Scorio grinned ruefully at them both. “And I’m going to work on making Flame Vault.”
“Don’t leave us too far behind,” warned Lianshi darkly.
“Unlikely.” He was about to say more when Juniper, who’d been lying on her back and gazing up at the sky, sat up abruptly.
“Look,” she cried, pointing straight up. “What the hells is that?”
Chapter 13
Scorio searched the blue skies for some sign of a threat. For anything, really.
But the skies were peerless, vast, and empty.
“Oh wow,” whispered Lianshi, gazing straight up.
“What?” Leonis looked up, at Lianshi, then back up. “What are you looking at?”
Scorio lowered his gaze. Evelyn was watching them with a sly grin, clearly enjoying the moment. “I was wondering who’d see it first.”
“Use your mana sense,” said Lianshi quietly.
Scorio frowned, summoned his Heart, and then gazed out at the world anew. Unlike the Ash Belt, the Farmlands were awash in Copper; it slid through the air in great interweaving streams, quicksilver and endless, flowing like the wind in every direction.
But then he looked up and went weak at the knees.
The sky was striated in great curving bands of Copper. Each was as thick as the road on which they’d walked, patterning the blue with gleaming stripes that spread across the vault of heaven, sweeping in from the far horizon to curl around the Rain Wall.
And they were moving. Even as he watched, Scorio realized that they were all slowly gyrating in the same direction, as if the Rain Wall acted as the hub of some impossible wheel, and each band of Copper was a curved spoke arching out across the sky.
“Right, right, right,” whispered Lianshi excitedly. “How did I forget to look?” She turned to Scorio and Leonis excitedly. “You know how the Gold mana fountains up at the edge of the Farmlands to the floating islands, keeping them aloft, or siphoned up by them, or whatever? That mana gets processed by the islands, or converted, and diffracts across the sky toward Bastion. It’s the cause of the Rain Wall.”
“No,” said Scorio, deadpan. “I didn’t know that.”
“But you knew about the flying islands,” said Leonis.
“Well, yes. Hard to forget about those.” He looked up once more and marveled at the cyclopean bands of Copper that slowly turned overhead, almost too slowly to notice. “Can we harvest that mana?”
Lianshi laughed merrily as if he’d made an excellent jest.
“I really should have paid more attention in geography,” Scorio said ruefully, lowering his gaze at last.
“Eh,” said Leonis with a fatalistic shrug. “What’s done is done. And that would have meant taking energy and time away from everything that allowed you to reach this point now. What use would it be to know about this if you were forever stuck in Bastion?”
“Right,” said Scorio softly. “It’s just so much mana. Makes the Coal in the ruins seem like…”
“A pittance?” Naomi had drifted back toward them. “Didn’t I tell you over and over again how Coal wasn’t the answer?”
“Is all of Hell like this?” he asked.
“This what?” asked Lianshi.
Scorio turned to take in the Farmlands, the wild Copper swarming over it all, the ancient bridges and windmills, the flocks of brilliantly colored birds, the splendor of it all. “This beautiful. This rich in mana.”
“Oh no.” Lianshi looked back up. “Most of it’s pretty terrifying. And has much, much more mana. This is only Copper, remember.”
“Right,” said Scorio softly once more. “Just Copper.”
“All right, enough gaping,” said Evelyn. “Sun’s going to be setting soon and I don’t want to miss my appointment. Davelos and I were going to travel to the Chasm together, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to change his plans. The barn is close by. Let’s reach it before we stop for the night.”
Everybody set to pulling on their damp robes and shouldering their packs. They fell in behind Evelyn and descended the slope from the base of the cliff to the farmland below.
It was delightful.
The barn was only a couple of miles into the farmland. It was positioned beside a broad bridge that crossed one of the rivers, its waters boiling and rushing through the many stone arches. A lookout tower was made from three huge tree trunks that were bound together at the top to form a tripod, with a platform built at the apex where the trunk’s tips crossed each other. Three men watched them approach from it, and Scorio imagined they could see for miles and ring the large bell that hung beneath the platform if they saw cause for alarm.
The barn itself was large, spacious, and inviting. It was an old but well-kept building, its red sides now a faded rusty rose, and several carts were parked to one side with six-legged steeds grazing within a fenced paddock.
Evelyn led them confidently across the yard and in through the double doors. A dozen travelers were gathered within, many eating at the central table that ran down the building’s center, others having claimed bare wooden bunks that lined the high walls. Davelos wasn’t in evidence. The great double doors were thrown open, allowing sunlight and fresh air to enter, but Scorio noticed how thick and reinforced they were.
“This place has a defensive feel to it,” he whispered to Naomi as their group moved to an unclaimed group of bunks. Other travelers studied them, nodded politely, but otherwise minded their own business.
“It does,” she agreed. “Look at the walls. I couldn’t break my way out. No windows, either.”
They dumped their packs, placed the last of their wet stuff to hang over the sides, then as one stepped back outside to arrange themselves in small groups upon scattered stone tables and benches that were set out in the grass before the barn.
Scorio sat close to Evelyn. “Does the barn get attacked much? It looks… strong.”
Evelyn sipped from her waterskin. “Sharp eyes. All local workers know to retreat to the closest barn in case of trouble. Which is rare, especially this close to the Rain Wall. The Houses expend a lot of energy in safeguarding the Farmlands, and patrols range deep into the valleys beyond the floating isles to clean out nests and prevent dangerous build-ups. Wasn’t always the case.” She hesitated and wagged her head from side to side. “And, truth be told, with our numbers dropping these past few years, the Houses aren’t doing as good a job as they used to. Attacks are up, but no major incursions like in the old days.”
“Old days?” asked Scorio. “Like when you were reborn? Five, six years ago?”
“No,” laughed Evelyn. “I mean centuries and centuries ago. When we had to actively fight to defend Bastion. Back before this was called the Farmlands, you know? But that was ages ago. This whole band of Hell has been pacified since forever. Not necessarily safe, of course. Fiends will always come at you when you lower your guard. But safe enough for regular people from Bastion to do farmwork without fearing for their lives.”
“Yeah, about that.” Scorio twisted about and looked at a wagon that was trundling over the bridge, two drivers on the headboard, a handful of guards walking behind. “I thought the Curse kept regular people pent-up in Bastion.”
“You ever see a functioning alcoholic?”
Scorio blinked. “No?”
“They exist. People who learn to exist in society despite their addictions. Being drunk most of the time, or obsessed with getting their next dose of flaywine. Workers out here are like that. They’re impaired. Judgment clouded. I’ve seen men just sit down in the middle of a field and start laughing uncontrollably, or run their plow into the end of a field and just stand there, looking lost, face completely blank. A lot more accidents happen than otherwise would, but overall? People grow used to it. Functioning alcoholics, all of them.”
Scorio studied the drivers on the wagon’s headboard as it rolled past the barn. One man, shoulders hunched, stared vacantly ahead, whip held lightly in one hand. The other blinked and glanced over at them, caught Scorio’s eye, and raised his hand to wave with a fatuous smile.