| SORCEROUS SIGNALS |
| Written by Therese / Artwork by Holly Eddy |
| After Zander |
During my youth in Nurathaipolis, I often went to the taverns by the docks where the travelers rested
and talked of their travels over their plates at night. It must have been at one of these places that I first
heard of Zandar. I forget who spoke of it: tired man or adventure-fevered woman or old man rubbing his
aching joints. But I remember what they and others said, for after that night I made a study of the
island of Zandar.
Zandar—city of memory, palace of hope, shore of dreams. There is no way to speak of it except
poetically. Years later, I still see grizzled seamen and wanderers grow soft with shining eyes when asked
about the island. It is obvious, I think, that they have never been there.
Something in Zandar is at work, it was whispered, that orders things so that when a man arrives there,
he finds what things he remembers fondest, and the greatest of his unfulfilled hopes, at a place where
time passes but slowly and even an aged man’s joints soften with the spring of youth to let him dance
with girls he has not seen in sixty years. Ah! Why didn’t they just tell us gold ran in the streets, as well?
They didn’t say so, because it wasn’t true. I know. I cannot attest to the softening of aged joints, but
the rest I can speak of, for I have been to Zandar.
It must seem that I had little enough to remember, going as I did in my youth, and as for hopes—later,
later I will tell you.
It is the custom in Nurathaipolis that when the son of a wealthy man gains his majority, his father
provides him provisions and funds to make a voyage to any land he chooses. When I told mine that I
wished to go to Zandar, he was dismayed and refused. For there is a little more to the tale, a part I
often ignored, that said a man who visits Zandar must sacrifice the land of his past, his home. But there
were many men on the docks of Nurathaipolis, I reasoned, and surely many of them were native, and
surely some of them had been to Zandar and back.
And if my father would be so unjust in refusing my request, I felt warranted in some minor untruth to
him. I pretended to change my mind and decided on another destination, a fair island more pleasing to
my father’s mind. He was trusting and gave me the money to book my own passage. Dear fool, he had
no way of ensuring I would do as I said—and of course I didn’t, finding instead the captain of a small,
brightly-painted galley that would bring me to Zandar, though he would not go ashore.
Zandar is an island in the Nerrening Sea, in the warm regions near the middle of the world. The voyage
was pleasant, but I spent most of it standing at the bow above the ship’s figurehead, watching the
horizon for the dim line that would be the shore of Zandar. When it appeared, it was on a cloudy day,
and it took me some time to realize that the low dark cloud in the distance was resting not above the
ocean, but in it.
It took us another day to reach the shore. The harbor was large and still, with many long stone piers.
Only a few ships sat at anchor, but from those few there was a sampling of the world’s vessels, because
no two of them were the same type nor from the same place, I think. Our galley docked without having
to pay a harbormaster or any such thing, and we let down our gangplank, on which I walked ashore
alone.
Zandar’s seaward hills were steep and green, with their lower slopes covered in purple bracken. A road
went from the harbor into low winding valleys, and I followed it until I came to a town. It was a small
place, though large enough bearing in mind that I hadn’t passed any field or orchard on my walk. The
road changed from trampled gravel to thick cream-yellow brick, and the low houses were also made of
brick and topped with thatched roofs, though a few were covered with plaster. A strangely-shaped
bronze fountain threw water into the air in the center of the town, and flowers grew in plots, vases, and
windowsills all around.
It looked like a child’s idea of a country town—like my imagined towns, when I grew up in crowded
Nurathaipolis. Something about the nonsensical prettiness of it, and the strange scent of the bright
flowers, made me uneasy. I passed through the place quickly.
In my day of walking, I came through two more towns, each similar to the first. I saw no one in either of
them and each time I passed by without stopping, not even to drink from the fountains.
So this was Zandar. I felt almost disappointed, but also uneasy that my childhood imaginings of the
place were so closely realized. It was almost as if I had been expected, but it did not feel welcoming.
Despite all the work I had done to come here, I had begun to consider turning back for the harbor when
something more appeared on the next hilltop.
The road had remained a narrow strip of pale brick all the way through the villages; now it widened by
half again as it lead to the gates of a white city. Gates, walls, towers, and the roofs rising above them
were all gleaming ivory and silver. Shapes moved on the walls, and the vast doors opened as I
approached them. There was a strange smell in this city, too, but softer than that in the villages, and I
felt somewhat more at ease.
And there were people, too. The men on the walls who had opened the gates looked down at me and
waved, and the streets were crowded with fair-voiced people who quietly asked my pardon as we pushed
past each other. There was something familiar in some of the faces, and every once in a while a
storefront or arch or well would remind me of Nurathaipolis, the barely remembered places in it which I
had liked best as child. So the stories they told of Zandar were true.
A woman brushed past me, and with a shock I realized that I knew her. Grown now, but as a child she
had the same wide face, the same warm eyes, the same dark hair curling down her back in waves. I ran
after her, calling her name. A few of the city’s citizens looked at me, but this seemed a usual occurrence
to them and they turned away after a moment, smiling.
She stood and waited until I came abreast of her, then began to stride quickly through the crowd again,
with a gesture for me to follow. She led me through the city and out a back gate, where the men who
opened the doors acted careful to ignore us. There was a road beyond, wide and graveled, through hilly
country that seemed to go on forever.
We used to be childhood sweethearts, this woman and I. But she had left Nurathaipolis sometime
before, after seeing strange things during her tutelage to one of the great magicians of the city. Her
visions had torn us apart, or so it had seemed, but my friends laughingly joked that perhaps it was me
she fled and not those sights. Now, as I met her eyes as we walked beside each other over the hills, I
was not so sure.
She said nothing, though, and in the silence I soon heard the pounding of the surf. We were nearing the
far shore of Zandar. The end of the gravel road came into sight: a small terrace, bordered by a marble
rail. More strange, colorful flowers sprouted all around in urns turned green with age.
She stopped at the rail and turned to me. “Why did you come here?”
“For my past and the dreams,” I said. “Why else would anyone come to Zandar?”
She turned and looked out at the sea; her shoulders and lips trembled. “You shouldn’t have. You should
have stayed in Nurathaipolis.”
“Even after your visions made you run from it?”
“My visions have nothing to do with you.” She turned to me again, and I saw her eyes were wide and
dark with anger. “Fool! You know what they say about this place. You know that now you can never
return.”
“Why does it matter?”
“You mean, why do I care? I shouldn’t, I know. It was feeling too deeply the pains of others that drove
me to Zandar. I thought that here I could be a selfish child again, not a wizard’s apprentice, and that I
could forget the visions. But I couldn’t. Zandar has only memories, not the true past. I could find no
comfort here. But you…if I know you, it was just a foolish thought of adventure that brought you here,
not the search for something you truly needed. And now you’ve doomed yourself.”
I stared at her, breathless from the picture her words had painted. “How have I doomed myself?”
“You’re lost. You know it. Once you set foot on Zandar you can never return to your native land.” She
looked back at the sea, a sneer in her voice, but one that had been placed there deliberately, resisting a
growing compassion. “At least you’ll have had your adventure.”
“But…”
“Go. I should never have spoken to you. It only makes it hurt more— Go! You know where the harbor is.
Your ship is waiting…for all the good it will do.”
I reached out, wanting to help her, but knowing I couldn’t. Still she felt too deeply the pains of others,
even before they knew the hurt themselves. She ignored me and at last I turned and left, following the
road that led back to the city.
I was let in, but something in the guard’s smiles made me wary, and I wondered why my childhood friend
had taken me so far to speak in privacy. Though I hurried through the city’s streets as quickly as
possible, they seemed different, more maze-like than they had been before, and by the time I left
through the final gates the sun was low. In the end, I had to lodge in one of the small towns on the way
to the harbor. They were no longer empty; at night their inhabitants emerged, gray and weary and with
an air around them that left me unhappy and restless. I slept in a tiny loft above a sour-faced woman’s
cow barn, and was so eager to leave the next morning that I couldn’t even be offended when she bit into
the gold I offered her before accepting it. Her teeth were long and sharp.
I reached the bay of Zandar before noon and found the crew waiting for me, even more restless than I.
We set sail for Nurathaipolis. Our journey was long, delayed by winds and storms, and we had to put in
for repairs at a Nerrening port, but at last we saw the docks and harbor I recognized. I held my breath
as the plank was lowered, and rushed down it.
Until that moment I hadn’t realized that I believed the tales they told of Zandar, of going there and never
being able to return. I hadn’t allowed myself to believe. Now was the test, and even as I ran to it I
thought my heart might fail for pounding.
The dock and shore beyond it came nearer and nearer, but I began to feel my steps slow, becoming thick
and ponderous as in a nightmare. At last I could move no further, and I looked around me at the
crowded streets and happy faces, cursing them in their joy and looking down at the earth so close
before me that I couldn’t reach.
“It’s true,” I whispered, and no one was close enough to hear me so my words went unnoticed.
The captain waited in silence as I climbed back up the plank. “Send a messenger for my father,” I said.
“Have him brought here. And anyone else from my family in his house. And…” With a bitter laugh, I
added directions to the counting house where I had stored most of my mother’s legacy as well as the
little profits I made from small enterprises I had joined over the years. “The money won’t do me much
good here.”
He nodded and sent the messages with his own sailors—he never trusted messenger boys. “I’m sorry,”
he said to me as they disappeared down the docks. “Is there…”
“Anything you can do?” I shrugged. “What’s a good port you’d suggest?”
Thus my journeys began: from the port of Tharn inland to Nurathaipolis’ sister-cities: Istanthaipolis,
Merenthaipolis, Therathaipolis. None of them were anything less than welcoming, but there was nothing
in them to keep or comfort me, and I soon went on. I fought through the jungles of Lathli, spoke in the
debate halls of Cernua, and once met the eyes of a Queen in the hall of Kedalcha. I don’t have the heart
to list all the places I’ve been, and it would only tire me to try and remember. I know that for a long time
I went to dangerous regions, with nothing to fear from death or any other end to my exile.
The captain of my first voyage—to Zandar and Tharn, and a few places afterwards—was a good man,
and I was sorry to part ways with him when the time came. But he had his own livelihood to look after,
and—since he had not gone ashore—a home to return to. I have met sailors who say their native land is
the sea. I wonder what it would be like for them, after Zandar.
My siblings and cousins have married now, my family name passed to another generation. I have become
a legend to them. Sometimes I come into the harbor of Nurathaipolis, where they greet me from a
chartered boat. I bring gifts from my travels and stories to tell, for I have been to every place twice over,
they say.
Every place, but one. I have not returned to Zandar.
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Therese Arkenberg is a student at Carroll University in Wisconsin.
On the rare instances where she puts down her pen, she bikes the
trails in her area, reads a book (more often a textbook than not, these
days), or attempts yet again to organize her desk and her collection of
stuffed animals.
She has fiction published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and the
anthologies All About Eve, Things We Are Not, Thoughtcrime
Experiments, Warrior Wisewoman 3, and Sword and Sorceress
XXIV. Her novella, Aqua Vitae, has been accepted by WolfSinger
Publications for a 2011 release. Several of her short stories are also
available at AnthologyBuilder.com.
Her blog is http://mumbling-sage.livejournal.com/ .
On the rare instances where she puts down her pen, she bikes the
trails in her area, reads a book (more often a textbook than not, these
days), or attempts yet again to organize her desk and her collection of
stuffed animals.
She has fiction published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and the
anthologies All About Eve, Things We Are Not, Thoughtcrime
Experiments, Warrior Wisewoman 3, and Sword and Sorceress
XXIV. Her novella, Aqua Vitae, has been accepted by WolfSinger
Publications for a 2011 release. Several of her short stories are also
available at AnthologyBuilder.com.
Her blog is http://mumbling-sage.livejournal.com/ .