1. The Blue Forest
Astra and crew try to get their bearings...
The Lost City continues the journey of Astra, respected Head Librarian of the Tiered Library in the renown monastery Qordashi deep in the Balashilar mountains, after an attack on her home destroyed everything she knew and took the lives of people she loved. Her childhood companion, Traz, has returned after 25 years for mysterious reason, and along with the Am’Ayat warrior Xavai they are on the run from the attackers: snow dragons and the dreaded tribe of Yosoi warriors.
Previously: Astra, Traz, and Xavai made it out of Ice Mountain alive, accompanied by a junior fire dragon and two mysterious temple dogs.
The Blue Forest of Burshok Valley was thick and matted, with trees reaching high up to the sky, creating a canopy over Astra and her traveling companions that was helpful for keeping them hidden. It was also a disadvantage as it cut out most overhead light, making the difference between day and night the difference between dark and darker. If Traz had not stashed a few moonstones in his pack, they would have very little way to see where they were going at all. There was no road, no path, no trail for them to follow. Occasionally something like a beaten down path appeared, but they were natural runoff gulleys and led nowhere.
They had escaped from Ice Mountain over three days ago, as best as Astra could tell. Without the bells of the monastery she grew up in to keep time for her, and without the predictability of the sun rising and setting, Astra was not sure of the exact length of time. Traz was a better judge of it, given his regular trips up the trees to look out over the thick canopy and act as a scout, but he never mentioned the time of day when he came back down.
Her other companion, Xavai, was a stoic soldier of the distant Am-Atyat kingdom, and the last of his delegation to accompany her. When the brutal mountain tribes of the Yosoi and the snow dragons of the southlands had attacked Qordashi monastery, all Xavai’s companions save one were killed. The other survivor of the attack, General Hiloh, had been injured badly enough to stay behind, despite the dangers. It was for the best, Astra reminded herself, as they struggled through a tangle of vines and branches. Traz and Xavai had taken to using their swords to cut the dark blue vines away, and it was slow going. Astra had never been so far down into any valley before and was stunned by the profusion of plants and bugs and at how tightly woven together the trees and undergrowth were. Given the sparse sunlight that made it to the forest floor, there were many different types of vines reaching up for a sliver of sunlight, but most of the foliage was dark blue from the lack of it, and heavy with water. It seemed to her that everything was swollen, making it different from the sparse and brittle grass and bushes of the high altitudes she grew up in.
But it was not swollen with life. Instead she felt the crushing weight of the unnatural absence of it…and worse, with the lack of life, came the lack of death. Nothing was natural about that. Despite the profusion of plants and bugs and, she assumed, other animals, the forest was bleak and soulless in a way even the most arid high peaks of the mountains were not. It felt as if what life was there only managed to exist in defiance of the natural order, instead of as a part of it. The trees grew and the vines spread, but they were all empty like a corpse. Astra had no words for how its existence made her own foul magic twitch deep in her gut. It got worse as they traveled, in ways Astra could not explain if anyone had asked.
No one did.
They crossed several streams where Traz had caught fish for them to cook and eat every time they stopped, but the flesh was bland and rubbery. The whole place felt wet and damp and lifeless to Astra, and she hated it. At least the fish had been alive enough to be nutritious when dead. She was glad she had not watched it die, though—Traz was careful about fishing just out of sight of wherever they stopped. It seemed to confuse Xavai that Traz wandered away at all, but Astra was in no mood to explain it to him.
If they had not dropped nearly straight down the mountain by way of steep tunnels, it would have taken them days to make it down the mountain as far as they did; but that gain on travel time was completely eradicated by the sluggish pace they were setting through the forest.
Above them sang the trilling cries of the snow dragons who chased them.
There wasn’t much planning to their route, because there wasn’t much choice in the matter. “Head north” was their goal, and “try to avoid snow dragons” was the challenge. Both men had looked to her for directions on where to go when they were in the mountain, but when they tumbled out of the tunnel through the narrow, overgrown exit, Astra had wanted to just lay down and sleep for a week. And cry. Then go home and have Zochur fix her some beet soup.
Unfortunately, none of that was possible, so Astra had simply said, “North,” and they started walking.
The sounds of the snow dragons’ cries had appeared a few bells later, jarring them from their tepid sense of safety. They had not stopped in the days since.
The library she had overseen in the monastery had been one of the best collections of scrolls, codices and letters pertaining to the trading caravans south of Parthikapum and the Gilded Plateau, and thus was a treasure source for snow dragon lore. Astra explained to Traz and Xavai what she had learned over the years, namely that dragons were not by nature trackers. They found game, they ate it. They did not chase the scent of something for miles, and in fact from what she had read, it was speculated that they had very little sense of smell at all. Therefore the main advantages her tiny band of fugitives had at the moment were the Blue Forest itself and the fact that the dragons were naturally averse to crypt-keepers like Astra—at least according to Traz. It was not something Astra had ever read of herself, which in and of itself was not surprising since very little was recorded by anyone about crypt-keepers.
She wondered with a pang in her heart if the Yosoi had left her precious library standing, or burned it to the ground.
Traz still carried their charge, the sacred Dragon’s Grail, which thrummed with magic and death. Their fire dragon companion had apparently given over possession of it, at least for the interim, as it hopped from branch to branch over their heads.
The grail was the talon of a long-dead dragon, but honestly looked like an unremarkable large bull’s horn. As a necromancer, Astra was happy to let Traz (or anyone else) carry it, as he seemed immune to the magic it radiated. Astra already felt too close to death to court it from powerful magical totems.
Whatever its origins, the grail was why the snow dragons were chasing them, and why Astrs’s erstwhile band of travelers had barely escaped from Ice Mountain with their lives, and why they were headed northbound. Not that Astra, or her travel companions, knew the reasons why any of that was true.
Traz paused in his efforts, holding his short sword high and looking up at the canopy. Xavai, who had removed his outer layers of heavy cold-weather travel wear the day before and was looking spectacularly out of place in his thin linen shift and bronze armor, paused in his efforts as well.
“What does the thief hear?” He asked Astra. He was stubbornly refusing to call Traz by his name, mostly in order to irritate Astra. Or so it seemed to her.
“I do not know, I can’t hear it myself,” she said sharply in Xavai’s native tongue, which still felt awkward to speak.
Traz tucked his sword into its scabbard and jumped up on some roots, then climbed further up a series of branches until he was nearly invisible in the canopy. Astra was glad he had left the kerchief-wrapped moonstone behind, given that it was close to nightfall (she assumed) and the forest was growing even darker. She once might have been nervous to be caught alone in the dark with the handsome Xavai, fearing her own improprieties, but he had turned his back to her when she had revealed herself as a necromancer during their confrontation with the evil Dzrezor and his Rangers—a nun ostensibly consecrated to the Gods of the Four Winds, but who had revealed himself to be a power hungry, corrupt, and murderous man (and was, as far as Astra was concerned, directly responsible for the death of the woman who had been like a parent to her, Sibling Superior Naboch).
She plopped down on an exposed root and looked around. Xavai was also sitting on the ground, knowing that there was no point in doing anything until Traz returned.
“You said that the dead are all around us, that you see them all the time,” Xavai said, kicking at some moss near one foot.
It was an odd question, but she had told him that exact thing not long ago, so she nodded.
“How can you be here?” He waved a hand at the forest around them. “Surely there is death in every crevice.”
Astra was sure that “crevice” was not the actual word he used or intended, but her skills at interpreting only went so far. She knew what he meant. “It is something I have spent many years ignoring. My abilities did not appear until I was an adolescent…” She paused, stumbling over the word, and Xavai frowned, proving that it had not gotten across to him. “When I was twelve?”
He nodded in understanding.
“I became very good at ignoring them.” She shrugged. He nodded again and let the matter drop. Astra was grateful, because she did not want to explain the weird not-alive-not-dead feel of the surrounding forest. It was bizarre; such a vibrant, living place should have been full up to the brim with death as well as life, which she knew from the gardens that the nuns of Qordashi grew on every patio and trellis. Nothing could grow without feasting on death. Even non-sentient things like plants had their own version of a soul, their life dust dull and weak but no less real for it. The monastery butcheries were, thankfully, kept beyond the walls because of the ancient law that mandated there be no death in Qordashi (an irony that burned her heart in the wake of Sibling Superior Naboch’s death in the very heart of the mountain).
It was possibly the one place Under the Compass of Heaven where Astra could have grown up without going insane. Even so, there was death that haunted the streets and alleys of the monastery, because where there was life, there was death, just in far fewer amounts than she had experienced the small number of times she had traveled beyond the protective walls. The monastery had been a reprieve of a sort for Astra, but she had assumed there was no place anywhere she could be truly free of the memories of the dead.
Except, it seemed, the Blue Forest, which existed but did not live nor die.
She could not tell Traz or Xavai such a thing; they would not understand. It was wrong, and unnatural, and deep in her own soul where the gray dust of a necromancer stirred, the absence of death terrified her.
NEXT: Their Main Problem
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