth. The sides of the hills were thickly forested and often so steep that they had to lead their mounts on foot, negotiating stony ridges and narrow gorges the sides of which were banded with red and white sandstone. At the end of one such gash in the landscape they saw through a gap in the trees an inlet on one arm of which the long, thin strip of a town was laid out, fishing vessels shuttling between the piers and the rich blue waters of the deep. The wind ran up the slope and brought with it the refreshing smell of the sea, pure air that made the prince feel at last like he'd passed from the realm of the familiar into something different and altogether grander in scope. A new world, he thought, with its own possibilities. Then they walked together down to the village to arrange passage for the next leg of the journey.