Session 14 Recap

Read aloud at the start of Session 15

When last we left our heroes... they came down at last from the green and deathless wood into the valley of the Wanlecheyth, and there found the river-town of Wanlunthara: quays and ferries, bird-beaked boats, and Star-folk going up and down the water as freely as birds. Yet even here the road eastward had begun to divide the hearts of men. The ferryman spoke of the Giver and the Great Return — of a people made worthy again to cross the Outer Ocean and come home to the Isle of the Stars. But when the company warned him against it, he only looked at the wealth of the Hills of Jade and trusted in the promise.

They had little in that country but silver, and silver was worth far less there than jade and uncut gems. Yet at last, after a costly exchange and much ill-advised bargaining, the ferryman carried them over for seventy-five pieces. On the far bank Thargash looked out across the plains and said that the road before them lay farther east than he had ever been. In their own age, those lands would be deep in Nalshbori country; now they were open and green, and the Hills of Jade stood somewhere ahead beneath the sky.

For eleven days they followed the Jade Road. In its early days they overtook a slow caravan of pilgrims, a hundred strong, all bound for Sothalkarr and its coming feast. Among them was Anaris, a young musician and Fateweaver of the old arts, who explained the quarrel of the age. The Old Faith watched the stars, heard their music, and remembered the exile of the Star-folk. The Homeward — the Slāgiri — believed that the time of testing was ended: that the lost greatness of Feihoth might be restored, and the road to the Outer Ocean opened again. Anaris did not speak as an enemy of either party; she only hoped that the forgotten arts might be found wherever they had gone.

She gave Ineia a map of the Seven Cities, and a small shining copper bell of her own making. Its clear ringing, she said, could raise the spirits of the weary and keep darkness from fastening upon the soul. Thargash, who had made himself scarce while the company were making friends, admitted afterwards that Anaris carried an anvil of great power: an anvil that might alter time itself. He had considered stealing it, and had decided that an anvil was not easily smuggled beneath a cloak. The company, to his disappointment or relief, chose not to go back for it.

Then the road turned hard. Thunderstorms came one after another; the ground became mud, their clothes and boots were soaked through, and their strength bled away by degrees. Ineia’s living flowers withered the moment the company left the Star-Wood, though she kept them carefully all the same; and in the winter plains the company found only a few cuttings of silver nettle. At every turn they pressed on, because Inayin’s eyes still wept blood, and because the city ahead held the name Afālnela had given them: Rinsos, priest of Raos in Sothalkarr.

So, wet, cold, and near worn through, they came at last to Sothalkarr. The city rose upon the highest of the Hills of Jade: terraces upon terraces, stone trees of granite and green jade, silver fountains among their boughs, and crystal domes taking the light of the setting sun and breaking it into colours. It was a time of feast, and the city was full beyond counting with pilgrims and music and flowers — though here and there a red vulture still shone at a throat.

At the gate a stately woman named Vianrei, of House Neras, saw the strangers in their travel-stained clothes and offered them welcome. She brought them to a house which proved to be a mansion, gave them food, fires, warm rooms, and clothes fit for a feast; and when they named Rinsos, she promised that he might dine at her table that very night. She asked only one thing in return: that they should not mention their errand to the priest if Lord Akdhēras came to dinner.

And so the company rested at last beneath the stone trees of Sothalkarr, with the full moon above the hill, a city in festival around them, and Rinsos’s name waiting at the end of the evening.