Away from the Godspike the desert changed again, morphing to a maze of mesas and broken cliffs and canyons, some of them so deep and dark he couldn't see to the bottom of them even when the glasship was directly overhead. He veered off course to the biggest and deepest canyon of all, the Queverra. There were some who liked to suggest that the Queverra was somehow the antithesis of the Godspike but Jima was sure this wasn't true. Very deep and very sharp and very dark, rather like some unfeasibly large god had slit the desert open with a knife. It had a bottom, though, and people had been there. The upper terraces were home to desert tribesmen, kept cool and shaded by the canyon walls for much of the day and there was even a little water to be had and places where plants would grow and animals could be fed. Further down in the darkness where the sun almost never reached, things were said to live. Jima had never quite grasped what these things were, exactly, and suspected they were ghosts, shadows and other products of the imagination rather than anything real; but since he'd never been down there himself and never would, he was cautious about where he poured his scorn. Glasships that flew over the centre of the Queverra sometimes mysteriously lost their buoyancy and plunged into the darkness, never to be seen again, and there were plenty of myths and legends of monsters. The caverns that opened into the walls of the Queverra were supposed to run right across the Desert of Thieves, for hundreds of miles under the Empty Sands to the ruins of Uban and into the Konsidar. They were supposed to reach down into Xibaiya itself.
Stories. Everywhere had its stories.
It took another full day from the Queverra to reach Dhar Thosis. He came to it early in the morning, and the first things he saw were the two great pieces of stone that rose out of the sea around its harbour, the larger Eye of the Sea Goddess, which from this angle, coming straight from the desert, looked more like a nose, and the pinnacle of the Dul Matha, the Kraitu's Bones. He could even see the arrow-straight line of the Bridge of Eternity, the span made of enchanters’ glass and gold that crossed the sea between the two, hanging a thousand feet above the waves. The stories of the desert men had it that the Kraitu had come from the Queverra, sent by the desert gods to battle the sea. The great serpent of the ocean, the Red Banatch, had fought it in the shallows here and the Kraitu had been crushed in the serpent's coils; the Kraitu's body had become the monolith of the Dul Matha, and the marks of the battle were still there to be seen if you believed in such things, the long dark gouges down the side of the sheer stone stack. The Red Banatch had returned to her depths, but not before she stole the Kraitu's essence and laid a thousand eggs along the shore, the offspring of earth and sea. Half had hatched into the sea titans, little images of the mighty Kraitu itself, and the other half into dragons.
Odd, the hsian mused, to be coming to one of the few places in Takei'Tarr that had a story about dragons in its past when he was driven by the ones that Quai'Shu had brought to the present. The dragons of Dhar Thosis were myths, and even if they'd once been real were long gone, but not so the titans. The old story went that the titans had savaged both land and sea with storms and floods after they hatched from the serpent's eggs. The dragons had plucked them from the water one by one and dropped them from the top of the Dul Matha — the shards and lumps of broken stone around the base of the cliffs were said to be their bones — until the last few swore an eternal oath to become guardians of the coast here for ever. In the cataclysm of the Splintering the dragons had vanished as the world fell to chaos and darkness but the titans were still there, lurking under the water, ready to come if the sea lord master of the Kraitu's Bones called to them. No one, as far as Jima knew, was quite sure any more whether the titans were real or merely an elaborate and exquisitely crafted story to instil caution into the city's enemies.
Time. Such scales of time and space and change beggared lesser minds. But not a hsian. Why would there be dragons here? He could see, as the glasship flew over the city and across a narrow stretch of sheltered sea full of ships at anchor, how it would be a fine place for dragons. The only ways to the top of the Dul Matha were to fly or else to cross the water to the Eye of the Sea Goddess and climb her winding roads to the Bridge of Eternity, both of which would be next to impossible for any unwelcome invader. Perhaps not quite as safe as Baros Tsen's flying fortress, but Jima Hsian was about to bet his life that the Palace of Roses on top of Dul Matha was a great deal more impenetrable to what was by far the most dangerous threat to any lord — an Elemental Man.
The glasship nudged up against a black enchanters’ monolith. They would need to stop here for a full day to recover enough energy to cross back over the deserts. Seneschals cloaked in feathers of emerald and blue, the colours of the city, greeted him with kindness and courtesy, exactly as the protocols of a good host demanded, and never mind the enmity that existed between their lords. They led him across the open yards between the three great glass and gold towers at the heart of the Palace of Roses. They opened the tower walls for him with their black rods and took him to a beautiful hall filled with scents and pleasures where they entertained him while their lord decided what was to be done. An hour passed and then another, and then the inevitable black-cloaks came. Polite to a fault, they blindfolded him and led him through a maze. Down, he thought. We went down, not up. Down into the Kraitu's Bones.
When they took the blindfold away, he was at the end of a passage filled with fine silver chains hanging from the ceiling, so thick with them that every step was like walking through thick mud.
‘They say the Elemental Men cannot pass such a passage in any form other than flesh and blood,’ said Sea Lord Senxian on the other side.
‘And are they right?’ Jima finished pushing his way through.
‘We will probably never know.’ As he emerged from among the chains, Senxian led him on into a small room lined with gold and lit with candles in such a way that no shadows could exist. They exchanged the necessary words, spoke of their families, their business interests, all the things that needed to be said before the reason for the hsian's coming could be reached.
‘I have considered my sea lord's position carefully,’ said Jima Hsian at last. ‘It is no secret that the acquisition of dragons from the western realm has placed a huge burden upon him. There are some who question whether he can survive. My sea lord will require considerable additional loans before his debts can be stabilised and brought under control. I have made my assessment of those who will be sympathetic and those who will not, of what assets will be traded fairly away and what cannot be lost. I have assessed those among the sea lords who see an ally in need, those that see an opportunity for partnership and advantage, and those who see a giant about to fall. Sadly, the state of Quai'Shu’s health and the fragility of his mind will have a significant and substantial adverse affect on the confidence of our friends and allies. In short, he does not have the trust and faith that he once commanded. Had that been otherwise I believe the fleet of Xican would weather this storm. As it is, I have concluded that it will be you, Sea Lord Senxian, who will hold the balance. The fate of Quai'Shu’s fleet will rest in your hands. You will decide whether Xican remains proud and free or whether it becomes a second vassal to the bottomless wealth of the Vespinese.’ Quai'Shu. Not My sea lord. There was a hint in that if Senxian cared to see it.
‘My hsian concludes the same,’ Senxian said.
‘Feyn'Channa. A great and dear friend and colleague.’ If you could say that about a man who was a venomous snake. ‘We studied together for a time.’