A Secret Atlas Read online

  So much of the ocean remained unknown, for most of the ships had gone south and then west, along well-known routes. Cyron felt certain that great discoveries would be found to the east, and toward that end the greatest ship of his fleet, the Stormwolf, had been created and was preparing to sail.

  The Prince found the map at once remarkable and tragic. All of the details of the world that had been confirmed by the Anturasi had been painted in strongly. They had filled in much, but still more lay blank. Even areas within the Dark Sea went uncharted, and it was from there the pirates that preyed upon provincial shipping sailed. Qiro’s ages-old desire to fill in these blank areas had caused him to send his son Ryn on an ill-fated voyage. But even the pain of his son’s death had not blunted his hunger to explore, and just five years previously Cyron had been forced to refuse another of Qiro’s requests to undertake a grand survey himself.

  The Prince tore his gaze from the map and received a surprise. Qiro’s grandsons, Keles and Jorim, stood with their grandfather, but a fourth man had joined them. The Prince found this remarkable because not only had he never seen anyone outside the Anturasi clan—save himself or his kin—in the workshop; Naleni decree had made it a capital crime to enter the workshop without express state permission. That the man was present bespoke his great importance, and the fact that he was wearing a blindfold indicated Qiro had not wholly lost his mind.

  Qiro smiled and crossed quickly to the Prince. Tall and lean, he possessed a full shock of white hair, moustache, and goatee. His pale eyes seemed almost devoid of color, save for the pupil, giving him an inhuman look. Though he was celebrating his eighty-first birthday within the week, he moved with the strength of a man half his age. The rich timbre of his voice, however, clearly had benefited from his longevity.

  “Highness, you honor the House of Anturasi with your presence. You have met my grandsons, Keles and Jorim?”

  The Prince shook and released Qiro’s hand, then greeted the brothers. “I do know them, and treasure them as much as I treasure you, dicaikyr Anturasi. Jorim, I think you would like to know that the pair of spotted cats you brought back from Ummummorar last year have mated and produced nine kittens. They are the pride of my sanctuary.”

  Jorim smiled. Shorter than his brother and stockier, he wore his side locks in braids and had grown a full beard after the fashion of the Ummummori. Though he wore fine and proper clothing, his hair and beard did give him a barbaric air that had caused a bit of a stir amid the Naleni nobility. A blacked eye, split lip, and abrasions on his knuckles indicated he had not abandoned the combative skills that kept him alive in the wilds.

  Before Jorim could say anything, the blindfolded man laughed. “Oh, yes, very good. Cats, the pride of your sanctuary. Splendid joke, Highness; marvelous. Many shall enjoy it during this Festival.”

  Cyron frowned. “Who is this, and why is he here?”

  Qiro smiled in a manner that would have taken seventy years off his age, were it not for the feral light playing through his eyes. “This is Jesbor Gryst, and he has with him something quite remarkable. I have already purchased it, and with it our domination of the world will go unchallenged.”

  Cyron’s frown deepened as Qiro retreated to a side table and pointed to a mahogany box. The lid had been lifted, and as the Prince approached he saw that two panes of glass separated by a piece of wood had been placed over the box’s lower portion. Each pane revealed the face of a clock, and each clock was set to the proper time.

  “This will allow us to dominate the world?” Cyron folded his arms over his chest. “I do not think a pair of clocks will daunt Prince Pyrust’s legions, and I already know very well how fast they are capable of moving.”

  “You don’t understand, Highness.” Qiro whirled away from him and approached the wall map. “Our ships, Highness, have sailed far from here. We have outlined the continent from here to Aefret and we do our best to draw accurate maps. Were we to compare this map with those from a hundred years ago, you would see quite a difference.”

  He pointed toward the top of the map and drew his hand down. “Our charts are devastatingly accurate in the dimensions of north and south. Why is this? Latitude is simple to calculate, Highness. Measure a shadow at noon and anyone with rudimentary geometry skills can determine how far north or south of the equator they are. It is a simple matter to determine your location.

  “East and west, however, are more difficult. North and south have an agreed-upon and fixed point of reference: the equator. We have a pole star to the north to guide us as well, and I am certain we shall locate such in the south, possibly above the Mountains of Ice, if they exist. The point from which east and west are measured, however, is arbitrary.”

  Cyron shook his head. “All maps have Moriande as that point. Wentokikun, to be exact.”

  “Our maps, yes, but Deseirion uses Felarati for their charts, and Erumvirine uses Keluwan as their demarcator. But which point is used is unimportant, because the problem is determining the distance between a point and another.”

  The Prince looked from Qiro back to his grandsons, then the blindfolded man. “But you have made surveys. You have had people pace the distance.”

  Qiro spun, the sleeves and tails of his gold overshirt flaring. “Exactly, Highness, but we have no one who can walk on water to pace it. Our ships, while they can mark their speed, have trouble marking the speed and direction of currents. All maps, mine included, contain a paradox, for if we take the time it takes to get to Aefret from here, we have one distance. If we mark the time it takes for the return, we have another. We have, in the past, played with the differences and estimated the speed of currents, but even so, that is inexact. A single storm can render any speed-and-direction data useless.”

  The Prince nodded slowly. “I believe I understand the problem. How is this the solution?”

  Qiro clapped his hands. “Jesbor Gryst, please explain this device.”

  “Well, Highness, first I must say it is not mine. I did not invent it; my son did. You see, I repair things, and my son, Borosan, always studied what I did, but he took it further. He became interested in the new art of gyanri, though there is no school for it here.”

  Cyron nodded, then appended, “Of course,” since the man could not see. Gyanri was the art of new magic—calculated, mechanical magic. The tradition of training to reach jaedunto was revered throughout the Nine, but Nalenyr and Erumvirine had the best schools and so benefited the most from it. Other nations had begun to embrace gyanri, in which mechanical devices used magical energy—mostly residue of the Cataclysm—to power them. A sword imbued with magical energy would allow an untrained warrior to fight skillfully, at least until that energy wore out. A hundred enchanted swords were cheaper to produce than a single jaecaiserr. While none of the warriors using those swords would be particularly good, few were the swordsmen who became Mystics. In a war of attrition, gyanri might well overwhelm masters of the old art.

  “Well, Highness, Borosan had an idea for a device that would allow one to communicate via writing over a long distance. He went off with it, and told me to look for a message every noon, which I did, but no message came. My son was frustrated, for the device seemed to work from one side of a room to the other, but not when he took it far away.”

  “Fascinating, Master Gryst. This, on the table, is the device?”

  “No, Highness; dear me, no.” The man smiled, clasping his hands together tightly at his belt. “You see, my son realized that I would be looking for his message at noon in the capital, but he was sending at noon from wherever he was. If he was north or south of the capital, it would work. So, what he did was invent this clock. It is a work of gyanri. It uses thaumston to power it. He made two clocks in case one were damaged or needed more thaumston, and set both to the capital time. You see, when he went away, he would send the message according to the time in the capital.”

  The Prince’s mouth hung open for a moment. Qiro had made his passion for the dual clocks apparent, but wha
tever it would allow him to do was nothing compared to this other device described. If the Prince could instantaneously converse with others far away, such as military commanders in the field, he would be able to coordinate defenses and stop an invasion quickly.

  “Does this device work?”

  “The clocks work perfectly, Highness.”

  “No, no, the communication device. Does it work?”

  Jesbor shook his head. “My son has not perfected it. He is, even now, traveling and working on it. I think he understood some of the message I tried to send him, for his last wished your Highness the joy of the Festival.”

  “That’s very nice of him, but if he is out somewhere, what is his dual clock doing here?”

  The tinker smiled. “Oh, well, Highness, Borosan tired of hauling that big chest around, so he just made a smaller one, more accurate. Fits in a pouch. He’s clever, my son.”

  Too clever to be out wherever he is. The Prince looked at Qiro. “The dual clock helps you how?” Cyron held a hand up and forced himself to think. “Wait, wait. If you are away from the capital, and you look at these clocks at noon where you are, you see the difference in time. That difference in time you translate into miles.”

  Qiro clapped his hands delightedly, but the tightness around his eyes suggested a bit of displeasure. “Yes, Highness, you have it perfectly. With this device we can accurately chart the oceans. We can venture into places where no one has gone before.”

  He turned back to the map and laid his hand against the blank expanse of ocean. “Untold treasures lie here, I am certain, and they will be ours. I need your permission, Highness, to outfit the Stormwolf with this dual clock and launch it as soon as possible. With the data we recover, our ships will be able to go everywhere. We can colonize new lands, discover new plants, animals, and treasures. Our nation will become even greater than it already is, and you, Highness, will have the means to reunite the Principalities into the Empire and rightfully sit on the Throne of Heaven.”

  Chapter Five

  36th day, Month of the Bat, Year of the Dog

  9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

  162nd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

  736th year since the Cataclysm

  Anturasikun, Moriande

  Nalenyr

  Keles fought to keep the surprise from his face and watched as his brother failed to do the same. Keles had long understood the problem with determining longitude. While a variety of clocks, from sundials and marked candles to water clocks and spring-wound clocks, did allow timekeeping, none was precise enough to allow for the measurements a grand survey required. Qiro had experimented for years with a variety of clocks, and though Keles and Jorim had carried and religiously tended to them, upon their return to the capital the time differential had been deemed unacceptable.

  What surprised Keles was his grandfather embracing a device created by a gyanridin. Gyanri was so recent a development, and one best understood outside Nalenyr, that local prejudice had dismissed it. Moreover, Qiro had pointed out that while gyanri might create devices that gave skills to the unskilled, it would only work with crude, unintellectual tasks. In keeping with the common wisdom, he had declared it the height of laziness to rely on devices for what training would provide. He had repeatedly sent away people who came to him with devices that would copy maps automatically, or could take readings of the sun and stars.

  Yet now he champions this device. The dual clock did seem the answer to countless prayers, but his grandfather’s shift in opinion was so abrupt that it almost seemed the man had lost his mind. In anyone else, Keles might have thought he had simply had a revelation and relented in his previous opinion, but his grandfather was too complex for that answer to satisfy him.

  The Prince smiled. “I applaud your vision, dicaikyr Anturasi. The existence of this device, of course, must be kept secret. I can count on your complicity in this, Master Gryst?”

  The blindfolded man nodded. “Oh yes, Highness. And my son, too. I’m sure he’s quite forgotten about it, now that he has his new pouch-clock. That’s what he calls it, a pouch-clock.”

  “Splendid.” Prince Cyron slipped his hands into the opposite sleeves of his overshirt. “And where is your son now? I should like to speak with him.”

  “And I know he would like to speak with you, Highness. It would be an honor. I know it.”

  “Good, have him report to me as soon as he can. After the Festival will be fine, but during would be better.”

  “Oh, Highness, I wish I could comply, but he’s probably in Solaeth now, or perhaps even in Dolosan.”

  The Prince’s eyebrow rose. “He’s in the wastelands?”

  “On his way. That’s where one gets thaumston, Highness.”

  “Yes, very true.” The Prince looked back at Qiro. “Perhaps you could have Master Gryst escorted down to the gate? I will see him home after we converse for a moment.”

  “Of course, Highness. Jorim, please do as the Prince asks.”

  “Yes, Grandfather.” Jorim crossed and took Gryst by the elbow, guiding him from the curtained area.

  “Your pleasure, my Prince?” Qiro pointed to a side table with glasses and a pitcher. “Keles, pour us some wine.”

  “No, thank you, dicaikyr.”

  Keles looked at his grandfather. “Will you drink?”

  “No.” Qiro lifted his chin and clasped his hands at the small of his back. “What is it, Highness?”

  “First, congratulations on finding the dual clock and recognizing its potential. You realize, of course, that the device Borosan Gryst is testing is . . . equally valuable. Its applications, especially as concerns our ability to defend ourselves against the Desei, cannot be overvalued.”

  Qiro nodded solemnly. “I have seen the value in it, too, for my applications, my Prince. Keles and Jorim have the talent that allows them to send me images and information, mind to mind. While this might not be as accurate as I would desire, the time saved is invaluable. Such a device would let me field more survey teams and would provide a check on the accuracy of the dual clock.”

  “Good. Then we are of a mind.”

  “That being, Highness?”

  “That having Borosan Gryst in the Wastes is too dangerous. I will need you to prepare charts that will allow a group to be dispatched to find him and return him to the capital.”

  “An expedition to the Wastes, Highness?”

  “Yes, Master Anturasi. The one we have long talked about will now be mounted. It will require your charts, of course, else any chance of success is negligible.”

  “My charts of that area are the best in the world, but they are still not very good.” Qiro rubbed a hand over his forehead. “When the Cataclysm released the wild magic, it wrought changes in what had been there before. While the centuries have brought a retreat of the magic, it is not complete. The storms cycle strong and weak, and could still be creating changes. I will make the charts—all based on my travels of course—but I cannot swear by their accuracy.”

  The Prince nodded. “That will have to do, though we will have to remedy that situation as well. If gyanri can create things as powerful as what we are talking about, and the Wastes are the source of the thaumston that powers them, we will need to find deposits and possess them, or destroy them. That is a matter of national importance.”

  Qiro’s icy eyes glittered. “A matter of Imperial importance, even.”

  “Yes, indeed.” Cyron nodded, but refused to let himself be distracted by Imperial daydreams. “I will need those charts by the end of the Festival.”

  “Consider it done, Highness.” Qiro smiled. “I am given leave to place the dual clock on the Stormwolf?”

  “Yes, of course. The sooner the better. The Stormwolf cannot leave until after the Festival. Its premature departure would attract attention.”

  “As you desire, Highness.”

  A chill ran down Keles’ spine. He dared not move, lest the two of them be reminded he was there, and motioned to his
returning brother to likewise be quiet. His grandfather and the Prince were making decisions that would shape the future. The blanks on the wall map would be filled in, and the vast resources of Nalenyr would grow even larger—perhaps large enough to force the other Principalities to join it or be driven to economic ruin.

  Prince Cyron nodded. “Good, very good. I had come here to convey bad news, but you have made it a joyous day.”

  Qiro’s head canted. “Bad news, Highness?”

  “Yes. Your request to leave Anturasikun is denied. I will, of course, come here to attend your birthday celebration.”

  The old man’s pale eyes flashed for a moment, then he waved a hand through the air. “Consider the request withdrawn, Highness. I have so much to do, I may even cancel the party.”

  The Prince shook his head. “To do that would attract attention, and we don’t want that. No, things will go as planned. You and I will host the Virine and Desei. We will show them how generous we can be. In the future they will hunger for our generosity again.”

  Qiro smiled his predatory smile—sharp and with a flash of teeth. “As you, in your wisdom, Highness, command.”

  “Good.” The Prince bowed, then made to withdraw through the curtains, which Jorim held open for him. “Your health, and that of the Principality.”

  Keles did not like the expression on his brother’s face. Jorim waited for the white curtain to sag heavily shut, then pointed at Qiro. “You ancient hypocrite!”

  Their grandfather’s eyes sharpened. “Be very careful, Jorim. I am in a good mood. Do not spoil it.”

  “I don’t care what sort of mood you’re in!” Jorim’s nostrils flared. “I told you about Borosan Gryst’s device months ago, when I returned from Ummummorar. You dismissed it. You berated me for being stupid and lazy. You told me that I couldn’t keep the clocks wound, so I could never care for such a device. And now I discover you have sought out the device? You bastard!”