There was one dramatic change that marked the border of Hydalath: the roads warmed up. They warmed up all the way, a famous amenity: the roads in Hydalath were heated! By the mercy of Hydalath’s land god Jadarkontalyia, Hydalath's broad roadways never froze over, but remained amazingly comfortable underfoot.
There was a subtler sign. As they passed north from the border, many of the plants in the fields and forests developed blue luminescences. Leaves, fruits, pinecones. It varied from plant to plant which part was glowing, but it seemed to be a commonplace in Hydalath.
On the northeastern horizon appeared two pyramids, regularly sized and at regular distances from each other, vast such that their tips were separated yet their bases (below the horizon) must be touching.
In scale, the pyramids brought to mind Akima, a city on the vertical, for each one structure was clearly more deserving of being called a city than either of the two "cities" in Denxalue. THIS was a place where dragons could be innumerable without running out of space!
In unity, the pyramids brought to mind Izaeyaranth. Denziu imagined that each structure contained other structures, and many levels of them.
The frictionless iceway turned off towards the two pyramids. The road branched, so that one branch followed the iceway and the other continued forward. Seeking the road that passed through the theome to the north, the caravanners kept their course and so the glimpsed city of vast pyramids slid towards the eastern horizon.
Something even more fantastical rose up ahead of them. A flat base hoisted up on the tips of other pyramids! This was the shape of the greatest city in Hydalath, which held the central marketplace to which they were going.
"That's a thousand years of construction!" chirped Ekis, following Denziu's gaze towards that city in the sky.
"I wish I could get a wagonload of those alloys," said Denziu, thinking that a wagonload of ingots of an alloy that could hold up a pyramid full of buildings would pay for an artefact itself. There were plenty of strange magics that Denziu would love to buy.
"A lot of dragons wish that," said Ekis, "But the armoured carriages that deliver it are protected by tons of magic. You'd be lucky to get an ingot here or there bribing construction workers. It'd take a century to have a wagonload."
Denziu's imagination was seized by the prospect for a moment. It was so similar to what zie'd done to accumulate a wagonload of art-pottery. Just one pot here or there, bought at grain-store prices. If zie lived in Hydalath, zie could put together a shipment of swaivshon alloy the same way. "I could do it," zie said.
Ekis snorted and said, "You're not even a century old.”
"Yeah, but it wouldn't literally take a century. Maybe a decade," Denziu said. "The bigger issue is the legal hazard, so I don't think I would do it. Just that it'd be possible. I bet the stuff is already purchasable to dragons who have the right contacts."
"Well, Hydalath is one of the biggest users of it. If you want to get hold of some, this is the place to go," Ekis said.
"I don't have any use for a single ingot of weird metal," said Denziu.
"That might be stopping thievery itself. Who can move swaivshon alloy in small quantities? You need a lot to make something out of it."
Omrezen called to them from the row behind them, "Hey, I heard something about that place! That isn't just a flying platform for buildings. They'll be building another pyramid on top of the ones they've got, someday. When they start running low on space in the pyramids they've got!"
"Yeah, and when will that happen, the 18th century?" called back Ekis. The two of them both snorted with sudden laughter, and Denziu smiled.
Getting near to the pyramids at Hydalath took a disturbingly long time, and the towering city was a humbling sight to stand at the foot of. They were truly massive structures. Had the caravan been approaching from the east and travelling west, they would not have seen the sunset past them, for the pyramids were so great that they would have blocked out the whole of the red sky and left the caravan to approach in shade. The great sky plate looked like it could have held the whole of Zhaoze, which was Denxalue’s largest city, and Denziu saw structures dangling from the plate with lit windows in its shadow. There were dragons launching from balconies under the plate.
At the foot of this massive structure, Denziu was aghast. Zie had imagined that there would be ten-thousands of dragons here in Hydalath. What unfathomable number were they truly? Or did they all live in mansions, with vast indoor spaces untouched by the cold outside?
It seemed all of glass, and there was level after level of buildings inside it, suspended like diamonds in the air on shining stout columns that left room enough to fly between them. Some of the buildings were built on great platforms. Others were literally diamondoid, shining edifices of unknown material with landing platforms to serve as the yards for each address. The whole structure was held up by trusses on trusses of that rumoured swaivshon metal. There were dozens of external balconies, slim and near to the structure, from which dragons on the wing could enter or leave it.
Oh how they flew! The swaivshon seemed innumerable here, the air filling with furred dragons on the wing. Their whole vast city was designed for flight, between the countless platforms, inside and out, between the different pyramids even they flew. This surely must be the greatest city of the swaivshon!
For the caravanners, bound to the ground by their wagons stacked high with ingots of a more banal metal, there was a broad, open gate into one of the four base pyramids, tall enough that a two-story house could have been brought in through that gate. By here the road continued uninterrupted directly through the pyramid.
Denziu felt sick with uncertainty as they entered under the structure. How could their paltry caravan of metal make any difference to societies which built with as much metal as was on display above them? For entering under this great metal city was not at all like going indoors, but it was like being underneath a webbing of great diamonds in an outdoors area. The shadows played strange over them as the great glass hull of the building above enclosed them in warmth.
"What is this place?" Denziu asked of Ekis.
"This is Polser, capital of Hydalath!”
After that, Denziu was too preoccupied in looking at everything. 'Everything' included an occasional bout of staring at the warm road underfoot. If there had been any innate grandeur to being a dragon, this city-building dwarfed it.
There was a substantial traffic of dragon wagons in the caravanserai district of Polser. Competing signage boasted of several different places with names that used the non-word 'econo' too much. Spurning the Econo-Resort and the Econo-Lodge, they stayed at the Econo-Shield. The decision between the three different enclosed and secured buildings was totally meaningless to Denziu; fortunately, Choave made the call.
The caravanserai had great open gates, and the intimidating sense of having Polser looming overhead was abated by the solid roof of the caravanserai. The wagon berths were packed. There was just barely enough room, and when Oghai had finished speaking to the innkeeper dragon, Denziu saw him stepping outside to put up the no vacancies signboard. They filed in after that.
There was a sausage seller in the great open space where the wagons were berthed. Lorma turned her nose with a grimace as she pulled her wagon past to its berth, but Denziu wasn't vegetarian just yet, and thought that a meal might be a relief from both travel fatigue and the overwhelmingness of Polser. Choave apparently had the same idea, as they both joined the line for sausages.
"Where is the market in Polser?" Denziu asked.
"Hm! For me, it's in one of those buildings overhead," said Choave, "Where I'll be checking the commodity prices to see if the spot price will cover the contract breach with my contacts in Wraquo."
"Will it?" asked Denziu.
"Certainly not, but I'll take the windfall if it does."
They got to the front of the line, and came away with sausages. "Where is the market for me?" asked Denziu as they walked back to their wagon berths.
"Well, there's a ground market not too far from the caravanserai," said Choave, gesturing with his sausage. "But I think you should ask where Lorvaza flies off to this time every year with her chest of fate-charms, as I think she'll have your best market in mind."
Denziu chomped half a sausage and looked around while chewing it. Zie was thrilled to see Lorvaza eating a sausage while wearing the blindfold of true faith. Somehow, the pull of Fate (or perhaps her sense of smell) had drawn her over to the sausage seller!
Zie went over to Lorvaza and said, "Hello! We should work together again today."
"Oh Denziu," said Lorvaza, "I would simply love to. This blindfold and your wagon will go over beautifully with my customers in Polser. They'll think I've prospered greatly over the last year!"
That was all the persuasion it took to find a guide to a market in Polser rich enough to buy art-pottery.
The next morning, Denziu and Lorvaza took off for a brief flight inside the pyramid that ended in its northeast corner. There a road descended into a brightly lit tunnel where everburning magelights marched along the ceiling to produce a clean (albeit orange) light. Above the descending road, Denziu could see where the four corners of the pyramid bases touched each other. A shared park marked the junction point.
"Why are we going here?" asked Denziu as they walked down the warm road into the underground between the four pyramids. Zie had expected that they would fly up to one of the platforms raised up off the ground.
"Past here is the finest market in Polser," said Lorvaza. "Where meet the four roads that go down to the helix descending, there is a market ring that sees trade from above and below."
They went into the tunnel for some distance, but soon came out into an open space as large as the parkland above. The road turned here around a huge dome-roofed ring, with a stout metal column holding up the centre. The room was full of warm, sunny light from balls dangling from chains in the ceiling.
Around the ring? Rows and rows of market stalls. The outer roadway was kept clear, but inside of it was a bustling market.
The two had departed early from the caravanserai. There were open spaces in the rows and the crowds were not yet dense. The two found a place to break open Denziu's floating wagon, piked up the tent cloth over it, and arranged the pots and charms that each hoped to sell.
Beyond the furred faces of the swaivshon, Denziu got to see more unusual dragons among the merchantgons and their customers: the small bipedal myrghon with their gems levitating 6 a piece, and the large quadrupedal myrskor with prominent earfins and complex, shifting glows across their scales. Zie longed to browse the stalls to see what traders had brought to the surface from the deep-under, but today zie needed to stay and hawk pottery.
Denziu remembered as well the kalla with the fur coat that Serafustin had showed zir. Would they meet here?
"Finest pottery of swampy Denxalue," zie called to dragons passing by. "Artists named and pieces dated; own a piece of art history! Painted works from a place far distant, on good stoneware!"
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The place was a babble of hopeful merchantgons in a chaos of unlicensed vendorgons. Denziu would not have known who to seek permission from to work in that market, but it didn’t seem like there was any rule other than getting to a place first
The traffic intensified as the day wore on. The outer ring was kept clear for wagon traffic. Myrskor pulled wagons as vrash and vashael did. More intriguingly, there were myrghon whose wagons seemed to propel themselves while the myrghon were seated upon them! There were no gems levitating near the myrghon with wagons. Some of the wagons disgorged myrghon passengers then turned to retreat downwards again, while others continued onwards to destinations on the surface.
"See the vistas of a swamp, preserved forever on these great grain pots," called Denziu, gesturing for attention.
That call caught a passer-by. "What's a swamp?" asked a fat blue myrghon with many-pointed white horns, who walked up to Denziu wearing her six gems like a levitating crown.
"Oh, swamps are wet and heavily overgrown," said Denziu. "Mucky slow rivers and trees overhanging them." Zie crouched next to one of zir pots that was on the floor of the levitating wagon and gestured at the wilderness scene painted on it. "Look, the artist who made this one painted one of the waterways of Denxalue."
The myrghon crouched by the pot and said, "Can you swim in that?"
Denziu grinned as zie said, "I've swam in that river myself."
"Huh. I may come back in a few hours. Watch for me," the myrghon said, before waddling off elsewhere in the market.
All through the day, Denziu met myrghon and myrskor who were simply fascinated by the brightly colourful pots. None of them were instant sales, but many claimed they would come back in a few hours. In that crowded market, dealing with strangers all day, Denziu didn’t expect to see them again.
Zie was surprised when a group of wagons, myrskor and myrghon, parked at the nearest point on the ring, then disgorged their drivers to visit Denziu again. These were most of the ones who had promised to return!
Denziu realised zie was looking at haulergons who had emptied their vehicles hauling something into Hydalath. They were eager to load Denziu’s pots onto their wagons and carry them away. There were more customers here than Denziu had pots to sell them!
There was just one wrinkle to all their welcome interest: they wanted mediocre prices.
They understood that they were buying art, and Denziu had little trouble negotiating them out of the range of unadorned grain storage vessels, but then they stiffened. All of them. Some of them pulled away at that point with complaints that they shouldn't buy art. At the back of the crowd, several left without having spoken a word.
For a moment, Denziu thought zie would lose the whole crowd, but then one of the myrskor spoke rapturously of showing a wonder of the surface world to dragons who had never seen a tree!
"Are there no trees in the deep-under?" asked Denziu.
"Oh, some!" said the myrskor, nudging their way to the front of the crowd. "In some places, where the work has been done to light them, water them, and give them soil. There’s nothing wild like your swamps and forests. I'll pay a little more, o merchantgon, but please let me have it in my price range!"
Two myrghon cried out and pumped fists in the air at that. They pushed their way to the front of the crowd as well. “I’ll pay a little more, too!” said one. “We’ll be the highest bidders!” said the other.
Impressed by their passion, Denziu agreed to sell three pots for a price that would have been good for a fast profit, but which was somewhat disappointing relative to the time and effort that had gone into gathering the collection. Three beautifully painted pots with pewter placards identifying who made them thus went off into the deep-under of Theoma. Those pots are never going to see sunlight again, Denziu thought as the last one pulled away.
Despite the wealth of Hydalath and Denziu’s high hopes for it, there were no other pottery sales that day. Recording a low price for the three pots put Denziu in a dreary mood. The yield might not impress the artists much for the effort involved. Denziu reflected that zie may have invested too much time into building this collection, and that putting so much time into it had led zir to develop unreasonable expectations about what it was worth.
As zie pulled zir wagon up the ramp to the ground level of Polser after the close of market, zie moved so morosely that Lorvaza hesitated at the surface rather than springing into the air. She said, "You look - and this is the strangest thing, but somehow I just know - you look like you're not at all happy."
Denziu looked into Lorvaza's blindfolded face and wondered, How do the land gods decide which things the blindfold’s wearer reacts to? For in this case, it was as though Jadarkontalyia had just prodded Lorvaza to see without sight that Denziu was moping up the ramp. That blindfold of true faith was a strange reminder of land god omnipresence.
"Let's step aside," said Denziu. The two pulled aside of the road so that they would not block traffic, and then Denziu spoke again, "Lorvaza, I don't think I'm ever going to spend so long gathering a collection of art. Not again."
"No such thing as a worthy price, is there?" Lorvaza replied.
"No, there's not. And... I've been asking too much. If I'd sold all the pots at the price I just sold those three, I would've sold more at other markets along the way," Denziu said.
Lorvaza was silent for a moment considering that, and then said, "Do you regret the price tag more, or the time you spent?"
Denziu's head tilted. "What do you mean, 'regret the price tag'?"
Patiently, Lorvaza tried again, "Would you rather you had priced the pots to sell more readily, or that you had collected them more quickly?"
'Ah', Denziu thought, and said, "I wish that I had collected the pots more quickly. If I'd gathered them all in a season, I would gladly have sold them even cheaper. But after years of collecting? I was hoping for a legendary return."
Lorvaza nodded, saying again, "No such thing as a worthy price. It's why trying to trade in artefacts is a skill of its own."
"Maybe just a skill of vast patience," said Denziu. "Or vast boldness. I think I would be afraid to burn my savings into items of rare value and then hope to sell them at even rarer prices."
Lorvaza listened to what Denziu said, but then echoed, "Of patience..." from the start of it. She said, "You know, I don't think the caravan did you many favours. You could have sold more of your pots at higher prices if you'd had more days in the markets that were good for the pottery."
"I was afraid that something would happen along the way," said Denziu.
"Maybe I should give this blindfold back," Lorvaza said with a smile. "If you go out with trust in the land gods and stick to the benevolent theomes, you'll be fine. Your flying wagon can move so much faster than the rest of us can."
"I wouldn't have known where the caravanserai were," said Denziu, "Nor would I have been sheltered in the wagon ring when there wasn't one."
"Ah," said Lorvaza. "That's a bigger issue. But now you do know where the caravanserai are, and how to pick them out from the sky, and I think you wouldn't want to trade save by flying one to the next."
“I'm still grateful to Choave for running this caravan. I think I'll come back again next year with an empty wagon, ready to contribute to his trade."
Lorvaza’s tail swayed. "That's what a lot of us are doing. We love Choave. It’s not about the money. The caravan we walk together is eighty-something days of a working holiday."
They had that evening at the Econo-Shield a fruit-laden meal brought by Lorma from the market. The blue plants in Hydalath were laden with magic, and they were gathered by local dragons to sell at market. They were a local delicacy, or at least a local novelty, and dragons travelling from afar were drawn to eating them.
Some members of the caravan looked on Lorma with disbelief and pulled away to feast on more sausages from the vendorgon in the Econo-Shield. Denziu soon found out why: the novelty of eating something that glowed blue lasted about one bite. The first fruit Denziu tried was the brightest on the table. It turned out that it was bittersweet with some strange lingering foulness. Good magic might have excused a bad flavour if Denziu knew what the supposed magic of the plants actually was, but zie did not. Flavour-wise, the least bad were some dark blue berries. Denziu thought that glow-juice might not be the tastiest thing despite how fascinating it looked.
Choave ate with those who tucked into the glowing fruit, and grinned when seeing Denziu pulling faces at the fruit. "It's cheap," he said. "There are orchards here that produce even in midwinter, growing these."
Lorvaza also ate of the fresh blue fruits, perhaps because the fruits were a miracle of the local land god, who Lorvaza trusted implicitly as a benevolent overseer of Fate. Lorvaza said, "I think the questionable flavour is because Jadarkontalyia wants dragons to eat lightly, but not skip meals."
"Is speculating about the motives of the land gods a sacred act?" Denziu asked, mild and unchallenging in tone.
"When we do so in praise of them, I believe so," said Lorvaza.
"If that’s so, I have a speculation, too," said Kishka the Runepainted. "I think that Jadarkontalyia wanted a fruit that would stay cheap despite demand. The off-flavour is to make them affordable to everyone in Hydalath."
"Perhaps so," said Lorvaza.
Lorma also brought back jars of some black substance and a corked pot full of dried blue fruits that had likewise turned nearly black after having been preserved. She assured a sceptical Denziu that the black jars were not an alchemical ingredient. They were fruit preserves.
Breakfast the next morning saw a jar of preserves trialled hard against thirteen hungry dragons, and after a great and delicious struggle, Denziu conceded that the strange foulness of the glow-juice was missing from the preserves made in Hydalath. Zie also ate a dried blue fruit in curiosity and discovered that it was still a bit bittersweet, though less than it had been fresh.
"Do you know, I have a third speculation about Jadarkontalyia's motives, to pick up from last night," said Denziu, seeking Kishka and Lorvaza after eating the dried blue fruit.
"Oho?" said Lorvaza.
"Let's hear it," said Kishka.
"I think the fruits are edible fresh, but they're meant to reward patient processing," said Denziu, "Because everything in Hydalath rewards patient processing."
"Maybe that's the answer," said Kishka.
Lorvaza said, "Hm, I think this theome is meant to be massively populous, and so it is not that." She glanced upwards at the roof of the Econo-Shield, and Denziu understood that zie was implicitly glancing upwards at the great bulk of the pyramidal city of flight overhead.
Choave sought out Denziu just then, as zie was grasping zir wagon's tongue to pull it into formation. "Denziu!" said Choave. "We're about to go to Axorus. You've never been there, so I wanted to speak to you about it."
"I read a bit about it," Denziu said, "I've a book about it in my wagon."
"So you know you need to stay with the group, then?" Choave asked.
Denziu said, "I know. Only the main roads are safe in Axorus."
"Good! Good. Several of us know the way, and if the caravan stays together we'll all be safe."
As the caravan assembled into its 2x6 rows with Oghai's carriage in the rear (and Orachu pulling that one this time), Choave stepped through his usual dancing ritual to cast a formless smoke into them that made their muscles sing with vigour. By now well-used to the spell, Denziu still enjoyed it. Being able to walk fast under heavy load surely contributed to the joy of the ‘working holiday’.
They were soon en route.
The road north through Polser bisected the southwest and the northwest pyramids, and the caravanserai cluster was in the southwest pyramid.
Each pyramid had an individual character. Where the southwest pyramid had a great many suspended diamonds in the sky, with great diamond-shaped buildings casting shadows, the northwest pyramid looked to be full of shaped platforms suspended in the air. As the group approached the pyramid, Denziu looked up through the glass of the southwest pyramid into the one they approached. It was full of layer after layer of platform.
Surely there were several cities worth of dragons in its density!
The northwest pyramid had an oppressive atmosphere as a result of the many levels of platforms blocking the sunlight. They trudged through gloom at the ground level. This pyramid must be taken up by industry, Denziu thought, for certainly there were a lot of structures at the lower level, and there was a great babble of iron noise from some of them. These structures stood in darkness, here where the land must be grievously unwanted, and yet they had each their own lanterns.
Ah, the lanterns! The relief from the gloom was the magical lighting of the layer. By their smokeless steady light Denziu could tell that they were each enchanted.
Seeing all those lanterns, Denziu felt a bit silly for thinking that zie needed any extra assurance of safety such as joining a Tekagoli caravan. Neither guards nor crimes were in evidence.
Zie wondered if Tekagol was losing something under Baggil's reign. The crime rate there was not so low. There was a way to have Baggil's mercy as a criminal: to have great need, never try to kill, and to inflict no ruinous losses. There were some very dubious dragons living in Tekagol who made their way at the expense of others. Enchanted lanterns were too resaleable to be used so openly there.
Baggil the Great Seer clearly thought it was the best that could be done. Rumour was that charitable plans worked better than greedy ones in Tekagol, but Denziu wondered if Hydalath was the result of many greedy plans working. Which was better?
Jadakontalyia would say that Hydalath was better, while Baggil would say that Tekagol was better. Each land god was building their own paradise and would surely say that they had made the best world. Was that the purpose of Theoma, to settle a great argument amongst the twenty thousand land gods over how to build the best world?
These thoughts occupied Denziu across the whole of the northwest pyramid of Polser, and then they were out into the sunlight again.
The horizons here were interesting. The great bulk of Polser blocked the sight of the two pyramid cities to the southeast of them. Yet ahead of them to the northeast, they could see another pyramid looming up, and off towards the west horizon they could see a great hump-backed lizard of a building whose moderate scale and unusual design made Denziu wish it were on the trade route proper. How populous is Hydalath intended to grow?
The marvel of megacities didn’t stop Denziu from growing bored as they walked that day. Neither did the blue glows of the tundra. Denziu longed to fly with zir flying wagon, and not be bound to the slowness of the ground. Caravanning with Choave held zir down. Hauling goods from one theome to the next was such an exercise in patience that Denziu was learning respect for haulergons.
So zie walked without complaining in the middle of the 2x6 order of the caravanners, and Ekis told Denziu how Hydalath's cities were nothing compared to Axorus, which they were about to visit. Denziu offered "The Mysterious Cities of Axorus" to Ekis, but the cheerful izerah said that there was no substitute for walking through the theome.