Angel of Storms (Millennium's Rule, #2)(121)
“Can people live in the worlds we just passed through?” she asked after she’d caught her breath.
“No.”
“Is there any other route to your world?”
“No.”
“So how did you find it?”
“From records stored on other worlds. It was inhabited and abandoned long before I was born.”
She frowned. “So has it ever been fully occupied since you found it?”
“Once, for a few hundred cycles.”
His fingers tightened on her hand as a warning that he was about to move on. The forest disappeared, and then several worlds flashed in and out of sight in rapid succession. When they had remained at a location for more than an instant, she guessed they had arrived at their destination.
He let go of her hand. She almost wished he hadn’t. They stood on top of a wall so high it made her dizzy to look at the city below. The metropolis stretched out so far that, as her eyes travelled up to the horizon, she wondered if it ever ended. Perhaps this world was one entire city. She stared into the distance and made out, almost invisible in the haze, a shadowy line of mountains.
Valhan turned around to look behind them and she followed suit–nervously, as the wall was one step wide at the top with nothing but the man beside her to grab hold of if she lost her balance. On the other side, but not so far below, lay a complex of buildings set out in a formal and grand arrangement. Quartets of men in identical clothing walked in step around a central square. People strolled or hurried between buildings alone and in groups. She wondered if any would notice her and Valhan, but no faces turned in their direction, and none stopped to point at two people standing in such a precarious location.
In the corner of her eye she saw Valhan look at her. She turned to see his eyebrows rise slightly, inviting a response or question.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“The city of Wuhrr in the world of Puht.”
“It’s huge. Is this what you wanted to show me?”
“This, but not only this.” He looked down at the formal structures. “You can read the mind of a place by reading the minds of its occupants. Reach out to the people here. Brush against their thoughts. Listen when something interests you. In time you will gather a sense of their values and expectations, and a little of their history.”
Intrigued, she braced her legs and tried not to think of the drop behind her. Selecting a structure, she sought out a mind within it. She found one instantly.
A man. A guard on duty. He was bored. Nobody had passed this way in hours. He was entertaining himself thinking how he would spend the night with his wife.
Amused and a little embarrassed, she moved on and found a room full of people rushing about, preparing food. Focusing on the mind of a young woman, she learned that a dignitary had arrived who had very particular tastes and she would be generously rewarded if she pleased him with the meal she prepared. But she had to compete with other cooks for access to the best contents of the storeroom, and one had taken the last of an ingredient she needed. She was fighting the temptation to steal it when he wasn’t looking.
A butcher was leaving, and Rielle switched to his mind and rode it back to his quarters, where his elderly father was playing a game with a pair of old friends. They were debating politics yet again. Recognising a good source of information, Rielle travelled around the circle, learning that one man had come from another world to this one many cycles before, and become stranded. His people, the Koijen, had built the city. He was proud of the achievement but also sad, as they had enslaved the local people and stolen much of the world’s riches. He had come to see and regret the evil in that.
But the Koijen had paid a high price. The rulers of nearly all the countries in Puht had sent sorcerers to the Raen to appeal for help. He had driven the Koijen out. The price had been reasonable, the old man was thinking, but he knew the older of his two friends did not agree. Rielle moved on to this man and sensed anger and grief. His son was dead, and he blamed Valhan and those who’d struck the deal.
His mind was full of more passion than details so she moved to the butcher’s father. Nothing in life came without a cost, this man believed. Better to lose some of their men and women fighting for the Raen than continue to lose them to the slavers. He had no idea what the war in the other world had been about, but most likely it had been to help others escape tyranny as well.
Easy for me to say, the butcher’s father acknowledged, my son was too young to fight. Soon he’ll be too old, if the Raen comes looking for another army.
The conversation shifted to a local matter, so she moved on, touching the minds of more and more people and gaining an understanding of the purpose behind this place. It was a palace, but not for a ruling family. As in the city she had grown up in, a group of influential men and women ruled this land, making decisions by vote. It was a good place to learn about the country, she realised, as the occupants were all involved with ruling it in one way or another. Valhan had chosen it for this, she guessed. He also must have known she’d see more than gratitude for his help in their minds, too.
Yet these were the elite of the city, and the servants of the elite. The majority of the population lived on the other side of the wall. Turning slowly, Rielle looked down at the city far below. The buildings were further away and she strained outwards. The minds she found were faint and mixed, with gentler thoughts easily drowned out by stronger ones. Thoughts of daily tasks, work and interactions formed the hum of mental voices, with occasional shouts of pain or excitement or anger rising above. Rather like listening to a crowd at a distance, she mused, only most of the people were unaware of the rest and no purpose or reason had brought them together.