Kidu had always wanted to see the wonders of the world that was beyond the Scales. His first marvel was the white towers of Lanfydhall that sat atop the mountain over the Sea of Firgan. It was a city built to reflect light in all parts of the day, which justified its nickname of the Shining City.

After the council, he had left with Edmon and Seordmeister Arthero, and journeyed east past Ronynhall. While in the military fortress of Ronynhall, he was as treated to watching ten thousand archers train in a single formation. He had never seen so many people move in such unison.

However, as he traveled further east, his breath was truly taken away when after days of travel, he arrived at the Cleaving, the expansive canyons that separated Kienne from Aredun.

Though winter began to recede with the onset of spring, nothing grew as far as he could see. The land was different colored layers of wet rusty clay. The canyons seemed to stretch for miles in all directions until Kidu lost sense of the earth. If not for a single bridge that ran across the canyons, he would have truly felt lost. The bridge was originally set hundreds of years ago by Ronyn the Builder and was the only way the two kingdoms of Kienne and Aredun connected. It was a wooden bridge on seemingly endless arches, wide enough for four horses riding side by side.

Kidu, Edmon, and Seordmeister Arthero rode along the bridge which stretched for five miles. It passed over the Boiling River, the longest river in the world that ran the length of the entire continent from the Withings in Kienne to the waterfall that spilled into the sea by New Hearth in Aredun.

"Your people settled here, when these fields were all green. The Greenfields, it was called then," Edmon told Kidu as they rode across the bridge. "When your ancestors left the desert wastelands of the north, they were called the EnKai, or the First Migrants. When the Great Cleaving happened and the earth quaked and split, volcanoes drooled molten fire into the river, turning it hot and giving it its name—the Boiling River. All fled east into Kienne, which was a young country then. Including your people. That’s when your people became the IrKai, the Second Migrants. Do you know the words of the old language?”

“No,” Kidu said. “The old language never really persisted. We’ve inherited much of the culture of Kienne.”

“And why wouldn’t you? Kienne’s King Ronyn received all the refugees fleeing from the volcanoes and earthquakes,” Edmon said. “The refugees had established themselves firmly in Kienne through their ethnic communities, businesses, schools. Kienne benefitted from the influx of languages, religions, and cultures. Alas, exactly one hundred years later, King Menfryd didn't have the same view as his predecessors. His shortsightedness saw only foreign bloodlines spreading in his kingdom so when he saw the population continue to grow, he banned all refugees from his borders.”

“Our history is complicated,” Arthero said. “Sometimes glorious, sometimes violent.”

“Menfryd expelled the descendants of those families from a hundred years ago,” Edmon continued. “It was easy to find them, they were mostly established in the Promise. That’s why it was called the Promise, because Ronyn set aside that land for the refugees. Until it was taken away.”

“So that is why we are called the SanKai,” Kidu said. “Third Migrants?”

Edmon nodded. “King Menfryd later would be called the Cruel for banishing his own people from Kienne. He was the inadvertent reason for the four kingdoms being founded. Menfryd the Cruel is the reason your people settled in the Scales as SanKai.”

"Lanfryd the Uniter was the reason," Kidu said. "Our people wandered for a while, but when Lanfryd became king, he granted us the Scales. We remember the leaders that pulled us together."

"History will judge us on that as well," Edmon said. “And it all started here, in the Crossing. Seemingly endless canyons splitting the earth in two during the Great Cleaving nearly 1700 years ago.”

“You would have done well in the history exams if you were a monk,” Kidu said.

Edmon laughed. “History is only useful if it gives you perspective.”

Kidu looked below at the river, which looked like a stream from that height. "The sight of the river makes me feel small, but traveling on this bridge makes me feel big.”

“That’s perspective.”

Kidu reached into the inside pocket of his coat and retrieved a small book bound by five brass rings. He thumbed through its pages. “Master Rengu gave me a copy of the Book of Five before I left Angshar. There is a passage in the Book that says:

Chaos is eternal and inexhaustible.

It spins around the world without a body.

From its dark source we feed,

and we give the nourishment a shape:

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

the Five Pointed Star.

With the Five Points,

the wise draws from the eternal chaos

and spans a bridge across the black chasm.

“I wonder if the author of that passage ever walked on this bridge. It’s a feat of people against the odds given to us by the gods."

"You truly do marvel at the world," Edmon said.

“I've spent my entire life studying books and living through other people’s words,” Kidu said. “The Five teaches us about the five paths of all men. The Farmer, the Merchant, the Poet, the Warrior and the Architect. I've studied these paths for so long that when I witness the work of real Architects, it is as if the intentions of the gods reveal themselves through creation.”

They continued over the bridge until Arthero raised his hand to stop. He looked out at the distant stretch of the bridge. "Riders approach," he said.

There were two riders bearing no colors or banners. They wore simple white cloaks wrapped around their bodies, stained from travel. Both had broad brimmed straw hats. From what Kidu could tell, they were tall and one of them held a wooden stave.

Arthero started his horse at a slow pace toward the riders. Edmon and Kidu followed closely behind.

The white riders were pale and clean shaven. As they neared, one raised his staff in greeting. Arthero halted his horse and waved in return.

"Did you come from the Gildemanse?" Arthero asked.

The rider that waved nodded his head.

Edmon moved closer to Kidu. "I don't think they are Aredunian."

"Are they Yghrs?"

"Yghrs look like SanKai, for the most part," Edmon replied. "These two...look different."

The two riders continued on, smiling. Kidu noticed that they had no hair on their faces, including eyebrows. One of the riders paused at Edmon.

"Are you lord of the eastern Capital?" he whispered.

The whisper unnerved Edmon's horse and retreated several steps. "I am Steward of Lanfrydhall, if that’s what you mean."

The rider sniffed the air and smiled. "Sarvamang means that," he hissed before turning his head away. The other rider looked Edmon in the eyes and then at Arthero's. Neither looked at Kidu.

“Sarvamang?” Edmon repeated. “Is that your name?”

The riders did not answer, but rather continued on past them without looking back.

They watched the two pale riders shrink away toward the east, toward Kienne.

"Do you recognize the region they are from?" Arthero asked.

"Perhaps from Old Menathinion," Edmon said. "Though there are several regions of Aredun of which I have limited knowledge."

"Something about them doesn't make me feel right," Kidu noted. "The way he spoke reminded me of someone else."

"Let's keep moving," Edmon said. "Lingering at this height is making me dizzy."

They picked up their pace and continued down the bridge. Kidu's thoughts got lost in the riders and he ignored the expanse of the canyons.

As they neared the end of the bridge, they came to a stuccoed building flying the Aredunian banner of golden flags on a green hill. "A flag of a flag," Arthero said. "Only in Aredun." Three Aredunian guards in half mail came out of the building. One of the guards waved at them to halt.

"Your name and business in Aredun, my lord?" he asked.

"You know who I am and you know my business," Edmon told the guard of the Crossing.

"I only imagined that when the Kiennese invasion came, there would be more than three riders," the guard joked. "Don't be too sour from my japes, Lord Edmon. We don't get many visitors on the Crossing. Still, three riders on the road to the Gildemanse will not do. Perhaps you will wait for an escort?"

"I have a Seordmeister from Kienne and a SanKai monk," Edmon said. "I think I am safer than most."

"What do you mean you don't get many visitors?" Arthero asked. "What of the two fellows with the white cloaks?"

"No fellow in any cloak came through this gate," the soldier said. "Are you sure they didn't come through your side of the bridge? Best keep a watchful eye on your borders. Since the rout in New Hearth, we are all to exercise more caution."

"Rout?" Edmon asked.

"The jungle heathens came out from the Purge and attacked New Hearth, felling the castellan," the guard explained. "The city stands, for now. The heathens returned to the forest."

"I would burn the whole damn forest," Arthero said.

"Aye, I would burn a lot more," the guard agreed. "Regardless of this fearsome company you keep, we will give you escort to the Gildemanse. It will not be said we sent you along and you got lost in the Cleave."

Edmon nodded and the three companions rode past the gate, escorted by one of the Aredunian guards. The path veered south toward a small hill.

"Two guards left to watch over the Crossing?" asked Kidu. "If there truly was an invasion, a band of farmers with pitchforks could overtake the bridge."

As they reached the top of the small hill, Kidu saw the military encampment on the other side of the hill. Hundreds of tents, stations and barracks lined both sides of the road. The Aredunian soldiers came out of their tents to watch them ride by.

"No, a band of farmers could not," Edmon said. The encampment spread out like a small town. Kidu had never seen so many horses. There must have been hundreds, if not a thousand. Some galloping on their own, others being ridden while formations were being rehearsed. He looked out in the flat distance and saw the Gildemanse lit by the sun.

The path ran south along the canyon. The lands turned to fields, and the fields turned to farms, and the farms turned to villages, but the Gildemanse always jutted from out on the horizon.

"Aredun is governed by five principal states," Edmon said. "We shall stay within the Kingsfelt, the state governed by King Padrig."

"You should know that I learned all of this as a child," Kidu said.

"It isn't your knowledge of geography I am advising you on, but rather your sense of politics," Edmon continued. "If you think Kienne is wrought with power games you will find that it is but a taste to how wretched politics can really be. Five states ruled by four governors and a king, plus a senate put forth by those rulers to set law for the entire republic that every governor feels he is above. Add to the mix an unpopular boy king and you have a country ripe for the Isnumurti for the picking."

“Or for Kienne.”