Beyond the tasks of serving or protecting the Guardian, the servants in the Blue Tower could tell me nothing of other people’s occupations. The Guardian’s food was grown or raised, fabric was woven and thread was spun, but no one could say who did those things or where. Meat and flour, oil, fruit, fabric, pottery, and all types of goods arrived in the storerooms of the Blue Tower, seemingly without the interference of servants or laborers, and were used as the Guardian desired.
The Singlars had no such luxuries. Their diet consisted entirely of the tappa root, a white vegetable that looked something like a turnip and tasted worse. They boiled it, baked it, or fried it in oil squeezed from its stem. They dried and ground it for flour and baked it into a flat, slightly sweetish bread. They made their clothing from the woven fibers of the tappa and the other stunted shrubs that grew in the dim light, and they made a thin bitter ale by fermenting the tough skin of the tappa root along with its shredded gray leaves. We saw little evidence of commerce or trade, only rudimentary bartering.
Most of our information we gleaned from observation, for the Singlars were too much in awe of me to speak, and I didn’t know how to make them. Frustrated, I asked some of the Singlars where I could find Vroon and his friends. Everyone knew the three Singlars who had been granted names, and they pointed us toward three towers not far from the Blue Tower. One was tall, straight, and gleamed silver in the starlight. One was shaped like a stepped pyramid of ruddy sandstone, and one, Vroon’s, curved upward from a wide base to a crown-like peak.
Vroon, Ob, and Zanore were delighted to accompany us in our explorations, despite the Guardian’s having specifically forbidden them to have contact with me. They said that since I was certainly the king, all would be made right eventually. Every morning after the lamps came up, the three waited for Paulo and me in a lane near the Blue Tower and guided us about the confusing countryside.
“Tell me, Zanore,” I said, “does anyone know the shape of the Bounded or make maps or charts? Perhaps if we could see a map, we could get some idea of where to go.” The morning was dismal and rainy - morning in name only, as it was still and always night in the Bounded. The constant dark and the wild, fickle weather made it difficult to estimate the size and shape of the land or even to decide if we had been in some particular place before.
After a quick consultation with the other two, Zanore nodded and led us through the muddy lanes to a beehive-shaped fastness. He entered and, after a few moments, poked his head out. “This Singlar will be honored to have you come into his fastness.”
Inside was a single round room, cluttered with stacks of flat stones and wood scraps, some of the stacks taller than my knees. A sputtering wall torch made from damp branches provided smoky yellow light, but revealed no evidence of mapmaking. The Singlar pressed his over-large head to the stone floor.
“Thank you for allowing us to come in,” I said, tilting my head in an attempt to see his face. I’d found no easy way to address people whose heads were on the floor. “I’ll do my best to see you reap no punishment for it. I would like to know about the Bounded… its shape and size. I understand you have made some kind of a chart…”
He didn’t move or answer, except to quiver a bit.
“Are you sure he doesn’t mind us being here?” I whispered to Zanore, who had come inside with me. Paulo and the others waited outside, alert for any maintainers taking an interest.
Zanore pointed his bony black finger around the room and shrugged his shoulders.
At my left hand stood a stack of flat stones, one of the fifty or more such stacks that crowded the little room. The one on the top had lines scribed into it, and when I picked it up to examine it, I saw that the one underneath had a similar pattern, but not quite identical. And the ones below, the same. A quick survey evidenced that every scrap of wood and stone in the stacks had a sketch on it.
“This room… this fastness… the whole thing is your map,” I said, as the clutter suddenly took on new meaning. “Each stack placed in relation to the others. Some stacks tall, some short. Each layer of a stack a new version of that particular area or feature.”
The big-headed Singlar peeped up and grinned.
“Please, would you show me? It’s marvelous.”
Scarcely enough room to walk remained between the tall stacks in the middle, and the sketches on these pieces were quite detailed. Some wider gaps existed between the stacks at the outer margins, and those stacks were very small.
“Out here must be the Edge. Is that right? But I can’t tell which direction is which.”
“The mark on the wall represents the entry of the King’s Fastness,” came a whisper from the floor. “That is Primary.”
The mark was an arrow smudged on the stone wall with a charred stick. I nodded at the man who had now lifted his head slightly. “Come, please, show me the rest,” I said.
I learned a great deal that morning. Where a mapmaker in Leire might labor for three years on a new version of his map, the mapmaker of the Bounded had to create a new one every day, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he was never able to finish one map. The place called the Edge was truly the edge of their known world, and it moved outward with every change of the light - every day. The firestorms kept him even busier, for while the Edge always moved outward, changing only the dimensions of his works, the firestorms wiped out clusters of towers, and shifted or erased landmarks, whether roads, ridges, or even mountains. He collected his information from Singlars who moved around in search of tappa or wood or to build new towers and from those who traveled in from the Edge.
“Would you… could you… possibly tell me of the places you’ve traveled in the Bounded, mighty one?” he asked, once he’d taken me on a tour of his current work. “Zanore” - his soft voice caressed my guide’s name with wonder - “has a natural ability to find his way, but he lacks greatly at describing what he has seen. But he says… all say… that you see much. If you would honor me… ”
It seemed only fair to tell him what I could. He grew comfortable with me very quickly then, peppering me with questions about where we’d been and what we’d seen, sketching my descriptions with charred sticks on more bits and pieces that he could transfer to his map, exulting whenever he could lay a new chip on the floor to start a new stack in between two others. The Bounded was much larger than I’d imagined, home to thousands of beings in hundreds of tower clusters, scattered across the landscape. Two hours we spent examining his torch-lit stacks.
“I’d like to repay you for your time,” I said, as I stood by the silvery trace that marked his door. Easy to guess what payment the mapmaker would want. Though the Guardian had specifically forbidden me to grant any more names, the mapmaker had already violated the law by allowing me into his fastness, and I certainly hadn’t anything more useful to give him. “A man named Corionus was the most famous mapmaker in my home country. My grandfather collected his maps. Would you accept the name Corionus in thanks for your help?”
I held his arm so he couldn’t put his head on the floor again. I already felt like I was cheating him.
“What next, great Master?” said Vroon, after Zanore and I rejoined the others and told them about the map. “Shall I show you the tappa planting at the Gray Towers?”
“No,” I said. “Take us to the Edge. I’d like to see it for myself.”
Before the horrified dwarf could answer, a huge, leathery hand fell on my shoulder, almost pressing me to the ground. “No.” Ob didn’t need to say it twice. As with all of his rare words, he communicated a great deal more than the simple meaning of the word.