City at the Top of the World: A Cirsova Branching Path Adventure Read online

  City at the Top of the World:

  A Cirsova Branching Path Adventure

  City at the Top of the World:

  A Cirsova Branching Path Adventure

  P. Alexander

  2014

  Copyright © 2014 by P. Alexander

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to places, events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  First Printing: 2014

  Cover Art: SelfPubBookCovers.com/yvonrz

  www.cirsova.wordpress.com

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank those who have followed and commented on the Encyclopedia of the Cirsovan Empire and to beta readers, Random Wizard, Jeffro and Dither: I may not have followed all of your suggestions, but I certainly appreciated them and your candor. What you didn’t see make it here this time may well find its way into future

  volumes and future adventures. I would also like to especially thank James Hutchings, whose writings on the fictional world of Teleleli inspired me to dust off my old notes on Cirsova and actually start writing about it again.

  Preface

  City at the Top of the World is the first published book in the Cirsova setting. You will bear with me, I hope, as this is not only my first ever attempt at a branching-path style adventure book but also one of my first (published, anyway) full length stories.

  Those of you who have followed the Cirsova webpage in its early days as a setting blog rather than a gaming blog may notice a few discrepancies in the names for places used there and here. City at the Top of the World takes place in the far distant past of the continent, long before the Empire, long before the Akhirs settled in the heartlands, and long before the Northern Kingdom was destroyed by the endless winters and ever-encroaching sheet of ice. As such, readers unfamiliar with the setting ought to have no barriers to entry while readers who have read the Encyclopedia of the Cirsovan Empire will find a few delightful Easter eggs. Whichever reader you are, I sincerely hope you enjoy this little book!

  ***

  Aeryn’s stomach turned and knotted as her room shook. Nearly a week had passed since she had been taken by those strange pale men and placed upon the sky sail, but she still found herself unadjusted to the traumatic and unnatural sensations of flight. No one who was taken by the slavers of the north was ever seen again.

  The tall men with fair skin and golden hair would speak in a silvery tongue that no one but the elders understood, and the elders were rewarded with bangles and crowns and chains the color of those foreigners’ hair for telling the people that all was well and those who went with the fair men went to somewhere far better: the kingdom of the gods, land of dreamers!

  When the Northmen spoke the tongue of her people, the words came out garbled and wrong. Her people’s speech in the mouths of these strangers frightened her. “Fear not our fair neighbors,” the elders would say. “They are our friends and allies, brothers of the tribe!” The promise of a life outside the harsh deserts, away from the endless droughts and famines in the Land of the Eye was not entirely unappealing.

  Aeryn knew better than to believe the elders’ lies, but she also knew that the wealth provided by these northern men would be used to buy much needed food and textiles from the great port city to the east. Why had her people so foolishly chosen to remain in the Land of the Eye, where the sun burned down and scorched the earth and the earth’s people? The yora of her village, an ancient ebony fellow who had travelled as far as Xeln in his youth, spoke of the will of the Eye that watches the desert peoples from afar, but to Aeryn, the only ones watching her people were the alien men from that northern kingdom whose name was awkward and insensible on her tongue and the tongues of her tribesmen. To them, they were merely the Great Dreamers. And they were great indeed, for had they not dreamed this magnificent and terrifying vessel that rode the skies as swiftly as a camel upon the sands?

  That she would not come back, Aeryn was certain. Her eldest sister, Velina, in the blossom of womanhood and soon to be betrothed, had been taken, never to return. That had been many seasons ago and one of her earliest memories of the white men. Her uncle Ashoor had not returned either, though he seemed… Excited? Yes, excited to have been given the chance to ride the air with the Dreamers as he had kissed his wife and his sister, Ti’ala, Aeryn’s mother, goodbye before leaving the tribe forever. Ti’ala had wept when Aeryn was selected by the Elders – an ancient driftwood staff, adorned with blue feathers of the Akaka, was waved over the heads of the chosen from the anxiously waiting crowd, signaling their doom that they were to spend out their days in a distant land which none had seen and of which only fabulous tales were told – and given the dark green garbs of slavery (a tradition of her own people, not the pale men). The collar had been placed about her neck, another symbol of her fate, and she was taken on board the strange vessel.

  Her quarters were not uncomfortable, but insufferably dull. She had been furnished with a small cot, a bedpan, a table-desk, and a chest, where several sets of clothes were kept, neatly folded. It was odd, she thought, that the fair men had so many outfits of the slave green clothes for her, though they were of much finer make and material than those her people sent her with. Had they assumed that this was the garb of her people and simply adopted it? Her only pleasures were the small port-hole window in the paneled wooden wall of her cell and the meals which a young boy – another slave perhaps? – brought to her with some regularity.

  The evening meal, which would be delivered soon, Aeryn judged by the position of the sunlight pouring into her room, arrived each day with a small bottle of a strong aperitif. The boy had told her it would help her sleep. It did, though its side effects often included wild and vivid dreams.

  As they had sailed the sky, Aeryn had seen the desert fade into jungles then grasslands, then mountains, then forests, then valleys, with each day bringing a new biome for which her people had no name. These sights were of a terrifying beauty to her. She could have never imagined that she would ever set foot in such strange lands to see them, yet now she saw them through that tiny porthole with the eye of an Akaka. Sometimes she could not bring herself to look out the window. Sometimes it was too terrible a reminder of how far from home she was, but other times it gave her an exhilarating pleasure, imagining she was some great yora who had transformed himself into a bird. Was this how the Eye saw its people?

  Look out the window

  Sleep until dinner arrives

  ***

  The young boy opened the door slowly, peering in a bit before coming fully into the room. "Evening meal, ansi," he spoke in his soft, childlike voice. Aeryn gathered that this was a term of endearment, meaning something like, but maybe not quite, sister. Though they could not understand each other well when they spoke, Aeryn had grown somewhat fond of the boy, Khiur, and his fondness for her was made quite obvious by his blushing and polite mannerisms.

  The boy placed a lacquered wood tray with a covered plate, a glazed clay mug of water and a small stoppered blue bottled on the desk. He removed the cover to reveal a still steaming bowl of soup or stew and a roll.

  "Thank you, Khiur," Aeryn smiled, for a moment feeling that she was no slave, but a pampered emira, to whom meals were brought by a handsome young page. The feeling was brief, though, and she knew that her fate was no better, if not worse, than this lad’s. Though he seemed to have some degree o
f freedom to move about the sky sail, her certainty had grown that he was a slave bound to the vessel. The boy, who was still a few years from manhood, had told her that he had been taken from "the Nest". Aeryn had no idea where that was but knew that he was not of the desert peoples of the south. While he was not as pale as the Northmen, he was much fairer than she or her people and had a light brownish blond hair. She looked at him longer, perhaps, than she ought to as she mused on the vast differences in the appearances of the races of men, causing the boy to turn away in embarrassment. In that moment, something caught his gaze outside.

  "Top of the world," Khiur pointed out the window of Aeryn's cell, his voice filled with a mixture of fear, wonder and hope. "We are here!"

  "So we are," Aeryn murmured, knowing that her long journey and heretofore pampered captivity were reaching their end. What her future held within the dark jade towers of the Northmen's city, she could not know. She dismissed the lad, who locked the door behind him. It was too much to hope for that he should leave the door open for her escape. And if he did, where would she escape to? She was on a ship sailing the breeze to the far end of the world, thousands of miles from any home she had ever known. All that was left was for her to eat her last meal and await the inevitable.

  The soup was savory, filled with a meat that reminded her of the stewed meat of desert boars. Her younger brother To’a, who was perhaps Khiur’s age, had just led his first hunt for such a beast, and memory of the celebratory feasting came to her with each bite she took. After a few bites steeped in the flavor of memory, Aeryn could eat no more.

  She drank the mug of water and then eyed the translucent blue crystal vial of the strange liqueur the fair men provided with her evening meal.

  Drink the strange liqueur

  Do not drink the strange liqueur

  ***

  Aeryn looked out the window. The sun had already sunk below the broken and surreal horizon, casting an unearthly pink glow upon the broken crags and summits. Or was there any sun at all? Her sense of time was all muddled. Had her evening meal already come? No, it hadn’t. The land hung in a strange twilight, both brighter and darker than she supposed it should have been, with the moon, looming evil and pale – pale as the men who had taken her from her home – over the spires of a great city.

  At the top of the world, it was said, the Dreamers had their greatest city, where they dreamed the dreams of the gods. One of the Elders had told her that the Dreamers had dreamed their very cities out of the earth from nothing, so great was their power. When they closed their eyes, Aeryn wondered, did they open the great Eye which saw them? It would explain how they knew where to find the towns and villages of the desert peoples and who they knew had been chosen for the exile. Chosen. She was Chosen.

  Many of the Elders argued that it was an honor to be chosen by the pale dreamers, for those chosen would see the most splendorous sights (“what holds more splendor than a dream and what are the dreamers’ cities but dreams turned to stone and steel?”) and would live among the man-gods. Those who said such things were always men, and only those were eager to be chosen. The women, when they heard such stories, would give grave looks, and pull their young daughters close to their robes. When no men were around to hear, they would wail and cry together, repeating the names of those who had been taken.

  She had experienced no mistreatment at the hands of the pale men, but Aeryn knew that her life was no longer her own.

  After some time, a knock came upon her cabin door, timorous and weak: the young boy who was arriving with her meal.

  With a hollow clanking, the boy’s key worked the bolt of her door. The method of delivering meals to slaves (or to her, at least) was incautious; the door would open, the boy would walk in and deliver her platter to eat at her desk, pleasantries might be exchanged, the boy would bid his leave, close and lock the door behind him. Whether this was her captors’ magnanimity or confidence that their slaves might not escape, she did not know.

  The black spires of the great City were closer and larger than before. They were circling in descent. This would be her last meal upon the sky sail and her last glimpse of the world from the free eye of the Akaka.

  “Come in,” Aeryn bade.

  Accept meal and wait for the sky sail to land

  Try to overtake the servant and escape

  ***

  Aeryn sat up in her bed, drenched in sweat. Sometimes the bitter-sweet liqueur had brought wonderful, beautiful dreams, other times nightmares. The most frightening part of any of them was that they always seemed so real.

  The constant vibrations had stopped. Had they arrived? Surely they must have. It was a queer feeling to no longer be moving, tossed about by the winds. The stillness left her stomach strangely sick. Or perhaps it was the drink of the Dreamers.

  Out her window, she could see nothing. Aeryn had arrived at the city on the top of the world.

  A loud banging on her door startled her.

  “Arise, we are here,” a voice from without boomed such that it seemed to rattle her dishes. Aeryn looked down in brief panic before realizing she had slept fully clothed, overpowered as she was by the drink; though a slave, she kept some small dignity as the door to her chamber unlatched and opened to reveal her, a token, a thing to be had, to the tall, long-faced pale man whose straw hair fell about his shoulders. “It is time for you to go.”

  Follow

  ***

  After a few uncomfortable moments, during which the nervous and trembling women sized one another up, Aeryn raised a hand, flat-palmed, in the greeting of her people. “Aeryn,” she said, pointing to herself.

  The woman responded by raising a closed right fist across her breast in salute. “Elinka. Do you speak the ‘tongue’?”

  Aeryn thought her accent incredibly peculiar, yet she understood the words of this woman as though they were in her own speech. “You speak the desert oddly; you are of Pa’el Noor?”

  “I am from Orshi, the nested river,” the woman called Elinka said, shaking her head. “The drink of the fair men… Shuul, they call it. Wyhossa who drink it understand them and each other in time.”

  “Wyhossa?” Aeryn cocked her head.

  “It is what I heard the Northmen call us,” Elinka explained. “One told me it meant ‘those who are below’.”

  “If the Dreamers’ city is truly on top of the world, then we are all below them, I suppose.”

  Elinka laughed. “You are from the deserts; that is far to the south, across the plains and jungles from the Nest. Please, tell me of them! Travelers from your lands are rare in my country.”

  Aeryn quickly warmed to Elinka, who seemed as fascinated and charmed by Aeryn’s exotic beauty, her stories of the Land of the Eye and the proverbs of the yora as she was with Elinka’s descriptions of the Orshiano River that cut through the mountains and forests and ran into the Dawnsea. They talked for what must have been hours, though time was immeasurable with the constant mix of pinks, yellows, and purples in the sky giving no indication of day or night, making up for their days spent in silent isolation on the sky sail. They laughed, they hugged, they cried, they became as sisters. Eventually, the topic of their abduction was broached.

  “Why did the Northmen come to Orshi to take you?” Aeryn asked. “Do they come and take from you as they take from my people?”

  Elinka nodded. “They come and take a few of us every year. I had always prayed that I would not be selected. But they come with strange jewels and statues, wondrous things for which we are bartered.”

  “The Elders of Kieab spoke of the lands of the Northmen as some sort of paradise.”

  “No land can be paradise if you can never leave it,” Elinka said.

  Elinka looked as though she was about to speak again when an unearthly sound reverberated through the halls of their crystal prison. Though it was like the tinkling of a glass bell, it shook her with a loudness surpassing that of the great bronze gong the Elders of her tribe would use to call the people together
.

  With a ghostly quiet, several Northmen filled the hall, opening the many cages and placing leashes on the captives. Elinka tightly held Aeryn’s hand, never looking away while the pale men hooked and fastened the leather straps to the metal rings of their collars.

  The pale men led Aeryn and Elinka out of the purple geode then towed them off in opposite directions until Elinka’s hand slipped from Aeryn’s.

  Follow the Slaver

  Insist on Going Together

  ***

  Aeryn lifted the corner of the crate she had hidden under. Cool air wafted in, refreshing her, for she had been somewhat stifled.

  Certain that no one was in the cargo hold with her, she quietly overturned the crate so that she could make her way out.

  Unfortunately, Aeryn was unaware of how swiftly and quietly the pale men of the north moved about, so she did not know that a pair were on their way to the cargo hold to search for the escapee that the drugged lad had warned them about.

  Aeryn was seized in the arms of a tall man as she turned the corner of the storage nook and ran right into him.

  “You should not have hurt the boy, sehr,” the fair man said in a voice with traces of disappointment. He bound her hands and hooked a strap to the metal ring on her collar so he could lead her from sky sail’s hold.

  “That one might be dangerous,” the other fair man said, grimly nodding at the man who held Aeryn’s leash.

  “This wyhossa will be kept apart from the others,” her captor replied. “She is needed. The stress of the journey has affected her. She will be fine with rest.”