Upon emergence from the Shdrast Mountains the traveler descends to the town of Duvust, a modestly sized place that serves as the capital of the kingdom of the same name. This little state occupies a slender crescent of land at the base of the mountains where melt water from the high snows offers sufficient moisture to grow crops and breed livestock across a short expanse of fertile territory before it fades out into the brown wastes of the desert beyond. Though the kingdom offers a pleasant face where it has been tamed and turned to productive purposes by human hands, the land is naturally dry. The streams are thin and cold, and their output vanishes into countless vegetable terraces, irrigation canals, and pale shallow ponds that dissipate to empty mud pans in the heat of summer. Even as the Dragon Expedition passed them by they were already nearly lost for the season.
Though much of the time this little kingdom seems pleasant and even prosperous, its existence is in fact precarious and perilous. Should sufficient snow fail to reach the eastern edge of the mountains above, the melt that follows will fail to allow those little lakes to form. Under normal circumstances these blossom with huge numbers of shelled crustaceans emergent from the soil upon the coming of water and serve as critical food for vast numbers of birds that stop here during their northward migration. These fowls are a critical source of meat to the people of the Foothill Kingdom, and should the snows fail they do not stop, resulting in terrible famines. Many forms of fowl pass through this place, great in both size and numbers. It is said that the ducks and geese are so numerous that an arrow shot above the lakes can strike through as many as four birds in one shot if the archer is strong enough. Perhaps an exaggeration, but one of our crossbowmen made the effort and took two in his first shot before Erun ordered him to cease. Larger birds are also found in great flocks, raucous cranes and stolid storks bend and bob across the shallow plays, colorful and twisting with the evening shadows. Such large winged forms, gathered in their masses, are a loud and stunning sight. The local people harvest them for feathers in addition to meat, and the warm blankets and soft pillows fashioned in this manner form a considerable portion of their trade both back to the Sanid Empire and onward to Shdustu.
Small and tightly compacted villages are scattered across this countryside. High walls of rammed earth surround each one, made by stomping together soil between a frame of wooden boards. These endure well against heat and cold, so long as they remain dry. An easy choice in this place where rain is rare. Each village relies upon a stream descending from high above to fill their terraces, water their fruit trees, and grow the waterside reeds they use for roofs, baskets, and furniture. Wood is rare upon these hills and must be harvested on the mountain slopes at risk of bandit attack and is not used for building as a consequence. They make few bricks, for the stony ground of this region does not produce quality clay. Such little grain as is grown here is sown in thin riverside strips, a single crop of winter wheat harvested each spring.
Beyond the immediate environs of the villages the land is open, with scrub and thin short grasses providing limited cover. This is used not to graze goats or sheep, but instead in the breeding of heavier mounts. Each village specializes in the production of a single animal. At the highest altitudes they breed yaks, on the middle slopes donkeys, horses, or mules, and at the lowest reaches edging into the desert, camels. Generally, they will not eat the flesh of these animals save when one perishes through accident, but instead keep them for trade, for which each village sends a portion of their herd to the king as their tax payment. They do not have oxen, tilling the small fields and terraces by hand. The taxed animals are driven to Duvust once each year in late autumn for an annual trade fair.
Though ruled by a king of their own lineage, Duvust is an official subordinate of the Sanid Empire and pays an annual tribute to his Imperial Majesty while also hosting a visit from the Imperial Inspectorate during the yearly trade fair. This tribute is taken in warhorses, of which fine stock is bred in this region, and many of the Winged Guard ride mounts born upon these slopes. During the reign of Enduring Peace this town represented the furthest east outpost of imperial authority. Though the states of Shdustu were nominally claimed as tributaries, and Duvust appointed as the official grounds for meetings of representatives between these states and the empire, no official from either party had been sent for generations.
The town of Duvust is not large, being placed high in the hills to better serve the needs of travelers and traders. It is blessed with a wide expanse of level space, a rarity in this rolling landscape, to its north that has been packed flat by the stamp of centuries and is used to hold the annual trade fair, a livestock market of truly vast proportions. This event draws upwards of ten thousand persons, more than doubling the town's population during ordinary times, and perhaps more than one hundred thousand animals. People travel from every village in the small kingdom to attend, but also from Nla-Shdrast across the mountains and Shdustu across the desert, and even from the distant lands to the south who lie beyond the scope of this chronicle and the knowledge of the empire.
Residents of this kingdom strongly resemble the people of Nla-shdrast in physical bearing, and it is said that brides and grooms cross the mountains with some frequency. Despite this congress, they are clearly not a branch of the Sairn people. They speak their own peculiar language, one unrelated to Sairn. Instead, I believe it is derived from the tongue of the Kharal of Shdustu, though greatly altered by their long exposure to imperial discourse to the point that it can be written in imperial script. Our yak drivers knew this language and conversed freely with the locals as a consequence. Following their departure, the expedition made do with broken Sairn or equally strained Kharal, according to individual capability. I, being a speaker of both, often found in conversation with the people of Duvust that I would stumble over some word or phrase clearly taken from one of these tongues and switch over to that from which I had been speaking as I continued. The resulting bizarre discourse seemed to greatly amuse our hosts. Their records are kept in the Sairn script and numerals, but using their own language, as mentioned, a very rare case that I do not believe is permitted elsewhere as it enables the locals to cheat the empire and other outsiders. If the empire exerted greater influence here I am sure such an offense to scholarship and proper record-keeping would never be permitted.
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Despite this, the links to Shdustu are perhaps stronger than those over the mountains to the west. The most obvious case is the names used here for the three divines: Nakiat, Tipapaku, and Ukit, which originate in Shdustu. Though these labels sound foreign to the Sairn ear at first, the differences are ultimately a minor matter of pronunciation and the faith of these people, and their ritual practices, register only minor and cosmetic changes from those conducted in the Core Provinces. The Princess Romou assessed their temple and observed a local service in detail. She reported no heresy. A few adjusted syllables being well within the permissiveness even her strict orthodoxy accepted.
A truly impressive quantity of fodder is regularly transported to Duvust in order to supply livestock exhausted by their crossing of either the Shdrast Mountains or Shdus Desert and all them to recover for journeys onward. Tiny seasonal streams, too limited to support villages but capable of vast grass growth following spring floods, provide this hay, and those streams are kept clear of tree growth to sustain this. Those who cut hay here have truly exquisite technique, better than I have observed elsewhere, and work fast and in precise coordination with the donkeys who haul their wide-wheeled carts.
The stopover in Duvust is absolutely necessary for any caravan or traveler. Bodies of humans and livestock alike are strained by the desolate lands surrounding it and spend much time and effort in recovery and re-provisioning, for another difficult passage awaits beyond. There is, consequently, a continual flow of trade through the kingdom, even apart from the great annual livestock fair, which the Dragon Expedition did not witness. Curiously, the king, in those days a man named Crenumul, maintained strict restrictions upon the licenses of merchants. His rule was that animals could only be exchanged by members of the royal house, and all other trade licenses were given not to his own people, but foreign merchants, mostly Sairns of the Empire such as Master Lam – who possessed such a permit – or Nikkad traders from Shdustu. Master Lam explained to me that this monopoly was a method used to impoverish the people of the Foothill Kingdom and thereby prevent any from rising in rebellion. Merchants passing through this narrow place can, if they are able to avoid the troubled famine years, earn vast profits. Few who do so remain, preferring to retire to estates in the Sanid Empire or the cities of Shdustu rather than stay in this dusty and drab place, and there are no palaces in the city beyond that of its ruler. In this way the king sustains his wealth and keeps his rivals far away, though it seems a most miserable measure.
Over the long-term I have considerable doubts regarding this doctrine of poverty. Duvust is isolated, but not beyond the reach of the warriors of the Kharal, who raid with some regularity in years where the rains are good and the passage across the desert is easier. I saw the marks of fire and sapping upon earthworks, and many a villager with weapon scars. Many of these warriors arrive each year for the great fair, and if it is the will of their khagan or they are simply sufficiently angry, they can and have acted to depose the king and find a more pliable ruler. Crenumul, when we encountered him, had been on the throne a mere six years, and in the past century no Duvust king reigned for more than twelve. Several of these monarchs sent requests to the Husun Emperors for military support in order to safeguard trade, but while provision exists for the purchase of mercenaries using remitted tributary funds, no members of the imperial army corps have been dispatched at any point. The Imperial Court wishes to keep war on the opposite side of the mountains.
In this environment the arrival of the Dragon Expedition was rather broadly misinterpreted, and Erun was pressed into tense negotiations with the king's guards. This discourse expanded to include the king himself, as he had seemingly endless questions and much disbelief regarding our presence. Crenumul, who I observed in audience, did not represent an impressive figure. He was fat, wracked by gout, and preferred the company of his concubines to that of his ministers. One of these, a distant cousin and husband to the king's younger sister who served as the chief livestock seller, had him killed two years later and placed his own son on the throne of the Foothill Kingdom. This official's name was Lnarud, and he was a careful and shrewd negotiator who knew animals well. He would spend nearly thirty years as the true power in control of Duvust, though he never sat the throne.
That position, as master of the royal stables and controller of the livestock monopoly, is a critical one, for the livestock needed to cross the mountains are not the same as those used to cross the desert. Exchanges are an absolute necessity. Our yak driver was paid and discharged here, and Master Lam proceeded to exchange all of our mules and packhorses for a mixture of camels and locally bred hardy donkeys. The trade was not advantageous, for though Master Lam bargained well, Lnarud delayed the transfer of the camels for several days in order to insure the men of the expedition expended much of their pay indulging the limited and drastically overpriced pleasures of Duvust. Five days were expended in the town, with order degrading day by day until Erun had one of the mercenaries savagely beaten for drunkenness and blatantly threatened to decamp to surrounding villages and acquire the necessary animals under the imperial mandate. Such a high-handed move offended the king, but he dared not object openly in the face of the imperial seal. Such is inevitably the fate of places like this, too small to achieve true strength of their own and too isolated to join in a protective alliance with others. Perhaps, could the mountain bandits be expunged from their hidden lairs, this kingdom could be brought within the embrace of the Sanid Empire, but any such undertaking would be very costly and take generations.
It was possible to make purchases using imperial coinage for declared value here, rather than measurements of metal weight. This was the last such place where that was possible and represents a boundary of a different sort of influence. Many purchases were made as we discarded clothing suited for the gentle imperial spring and frigid cold of the high peaks for garments suited to the blazing heat to come. As this exchange, like the swap of our livestock, is a common one, we were able to purchase outfits in the style of the hot southerly provinces of the empire rather than those of Shdustu. At Erun's order the soldiers and officials, including myself, acquired such garb. Most of the caravaneers and mercenaries, by contrast, chose instead to adopt the loose, knee-length robes common to Shdustu in pale shades designed to ward off the sun. Only the mystics refrained from changes of wardrobe, as whether an apothecary, healer, priest, or sorcerer they universally retained the distinctive costume identifying their specialized trades.