City at the Top of the World Read online

  Aeryn lay upon her cot, shutting her eyes. She dreamed. Not the strange and alien dreams of wild vividity that the strange liqueur of the fair men brought on, but the normal dreams, sad though they may be, of a young woman forcibly plucked from her home, her family and the only life she had ever known. She dreamed of her mother, who told her not to worry, and of her father, who told her to be strong. She dreamed of her brother, singing the songs of the hunt and his fellows clapping their hands. She dreamed of her sister, Velina, who had been so lovely and had been so cruelly taken weeks before she was to be married. She dreamed that she was not bound for the land of dreamers. Like a wave breaking upon the shore, her dream ended with a loud crash.

  The endless hum and vibration of her room had ceased. The sky ship had stopped. Aeryn got out of bed and looked about.

  She had missed her meal. It was sitting for her on the desk, but it was cold. The boy who brought her meals must not have wished to wake her, though, as her stomach growled, Aeryn wished he had. The porthole, her only view of the outside world, was shrouded in a faintly purple darkness.

  There was a heavy knocking at her door.

  “Arise, we are here.”

  The bolt on her cell door opened with a loud click. One of the fair men had come for her. The door swung wide to reveal a tall, long-faced pale man whose straw hair fell about his shoulders. “It is time for you to go.”

  Go Willingly

  Try to Escape

  ***

  The pale man who led Aeryn down the hall with some of the other captives took no pleasure in her discomfort. In fact, it seemed to Aeryn as though he held her some regard, cautioning her whenever they came to stairs, ramps or any uneven ground as they negotiated the labyrinth of jade and amethyst that formed the holding area; while he held her leash, he kept it slack, and would offer his arm for support when it seemed that Aeryn might stumble.

  “You should have eaten to keep your strength, sehr,” he addressed Aeryn in a soft monotone, helping her down a scalloped step.

  Aeryn glared at the pale man angrily; his polite manner did not change the fact that she was captive and he her captor. She would not forgive these people, she told herself. The Desert of the Eye may have been a forsaken waste, but there she was free. “Where do you take me, Northman?”

  “The wyhossa, those who are beneath, need homes in Polaris,” the pale man explained. “Beds where they may sleep and dream.”

  “And serve?”

  The pale man did not answer her.

  At last, she and the other captives were taken to a plaza, over which the moon hung like a great plate of silver on a tablecloth of gold upon which wines had been spilled. The grounds were paved with obsidian flag-stone in which Aeryn saw her reflection as though through a mirror darkly. A raised dais of green stone, in bright contrast to the glassy black of the ground and deep purples of the walls, was the central focus of the courtyard. Opposite the dais, was an ornately carved double gate, taller than three men, guarded on either side by Northmen wearing light blue armor and holding long rods tipped with what looked to Aeryn like the silhouettes of the heads of sand dragons.

  The slavers positioned the captives in a single row upon the green dais. Aeryn was roughly in the middle of this line, and she took a quick look at those on either side. There were fewer slaves, no more than two dozen, with her on the dais than she expected. Of course some must have been taken elsewhere. But why spend the effort to send magnificent flying vessels across the world to take so few if servants and labor was what they wanted?

  A Northman stood before them. He was older than the other fair men that Aeryn had seen, and his hair was whiter than it was blonde. He looked from one end of the row of captives to the other before speaking in a slow and deliberate manner:

  “Wyhossa… People from the lands below, welcome to Polaris, city of dreams, city of dreamers, city at the top of the world. You have been chosen; blessed are you. You shall aid the dreamers and aid in the dreaming. Do not fear, honored guests, for we are your servants. Today, you will find new homes with the great families of the citadel. You will be the sons and daughters of lords, and the lords shall be your servants. Do not fear.”

  Like all of the fair men Aeryn heard spoke, the words sounded strange. Wrong. The emphases were ill placed, the pronunciations all off, and the words were devoid of feeling.

  A flourish and fanfare was blown from unseen trumpeters. The great gate swung open, and the men with the dragon-headed poles stood in salute. A grand procession poured into the courtyard. Men and women, all pale as ground gypsum, their hair like beaten gold, wore flowing robes and ribbons of black and red and copper and green and fuchsia. These decadents, Aeryn decided, must be the Elders of this city. The lords who would take them as household slaves filed in two by two and lined up at the foot of the dais. They were pointing, talking amongst themselves in whispers, judging the ‘wyhossa’. After a few minutes, the lords and ladies of Polaris began to inspect, and then lead off, captives on the dais.

  Try to attract the attention of a Lady

  Try to attract the attention of a Lord

  ***

  Aeryn felt her hope of survival lay with finding a kindly lady to serve as a handmaid to. If she was humble and loyal and won her lady’s favor, she might gain what small bit of freedom one could expect from the life of a favorite servant. Even at worst, she thought, better to suffer at the hands of a cruel mistress than to be subject to constant abuse from a perverse master. She would take her chances with one of the high ladies of Polaris.

  Whenever one of the Polaran gentlemen passed near enough that Aeryn was certain his attention was on her, she would look down or away, cough or try to look miserable in general. Looking miserable was not difficult, because she was desperately hungry. The men gave her sad and pitying looks, but ultimately moved on.

  Aeryn caught sight of a rather pretty Polaran lady, whose face was like a doll’s: young, ageless, inhumanly beautiful but for skin the color of the middle-moon which no healthy desert-woman could be imagined to have. Her eyes only gave indication to Aeryn that this woman might not be a girl young as she, but they were filled with no cruelty. Nor were they empty, as were the eyes of the slavers. Not a frown-line could be seen marring her. Aeryn hoped beyond hope that this woman would take her.

  When the woman stepped in front of her, Aeryn smiled as best she could manage. If I must go with any of these strange creatures, let me go with this one, and let her be as kind as her face!

  The woman returned Aeryn’s smile. She reached from the red hemmed dolman sleeves of her many-colored gown to take one of Aeryn’s bound hands in her own.

  “Come with me.” The words came out like spider-silk, lovely, delicate and aethereal. The woman’s speech was easily understood by Aeryn, for she did not have the affectation of misinflection that seemed ubiquitous in the words of the Northmen. “My name is

  Hilana, and my home is yours.”

  Aeryn bowed as best she could with the slaver still standing behind her holding her leash. “I am called Aeryn.”

  “Welcome to Polaris, Aeryn.” Hilana kissed Aeryn’s cheek, and the slaver handed Hilana the leash. “Oh,” Hilana took hold of the leather cord and pointed to the binds on Aeryn’s wrists. “She won’t need either of these.”

  The slaver shrugged and removed the leash and wrist bindings. Hilana took Aeryn by the hand, led her down from the dais and off into the arcade beyond the massive gate.

  The streets of the city beyond were unlike anything Aeryn had ever seen. Kieab’s dusty lanes betwixt clay and stone buildings held no candle to the strange geometry of Polaris, with its triangular spires, its semi-circular crystal steps, its villas made of dark green jade, and sculpted ice fountains from which flowed molten bismuth that crystalized into tiny temples mid-air. Aeryn could hardly believe her eyes when they stopped before a spike of quartz larger than her entire village that had a palatial maze of chambers hewn within it and Hilana said “Welcome to your new home.”<
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  The interior was lit with crystals held in brass braziers affixed to the ceilings that burned like fire, and the walls demarcated the use of the room by the wisps of manganese, iron impurities, and silicates that tinted them with bright pinks and purples and yellows and added a measure of privacy to the otherwise transparent domicile. A lavishly furnished five-cornered room of rose-quartz was to be Aeryn’s bed-chamber.

  “Hilana, I do not understand. Am I not to be your slave and

  servant?”

  “No, sehr,” Hilana’s laughter was like the first moments of the season’s first rain. “You are to dream with me!”

  “I beg your pardon, mistress, I am ignorant of the Dreamers, but I listen.”

  “You will understand in time. Come with me. You must be tired and hungry.”

  Hilana led Aeryn to a wide dining hall where hide-cushioned silver chairs were placed about a long alabaster table. Fair men with gentler features than those who had brought Aeryn from the desert and fair women scurried about noiselessly performing tasks and chores in the house of Hilana.

  “Food and Shuul,” Hilana clapped. “At once!”

  Two servants ceased what they were doing and disappeared for moment into a red room off the dining hall. They re-emerged carrying trays of all manner of food, silver pitchers of waters and wine and two blue beryl vials with ruby stoppers.

  Eat and drink

  Eat, but decline to drink

  ***

  Aeryn had known women to have a tendency to be spiteful and abusive to their female slaves. She had seen haughty Ortian noble women beating their maids in the bazaars of Kieab. Though she feared the cruelty and predilections of a perverse master, she feared more the venom of a jealous mistress. She would take her chances with one of the great lords of Polaris.

  Whenever a gentleman whose demeanor did not seem too harsh looked her way, Aeryn would subtly curl the corners of her mouth into a coy half-smile. They are men like all others, she thought, seeing a few of the older pale men choose from the females on the dais. She realized, though, after studying their chiseled long faces which betrayed no hint of passion, not even the subtlest flare of lust or attraction, perhaps they were not men like all others. Her fear of this strange and alien race returned and set her heart aflutter.

  “You are to live with me,” a middle-aged man said matter-of-factly in a flat monotone that sounded more tired than cold. The slaver handed him the leash, and the man led Aeryn down from the dais. The man did not have the long hair that fell about the shoulders which many of the Polarans had; rather he wore it cropped short above the ears. Perhaps, thought Aeryn, it was meant to detract from the fact that he lacked the characteristic long face of most of the other fair men. “You may dream with us, or you may not. I do not care, but you should have a place to stay in the city.”

  Aeryn was confused by his words as he led her through the courtyard gate and into a massive arcade. She wanted to ask him many things, but each time she opened her mouth to try to speak, she would be distracted by something which she could not wrap her mind around: trees that bore bars of lead and steel rather than fruit, a neighborhood where the walls of homes were roaring waterfalls, a well that threw coins at passersby, a stone bench that recited poetry in the tongues of Ort.

  The very stones of the city speak their minds while I cannot!

  At last the man stopped in front of what had to be the most mundane thing Aeryn had seen in the city thus far: a simple house of orange-yellow brick and white mortar which, while much larger than any building in Kieab, was probably the least ostentatious structure in all of Polaris.

  “Master,” Aeryn began, finally having mustered the composure to speak. “What am I to call you?”

  “Names, names, right, names…” the man muttered, gesticulating dismissively. “Master is no name, and I am no master. Adona, I am called by those who are awake. Come in. You are home.”

  The sprawling bungalow of Adona was furnished richly with many treasures of the south. The rugs, the furniture and statuary Aeryn recognized as Xelnish, Kieabi and Bsean respectively. “I am home,” Aeryn gaped while Adona removed her leash and wrist bindings.

  “Good Adona, I, Aeryn, am of Pa’el Noor!”

  “I thought as much,” Adona remarked flatly as he discarded the vestiges of her captivity. “You have the look of one of the desert wyhossa.”

  A look of worry replaced the look of amazement on Aeryn’s face; had this man acquired her as he had collected the things of her people? A desert woman to complete his desert decor? Adona must have seen the look and understood her thoughts, for he said “You are not a prisoner or a servant here; you may come and go as you please, so long as you remain in the city. I merely offered my home to you because I thought you might feel more comfortable among familiar things in an unfamiliar place.”

  “I don’t understand, mas- Adona… To what purpose am I here? In Polaris, I mean.”

  Adona gestured for Aeryn to have a seat on a plush cushion that smelled faintly of alpaca. “You of the desert, the sailors of Ort, the men of the jungles and plains, the riverfolk of Orshi… you are young races. You are still dreaming the dreams of the wakeful, chasing the wind, riding the waves, chasing the stars. We of the North dreamed those dreams long ago. And we have dreamed much since. We have dreamed so much, there is naught else to dream but that which is wrong. The wellspring is dry, though we dig new wells.”

  “We are those wells?”

  “The Orshians are rivers, the Orti are oceans, and you are oases.” Adona picked up a small wooden figurine, a crude and simple hominid, a representation of Bassaa the Lord Camel who was one of the many thousand godheads represented in Xeln. “People here may dream thousand foot towers of blue-green gold, but have forgotten all that is true, all that is beautiful, in their decadence. There are those who think that the young races, in their innocence, will aid our dreaming.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think the people here are fools.”

  “Why did you come with the other lords to choose me?”

  “The wyhossa need homes in the city. The lords are obliged to house them. If not you, another. If not me, another. That you were of the desert had no bearing on your being here.”

  Ask about leaving

  Ask about Adona’s fascination with the Desert Peoples

  ***

  Aeryn sat in one of the silver chairs, and Hilana sat opposite her, motioning for her to begin eating.

  “I hope you find my food here to your taste.”

  “Oh, mistress!” Aeryn cried between bites, for she had been famished, “These are the most wonderful things I have ever tasted. I could have never dreamed such a feast!”

  “I’m sure you could,” Hilana replied, eating with much more delicacy than the hungry desert woman.

  They ate, they talked, they drank their wine. Aeryn told Hilana of her home in Pa’el Noor, the bazaars of Kieab, the herders of Frolna, the mystics of Xeln, and the Eye in the wastes beyond Xeln that watched her people, and Hilana listened, rapt with the fascination and adoration of a child. Hilana then told Aeryn of all the wonderful and terrible things wrought by the fair men of the north, things that were beautiful, things that were impossible, the countless and unpronounceable cities high above the simpler races of men, places where up was down and light was dark, but after extolling the virtues of all such things, she declared that Aeryn’s presence in her home outshone all else.

  “Now, let us drink and dream!” Hilana lifted the crystal bottle, removing its ruby stopper. Flattered and desiring to please her mistress, Aeryn followed suit, and both women emptied the content down their throats.

  The liqueur was much stronger than Aeryn remembered it being, and she was quickly overcome by a floating sense of exhaustion.

  “Come, let us retire,” Hilana said, as servants cleared plates away. Aeryn was vaguely aware that she and Hilana were ascending stairs and climbing into beds.

  They dreamed wonderful things
and terrible things, cities made of sand that clung from the skies, rivers that ran up the mountains and drained the seas, and men in ships who conquered the wyhossa. Aeryn dreamed some nights that she and Hilana would feast and again imbibe the Shuul, laughing, loving, dreaming, until, at last, Aeryn dreamed no more.

  The End

  ***

  The feast was sumptuous like nothing Aeryn had ever seen, and at Hilana’s signal that she should eat, Aeryn ravenously consumed all that was before her.

  During the meal, Hilana asked Aeryn many questions about what her life was like in Pa’el Noor, who she was, who her family was, everything about herself. She seemed especially fascinated by the stories about the Eye in the wastes to the west of Xeln and the yora who were taught the old ways after spending months alone in the desert. She listened like a child, her eyes full of wonder and longing, which seemed strange to Aeryn, given the marvels of the city. What was her mother’s yurt when compared to Hilana’s palace of living gem?

  “I should like to see it in my dreams!” Hilana remarked to Aeryn’s puzzlement. The doll-faced Polaran lady finished her last glass of wine then picked up the blue crystal vial, removing its ruby stopper. “Dearest Aeryn, would you care to join me in Shuul?”

  Aeryn apprehensively eyed the bottle sitting near her empty plates, remembering the bitter taste and often unpleasant side-effects of the pale people’s dessert liqueur. “Please, mistress, you will excuse me if I do not. I am very tired from my long journey, and, begging your deepest pardons, do not think it would do me good.”

  For a brief moment, Hilana looked crestfallen. “You do not wish to dream with me?” The look passed and was replaced by a look of gentle understanding. “It is okay. I am not upset with you, Aeryn. Even without you, you have given me much to dream about.”