Two hundred paces across the sea from the peak of the Eye of the Sea Goddess, the Dul Matha rose. The Divine Bridge crossed that space now, floating on enchanted gold-glass, but the Watcher wondered how it might have looked to those ancient pilgrims as they climbed down from their ships squeezed between the towering islands; as they rowed to the Vul Tara and their first night ashore, heads craned back to stare at the sky and the Divine Bridge high above them, searching for a first glimpse of the most famous shrine in the world — or so it had once been. They would have looked again as they rowed back the other way, across to the mainland and to what had once been a swamp, the salt marsh grown over time into the working rump of the city of Dhar Thosis. The swamps and the channels of brackish water were still there, some of them built over, others built around, others still slithering their way between the packed-stone streets of the shore city. There might have been jetties where the shore-side docks now stood, with a few little wooden huts perhaps sheltering sellers of slivers of wood or bone claimed to have come from the shrine. After that the pilgrims would have walked the swamp trails, now city streets with names like Pilgrim's Path and Quicksand Alley. They would have turned their backs on Dul Matha at first, following the curve of the shore until the Kraitu's Bones vanished behind the Eye of the Sea Goddess where they would have crossed the causeway, a treacherous tidal path now supplanted by the gleaming glass and gold spans of the Bridge of Eternity. They'd have climbed the winding paths up the Eye towards its peak, past temples and other shrines long since flattened to make way for palaces. All the way to the top of the Eye and they'd have come here, to where the Watcher stood now, to the start of the Divine Bridge.
Like the Bridge of Eternity, the Divine Bridge was now a thing of gold and glass, one great magnificent span crossing the sea far below, but back when pilgrims had come to the shrine atop the Kraitu's Bones the Crimson Sunburst had yet to be born and Hingwal Taktse and the Dralamut were just two warlord castles among many. There were no golems, no gold-glass, no enchanters, no navigators, no sea lords with their palaces and the Divine Bridge had been nothing more than two great ropes strung across the void. A place to be at one with the air, with the sea below and the unforgiving cliffs to either side. Bones still littered the rocks where the Goddess of Fickle Fortune had chosen not to cast her favour on her pilgrims. They said the ropes of the very first bridge were made from the hair of Ten Tazei, the first man to stand on Dul Matha's peak; but then they also said that he'd been carried there by an eagle, that he'd lived for three years on top of the rock eating birds and eggs and fish brought to him by the gulls — who for some reason didn't much like the eagles — until he'd grown his hair long enough to make the rope that would become the first bridge.
They said a lot of things in Dhar Thosis, but the rope bridge was long gone and nothing of it now remained. The enchanters had come with their glass and gold and a sea lord had followed. Parts of the shrine were still there, walled within Senxian's palace where only the greatest of men were allowed to see them. The Elemental Men had seen to the rest. The shrine was a curiosity from another time, a relic of ideas now forbidden.
The Watcher, by his nature, had no time for gods. The Elemental Men had wiped out their religions long ago, casting out all but their most distant echoes. It seemed a shame, though, that the enchanters had built this bridge. The Watcher tried to picture it as it had been in the stories, two great strands of rope, a coming together of air and stone and sea when Dul Matha was untouched.
The stories belonged to another time. The Palace of Roses had stood here for hundreds of years now and the sea lords had thrived as all sea lords did. Evidence perhaps that the Goddess of Fickle Fortune was nothing but a superstition, for surely to wall away her shrine was nothing if not insulting and yet she had rained no great misfortunes upon the lords of Dhar Thosis to punish them for their hubris — at least not until now.
Or perhaps that was simply why she was called fickle? The Watcher smiled to himself. He became the air and vanished and appeared again atop the highest of the gold-glass towers of the palace, looking down on the city so far below that even the ships were little more than specks in the grey rippled sea. There were no doors here of course, none that could be opened from the outside, no point of entry for an Elemental Man. The palace wore a shield of gold, armour against such killers. The Elemental Masters would never permit one sea lord to strike against another and so such armour should never be needed, but the sea lords dressed their palaces in it nonetheless, never quite trusting the Elemental Men as they never quite trusted their peers, their kin, their kwens and hsians and t'varrs. They built their world of opposing forces kept in carefully weighted balance to prevent any one from overwhelming the rest. An illusion, all of it, a fallacy. The Watcher knew this and the sea lords perhaps knew it too at their core, but for as long as the Elemental Men obeyed their masters and as long as the masters kept themselves to themselves, this tension of oppositions worked.
And that, he knew, was why the sea lords of Vespinarr and Cashax and Dhar Thosis and all the other great cities feared Quai'Shu and his dragons. Quai'Shu had ruined his house to get them. None of the others knew quite what for, but the not knowing made them afraid, and through the visor of their fear all they saw was a crippled house ripe to be brought down and a corpse to be picked over. None of them even knew what these dragons would do to them, not even Baros Tsen T'Varr, to whom the beasts answered, but they were right to be afraid.
They had to go. Back where they came from. All of them. The balance must be preserved. These were his own thoughts, unshared as yet, and there would be a time to bring them to the minds of others, but not today. Today the Watcher waited. A sea lord had not fallen for nearly two hundred years. An Elemental Man had not struck in a gold-glass palace for even longer. They had forgotten the fire with which they played.
A glasship rose from the city below, drifting in its leisurely way across the water and up towards the palace. It floated higher and higher, beyond the Divine Bridge, and then arced closer. The golden egg of the gondola beneath gleamed in the sun, catching the light like fire. The ship came over the palace. It nestled itself into the needle of black stone that the enchanters had raised here to feed it. As it stopped, its gondola sank gently on silver chains until it came to rest deep among the roots of the towers. It opened and waiting men came to take whatever it carried inside — food, water, simple things that any palace would need.
The Watcher looked down on the slaves as they worked. Glasships were a marvel, the pinnacle of the enchanters’ arts, but often they were treated no better than a wagon and a few mules. Such was the way of a sea lord. He shifted from his perch. There was always a way through any shield of gold that the sea lords made. Men were men. They had to eat and they had to drink. He admired Baros Tsen T'Varr sometimes for not hiding himself away like the others, for seeing the futility of even trying, but then Tsen T'Varr had an Elemental Man of his own and Quai'Shu had always been different.
He chose a barrel filled with wine and a moment later was inside it. The men who carried it never knew he was there. They brushed through doors of beaten gold and the sea lord's shield was punctured. It was that easy.
Once inside, the Watcher shifted again, into the floor now, into the stone of Dul Matha itself. He felt his way towards the palace centre. There were more layers, more walls of gold and silver, animated sentinels of glass and jade like the Stoneguard of Xican. He passed through them one by one, always patient, always waiting until the moment came to move unseen.