After three days of random travel, the group came out of the northern border of Keltia-Aneya with much gratitude for the sunlight that was no longer contesting with a massive canopy. A great mountain-range that had been ahead of them when they went under those trees was now southeast and behind them; they had passed around the western edge of the mountain range whose nearest extent was called Inrakaveach.
Denziu had read tales of Inrakaveach, which was also a famed industrial theome, and zie kind of wished zie could travel there. They supposedly had one of Theoma's few roads to the deep-under, where different land gods reigned over strange lands far from the sun. It’s a someday travel, zie thought.
Ekis was on Denziu's mind that morning, too. She remembered talking Denziu's fins off about the deep-under two weeks ago on the way through Denxalue. The two flying wagons were side-by-side in the wagon train again on the walk to Xeladash.
"I'm always tempted to break away from Choave's caravan when we get here," Ekis said to Denziu. "Inrakaveach is right there! Maybe we should go there together! Your pottery from the surface world will be even more exotic there!"
"How can they appreciate paints without lights?" Denziu asked, thinking of the weight of the mountain between the sun and the land below.
"But they have plenty of lights!" said Ekis. "They have geomantic blessings of light all over, and necromantic blessings of light so I've heard, and the myrskor can give up fragments of their light magic to produce sun-bright orbs! You can buy them at the market in Inrakaveach!"
Denziu had heard plenty about myrskor lights two weeks ago, but Ekis had given up something very new this time. "What is a necromantic blessing of light?" zie asked.
"Light by which the land gods cannot see! It sounds very strange, but they are unFated lights! Dragons are Fated to be blind in darkness when the soul-lights of a necromancer are shining to show the way! Having a bunch of them in the deep-under must make Fates down there harder to weave!" said Ekis, leaning towards Denziu. Denziu imagined from her eager tone that she'd be gesticulating avidly if she weren't gripping the tongue of a floating wagon.
"Do you think the merchantgons down there would sell me necromantic lights for warming spelltiles?" Denziu asked, musing about the idea of splitting with Choave. The products of the deep-under sounded exotic enough to sell easily on the surface, if necromantic lights were a commonplace in the deep-under.
"They might!" Ekis said, "I don't know where or when it gets cold in the deep-under, but if you find a spa, they'll surely buy you out of those!"
"A spa? What's a spa?"
"Oh! A spa is a luxurious place!" Ekis said. "There’s warm and cold baths, they have mudbaths, they'll trim and buff your claws, and they stock cosmetics of every kind! I know you use your paints on yourself! I wish I could sell your paints to a spa. They'd love to use them on other dragons!"
“Mudbaths? Luxurious mudbaths?” asked Denziu, zir imagination caught. “You can get a mudbath for free in Denxalue!”
“But that’s swamp mud!” protested Ekis. “It smells awful and it’s gloopy. Spas use clean, healing muds!”
"Are there any spas on the Tachanigh-Kelkaith?" Denziu asked, thinking that zie hadn't sold the bulk of zir paints yet.
"They’re rare! Jiasote has three, because they consider them medicinal, but most theomes have none. If you still have warming tiles when we get to Jiasote, sell them there! I know you've a box full of them," said Ekis, and Denziu thought wistfully half a box, for in truth Denziu's necromantic box was a two-layered thing that was a little less than half full of the little ceramic bits that were warming spelltiles.
Still thinking of the deep-under and Ekis' longing to visit there, Denziu asked, "Do you think we'd be able to find a spa in the deep-under? Would it be hard to find one?"
"Oh, it might. They're such a waste of time, really," said Ekis a bit sadly. "Just dragons having fun relaxing; nothing gets done in a spa. But I think there's a chance! The myrghon, they don't work with their hands, I’ve heard they get fat relaxing. So there should be plenty of dragons who would want to go to spas in the deep-under! We would just have to spend a few years trading food while learning about them!"
Denziu grimaced. "The problem there is taking goods from the surface down there would require us to cross Keltia-Aneya. Again and again. For years."
"We can buy food from the Xeladash markets!"
"I think it sounds like an interesting way to spend a few years," said Denziu, "but I think I'd rather stay with the caravan going north for this run."
"Ooh, I do hope you mean that," said Ekis, beaming with excitement. "I've been trying to recruit someone from this caravan every year, Choave only does one run per annum, and so far it's been no good at all. But your flying wagon! The only way this would be more perfect would be if you were an izerah yourself. We could RUN, Denziu! Not you as long as I, of course, but we could still go so much faster, because you and I both have such very good wagons!"
And of course they did have very good wagons, and Denziu was seriously considering joining Ekis, not currently but soon.
This whole trip north had been such a beautiful change of pace! The world hadn’t exactly seemed small, flying between different theomes to meet all the farmergons and pottergons. Denziu had felt like a fast-moving dragon with active wings. It was only in hindsight that zie saw the world was so much wider still. Zie was seeing a world of opportunity opening up as zie travelled north, and zie wasn’t even flying on this trip.
Zie had no true set plans for what to do after the run to Hydalath and back was done. Working with Choave was an occasion, not a job. Each of them had some manner of employment elsewhere. They did this to travel together on an excuse of profit.
Zie wasn’t confident that zir old job of selling soil to farmergons was still there. Zie’d sold a lot of soil samples over the years. Most of the farmergons were vrash. The pottergons would still need clay, and vashael farmergons still needed good soil to till into exhausted fields, but the vrash farmergons were likely only buying in love of Denziu. They wouldn’t need more until they got rusty.
The farmergons were all Denziu's friends now, but it didn’t seem a stable employment with friendship rather than business carrying it. The few vashael farmergons of the region each benefited from several wagonloads of fresh soil every season, but some of the more roustabout vrash could provide that service as well as Denziu could.
Travelling with Ekis in the deep-under was easy to imagine as a new job thanks to Ekis' endless chatter. The untiring izerah had a motormouth to match her legs.
Xeladash itself was a bright and vibrant city with red colours predominating. The accents on buildings were generally set against red, and some buildings stood out in one way or another by bucking the trend towards red paints and red stones.
The broad roads were lined with merchantgon stalls and occasionally shops, and above these there were apartments that opened up cavernously so that dragons could fly right into the buildings to land on internal balconies. It was a city on the wing!
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There was a caravanserai at Xeladash near the harbour. It was an imposing fortification with walls three stories tall and quite wide as well, fit for the amount of trade Xeladash received. There was a vrash atop the wall, whose officious-looking armour suggested that they relied on wall guards rather than a dome to protect merchantgons here.
Choave had hurried the caravan across the city, fuming when city traffic slowed them, and sending Oghai to goad them onwards and keep their rows in position. Ekis kept up effortlessly; Denziu surprised zirself by doing fine as well. Two weeks of walking had hardened zir legs. If Choave had a reason to hurry them...
That reason turned out to be, "I don't trust this city not to steal everything we're carrying," as Choave explained to Denziu when zie was settling zir wagon into a caravanserai berth. "Any questions?"
Denziu asked, "If I find a buyer for my pottery, can I bring them here?"
"No, you may not," said Choave. "You'd best abandon hope of selling things, because Xeladash is practically a missing theome. Tasumdynal exists and yet will not ding the Fate of thieves in this city. In turn, the thieves in this city keep the city's few true laws. They want your pottery, Denziu, the tiny fraction of whose value they can get will be greatly enjoyable to them."
Denziu tilted zir head. “How do you sell Shaleara cider if the crime rate is so bad here?”
"Don’t worry about that. I do this every year, and I know I can trust my purchaser."
There was a lull in the speech, and Choave was still looking at Denziu, so Denziu said, "How about exploring on foot? Is that safe?"
Choave laughed. "Safe enough! Just pouch one of your warming spelltiles and be ready to give it up when you get menaced. They’ll let you go for a minor magic item."
So Denziu wondered if zie should stay in the caravanserai zirself, because writing off a warming spelltile was asking a high price for Xeladash, which had little wonder for zir if zie couldn't try to sell pottery and spellcharms in it. This would have been even more tempting if there had been a good and cheap eatery in the caravanserai, but there was not; they would be stopped over for anywhere from a day to six days, depending on how long it took to rent out part of a ship for the trip over the Xang Sea and the Great Lake Smaril until the League Tonturaseer, where next the group intended to make landfall.
Finding the stairs to the wall, Denziu climbed up to see the view of the city from the third story. From here, zie could take off into the air if zie had a destination in mind. How to spend the days until Choave secured for them a ship? There would be time to kill, and zie needed to find some way to do so without killing zir budget.
Although it had little to do with what made Xeladash itself famed, zie was most tempted to visit the local Library of Querent-Querent. Surely there would be one in every great city, and from there zie could perhaps study Inrakaveach and moreover the rumoured road under Inrakaveach. What was rumoured afar might be certainly known up close!
Climbing down from the walltop, Denziu inquired in the caravanserai’s office for directions to the Library of Querent-Querent. Zie was offered a map to the place, but reared back from the price tag of the hand-painted scroll, and so the innkeeper pointed Denziu to where a copy of the map was framed behind glass on the wall of the office. On this was marked various landmarks of the city, and the Library of Querent-Querent qualified. The inn-keeper also tapped a sidestreet in the shadow of the caravanserai and said, "If you're here a few days, eat here. I'm told the best place on a budget in the area is down this street. It's called The Cursed Hammer... but don't mind the name... and don't buy their alcohol."
"What's wrong with their alcohol?" asked Denziu, who wasn't particularly of a mind to try it, yet who was very curious.
"They're very proud to sell it overstrength, that's what's wrong with it," the inn-keeper said very earnestly. "I'm sure you know this - I see your little pewter charm - but you mustn't let the barkeep there or anywhere goad you into drunkenness."
"Oh dear. I'll eat there early, to avoid the dragons who eat there late..." said Denziu.
The inn-keeper nodded knowingly and said, "That's the spirit!"
So Denziu went first to The Cursed Hammer, and asked for a bread-bowl of stew with a side of a SMALL beer. There was a brief stare-down with a grinning barkeep who asked if Denziu was VERY sure... and then, guffawing, filled the order as requested. The large tankard of small beer tasted appropriately low in alcohol. The stew was filling, albeit bland; Denziu finished by mopping bits of stew off zir snout. The bread-bowl proceeded to taste better than what it’d contained.
There was a large painting of a red-feathered kalla on the wall in The Cursed Hammer. It was their most notable furnishing, Denziu thought, the room being otherwise nought but tables and a hearth, with strange-looking glowing hooks hanging in fours for lighting. The legend written under the portrait said in great curving letters, "Tasumdynal's Favour". It was a picture of a red-feathered kalla, raising a tankard of the spout-tipped sort served to kalla, whose beaked faces benefited from an aid to drinking. They looked drunk. Zie asked of the bartender, “Who is that in the painting?”
“Why, that’s Tasumdynal himself! He loves us, visits all the time!”
Under a painting of his avatar? Denziu wondered about that.
In a true missing theome, it would be ridiculous to claim the favour of a land god, but Xeladash wasn't a true missing theome. It was a negotiable theome with a land god who favoured thieves, louts, and other ne'er-do-wells.
After The Cursed Hammer, zie set out across town to visit the Library of Querent-Querent. It was a great temple of red stone with a blue orb atop it like a beacon of contrast, making it highly visible from an aerial scan of the city. A landing platform hung from the orb with stairs leading down into the building. Denziu landed and went inside.
In the stacked shelves of the Library was a great wealth of knowledge about distant theomes, for the mandate of Querent-Querent is to promote trade, travel, and migration between distant places on Theoma.
If only they had more knowledge of necromancy! Such a profane subject was against the mandate of Querent-Querent to promote, but Denziu was very curious to read about necromantic lights. What influence would a necromantic lighting fixture have, if it was always revealing a little gap in Fate..? A little moment where dragons were Fated to be blind, and yet Fate was stuck being wrong about that, to correct itself a moment later with what dragons had seen and had done under the cover of necromantic lights. The thought distracted Denziu as zie requested scrolls about the deep-under and tried to fill zir time hunting for information about the trade conditions in places that many dragons didn't know were real.
It was in a dry scroll the next day that zie found it. This was a customs scroll. Page after page of ordinary goods were listed with their estimated customs tariff, revealing a wealth of information about what their expected values at market were, with only a minor extrapolation needed to go from the known tariff rate to the expected market value. This was the kind of thing that the trade-fixated Libraries of Querent-Querent could provide to merchantgons!
And in this scroll, there was the record that some enterprising dragon had hauled three wagon-loads of necromantic light fixtures up into Inrakaveach! They had paid due customs upon their goods, whereafter by some causality the scroll had eventually found its way to (or been duplicated into) the Library of Querent-Querent in Xeladash, to serve the greater interests of trade between Inrakaveach and the deep-under theome to which Inrakaveach had a road.
That theome's name was Adenth! The name of its land god was still unknown to Denziu, for the customs scroll didn't list it.
Nor did it list the exact, current value of the necromantic light fixtures, though it listed the value that the local government of Inrakaveach expected them to have as of thirteen years prior. Denziu fetched out zir lev-i-quill, a paper, and an ink phial for the quill, then did the calculation then and there to find out what the expected market value had really been. Zie labelled the paper with its calculation as necrmatic lits frm Adenth.
This was a fixation that invited a curious thought of Taioma. For if Denziu was investigating necromantic lights at a Library of Querent-Querent, zie was certainly investigating necromancy where Fate was strong, and while wearing a Tekagoli Luck Charm as well. In all likelihood, Inadagedyn had already known that Denziu would study this matter a mere few days later, had known before dispatching Taioma to tempt Denziu. Land gods had some seerage.
Was that why Inadagedyn had wanted Taioma to meet Denziu?
It was part of zir Fate that zie would have that conversation with Ekis and produce this little scrap of paper at this library. The further conclusion: Baggil had also let Denziu be Fated with the study of a necromantic trade good! How curious were the land gods; did they not oppose necromancy's inclination to let lesser divinities slip the grasp of Fate? A darker thought: Was there something in Denziu’s probable future that zie needed to slip free of?
That simple scrap of paper and math became a prize to show to Ekis that night at the caravanserai, so that Ekis knew that Denziu had very much meant what zie had said about potentially joining Ekis after completing their current run of the Tachanigh-Kelkaith, and as well so that Ekis became informed of the tariff rate that Inrakaveach's government charged on the imports from the deep-under, which Ekis would need to know about to calculate the worth of the exports from the Adenth markets.