5.I

Today I am rested but still aching from climbing a mountain worth of stairs. But at least I am well enough to be able to put down to parchment what was spoken of in the presence of the God Serpent Seer of the Mountain Shialtza and his environs.

Beyond the torture that was the steep stepped climb the structure of the monastery itself was from without nearly a fortress.

As much cut from the mountain as built by stone laid upon stone.

We entered however after our ascent into a flattened garden, past a passageway which held no barrier of wood or metal.

The idyllic peace of it after the arduous trek up the stairway came as a bit of a shock.

As did the warmth which nestled within behind sheltered walls.

The lack of guards at first confused me then but reflecting a day after I have come to understand.

If any force of arms had sought to invade that monastery I am now certain the climb alone would sap any vigor for the fight they might have held.

This walled refuge on a mountain peak was much like a broad arcade with tall walls set more to guard against wind than any conceivable assault and many doors and passages into smaller structures or chambers, with gardens flourishing and tended by the strange robed figures which moved smoothly all around us.

Of note was the quieting of the wind and the silence of all figures present.

Through this outer section we were taken deeper by direct road.

The inner circle of the structure was beyond another wall and stilled the air even further.

Furthermore I saw that none of the robed attendants around us spoke or even seemed to breathe as I could hear, nor signal in any way though they moved and acted in concert.

I saw not the faces of anyone but me and my father anywhere on those grounds. But the tending of the lands and plants was well done and with the care of tender masters in their art.

Beyond vegetable gardens many small trees were being trimmed back into fantastic and elegant shapes set in pleasing positions among the many paths and smaller buildings.

It was a soothing place even while we were led along the path and up more star blighted stairs.

After ascending to the next level of the monastery, father and I began to apprehend what had summoned us.

For even though we were at least forty feet distant on a straight cut path from the building which surrounded it we saw the God Serpent.

White coils looped and shifted in evidence above the walls of the central structure and wings which shined with purest silver feathers spread into the heavens to extents I could not properly judge.

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The chill of the sky vault was so close in the monastery at this level it was only by the grace of it being midday and the walls that sheltered us that we were not chilled to the bone.

This closeness of the vault grew even greater when we passed elegant arches within the courtyard itself, where if I am not a fool I believe the structures and roofing of the stonework itself was holding the weight of the vaulted heavens!

It is to this closeness to the eternal and infinite sky that I attribute the impossibility of describing the full extent of the God Serpent.

Shialtza, Seer of the Mountain.

Filled that courtyard with coils and pressed the sunlit sky itself out and upwards with the billowing of his wings.

His face was somewhat like that of a horse, or perhaps the faces of the spiral horned southern stags.

The eyes were black and upon his head was a turbulent mane of white which moved even in the dead still air of that place.

A swept back line of this mane traveled down the back of the neck and along every visible coil of shining white scales.

When he spoke it was as thunder and I admit that I missed the first words of greeting, though almost certainly clear and knowable they were.

He spoke in a very refined form of Kolkor.

And here I could tell even my father with his talent for tongues struggled. The words were strange and sharp from those either of us knew and what ones I could also follow were archaic and bizarre in their placing.

But as the conversation passed there was a simpleing of words that the God Serpent took upon himself to be better understood.

After we could do more than simply gawk at his magnificence the matters turned to familiar business of my father’s trade.

The serpent’s interests were predominantly tales of our homeland, what roads we had traveled and the state of the world beyond his valley.

Much of which I have already written here in my logs and I admit drifted from my attention while I beheld him.

The Courtyard which the god serpent hosted us in was by my eye’s measured at least thirty feet to a side, but the far end of it was obscured behind the pearl-white scales of the Seer.

And by roughest measure I would say he had to be at least a hundred and fifty feet in length if ever he had unspooled entirely.

However in all the time he spoke to father of our home and places we had been and ways we had passed to get there I never saw the serpent shift much from the reposed sprawl he was in at our arrival.

After the interrogation of our journeys was done the God Serpent offered to trade any goods or trinkets that interested him for what wealth he could offer.

To which Father admitted that we had not brought the full stores of our treasures to the monastery as such a climb under burden would be terribly arduous on mere mortal backs.

And that brought another surprise!

In what I could surmise from the Seer’s Kolkor and also the expressive if beastly face there was an understanding and even some contrition for that.

A thing I honestly did not expect to find in such a divine beast which brushed the very sky itself and remained unharmed.

However it promised to send an emissary down to our place of rest in the following days to negotiate trade and overlook our goods.

Such business to which Father is in fact now calling me to attend as it is catching well into the morning and sight has been made of the emissaries descending that accursed stairway!

-Excerpt from the travel log Pythra of Veracules