THE STARS faded from sight as the sun began to light the sky, the sister moons running to hide behind the curve of the world. Sunrise brought the chirps of birds and the calls of men and women throughout the pilgrim campsite. Dirt doused the night watch fires. Feedbags slipped over the necks of the horses. Cookware and sleeping rolls stacked the backs of wagons. By the time the sun crested the tops of the hills beside the road, wheels turned, hooves plodded, feet shuffled, and the pilgrim band made way again, heading for the coast, to follow the dream and the new star in hopes of meeting with their prophet and crossing the great Zha Ocean to the Forbidden Realm.
Abananthus swatted a deer fly at his neck and sniffed the crisp morning air. He loved the morning hours before the world fully woke and the heat of the day settled upon the land.
Morning prepares the blessings for the day to come.
He smiled and flicked the reins against the back of the horse drawing the open wagon he rode. Luntadus and Lantili still slept, each curled under an arm of the dozing Jadaloo, gently rocking in the back of the wagon. Kellatra walked ahead of the cart, speaking with one of the pilgrims, a woman who had joined the band the prior day. She always did this: interviewing the new arrivals, learning what they knew, what they had heard. She made it sound like idle curiosity to compare the experience of the dreams. It also gave her an opportunity to learn if anyone had heard of a woman and her family being sought for vague reasons.
Rankarus walked behind, chatting with a group of men, keeping them entertained with stories of life as a merchant woman's husband. They had become a family of merchants who sold their shop of dried goods and imported spices to travel the pilgrim path and see the destiny revealed in their dreams, a story that Rankarus told with great enthusiasm. Kellatra had at first cautioned him to curb his usual gregarious nature and to hide within the traveling tribe, but he had explained that the true art of hiding among strangers relied on becoming their friend. A friend, particularly a charming friend with a beautiful wife, two playful children, a lovely niece, and a helpful uncle, would seem like people worth protecting in the event someone arrived one day searching for the owner of an inn and her husband and children.
The story grew easier for everyone in the repeated telling, especially as they mostly allowed Rankarus to tell it. Convincing Luntadus and Lantili to follow the ruse had proved easier than Abananthus had suspected. However, the boy and girl were both still so traumatized by the events of that night three weeks ago that they said little when spoken to by adults, and rarely mentioned their lives before the road when playing with the other pilgrim children.
The wagon tilted slightly as Jadaloo climbed from the back to sit on the driving bench beside Abananthus. Rankarus had purchased the wagon and horse the morning the inn burnt to the ground. He did not know how the couple had managed to salvage any coin from the inferno. It had probably been hidden with the book Kellatra had retrieved. He'd contributed his own savings from beneath the floorboards of his teashop to help pay for the expenses of their hastily arranged journey. He wondered what would happen to the shuttered shop in his absence.
"Today, you think?" Jadaloo stretched in the seat, working out the kinks of the long night in the wagon.
"I think so." Abananthus watched the backside of the horse, ignoring how tightly the girl's dress clung to her limbs as she moved. He'd been disregarding her attractiveness for years, but always found it more difficult when seated beside her. Odd, because he never thought of her in a romantic way. His thoughts usually noted that he might have had a daughter her age if his wife had not died. He had always wished for a daughter.
"Have you ever been?" Jadaloo asked, turning to grab an apple from a bag in the wagon. She offered it to him.
"Yes. Many times." Abananthus shook his head at the apple, and the girl bit into it. "It used to be part of the trade route I ran as a merchant guard. I visited once as a merchant myself, but the distance cut down the value of the trinkets I brought back and the journey didn't pay. I wandered closer to home after that."
"They say the trees are lovely." Jadaloo wiped apple juice from her chin with the back of her sleeve.
"The trees are merely trees," Abananthus said. "What makes the sight so intriguing is how they are placed to line the city streets and encircle the public squares. No other city does such a thing, bringing the forest into the town."
"You think she'll find who she needs?" Jadaloo gestured with her chin toward where Kellatra walked ahead of the wagon.
"I've never known her to fail at anything she sought to do." Abananthus watched Kellatra and hoped his words proved accurate. "Put your faith in the one who has proved worthy of your faith in the past," he said.
"You think she'll really give it up?" Jadaloo turned to look at Abananthus, her eyes filled with worry.
"I don't honestly know." Abananthus wiped his brow, more to cover the unease aroused by the girl's question than to remove the dust of the road from his face. "The sky is sun and moon and clouds and rain and stars while the mountain is the mountain," he quoted.
"I think you make those up." Jadaloo smiled. "That one makes no sense."
"The poet Galanoo Haas wrote that some two thousand years ago," Abananthus said. "It means some things change and some things do not. He was asking himself, am I like the mountain or am I like the sky?"
"You're a mountain." Jadaloo patted his arm. "Always dependable, you are."
"I was the sky and became a mountain." Abananthus fidgeted at the girl's open affection. "You're a bit of a mountain yourself, coming along on a journey like this." Kellatra and Rankarus had tried to hand Jadaloo and the cook, Taosee, each a pouch of coins to travel to a nearby town for safety. Taosee took the coins, kissed Kellatra's hands, and ran off into the night. Jadaloo refused. Their arrangement included room and board, she had said. With no inn and no beds, she'd settle for the back of the wagon.
"I owe her. And him. They've been more family to me than any family I ever had." Jadaloo wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. Dust from the road. "Why'd you tag on? Not that I'm not glad you did. Good to have a face you can trust nearby."
"The same reasons as you." Abananthus glanced back at the still sleeping children in the back of the wagon. "You protect your family no matter what, even if they aren't your blood."
"Who said that one?" Jadaloo asked.
"Well, that one I did make up." Abananthus laughed, his hearty voice finally rousing the dozing children to wakefulness.
In the late morning, they passed an old man and a boy sitting under the leaves of a tree, eating apples. The boy waved at every group of passing pilgrims. Most of the pilgrims waved back. Lantili and Luntadus waved to the boy, happy smiles on their faces. A few of the pilgrims called out for the man and boy to join them, but the old man shook his head. Abananthus felt he knew the man, had seen him somewhere, but could not place his face. Something about the man brought to mind his wife's death. Had the man been present in the crowd? So many years had passed. Surely he would not look the same.
He let the thought fade as they continued beyond the man and boy, leaving them behind to whatever purpose they were set about that day. At midday, he gave the reins over to Jadaloo and stretched his legs, walking beside Rankarus for a time. Rankarus usually walked beside Kellatra, or sat with her in the wagon, but instead, he walked with the rope of an ox in his hand, guiding the animal along as it pulled one of the pilgrim band's small carts.
Rankarus and his wife had not been happy these last weeks. The pilgrims would never have noticed, seeing only a cheerful, loving couple, but Abananthus had noted the small things that spoke to the rift between them. Hands not held after dinner. Kisses not traded in passing. The things he had seen them do without thought for over eight years. There were reasons for the distance between them, none of them good.
"Will you tell her?" Abananthus reached back to stroke the ox's snout.
"Tell her what?" Rankarus gave the rope a tug as the ox slowed to lick at Abananthus's salty palm.
"Why you are afraid to go to the City of Leaves." Abananthus wiped his slobbered-on hand on his breeches.
"Why would I fear the City of Leaves?" Rankarus ran the fingers of his free hand through his hair in a carefree gesture.
"Why, indeed?" Abananthus reached down to snag a stray stalk of rye growing wild by the roadside, sliding the end between his lips to chew on it.
"We are heading to the City of Leaves." Rankarus played with the end of the rope, wrapping it around his wrist.
"Closer every day." Abananthus spoke around the stalk of rye as he chewed. He had always liked the flavor of the grass, savoring the bitterness on his tongue. "And every day, you become more ... unlike yourself."
"I am myself. How could I be other than myself? You make no sense. As usual." Rankarus grinned and reached up to pat Abananthus's shoulder.
"A man is as a man acts," Abananthus said.
"Now you make even less sense," Rankarus said.
"Maybe so." Abananthus shrugged. "She will learn what troubles you eventually. This business of the book distracts her now, but it will not do so forever."
"She spends too much time with that book." Rankarus kicked at a rock in the path.
Kellatra had pulled the book from its hiding place each night to examine its pages by lantern light in the wagon, out of sight of the other pilgrims.
"The book presents a problem," Abananthus said. "You know how she is when faced with something she does not immediately grasp."
"A short list of things." Rankarus snorted in annoyance.
"She has a keen mind." Abananthus looked to his friend. "Did you ever hear of another inn with so many books?"
"For the guests." Rankarus laughed and shook his head. He looked skyward and sighed. "All gone now. Nothing but ash. All of it."
"The inn, yes, but nothing else." Abananthus pulled the stalk of rye from his mouth and cast it aside. He suddenly found the bitterness more than desired.
They walked in silence then, the conversations of fellow pilgrims, the squeak of the cart wheels, the heavy breathing of the ox, the clomp of hoof and foot along the packed dirt of the road filling the quiet between them. After a time, he patted Rankarus's shoulder and wandered forward to walk beside Kellatra. They made idle conversation about the weather and the road and the pilgrims and the children until he could no longer avoid the topic he'd sworn not to mention.
"When are you going to tell him?" Abananthus's shoulders sagged with his query.
"I can't tell him." Kellatra frowned up at him. "You know that."
"What do you think he will do when he finds out?" Abananthus asked. "He will find out, you know, if he hasn't guessed already. He's not as dense as he pretends."
"No. No, he's not." Kellatra crossed her arms with a sigh. "But he would not understand."
"A secret shared is a secret gained," Abananthus said.
"A secret shared is a marriage ended, you mean." Kellatra sighed again.
"He will not leave you." Abananthus filled his voice with certainty. "He loves you. No matter what you are. You have The Sight. We are in Juparti now. It is considered a blessing here."
"I know how it is viewed in Juparti," Kellatra said. "That is part of why I cannot tell him. If I do, then I must tell him the truth of why I fled to Punderra and hid as an innkeeper."
"Why did you flee?" Abananthus had been considering what past events might have led Kellatra to hide her gift and leave her homeland. While her Juparti origins would have been curious, the Keth councils of Punderra would have welcomed her into their fold. The syncretic beliefs of the Keth religion made them more than willing to accept an adept with The Sight from other faiths and dominions. Instead, she had become an innkeeper and a wife and mother. She could not safely practice The Sight outside the Keth councils, but they had no prohibitions against marriage or children.
"Family difficulties." Kellatra looked down to where her feet trampled the dust of the narrow road.
"Ah." Abananthus had no idea what these difficulties might entail, but understood them to be great indeed if they could force a woman like Kellatra to abandon her homeland. "And you fear he will not appreciate these difficulties?"
"Exactly." Kellatra did not look up from the road.
"Your husband is many things, some good, some bad, but he is not miserly, neither in coin nor in his love of you and your children. He will forgive you anything. Has he spoken a word against you for the loss of the inn?"
"No." Kellatra lifted her eyes from her feet.
"Has he questioned you for keeping hold of a book that people would have killed you for?" Abananthus turned his head to watch Kellatra's face.
"No." Kellatra frowned up at the cloudless sky. "Strange that."
"Has he criticized your plan to return the book to the Academy?" Abananthus asked. Kellatra had insisted that the friend who had left the book with her for safekeeping, the man named Menanthus, the man turned to stone, must have stolen it from one of the libraries of the Academy. Whoever wanted it, whoever risked sending a soul catcher to chase it down, would not leave anyone who had seen it alive. The only path to safety lay in returning the book to its owners.
"After his repeated suggestions to sell it or burn it, no. No, he has not." Kellatra brushed her hair back from her face as a sudden breeze pushed her locks across her eyes.
"Then why do you think he will question you about this?"
Kellatra said nothing for a long while as she walked. Finally, she spoke a phrase he knew well.
"The road ahead is always unknown, but it can be traveled either alone or with others." Kellatra turned her gaze to Abananthus's eyes. "You said that the first day we met."
"I remember." Abananthus smiled at the memory. His first night in the inn, weary from travel and searching for a hot meal and a strong cup of wine. "I complained about the stew."
"Not enough spice." Kellatra laughed.
Abananthus chuckled. He liked his food with flavor and heat. The redder his face got, the more satisfying he proclaimed the meal.
"You should not wait until the waiting makes the task harder," Abananthus said. "A soup over salted is a soup thrown away."
Kellatra made to reply, but a loud murmur ran back along the caravan, silencing her words. Curious comments crescendoed among the pilgrims as the convoy crested the top of a rise in the road to reveal the next way station on the group's journey.
Kahara Nattaa. The City of Leaves. Named not for the leaves of the thousands of trees that lined its major streets, but for the millions of pages of paper in the books of its libraries. The City of Leaves held more libraries than all the other cities of the Iron Realm combined. Poems and ballads told of more books lining the shelves of the City of Leaves than stars lining the heavens at night. The great Library of Mysteries sat in the middle of the Academy of Sight, the only nonreligious place for the study of The Sight in all the realm, and likely all the world. In this city, Kellatra would try to find the owners of the mysterious book.
Abananthus hoped she would find what she sought before the people who desired it tried to kill them all again.