"In the distance the burning mountain was already visible, the fire on top coloured as well, flickering into violet, then blue, and back to violet. Its foot is ringed by a forest in a golden hue, and above it the vines carry the same gold, shimmering in the light with emerald and diamond, colours neither bank produces."
Sutarri burns from the rock. Its flanks carry fire the way other mountains carry snow: small flames standing out of cracks in bare stone, hundreds of them, with no fuel anyone has found and no hand to feed them, and not one of them has gone out in any chronicle. The Argians call the flank fires Betisu. By night they show across half the east as a scatter of points, a town seen from a hill, and travelers on the Hafra make them out from the deck.
At the summit burns one great fire that changes colour. It is Ortzisu, and the Leitores, Iro's priests of the reading, keep a house on the mountain's high shoulder and watch it in shifts. The colour runs ahead of the sun, and the shades between carry their own meanings in the Leitores' books. The readers set down what they see, and once a week the reading goes out to every mast, market, and well-house in the country, a chalk colour and a line in a priest's square hand. The south plans its summer by it: when to harvest, when to shutter, when to send the herds north, when to fill the cisterns. A Sprite who climbs to the reading-house is asked, politely, to stand back from the rail while the reading is taken.
A fair week.
Heat.
A hard sun.
A killing sun.
Below the fires, the forest that rings Sutarri's foot is gold in every season, and the river circles outside it. Above the forest, on terraces cut between the flank fires, grow the vines of zerai, gold in leaf and emerald and diamond in the fruit.
"A kind man at the counter explained it to me: leaving in the morning means flying over Argia Esfera during noon, which can end deadly, and only the noonships, the Occultech ones, are equipped to handle the heat."
The south of Argia is desert, and in high summer the noon reaches 50 degrees. At that hour the country stops. Shutters close, streets empty, work waits for the evening, and the airships that cross Argia keep to the morning and the dusk; only the Occultech noonships fly through the middle of the day. The south lives by night through the summer, and the rule every Argian keeps without being taught is that nobody is left in the noon: a door opens to anyone caught outside at the killing hour, and the household behind it owes them shade and water until the heat breaks.
Anyone may walk the noon, and some do: pilgrims, penitents, the fervent, and the desperate, out on the sand at the worst hour to prove something to Iro or to themselves. Some of them die of it. Those who come back claim the heat they walked in, said as a number in Talanese, and the order writes down only the numbers it saw.
Every tavern in the south has a regular who swears to a number the order never wrote down: a Fifty-One from a noon nobody else saw, a Fifty-Three from a road nobody walks. A patron who believes him stands his cup; the house never does, save where the owner knows the deed, and there are owners who pour a claimant free for life because once, at noon, he walked out and brought their child in. The rest of the room decides for itself whether the man at the bar is a charlatan or the real thing.
The Dark Era came to Argia as it came everywhere, and here it came in the water: the rivers festered, the wells turned, and in a country where the summer kills in an afternoon, a poisoned well was a town's death. The Aguarda began as a handful of Iro's paladins who went from well to well cleansing the water and then stayed to hold it, keeping each source clean and open to any stranger who reached it. The order's founder-deed is the walk of Beatriz Fontefria: in the worst summer the valley has on record, she carried clean water on foot at noon across the desert to a cistern-town the corruption had cut off, and the heat that day was fifty-two degrees. Every paladin of the order since has walked in her name.
The order came out of the dark holding every well, cistern, and channel in the country, and it has held them since. It runs the water still: the cisterns under every town, the channels off both rivers, the shade-houses on the roads, and the noon-watch, the patrols that walk the streets and roads at the killing hour to bring in whoever is caught out. It builds the country's works, because it always has; a new cistern or channel is the order's to decide and dig. The country is divided into comendas, each held by a commander from a well-house on its own river stretch. At Sombral sits the Mestre, who receives envoys, signs treaties, and speaks for the country abroad.
A paladin of the Aguarda holds Iro's grants by a Knight's Oath, and the order's vows are the law it keeps on itself: water given to any who ask, no well closed to a stranger, no one left in the noon. The Compact binds that oath as it binds any, and a paladin who breaks it loses the god's grants for all to see. The order refuses no willing mortal, of any people, and in practice most of its paladins are Shoony.
A squire becomes a paladin by the Walk: a noon pilgrimage in full armour, on a ration of water bare enough to live on, to Beatriz's number. The order sends a party behind every squire to bring them in if they fall, and the party are the witnesses; a heat is written into the order's rolls only when the order saw it walked. A paladin who has walked carries the number in their name for life.
The Mestre holds the office for life. When a Mestre dies, the Claveiro, keeper of the cistern keys, holds the order and names two electors; they name two more, and the chain runs until there is an elector for every comenda. They meet once and choose the next Mestre from among the paladins who have walked the Long Noon, the older and harder route that only a handful in any generation attempt.
The order and the Leitores are one faith and two powers. The readers say what the sun will do; the order decides what the country does about it. A reading the order doubts, or an order the readers call faithless, is argued in public, and Iro, who says nothing on zeal, says nothing on this either. The Aguarda and Ljosarn's Ordained are separate orders of the same god, and each holds the other in respect and argues precedence at every feast where both stand.
"The river is a beautiful spectacle shimmering with the light of the sun, terraced almost all the way, the vines growing in many colours: one side a green bank with colours of blue, green, and teal, the other side almost like desert, its grapes of red, orange, and brown."
Gozai is made on the river that runs from the western ranges east through green country and the lake Vonura to join the Sutarri river above Sombral. Both banks are terraced nearly to the water. The north bank is the Green's, and its grapes come blue, green, and teal; the south bank is the drier, with the desert further south, and its grapes come red, orange, and brown. The vintners are Shoony families working their own terraces, and each bank keeps its own gozai. The must is fortified with grape spirit before it finishes, which keeps the sweetness in, and the casks age in the heat of Sombral's lodges for years before anyone opens them. Gozai is what Iro's altars pour across Talan, and a barge-load leaves Sombral for some temple most days of the year.
Zerai grows only on Sutarri, on the terraces between the flank fires above the gold forest. The grapes are hard to raise and the wine harder to make; it carries a taste of the mountain no other wine on Talan has, and the vintages are small. A foreign buyer may taste zerai. The right to buy it is earned.
The folk name for zerai is godspour, what the gods drink, and the folk hold that a cup of it shows the next colour of Ortzisu before the Leitores see it. Vintners sell it on the promise.
"The city is white, and it is built for shade the way Merkavar is built for bargaining. Every street runs under arcades or awnings or vines trained overhead, the windows are narrow and deep, and the shutters are painted one blue I have seen nowhere else, save on the houses that keep a cask."
Sombral is the seat of the Mestre and the port of the wine, at the desert's edge on the Sutarri river, below the meeting of the waters, where the river runs on to the lake at the coast. It is built for shade: arcades over every street, awnings and trained vines between them, narrow deep windows, and one blue on every shutter, save on the houses that keep a family cask, whose shutters are amber. The lodges stand along the river, cut back into the riverbank so the casks lie cooler than the families above them, and the barges come down both rivers all night. The airship mast stands on the highest roof in the city with the week's reading chalked beside it. Under the city lies the order's great cistern, where the Mestre keeps the seat, and the dunes begin where the last lodge ends.
"The Guild came with maps. The order came with water. And both of us brought our best weapons and armour."
Beatriz's road, the route of her founder-walk, runs out from the cistern-towns into the southern desert, and for four centuries after her it was the road of the Walk. Near the end of the Dark Era, Beatriz set out on the Long Noon and did not come back, and the order counts her among those the noon took.
When the Nine Dungeons erupted in 2524 MR, the chapel of the False Saint, one of the Corrupted God's Nine, opened through the sand halfway along Beatriz's road: an underground chapel oozing false miracles, where prayers rot into curses and the faithful rise as zealots of corruption. The Aguarda mustered as a state and called in the Adventurers' Guild, and together they broke the first wave and sealed the gate. It is sealed and uncleared, and what leaks from the smaller ways the order hunts on the sand. Since the eruption the order forbids Beatriz's road; the Walk follows a newer route, in her name and to her number, and the old road runs out into the desert with no sanctioned foot on it.
The noon did not take Beatriz Fontefria. She set out on the Long Noon in the last years of the Dark Era, and the Corrupted God took her on the sand; after the binding, it remade her, as it remade each of the Nine from a mortal it chose, into the mockery of faith that lies under her own road. The holiest woman in the order's memory is the False Saint.
Every squire for four centuries walked toward her, and since 2524 the order has forbidden her road without knowing why the road should frighten it most: Beatriz made her own walk unwalkable. The false miracles the chapel breeds wear her shape when they can, a paladin in old armour who walks out of the noon and offers water, and the unwitnessed walkers of the south are the ones she reaches first.
An Argian carries a given name and a well: the cistern or spring their household draws from, said as a name. The well is kept for life, because a person's water does not change. The register keeps its words in plain letters. Anyone who joins the Aguarda adds the comenda they serve, with da or do; a paladin who has walked adds the heat, said in Talanese. In ordinary speech a paladin goes by given name and heat.
The unwitnessed walkers carry their claimed numbers the same way, and in the south a stranger with a number in her name is asked, sooner or later, whether the order wrote it down.
Given
Wells
Comendas
Whole names
The Shoony give the heart once, and in Argia the heart goes to a vow, a well, a terrace, or a door. The noon-watch is theirs, and so are most of the order's paladins, most of the Leitores, and most of the vintners on both banks; and at the noon hour the Shoony households open their doors first.
The founder-walker of the Aguarda; lost on the Long Noon at the end of the Dark Era.
The present Mestre, at Sombral.
The present Claveiro, keeper of the cistern keys.
A gozai lodge at Sombral.
Rustam Varaz's letter to his client, Madam Parisa, whole. Open each part to read it.
Dear Madam Parisa,
You have sent me quite on a journey with your request for gozai and zerai.
As always I had an early start into the day, but much to my dismay none of the airship ports had a passage to Sombral in the morn. The earliest they leave is at noon. A kind man at the counter explained it to me: leaving in the morning means flying over Argia Esfera during noon, which can end deadly, and only the noonships, the Occultech ones, are equipped to handle the heat.
So I booked passage on the earliest ship and sat down in a café and enjoyed a little rare rest.
The views of Lautara made me smile, same as every time. Seeing the holy mountain. We cut through Azkataria, south to Jakinduria. We saw Thekkavar in the distance, alone in the middle of its ring of forest, held close the way a scholar holds a good book to the chest. Then east through Lua Lasai's north, a quick pass through Harro, and by Ljosarn with its holy flame to the south-east.
The barman, nice chap, lifted my confusion why we weave through the mountains and do not take the southern way. The heat was the answer once more.
Though I find not a lot to complain about, the views of the lands below were quite unlike any I have seen before.
We held a little north, over the Green, as it is colloquially known I was informed, to the river where the grapes for the gozai are grown.
The river is a beautiful spectacle shimmering with the light of the sun, terraced almost all the way, the vines growing in many colours: one side a green bank with colours of blue, green, and teal, the other side almost like desert, its grapes of red, orange, and brown. All made a little hazy by the still lingering heat.
In the distance the burning mountain was already visible, the fire on top coloured as well, flickering into violet, then blue, and back to violet. Its foot is ringed by a forest in a golden hue, and above it the vines carry the same gold, shimmering in the light with emerald and diamond, colours neither bank produces.
An old Argian told me of the fire-reading the priests turn into weather forecasts, and told me to check the reading for the coming week after landing, or I might be surprised and need to seek shelter with a family or two.
We came down at Sombral with the sun just gone and the heat still standing in the streets like a guest who has not noticed the hour. The mast is on the city's highest roof, and the first thing on it, before customs or porters, is the reading-board: a violet chalk mark and beneath it, in a priest's square hand, hard sun, seven days; keep in at noon. Which in my trade, Madam, means buy early, and I have.
The city is white, and it is built for shade the way Merkavar is built for bargaining. Every street runs under arcades or awnings or vines trained overhead, the windows are narrow and deep, and the shutters are painted one blue I have seen nowhere else, save on the houses that keep a cask. Those are painted a deep amber, the colour of old gozai, and an Argian reads a street by them the way we read the signs over our stalls: behind every amber shutter a family cask is lying down. At this hour everything is open and everyone is out; the markets set up after dark, children run the arcades, and a family eating supper on its own doorstep asked me to sit. The people are mostly the dog-folk, warm and direct, and not quick to let a stranger walk off hungry.
The lodges stand along the river below the meeting of the waters, cut back into the bank so the casks lie cooler than the families above them, and barges come down all night stacked with barrels from both banks. Beyond the last lodge the town simply stops and the dunes begin, orange even by lamplight, and at their edge a pair of knights in pale armour, water-skins at their belts, were doing nothing I could name except watching the sand.
Tomorrow I taste gozai from both banks at the Posovelho lodge, before the heat. The zerai I may taste, I am told, and may not yet buy; that right is earned here, and I intend to learn what the earning costs.
Yours in haste and in the shade, Rustam