The Shattered Land_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [91]
“An Elvish word,” she said, handing the weapon back to Gerrion. “It means ‘bound flame.’ In the older dialect, you could interpret it as ‘one who binds fire,’ I suppose. Why is this significant?”
Daine glanced at Gerrion, but the half-elf had returned the dagger to its sheath and picked up his pace, pulling ahead of them. “The spirit on the water called our friend Gerrion a ‘child of the Sulatar.’ Seems to be a touchy subject.”
“Child of the bound flame,” Lakashtai mused. “Child of the firebinders. It is a shame I did not see this spirit myself.”
“How did you manage to meditate through the boat being tipped over, anyhow?”
“It’s … not that simple. My soul was submerged within, leaving the body temporarily unattended.”
“It also mentioned a ‘season of flame.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
Lakashtai ran a finger across her perfect lips. “Interesting. I don’t see why it would be relevant, but it is—”
“We’re here!” Gerrion called. “I told you it wouldn’t be far from our path, and trust me, it will be worth the time.”
There was a clearing up ahead almost two hundred feet across. A long, flat mound stretched across the space, rising up six or seven feet from the road.
“Who built this?” whispered Lei, coming up behind him.
“Built what?” Daine said.
“Look around you.”
He did. A long mound, surrounded by trees. Trees with no branches. Trees with strange inscriptions winding around their trunks.
“Look up.”
There was a roof over the clearing. Nearly forty feet from the jungle floor, it was now falling to pieces—but its original purpose was perfectly clear. The trees weren’t trees at all; they were pillars carved from the trunks of massive densewood trees, set around the mound. The mound itself—dirt and weeds had risen up around it, but it was a platform of light stone.
“Daine, Lakashtai!” Gerrion called down to them. “Come up here—I’ll show you why we made the trip. As for you, Lei, you should study the notched pillar in the corner. For a scholar like yourself—well, I think you’ll be fascinated.”
Daine shrugged and climbed up the steep edge of the platform, then reached down and helped Lakashtai make her way to the top. “What’s so interesting …” He stopped as he saw what he was standing on.
It was a map.
Two hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide, it seemed to have been carved from a single vast slab of stone—though Daine couldn’t imagine how such a thing could be quarried or transported. There were craters across its surface where chunks of densewood had fallen from the canopy, but much of it was still intact. The serpentine shapes of rivers wound down from the edges toward the center, and mountain ridges rose up a few inches from the base. He could see the spires of towers surrounding tiny cities.
It was as if he were a god, straddling the entire continent.
“Why are we here again?” he called, making his way over to Gerrion. The half-elf was examining a small castle that seemed to have been painted in black enamel. “It’s something to see, I’ll give you that, but I thought we already knew where we were going. It’s too big to be useful anyway—the only way I could make any sense of it would be from thirty feet in the air.”
“I suspect that wasn’t a problem for its creators,” Gerrion replied. “Besides, just think: years from now, you’ll be telling your grandchildren about the time you saw the biggest map in Xen’drik.”
“I trust you have a better reason than that,” Daine replied.
Lakashtai had been studied their surroundings intently, illuminating the map with the eerie light radiating from her eyes. “There,” she said, pointing to a massive densewood boulder a few feet away. “Our destination is in that crater.”
Gerrion smiled. “I hope that’s not a bad omen, but, even if we can’t get there directly, we’ll still be able to save a few days’ travel.”
“What are you talking about?