Prologue: Exodus (Part 4)

A new sunrise, a new beginning. As the orb of light rose into the sky, it illuminated a tall plateau, some fifty paces high, a pinnacle of rock amidst the flat plains. Gleaming on the summit, safely surrounded by sheer cliffs, a splendid palace stood, with short towers and many balconies and walled all around. It was made of white stone, not quite marble, but smooth like it. Around the side of the cliffed plateau a path, three paces wide on average, wound its slow way down to ground level, terminating amidst the spacious rows of buildings lining the wide shaded avenues of Mirynium, capital of the Erennin and city of almost a hundred thousand souls.

The great city had been designed as a perfect circle a long time ago, centred on the plateau whose crowning palace served as citadel and heart of the kingdom. The kings of the past had built the walls ten paces high, of heavy masonry blocks of black granite, cut so well that not even the thinnest blade could slip through them. In sharp contrast to the black circumference of this the Inner City, the actual gate portal was surrounded by a band of brilliant gold two paces in width, intricately worked and polished to gleaming brightness. At each of the four quarters there stood one such gate, reminding any who passed through them, trader or Erennin, of the kingdom’s great wealth, in times past, and in the present.

From that Inner City two more rings of walls expanded the size of the great city, with its manor houses, parks, inns, and markets, its towers soaring as high as twenty paces into the air. The Middle and the New City were almost identical in architecture and in atmosphere. On top of every high place, the blue and gold banner of the Erennin flapped in the spring winds that now and then gusted across the rooftops. They were relatively young compared with the old Inner City, the outermost ring of buildings, the New, having only been built a hundred years ago. There was an air of…history…about the city. It exuded a charm that went far beyond its beautiful buildings, or the idyllic calm that could be found in some of its streets. There was some sense that the millenia—for that was surely how long the city had stood, one of the First Five Cities of the Thirty-Five Kingdoms—had imparted a grace to every brick, beam and rafter that stood within the walls, giving a peace to everything, making even the marketplace an unhurried centre of economic activity but nothing more bustling than that.

Imyra’s stall was an affair of several tables lined up beneath an awning, selling trinkets and herbal cures. A visitor would find Erennin bead necklaces, treasured for their intricacy and their colours, arrayed before her smiling wrinkled face. Arranged around these would be other pieces of jewellery, bronze bracelets inlaid with gold, silver and leather, gem-studded brooches, and inexpensive philters, potions and other concoctions intended to remove fevers or heal ulcers, and poultices to seal open wounds. The marketplace bustled around her, the awakening city sending its inhabitants forth to find sustenance for the day. At the edge of the marketplace the clamour that a visitor deeper in would experience was muted to a soft buzz. Just one of many marketplaces in the New City, Nerris Market was near to the northern gate, called the Serimris Gate after the artisan who had designed the beautiful carvings on the bronze-plated portal that gaped open some three hundred paces away, five paces wide and ten paces tall.

A merchant walked slowly up to her stall, fingering some of the items she had for sale, a considering look on his face. From his dressing he was Boroni, from a southern kingdom that had not yet felt the ravages of the Ismaransi that were scourging the lands to the north. He lifted a bracelet up, studied it closely, flashing a grin of slightly yellow teeth.

“Don’t touch them. You can see them well enough on the table, trader.”

The Boroni looked at her, regarding the wizened old woman with some seriousness. Putting the bracelet down, he asked, a bemused look on his face, “Old lady, why that request? Most peculiar…I must inspect the goods well before I buy them, no?”

“And how do I know that you won’t run off with that bracelet once you’ve decided you like it, young man?”

“Young man? Hardly, old lady. I have seen forty years of age, surely that is past my prime. I’m just waiting to die now. And I have a name. It’s Terpila.” He said it with the last syllable drawn out. “Furthermore, I am most certainly not going to run away with your bracelet. I’ll pay for it.”
“Well, since you have honoured me with your name, it is our courtesy to return you the honour. I am Imyra. And I have seen seventy winters, so I certainly think you are young compared to me, young Terpila. Now, are you buying that bracelet, or not? You waste my time bandying words.”

“I want…this one,” replied Terpila, picking up a moonstone bracelet with fine gold chains hanging from it. “This will be a fitting present for my wife back in Argana. How much is it?”

A fanfare of trumpets drowned out the bargaining of the two. Consummate traders, they did not stop to find out what the fanfare was for until a price had been agreed upon. Terpila left with the bracelet, his purse two silver marks lighter. Pocketing the money, only then did the two of them investigate the vibrations in the ground that were increasing in intensity. At three hundred paces, Imyra’s slightly blurred vision could make nothing out but a black mass coming through the gates. She reached out and carelessly yanked at the first piece of cloth that came to her hand. It turned out to be Terpila’s cloak. Irritably the Boroni merchant responded.

“What’s going on? I can’t see a thing.”

Some silence followed. Imyra was about to yank on the cloak again when Terpila replied. “It’s your King, I think. He’s coming back. He has come through the gate with his army on a horse at the front. There is a man riding beside him, too.”

“He has returned victorious again, then. Thank the gods for that. That’ll be the royal guard entering the city, then…the rest of the army never enters with him. They encamp outside the walls until they are disbanded. But someone riding next to him, now…that has never happened before. I would surmise it is someone Jodias intends to honour greatly. Ah, I can see them clearly now.”

The clip-clopping of hooves passed Imyra, and the old lady looked up at the figure of a young man, seated straight-backed on a black charger. He passed by, looking straight ahead, dressed in full armour. He held the king’s banner, the crossed crescents on a field of blue and edged with gold and red, next to Jodias himself, head raised high in a kingly way. He seemed to have aged since he last rode out of Mirynium a month ago—his wild locks of brown, almost-black hair showed streaks of white. And behind them both, the impeccably dressed ranks of the Royal Guard, their armour polished and cleaned since Falcorea Field, marching in five abreast in perfect unison.