She felt her husband’s desire to handle this one, so she let him speak. His answer surprised her, but it made sense, as well.
“The city’s called Tajvana. For several thousand years, it was the capital of Sharona’s largest and most ancient empire, called Ternathia.”
“The name of the language you taught us,” Gadrial said in surprise.
Jathmar nodded. “Ternathia either controlled or colonized at least two thirds of the world. Today, Tajvana is the seat of world governance. Even our Portal Authority is headquartered there, despite the fact that no portal lies in or near Tajvana.”
Shaylar could very nearly see the thought that formed behind Jasak Olderhan’s eyes: Their capital city is protected from direct invasion through a portal. She managed to hold in the shiver that touched her spine, feeling glad-very glad-Jathmar had answered. She would’ve bungled it, she knew, but Jathmar hadn’t actually lied, not once.
Which hadn’t prevented him from leaving the distinct impression of a long-unified multiverse government. The failed truce in Hell’s Gate had been called under the auspices of something called the Sharonan Empire, but neither of them knew if that really existed as more than a polite fiction useful for negotiating with the Union of Arcana. Yet if Sharona as a unified political entity had come into existence after Toppled Timber, Tajvana was the city most likely to be named as the seat of that new multiversal government.
Who would head it and what form it might take were unknowable. Shaylar couldn’t even hazard a guess. So she sent a flood of gratitude to Jathmar over the weakened bridge of their marriage bond and turned her attention back to the city they were approaching. The closer they got to Portalis’ heart, the more amazing it grew.
Buildings soared to impossible heights, rising at least forty or fifty floors above the streets, and the shapes were even more astounding than their height. One immense building resembled a butterfly, with wings outstretched beyond a central tower shaped like the long, slender body of that delicate insect. The windows in those “wings” dazzled the eye, catching the sunlight with myriad colors, mimicking real butterfly wings with uncanny success.
Others had fantastic, soaring arches that spanned entire city streets, connecting buildings, allowing people to cross busy thoroughfares without leaving a covered building. Yet those arches seemed gossamer thin, like bridges made of spidersilk and thistledown and soap bubbles. She couldn’t imagine how they didn’t fall apart or plunge into the busy streets below, let alone support so many people’s weight as they crossed along the soaring spans.
Other buildings had strange projections, like shelf mushrooms made of glass and what caught the sunlight like metal. Only these “shelves” were the size of large houses, projecting sixty and seventy feet from the sides of buildings, with no visible support. Their walls and roofs were almost entirely glass and they were undeniably beautiful, but Shaylar would have been petrified just nerving herself to step out onto one of them. When the slider slowed and the sliderway angled down to a height merely twenty feet above street level, she stared in wonder at yet more sights nothing could have prepared her for.
Everywhere she looked, there was something new and marvelous, so much, her senses began to overload. She couldn’t take it all in. Little flashes now and again came clear in the blur of unfamiliar sights. People rising up the sides of buildings in lines like marching ants, to reach doorways cut into the sheer, vertical sides of those buildings. Many of those doorways were cut into the sides of the strange, cantilevered “shelf mushroom” extensions, which she could see more clearly, now that they were actually inside the city.
She saw street entertainers performing complex acrobatics and dances, while hovering mid-air. They whirled like spinning tops, made prodigious leaps, turned graceful somersaults like a high-trapeze artist, except there were no apparatuses to assist them. They simply danced and whirled and leapt like birds who’d decided to take up acrobatics.
Sidewalk artists painted the air. Glorious swaths of color burst into being as they swept their hands in complicated patterns, creating breathtaking works of art that shone with unearthly beauty. Some glowed with soft tones, others glittered like gold dust, and still others scintillated like sun-struck opals. As Shaylar watched, entranced, a girl pointed to one of the patterns hovering mid-air and the whole glowing “painting” floated gently over to an easel, where it landed on what looked like a sheet of that strange, glassy substance that stored spells.
The artist picked up the sheet and handed it to the girl, who passed money to him, then walked away with her artwork, smiling happily. The other patterns floated over to other sheets of that strange glassy material, creating yet other paintings the artist then stacked up beneath the easel, and Shaylar sighed as she sat back in her seat.
“What’s wrong, Shaylar?” Gadrial asked in sudden worry.
She turned her gaze away from the astonishing city. She was still so amazed by what she’d just seen, she blurted out precisely what was on her mind.
“I wanted one of those glorious paintings. The ones that artist painted in the air.” Then she reddened and covered her face with both hands. “I can’t believe I just said that,” she said, aghast.
Jasak laughed softly. “If you want a spell painting, Shaylar, I believe I can afford to buy one for you.”
She lowered her hands to meet his gaze. “I didn’t mean-”
“I know you didn’t,” he said gently. “But it’s my fault you’re here, unable to leave. If you want something beautiful, that’s only natural. And Shaylar, if you ever need anything, tell me. Please. My responsibility for you is as deep as though you were members of my own family. I’m bound by honor to provide you with everything you need, and the friendship I’ve come to feel for you makes me want to provide you with gifts, as well-things you might have purchased for yourself, before all of this happened.
“At some point, it’s my hope we’ll be able to help you work in some fashion, to earn your own money. I know it must gall to be totally dependent on what you surely view as charity or the grudging support of a jailor,” he added, looking into Jathmar’s hooded eyes, as he spoke. “You probably think I don’t understand how you feel, and I will admit I probably don’t.
“But I do understand wanting to feel like I’ve accomplished something on my own merit. Neither I nor my sisters have the slightest need to work, but we all do, nonetheless. Except for the youngest, who’s still in school. Working, contributing to society, earning your own money-that’s something important to self-esteem. But until we can find some way for you to do that, until we can help teach you to live safely in Arcanan society, you must rely on my help, financially.
“You’ve been watching the city with wonder and fright in your eyes. Now that you’ve seen some of the things that happen on an ordinary city street, I think you have a better understanding of the fact that we have to teach you how to live, here. How to avoid unseen dangers, such as accidentally stepping into a spell-field that sends you thirty stories up the side of a building when you’re not expecting it. That will take time, as well.
“I hate seeing you virtually helpless as young children, when both of you are extremely intelligent, well-educated, talented-and Talented”-he added with a very serious expression of respect-“people, highly skilled at what you do.”
Shaylar, seated on a train in the middle of the most amazing city she’d ever seen, met Jasak’s worried eyes and bit her lower lip. “I’d like to work, somehow. But there’s very little I can do, here.”