Figure: Six-Link Circuit from Isewalus on Clarus, to Hashawami Temple on Olympia, and Back to Isewalus on Clarus.
Here are the adventures of Hashawami journeymen who departed Clarus through CSDS3 on 27th November, 2479. Passages in italics are dramaturgical notes. Other passages are written by one of the journeymen in her diary. We will give days according to Kambiz's Almanac of Conjunctions, 2475 edition.
The first planet the monks visit on their journey to Olympia is Draxius, which has a maeon wind 1.6 Y compared to Clarus's 1.0 Y. All other things being equal, the number of dodging points bestowed upon an adventurer increases as the square root of the maeon wind strength. When they arrive on Draxius, the monks have been through years of rigorous training and education, but they have not faced mortal combat. They are adventurer level one. But they receive 126% of the dodging points a first-level adventurer would receive on Clarus. On Igneus, with its wind of 0.4 Y, they will receive 63% of the dodging points they would receive on Clarus.
The planet Draxius has gravity 9.0 m/s/s compared to 10.0 m/s/s on Clarus, the home world of the Hashawami. The monks feel 10% lighter when they pass through CSDS3. The Draxius day is 1.02 Claran days, and its year 1.67 Claran years. With its axis tilt of 18°, it has pronounced and lengthy summers and winters. The planet has no moon, so its nights are lit only by stars. Draxius is an Open World managed by the Athena Corporation. No public summoning is allowed. Draxius's strong maeon wind attracts many conjunctions.
Draxius Day 2338 That is the day according to the Almanac of Conjunctions, 2475 edition. Dharmesh Khatun, Hemmendra Ali, Prisha Sah, Bhavin Patel, Naitee Biswas, and I, Tanvi Ray, left Clarus on 27th November, 2479. We passed through the conjunction called CSDS3 and arrived at Lat +38.8 Long 65.7 on Draxius day 2337. It is mid-autumn here. Our destination is a Draxius-Igneus conjunction, DSIS4, at Lat 39.1 Long 53.2, a distance of 933 km. Conjunction DSIS4 opens on Draxius day 2414 and closes on day 2420, but we must reach DSIS4 by day 2418 because the next conjunction we want to take, ISKC1 from Igneus to Kryanic, is a day's journey across Igneus and closes on Draxius day 2419.
Draxius Day 2386: Arrive Peyton, on the western edge of the Red Mountains, population five thousand. We believe we are 100 km east of DSIS4. We have walked, sailed, and ridden in a stage coach to arrive here. We survived three combats.
Draxius Day 2388: My five comrades are working for Sally and George Grensham. They are building a fence for a horse paddock. Looking from the main street in Payton, across the foothils of the Red Mountains, I see flat-topped pillars, called mesas, that rise thirty to sixty meters above the grassy plane. The countryside is dry. The bedrock is sandstone, as it is in the Red Mountains. The Grenshams are sheep farmers. They own one hundred hectares. The plane is covered with such farms. I am working for Roderick Goodheart, a tailor. He is old, with no children to carry on his trade. I am staying in the back room of his shop.
Draxius Day 2399: Last night, a giant bird descended out of the sky and stole a sheep from the sheep pen on the Grensham farm. There is one mesa on the Grensham farm, twenty meters tall and one hundred meters across. Naitee climbed it but found no giant bird. Three soldiers Arcturus, Mandrake, and Silas, all young men go to the farm. A month ago, the town posted a one-hundred guinea reward for the capture of this bird. The three soldiers go searching for the bird, walking down a river canyon to the west. One of them is now dead. The other two report that my comrades followed them into the river canyon and attacked them, killing the one called Silus. My comrades carried the body back to the Grensham farm. The body is now in the town. My comrades left the Grensham farm, going west. I believe they are not coming back. I am leaving the town tonight, riding on an pony with the Peyton sheriff and four deputies. They are hunting my comrades.
Draxius Day 2400: I am alone. The search party has returned to Peyton. My comrades have flown west on the giant bird. Last night I rode with the sheriff's posse. We went down the river canyon. We camped. We returned today. At the base of a tall mesa the sheriff found the footprints of my comrades: sandaled prints going up the south slope of the canyon. We found the place where they had camped the night before, and a trail leading to the sandstone cliff of the mesa. I stood at the bottom and shouted. My comrades answered from the top. I climbed up. When I reached the top, my comrades told me their story.
The day before, they followed the three soldiers into the canyon. When the three men turned around, my comrades hid. Later, they continued on down the canyon. They found the tracks of two giant birds, one twice the size of the other, beside the river. They find a giant feather. At this point in time they testify that they were attacked at a range of thirty meters by the three soldiers firing arrows from bows. My comrades charged. They say they wanted to close the distance so they would could not be killed by arrows. There was nowhere to hide in the canyon. The young men were armed with swords and protected by armor. Dharmesh tried to avoid combat by saying, "Stop!". I deduce that Naitee said something that infuriated the young men and the young men attacked with their swords. Naitee struck the one named Silus on the head. Silus collapsed. The fight stopped.
Hemmendra, who is a healer of considerable skill and kindess, even though he is also tall and strong and fierce, determined that Silus was dead. Arcturus was pacing up and down and angry. Mandrake was sitting beside Silus's body and crying. My comrades retired twenty meters, trying to decide what to do. Eventually, they all return to the farm, my comrades helping to carry Silas's body. George took the body to Peyton in hand-cart, accompanied by Mandrake and Arcturus. Sally told my comrades that the justice of the peace in Peyton is her own mother Greta Grensham, but she suspects this incident would lead to a confinement and trial before eventual release. She recommended they flee. She gave them five days provisions as payment for their work.
My comrades fled from the law. They walked to the place where they found the giant footprints. They camped above the canyon, beside a mesa. They heard our search party pass down the canyon in the night. In the morning, they climbed the tall mesa. There, they found an adult hippogriff, which is a giant bird of mass roughly three hundred kilograms, and its offspring of unknown gender, of mass roughly half the mass. Naitee says the big one is the mother. She does not know the gender of the little one. Before I arrived, they found a torn harness made of leather, along with saddle bags. The saddle bags contained books and clothes.
After I hear their story, I gave them a message from the sheriff. They have nowhere to run to and they should surrender or else they will be arrested for resisting arrest. They laughed at that. I am not sure if they were laughing at the sheriff or if they were laughing at the way I say my ars.
On this mesa is a shed in some trees made out of a sparkling gray material. Dharmesh, who is very clever and has read many books, says is made of spirit matter, a magical substance. There are a dozen small goats and their kids wandering around, but not the climbing kind of goats. These are farm goats. There are several rabbit warrens with dozens of rabbits. Bhavin killed a rabbit with a stone and cooked it over a fire. I repaired the harness. All this time, the sheriff's posse is waiting below, but then Prisha sees them starting to try to climb the mesa. When I had finished my repair, Naitee approches the mother griff with the harness. The griff snatched the harness away. Bhavin kills a goat and Naitee feeds some of it to the griff. Among the books, Dharmesh finds a photograph of a man mounted on the same griff, as is obvious from the colors of the feathers. The man's skin is black, but we do not think he is one of us. Naitee puts the harness on the griff. The griff's beak is big enough to bite Naitee into two pieces. Naitee is very small and pretty. I would not like to see her bitten. But she mounts the bird and the bird and just like that she takes off. The bird runs off the mesa and disappears. I screamed because I thought she was going to fall to her death, but soon after I see her rising into the sky on the giant bird.
My comrades found a way to escape the law. Naitee took each of the others to another mesa several kilometers away, one after the other, until only I remained. I did not want to ride the bird, and I had given my word to the sheriff that I would return to them. I climbed down to where the sheriff and his men were almost at the top, with their ropes and spikes and hammers. I explained what had happened. The sheriff and his deputies laughed. They were glad that the monster had been taken care of, and how they did not even have to give out the reward. "All's well that ends well," the sheriff said. I believe that my comrades are safe from pursuit, so long as they do not return to Peyton. Now I am sitting in my comrade's camp of last night. It is getting cold, but I have a fire.
Draxius Day 2405: I have not yet found my comrades. I walked down the river canyon to a town on a lake they call Mellisani. The tailor in the town did not want help. A boat took me to the other side of the lake to the town Marvellos. I am working for the tailor, sleeping in his back room. His wife is a good cook. The tailor's shop is busy with visitors who gossip.
Draxius Day 2400: I am recording what my comrades tell me of their adventures without me. On they flew on the big griff, Naitee going back and forth to carry them forward, the little griff following. This was New Year's Eve on Draxius. The big griff flew off on its own at the end of the day and came back with a sheep.
Draxius Day 2401: In order to avoid making the griff hungry, so that it would not steal another sheep, my comrades walked. They following the path of the river to the west, but not in the canyon. An hour before sunset they came to a cliff over Lake Mellisani. To the south, on the coast, with a tall mesa overhanging it, they saw Rodakino. The name of this town means "peach" in Greek. The town is famous for peaches it grows in glass houses. There are two walls about the town, one within the other. The glass houses are at the center, and they were shining in the setting sun. My comrades were cold and without blankets. They recalled the words of The Book.
Let the acolyte go to the new city, Let her enter in, rather than pass by, For how else can she find ways to serve? How else can she make the world glad?
They descended to the town, where they were welcomed by the mayor and chief botanist, a man called Venitos Arianopolis. The town was suffering from a conflict, and my comrades were invited to arbitrate. Sixteen of the town's children, aged thirteen to nineteen, were living on top of the mesa overhanging the town. These youths climbed up with ropes, and the adults were unable to reach them. The youths lower a basket each day and either the adults put food and peaches in the basket or the youths drop rocks on the glass houses. The youths demands eighty peaches a day.
The town produces two hundred and fifty peaches a day. Half of these are given as tithe to the Godess Athena. The other half are the town's livelihood. They sell the peaches for one hundred dollars each. So each day they are giving the youths eight thousand dollars of peaches, and are left with only four thousand five hundred dollars to support the town. The adults of the town include the parents of the youths, and they wanted no harm to come to their children. This was the conflict that my comrades were asked to resolve.
Draxius Day 2402 Naitee and Prisha fly up to the top of the mesa on the big griff. They talk to the leader of the youths, a young man called Alexis Polydrachma, who is the son of Rodakino's head shepherd. Alexis tells them they are, "Spitting in the wind." He asks them to leave, and they do. The sheep of Rodakino eat a particular type of grass that the town cultivates in the fields outside its walls. The sheep produce wool, lamb, and droppings. The dropping fertilise the peach trees, which grow in pots in the glass houses.
Draxius Day 2403: They talk to many people, but mostly they remember this day as a day when they were amazed by how delicious the food was in the hotel.
Draxius Day 2404: Bhavin and Hemmendra fall sick. Naitee, Dharmesh, and Prisha go down into the sewers beneath Rodakino and do battle with a monster with tentacles that lives in a pool beneath the city. The pass by the monster and retrieve a chest of gold for the mayor. The monster is called a Gulosis. The mayor pays them sixty guineas for this work: fifty for retrieving the chest and a bonus of ten for not killing the monster. He promises to give a good report of my comrades to the agents of Athena.
Draxius Day 2406: Prisha has fallen sick. Before dawn, Naitee flies Dharmesh, Bavin, and Hemmendra to the top of the mesa, as well as the chief shepherd. They wait for dawn, then approach the youths. The youths are awake and gather together. My comrades deliver an ultimatum to the youths: they must come down on the griff or be tied up and taken down by force. Alexis laughs. My comrades attack. The youths put up a good fight, but in the end they are overcome by the prowess and staffs of the Hashawami. Alexis is subdued. Once he is taken away, most of the others were willing to ride down. One young women fought to the end. She and Alexis were locked up in the town jail. Everyone seemed content with the outcome, with the exception of the two in jail. The mayor paid Naitee, Dharmesh, Bavin, and Hemmendra a carton of twenty peaches each as payment for the successful arbitration.
Draxius Day 2406: Prisha has recovered from her sickness, but wishes to remain in Rodakino for a few days longer. My comrades believe that Prisha so enjoys the food that she will never leave. I hope they are wrong, because I will miss Prisha. Naitee flies across Lake Mellisani to Marvellos. Dharmesh, Bavin, and Hemmendra help a man sail his boat from Rodakino to Marvellos. They find me in the tailor's shop and tell me their story. They are staying in a house down by the docks. The owner of the house is Sarah. She is the sister of the man they helped sail across the lake. They paid her twenty peaches for room and board for themselves, and barn and food for the griffs at her nephew's farm.
Draxius Day 2408: We have been busy in the tailor's shop for the past week, making costumes and drapes for a rich man called Pernassus Artichokhos as well as the all the guests who are coming to the party he is throwing tonight in the villa he has rented for the winter. He came into the store today and saw my comrades and invited them all to the party. So they all went up the hill to his villa for the party. They walked, but there was also a wagon to take people up the hill. During the party, this wagon came back down into the town and out to the docks where it picked up a cargo of humans and transported them through the town and up the road into the mountains, then returned in time to take the guests back down the hill from the villa after the party. Dharmesh, Bavin, Naitee, and Hemmendra ride the wagon down again and in the light of the lanterns they find some hair and some skin and a drop of blood. Sarah says she heard people wailing in the cart as it went by her house.
Draxius Day 2409: Naitee flew up into the mountains to see what became of the people in the cart. At the highest point of the road, she found a stone house with a slate roof and smoke rising from a chimney. Beside the house was an open grave and the dismembered corps of a red-headed woman. She saw two men hiding and she landed her griff. Five people came out from behind rocks and trees. They attacked her by charging and leaping. She is sure they were trying to bite her. Two of them were women. She escaped on her griff and returned to us. We ran up the road, which is uphill all the way. My comrades went slowly so I could keep up with them. A cart coming down the road warned us of five bandits who pursued him and his wife.
After two hours running we reached the top. We saw movement behind rocks that we believed were people. A man opened the door of the house. "Come quickly or you will be attacked!" Dharmesh did not want to go in at first, but the rest of us did. Mr. Ellis Snell and his wife Ingrid gave us pea and ham soup, which was delicious. "We are of the Order of the Necroni," Ingrid told me. "We come from Weiland on Clarus. There we suffered persecution because of the way we can coexist with the diseases of the undead. We are descendents of Galahad Mortus, the founder of our order, and from him we receive our immunity to these diseases." There was a big fire blazing. The house was one big room. Sitting in front of the fire on stools and chairs were fourteen people who did not move much at all and spoke not at all. But their hair was combed and some of them were eating soup from bowls they held to their lips. "They have zombiism," Ingrid said, "When cared for by us, they make calm and hardworking farm-hands. In the lands where they come from, they would be put to death."
According to Mr. and Mrs. Snell, they ordered twenty zombies for four hundred thousand Olympian dollars, and we deduced that Mr. Artichokhos's men delivered the twenty last night. But five of them were not zombies. They were ghouls. The ghouls attacked and killed one of the zombies. Mrs. Snell, knowing a ghoul when he smells one, did not allow the ghouls into the house. Somehow, the dead zombie ended up in a shallow grave, only to be dug up the next day by the ghouls, just before Naitee arrived.
Ghouls are suffering from a disease that spreads from saliva to blood. The disease makes them want to bite people and then eat them. The only way to cure the disease is to pay the gods a lot of money for a course of medicine. And that would of course require that the ghoul be captured and restrained. "They will either run away and hunt somewhere else, or they will wait for us to come out. My wife and I are immune to cannibalistic schizophrenia, but you are not, and nor are our zombies. Somebody is going to have to kill those ghouls. The only question is how many people they will kill before then, and how many more ghouls will be born of them."
Five Hashawami all agreed that it was our duty to go out and hunt down these ghouls and kill them. And that is what we did, with our staffs. One escaped us and ran down into the next valley. The mountain was steep. Hemmendra and Naitee sprinted down, leaping from one boulder to the next like mountain goats. Bhavin and Dharmesh followed them. I came down the path, which went back and forth across the slope. They caught up with the ghoul at the bottom of the slope, before he reached the hamlet of the Necroni, where we could see zombies working the fields. Instead of turning and fighting like the others, he lay on the ground, curled up, panting and sobbing. We stood over him.
A tall woman approached us, dressed like the Snells: black long-coat, black top-hat. She gave her name as Glenda Olaf. She knelt by the ghoul and made a keening sound. The ghoul stopped sobbing. She sniffed him. He tried to grab her hand, but she slapped his hand away. "He is a ghoul," she said. "What are you going to do with him, now that you have caught him?"
We answered all her questions. After that Glenda agreed to take custody of the ghoul. Hemmendra held the ghoul from behind and made him walk to a stone building where Glenda locked him in a cell. The ghoul spoke on the way. "He comes from one of the tribes to the north," Glenda said, "They have many languages, and I speak none of them."
Hemmendra and I walked back up the mountain to tell the Snells that it was safe to come out. We stayed the night with them in the hall at the top of the road. Dharmesh, Bhavin, and Naitee stayed in Glenda's house. Glenda has a zombie servant called Gwyneth.
Draxius Day 2410: In the morning, we fed the zombies, combed their hair for nits, cleaned the hall, packed up the perishable food, and set out with all fourteen zombies. It took all day to get down to the village. Tonight we are staying in the Snell's barn.
This village is calle Mica. The Necroni founded Mica eighty-one years ago. There is a mine in the cliff beside the lake. The mine produces sheets of mica. There are one hundred hectares of fertile land beside the lake cultivated for crops and grazing. Population: 163 zombies, 34 Necroni, 1 ghoul. Streams fall down the cliffs into the lake. The lake is long and thin and goes to the ocean. To get to Mica from Marvellos, take the road west up into the mountains, and when you get to the very top, go south. You should see the hall and find the path leading down into the valley to the south. You will see Mica from the top of this path. The lake is of a special kind: a fjord. It is one or two kilometers wide, but forty kilometers long. Mica is at the top end of the lack. The ocean is at the bottom end, to the south.
Draxius Day 2411: Say goodbye to the Necroni. Hemmendra, Bhavin, and I board a merchant ship. Dharmesh and Naitee start walking back to Marvellos to fetch the two hippogriffs. Our plan is to meet on Skid Island in a few days time.
Draxius Day 2412: Dharmesh and Naitee fly up the mountain road from Marvellos, one person flying at a time, because the griff cannot lift both of them in the mountains. They glide down from the top to Mica, where they spend one night and buy a sheep for the griff mother and child to eat, for which they pay ten Rodakino peaches. Hemmendra, Bhavin, and I are sleeping on the ship's deck at night.
Draxius Day 2413: We rowed and sailed forty kilometers down the fjord from Mica, in a direction that Hemmendra judged to be south. When the fjord opens to the ocean, we turned west and then north. We sailed past Conjunction Island. We examined it through the captain's telescope. It is one kilometer across with cliffs all around. There is no natural harbor, only docks built onto the cliffs. A plateaux hosts the two conjunctions: Draxius-Igneus Four (DSIS4) and Comitor-Draxius Two (CRDS2). Dharmesh consulted his almanac and provided the following schedule, in Draxius days:
2148 CRDS2 open 2157 CRDS2 closed 2184 DSIS4 open 2191 DSIS4 closed 2413 DSIS4 open 2414 ISKC1 open 2419 ISKC1 closed 2420 DSIS4 closed 2497 CRDS2 open 2506 CRDS2 closed
A mountain-top is home to a monastery. The monks of the monastery are responsible for keeping the peace during the conjunctions. Dharmesh and Naitee landed on Conjunction Island at about mid-day, soon after we had sailed by. Hundreds of merchants with their cargo and livestock are waiting on the plateaux. The DSIS4 celesti had arrived, and was due to open in a couple of hours.
The mother griff was able to carry Naitee and Dharmesh after coming down out of the mountains to the fjord. After leaving Conjunction Island, they must have overtaken us in our ship, although we did not see them. They arrived first in Skid City. They saw another griff landing in the higher part of the city, which lead them to the Broadnight Arms and its hippogriff stable. There they met Baradash Ragoon, who recognised our mother griff and called her "Flea". Mother griff and Baradash were happy to see each-other. Naitee gave Baradash all of his books and clothes, which we had been carrying, but did not agree to return the hippogriff of her child.
Our ship arrived in the late afternoon. Skid harbor is large and calm. The city is set in a forest that climbs a mountain. The captain of our boat recommended the Broadnight Arms, and that is how we found Naitee and Dharmesh. Before dinner, I went into the shop of Catherine Skiddle the clothier. She sells winter coats, and we may need such coats when we arrive in Kryanic. Her coats are well-made, but expensive. We are not yet decided if we should buy coats before we reach Kryanic, or trust that we shall be able to procure them upon arrival.
We are sharing one large room. We had dinner with Baradash. He works for the First Interplanetary Bank. He flies around Draxius on bank business. He has a new griff called "Wilks". He says he left Flea tied up outside a roadside inn in the mountains east of Peyton, one stormy night a year ago, when someone jumped on Flea and flew off with her. Baradash offers to pay us five hundred guineas for Flea and her child. He urges us to open an account with his bank so that we can keep our money safe and withdraw it from the bank on our journey to Olympia.
A man called Faust Grimm tried to take Naitee captive during dinner. He is a bounty hunter. Dharmesh and Naitee recall three soldiers on the road to Marvellos a few days ago telling them that there was a two hundred guinea bounty for the return of Naitee to Peyton, put out by Silas's mother. Silas is the man that Naitee struck and killed by accident. Faust is a big man. He was wearing studded leather armor. He surprised Naitee when she was coming out of the toilet. She escaped him, and the people in the dining hall were outraged that Faust would try to take a bounty in the Broadnight Arms. So he left, but he did not seem to be afraid or ashamed. We are keeping watch tonight.
Dharmesh consults the almanac of conjunctions, which gives the following Draxius dates and times for DSIS4 and ISKC1.
2413:13:37 DSIS4 open 2414:13:09 ISKC1 open 2419:10:48 ISKC1 closed 2420:10:19 DSIS4 closed
These same moments in Igneus date and time are:
1301:15:14 DSIS4 open 1302:04:48 ISKC1 open 1305:00:36 ISKC1 closed 1305:14:09 DSIS4 closed
We expect the conjunction DSIS4 opened today at 13:37 Draxius time, 15:14 Igneus time. The ISKC1 conjunction opens tomorrow at 13:09 Draxius time, 04:48 Igneus time. The Igneus day is 1.77 Claran days, 1.73 Draxius days. We will arrive on Igneus through DSIS4 at lat 55.7°, long 14.6°. We leave through ISKC1, which is only three kilometers from DSIS4.
Draxius Day 2414: I am sitting in the Guest Hall on Pusillus Island. It is warm in here and they have free lentil soup for travelers. We flew from Skid Island this morning and the flight was cold. We flew here on Flea, Wilks, and Penelope. Flea's son, who Baradash Ragoon has named Azalia, flew with us. Baradash rented Penelope for 50 gp, and Wilks is his own. We have given him Flea and Azalia in exchange for the ride this morning. We declined his offer of an account in his First Interplanetary Bank. He says he owes us a favor, and claims that we can get in touch with him using something he calls "the net".
In Skid City they call this island Conjunction Island. But the monks of the Order of the Blue Robe call it Pusillus Island. Their monastery is at the top of the steep hill on one side of the island. All the monks are fit from climbing up and down the steps. Brother Samual invited us to stay with them, but we decided to go to Igneus today. There is some crisis going on there with a volcano and monsters. We are leaving now. I must stop writing.
The planet Igneus has gravity 11.7 m/s/s compared to 10.0 m/s/s on Clarus. Its day is 1.77 Claran days, and its year 12 Claran years. Its axis tilt is only 2.2° with respect to the orbital plane, so it has no discernable seasons. It is itself a moon orbiting the giant planet Leviathan in the Quattor system. It has no moon of its own. It's maeon wind is 0.4 Y, compared to Clarus's 1.0 Y and Draxius's 1.6 Y. Igneus is an Open World with sapien population roughly one hundred thousand, owned exclusively by the goddess Pandora. Public summoning of healthcare is permitted, but summoning of creatures is not.
Igneus Day 1303: We passed through Draxius-Igneus Four at 10:30 am Draxius time and arrived at 3:15 am Igneus time. We have three Igneus hours until dawn, which is like five Draxius hours. The sun rises at six every day here, and sets at six, every day. When we arrived, it was raining and dark, but the rain was warm. It is almost dawn now. The rain is still falling, but it is even darker. Joshua Carnapi says the moon is setting. The moon is bright at night when there are no clouds. But there are usually clouds. Joshua is from Draxius. He works for traders who want to move their livestock to Plossis. Plossis is a town on the ocean to the south of us on Igneus. Joshua says there is a volcano erupting two hundred kilometers to the north-west of us. Lava is flowing across the plain. The lava flows in tubes. We are on a plateau. Fifteen hundred meters to the east is the Steaming River. On the other side of the river is another plateau. That is where the Igneus-Kryanic One conjunction should be, although nobody here knows if the conjunction has appeared yet. Animals are fleeing from the eruption. They are fleeing down the valley of the Steaming River. Birds are flying from the eruption. They are flying over us now. They attacked a flying hippogriff yesterday. The hippogriff fell to down to the plain. Nobody knows for sure what happened to its rider. The birds are loud. The sound they make is one loud note, long or short. No singing. Joshua says there are small, medium, and big birds, and they all eat meat. There are small, medium, and big hunters that go around on two legs. There are medium, big, and very big grazers too. There are large, slow insects flying around the luminous stone.
The bounty hunter called Faust Grimm came through the conjunction and tried to take Naitee, but Naitee, Bhavin and Hemmendra fought him off. He went back through the conjunction. An old man called Hamid Ghorbani provided the luminous stone that hangs from the ceiling of the rain shelter near. There are tables and benches and a map. Dharmesh and Joshua are leaning over the map. I am writing at a table. We are going to go East three kilometers to see if the path to the Igneus-Kryanic conjunction is clear for trade. Samuel the monk from the Order of the Blue Robes on Pusillus came through the conjunction to speak with Joshua. There are twenty or thirty travellers on Pusillus who want to go to the Draxius-Igneus Three conjunction that is opening on Igneus day 1306 a distance roughly 200 km north of here. By making this 200 km journey across land, they were hoping to travel five thousand kilometers across Draxius. The DSIS3 conjunction stays open until day 1311, so if they come through now they have 9 Igneus days, or 16 Claran days, to go 200 km.
Igneus Day 1303, Mid-Day: We are in the fort of Duke Tonic. From the top of the fort's wall, we can see Igneus-Kryanic One. We are on the other side of the Steaming River from Draxius-Igneus Four. Both conjunctions are open. The sky is dark. I am writing by the light of Hamid Ghorbani's luminous stone. Hamid says the sky goes dark for one hour in the middle of every day. He explained it like this. Igneus is one of the moons of Leviathan, which is a giant planet. Here, at this particular place on Igneus, Leviathan is always in the middle of the sky. Igneus goes around Leviathan in one Igneus day. In the middle of the day, Igneus is in the shadow of Leviathan for one hour. Hamid says we would see the stars if the sky was clear of clouds. It is pitch dark outside, and the air is cooler. Most people are sleeping. Duke Tonic calls it "nap-time".
Going back to the early morning today, we waited for sun-rise and walked east across a field of tall ferns. Cairns of stones marked the trading path. Everywhere else was covered with these ferns. Bhavin was in front. We were bashing the ferns flat with our staffs, making a path. Bhavin saw a green head staring at him from the ferns. He stopped and warned us. The creature jumped at him. At the same time, five other of the same creature jumped at us from their hiding places in the ferns. These were what Joshua called "small hunters". The Duke calls them "raptors". They are chest-high and dark green. They go on two legs. Their skin is covered with scales. They clawed on their arms. Their jaws are big and full of teeth, like a crocodile, but not as long and thin. They charged and tried to bite us. We fought them with our staffs. We killed three and wounded another before the final two ran away. We left their corpses behind.
We descended a causeway made of earth to a long, arched bridge that crosses the Steaming River. There were clouds of steam. A "big grazer", which the Duke calls a "bronty", was stuck in a broken section of the bridge. It was standing in the hot water on four legs. From head to tail it was twenty-five meters long. Its back was five meters above the water. It was shades of dark green. Its skin was like leather. Raptors were climbing on it and biting it. It was bellowing. We were on one side of the break and Gareth Jones, the Duke of Tonic, was on the other side with ten soldiers. We fired sling stones at the raptors and struck at them. The Duke and his men sang a stirring song. They speak Latin. The raptors ran away.
The Duke and his men climbed down off the bridge and one of them threw a lasso around the bronty's neck. They pulled on the lasso rope. The bronty was stuck in the mud. Through the steam to the north, which is upstream, we saw a "big hunter", or "teerex". It was forty meters away, dark green and brown. We fired stones at it. Naitee and Bhavin jumped on the back of the bronty and put a rope around its head. Bhavin jumped down and the Duke's men pulled on the both ropes. Naitee was still on the bronty's back when it staggered up and moved forward. The teerex turned away and disappeared into the steam. The river smells like eggs.
The Duke welcomed us and thanked us for our help. We decided to go back to the conjunction to bring people to the bridge before more bronties could break it in other places. Bhavin stayed with them to help put planks across the break. The fern-covered plane was now covered with brightly-colored "medium grazers", or "duckies". They can stand on their two hind legs, or lean on their front legs when eating ferns. The ferns were almost all eaten to the ground. Their skin was mostly green, but they had streaks of red, blue, and yellow. Their mouths are shaped like a duck's bill, but with teeth to pull the ferns. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. We walked through them and they made way for us.
We reached the conjunction and about that time the duckies started to stampede to the south. The merchants herded their sheep and themselves into the conjunction. Now a pack of raptors, hundreds of them, came chasing the duckies. We climbed up on top of the conjunction. Hamid Ghorbani stood at the entrance to the conjunction. Around him there were flashes and bangs. He is a wizard. The raptors jumped up onto the conjunction and attacked us, so we fought again. This time we were more frightened because there were so many of them, and they were so hungry. But Dharmesh was singing as he fought, and the raptors seemed not to like the singing, so we all started to sing, although not as loudly and clearly as Dharmesh, who sings very well. In less than a minute, the raptors jumped away and ran to the south after their pack. None of us were hurt.
The ferns were almost all gone. The conjunction opened and out came twenty men, women, and children from Draxius singing, playing horns, banging drums, and clashing some cymbals. They started off to the East. Dharmesh tried to tell them to wait, but they would not. They are Athena's Musical Travelers, and they are protected by the goddess, they said. So we went with them to protect them, and Hamid came too.
We made it to the bridge with the Musical Travelers. There were three bronties coming down the river on the eastern end of the bridge. The Duke said, "Oh boy. I don't know if we are going to be able to sing our way out of this trouble." It is getting lighter again, so I must stop writing.
Four teerexes attacked the bronties. Two bronties became stuck trying to push over the bridge on the east end. Two others passed through the repairs in the gap. We were on the bridge with the Duke, his men, mister Ghorbani, and the travelers, in between the gap and the two bronties who had their chests on the bridge. Two teerexes attacked the bronties. One sank his teeth into the smaller one's back. The bronties made tremendous honking noises. Their blood is red. We wanted to move the travelers past the bronties, but they would not move. Dharmesh picked up one of their children and carried her past the bronties to the east bank. Bhavin took a girl's hand and lead her. Dharmesh came back to take another child but ended up getting into a fist fight with the child's parents. We were yelling at the travelers. At last Branden Loff, their leader, started yelling at them too, and the travelers struck their drums, blew their trumpets, and moved forward. They passed under the waving bellowing bronty heads and the hungry teerex.
Igneus Day 1303, Evening: It is still light outside. The days are almost twice as at home. We are exhausted. It has been raining. We have been suffering from headaches and feeling dizzy. Before nap-time, we felt like throwing up, except for Naitee, who felt fine. Everyone drinks a bitter kind of tea here. They drink it all day. We all drank two cups of it earlier today. Dharmesh did not drink any. We all felt much better. Dharmesh did not. He drank tea with dinner, along with the rest of us, and he feels better now too. The Musical Travelers were suffering in the same way until they started drinking the tea. Cynthia Davies is the chef here. She made the tea out of fresh, thin, green leaves, oval and pointed at both ends. She called them "tea", even though it is not the same plant we call "tea" at home. On the underside of the leaf there are two curved lines parallel to the main vein.
We don't know what is making us dizzy. We are all heavier here, by about one fifth. I always feel like I am too heavy. I can't say I have really noticed that the stairs are more difficult for me to go up, but we certainly noticed a difference when we were throwing stones today. We had to aim higher. Maybe we are allergic to something in the air. The air smells like mushrooms and eggs.
We left the bronties bellowing behind us and walked up out of the clouds to a field of ferns. Five hundred meters away was the ISKC1 conjunction. Behind the conjunction, another few hundred meters up the slope, is the stone fort. The Musical Travelers were making their music. The Duke encouraged them, saying the animals do not like to come near music. There were animals in the field of ferns, standing on four legs, three meters high, six meters long counting their tails. There were two types, "tritops" and "steggies". The tritops have bone heads with three horns sticking out. The steggies have a row of diamond-shaped plates running down their backs and a bone spikes at the end of their tails. The tritops charge if they are angry. The steggies will swing their tail at you if you get too close. The Duke says these creatures weigh around five thousand kilograms and their meat is too tough to eat.
There were five or six tritops near the conjunction. "Well, Mister Ghorbani," the Duke said. "We'll not go any closer for now. Let's go around and have some grub, shall we?" So we walked around and up to the fort. We ate lunch in the hall of the fort. So did the Musical Travelers, the solders, and the Duke. Their Mister Loff interrupted the Duke's lunch to complain about Dharmesh. "A Hashawami monk striking my people with his staff! I'll be sure to file a complaint." The food at lunch was good, and there was as much as we could eat.
After nap-time, we set off to the north to see what we could do about the tritops and steggies coming up an old road from the bed of the Steaming River. We saw the beasts coming up the path from the battlements before lunch. "Oh, that will be trouble," the Duke said. There are not normally any big creatures near either of the conjunctions. The volcanic eruption has driven them down the valley from the north. The Duke's soldiers stepped back when he asked volunteers for this mission to step forward. So we were left out in front. The soldiers thought this was most amusing. Hamid Ghorbani came too, so it was monks, Duke, and a wizard.
Moving through the ferns I was on the lookout for more of those hungry raptors. From out of the sky came four giant flying creatures. I won't call them birds because they were so stange. The Duke calls them "giant terranodons". Their wingspan was ten meters. From head to tail they were eight meters. They landed on their two legs twenty meters from us, then folded their wings and used their wings as front legs. They were white on their bellies, red on their head and beaks, and gray on the back. Their heads were high up and stabbed down at us with their beaks closed and pointed like lances. We stood with the Duke in a circle around Hamid. I don't think he cast any spells. The Duke cut off one terranodon's head, we wounded another and the other two creatures ran off on their four legs, jumped into the air, and flew off with rapid beats of their enormous wings. They look almost as heavy as hippogriffs. That was a tiring fight. I had a headache after.
We reached the top of the road and Mister Ghorbani cast a spell that built a green wall. The wall material came out of the end of his staff. Mister Ghorbani is blind. He tells me he sees with a magical spell, but he does not see all that we see, nor do we see all that he sees. That's what he told me. We used the staff to put the green material on top of itself to make the wall. We watched a tritop try to push through the wall, but the wall was strong. So we started for home. Another tritops charged us when we reached the field of ferns. It came straight at us. Nothing could stop it. We all jumped out of the way, pulling Mister Ghorbani with us, and the tritops went pounding by and off to the south. We took Mister Ghorbani to the ISKC1 conjunction and he went through. I hope we see him on the other side. But we did not go through. We feel needed here, and we like the Duke.
We returned to the fort with the Duke. The lookout on the wall announced that a woman was approaching at a run from the south. "And what of it boyo?" the Duke said. The lookout described the woman: black trousers, black doublet, running fast. "Oh," the Duke said, "Let her through the gates." He turned to Dharmesh. "This will be interesting."
The woman was breathing hard when she entered the hall, but she stood straight. Her black leather doublet was suppressed at the waist, with tapered sleeves, and vented discretely at the back. Her leather trousers, an exactly matching shade of black, were cut with a low rise, and tapered so that they stretched just a little at one point in her stride. Her shoes were black leather slippers. Her skin was white and her long hair was tide up under a leather cap with a visor that she wore strapped under her chin. She put a leather pack, a sword, and a bow on the ground beside a bench, and sat down.
"And you are?" the Duke said.
"I am Pandora. I heard there was trouble, so I came."
The Duke smiled. "Well, ta for that." When he says "well" he makes it last for a long time. The woman says she is "Pandora". That is the name of the goddess of this world. But Cynthia says there is a society of women all of whom go by the moniker "Pandora", dressing like her and acting like her. We think this Pandora is a human Pandora not a divine Pandora.
Branden Loff complained again to the Duke about Dharmesh fighting with two of the Musical Travelers. Pandora said, "Let there be a trial." And so there was a trial. Cynthia Davies is the justice of the peace here in the Fort. She presided over the trial and was the judge. Naitee represented Dharmesh. Branden Loff represented his own people. Naitee interviewed the witnesses. Some said Dharmesh attacked with fists only. Others said he struck with a staff. Dharmesh and Bhavin fought a duel in the courtyard so Dharmesh could demonstrate the way of the defending staff. He showed it very well. Naitee spoke eloquently in Dharmesh's defence. She described how Dharmesh had taken one child to safety and wanted only to take a third. She said that it is the duty of every parent to protect their child, and if negligent of that duty, another must protect the child in their place. Branden argued that the parents decide what is the best protection, not anyone else, and so remaining on the bridge might have been best. The trial took an hour. Everyone in the fort paid attention. At the end, Cynthia took five minutes to consider the case. She went into the kitchen and chopped up a bunch of what smells like fenugreek, but looks like a type of fern. She came back to the hall to deliver her judgement. "Dharmesh did not assault with a deadly weapon. He caused no serious injury. We accept his claim that his only objective was to save the life of a child. Nevertheless, he is guilty of assault. I sentence him to serve water to the people in the hall, from this moment until sunset, including gathering the water from the well in the courtyard. Court is adjourned." She struck the bench with a pewter cup.
Dharmesh served water. The musical players are satisfied. Many are now thanking him for his efforts on the bridge. After dinner, while Dharmesh was still serving water, we sat at the same table as the Duke and Pandora. We asked her a few questions, and learned that yes, she has menstrual cycles, but no, she has no children. The Duke, however, has four children, ages six to twelve. "And I wanted them to be here, to see the travelers. But the wife, Ginan, she was too worried about it, with the eruption."
Igneus Day 1303, Bed-Time: While I was writing the passage above, my brethren were down in the hall talking to Pandora. She is going to escort Athena's Musical Travelers along the north-east road, through a mountain pass, to a river, where she says there is a barge waiting to take all the travelers down-river to the DSIS3 conjunction, which opens on day 1306 and closes on day 1311. My brethren said they thought it was a good idea, but they came up to talk to me about it first. I do not like the idea, and I told them so. I think the musical travelers are ungrateful and rude. It's not our job to protect rude people who want to go marching across dangerous country. And I'm not sure I trust this Pandora woman either. Is she really a goddess? I don't think so, because I don't think goddesses have menstrual cycles. She said she could "gate" us wherever we wanted to go, in the even of our following the travelers and missing the ISKC1 conjunction. After we talked for a while, my brethren changed their minds. So we went and knocked on her door and told her we would not be coming with her.
Igneus Day 1303, Night-Time: We woke up well before midnight. The sky is clear. We can at last see the moon, which they call Leviathan. It is directly overhead. It is so large in the sky that I cannot cover it with two hands next to one another at arm's length. It is so bright we can see for miles. We are told that Leviathan is a giant planet, and that Igneus goes around the giant planet, always facing towards its surface. At night, we Igneus faces away from the sun, but towards Leviathan. We are going to go back to sleep now. At midnight, we will eat and begin a new task.
Igneus Day 1304, Moon-Time: I am not writing this on Igneus. My brethren and I are on Kryanic. We rose at midnight and had a midnight meal and plenty of tea. We are all agreed that the tea stops our dizziness, nausea, and headache. Pandora set off with the Musical Travelers. The travelers were making loud music as they went. We still do not know what happened to them. Pandora had not returned by the time we left for Kryanic. The light from the moon at midnight is like a cloudy day back home, so we set off with the Duke and two of his carpenters to fix the bridge. The Duke left his ten soldiers to guard the DSKC1 conjunction, under their captain, a woman called Gladys, who is tough and white and strong. After we fixed the bridge with some planks, we walked back to DSIS4. There we found merchants with twenty cows and one hundred sheep waiting to move DSKC1. The Duke tried to persuade the merchants to take their livestock south to Tonic, but the merchants would not agree. Despite having nothing to gain from escorting these three merchants, their dogs, and their livestock, the Duke agreed to escort them.
We were attacked by four giant terranodons before we reached the bridge. We fought them off. On the bridge, we were attacked by raptors from both ends of the bridge. We fought them off, but then we were attacked by four teerexes, and these we could not stop from grabbing a sheep. But once they had one or two sheep in their huge jaws, they went away to eat it, so we could keep going. One of them Naitee drove off with an incredible sling shot to its eye. That would have been okay, but the raptors were becoming more numerous and there was still another teerex hiding in some trees to the north. We were not sure how we were going to get off the bridge.
That was when Owen Thomas, the First Singer of Tonic, approaches, riding on his tritop. He stood on the back of his tritop and sang. I don't think I have ever heard anyone sing so loudly, and so well. "Comfort ye," he began, and "Every valley" he sang. And he kept coming down the hill from the east, singing. The raptors stopped, then they turned and left. The teerex came out of the trees and walked to the north. The Duke greeted Owen with great enthusiasm and we all went as quickly as we could up the hill to the conjunction, where the Duke prevailed upon the merchants to sell him ten sheep and one cow to go in the fort, and the rest went through the conjunction to Kryanic. After that we all went to bed and slept until dawn, which was a long time.
In the morning, my brethren shared out the last of our Rodakino peaches, which were much enjoyed by everyone who received a piece. We ate with Ginan, the Duchess of Tonic. She arrived with the Duke's children last night. Owen brought them up from Tonic. Everyone seems to agree that you are safe from monsters when you are with Owen. Ginan is very pretty, and plump like me, with red hair and freckles, not like me at all. She touched my skin and said my skin was lovely. Her children stared at my brethren.
After breakfast, we climbed to the battlement of the fort and looked out across the valley of the steaming river. The sun was shining. Hundreds of tritops and steggies were walking up onto the plateau using the path from the bridge. A teerex came right up to the wall and put its head over the battlement. We moved back, and the Duke's children were shouting with excitement. Owen Thomas climbed the stairs and sang to the teerex and the teerex turned away. I have never heard anyone sing like Owen Thomas can sing. Now we saw a great herd of duckies climbing out of the river valley. Directly above us, in the sky, was the giant moon Leviathan. As the morning passed, Leviathan went from half-full to quarter-full, and then just a sliver of a crescent. After that, it blocked out the sun and the sky went dark. We could see the stars. The animals on the the plane slowed down and stopped. A cool breeze started to blow from somewhere. Next to the dark disk of Leviathan was a bright object in the sky, with a long white tail.
"The comet of doom!" one of the solders said, "It is the end of times!"
Igneus Day 1304, After-Noon: The possibility that the comet was a harbinger of the end of times was the reason we said goodbye to the Duke and marched up into the hills to consult Archibald Jones, First Astronomer of Tonic, in his hill-top observatory. "I have to go back to Tonic. These dinos could force our stockade, trample our crops, and eat all our sheep. I know you cannot come with me. You must go through ISKC1 by midnight tonight. I can't take anyone else with me, because there are going to be too many dinos around. I'm leaving Owen Thomas to protect the fort. But there is one last thing you could do for me, if you are willing. It would help if I knew what my astronomer had to say about the comet and the end of times."
We brought tea in glass bottles for our hike, because we have all become rather fond of the drink, and it seems to give us energy and enthusiasm. We carried baskets of food to give to the astronomer and his housekeeper. It seems the housekeeper had not been down to collect her groceries for over a week. Given that we later met Janice Davies the housekeeper, and she was rather elderly, I'm not sure how she managed to carry the groceries up, but this is what I was told she did. The observator is on top of a cliff. If you walk around the cliff you come back to where you started. At the bottom of the cliff were five men. Their leader was Xavier Balash. They wore wide-brimmed hats. The robes were black, hanging straight and heavy, with wide sleeves that hid their hands. This is the costume of the Celestial Monks. Xavier, Malcomn, Aspen and the two others had been camped at the base of the cliff for a week, saying they would not leave, nor let Janice get groceries, until Archibald let them come up to the telescope and view the comet.
"And what does Archibald Jones say about that?" Dharmesh asked.
"I believe he called me a dung-eating child of a stinking cow," Xavier said.
The means for getting up the cliff was a wooden cage with an iron chain, supported by an iron cantilever at the top, with an iron wheel. The cliff was thirty meters high. We suspect that iron is not as valuable on Igneus as it is on Clarus. Hemmendra and I withdrew and lit a fire while the others crept off through the forest. But Malcomn and Aspen came down to ask what was going on. We ended up fighting them, even though Hemmendra was very nice about everything and offered them tea. We each broke one of their arms, after which Hemmendra set their bones. While this was going on, our comrades went through the forst, where they were attacked by small raptors and scorpions, climbed the cliff on the far side, reached the garden of the observatory, and introduced themselves to Janice, who was at work in the garden. Archibald was not willing to see them immediately. While my brethren were waiting, Xavier climbed the cliff in his loin cloth, was stung all over by some kind of insect, and then gets into a fight with Dharmesh, Naitee, and Bhavin, which he loses.
Archibald wrote a letter to the Duke giving the path of the comet through the sky and stating that the end of times is not going to be caused by the comet under any circumstances, and my comrades brought this letter and the captive Xavier with his painful bites down in the basket with the help of the chain and wheel. We showed Xavier the letter and he was content to see the measurements, do they agreed to go home. We went back down the hill. We were chased by a teerex, which was very exciting, especially for me, because I am not as fast as my comrades, but they did not leave me behind, and it turns out that teerexes are not that fast at running down a path made for humans. So we eventually escaped without having to fight it. We gave the letter to Owen Thomas, said goodbye to all our friends in the fort, and went through the ISCK1 conjunction.
The planet Kryanic has gravity 5.0 m/s/s compared to 11.7 m/s/s on Clarus. Our heroes are immediately 42% of their weight on Igneus when they step across the threshold of the conjunction onto Kryanic. The Kryanic day is 3.12 Cdy. In the diary, the times Tanvi gives are Kryanic times in Kryanic hours, of which there are twenty-four from noon of one day to noon the next. The Kryanic year is 263 Cdy. Its axis tilt is 10° with respect to the orbital plane. Its seasons are mild. It has a single moon that orbits in 32 Cdy. It's maeon wind is 1.4 Y with repulsion constant 12 N/μg. Kryanic is an open world with population approximately one million and owned by the Amenhotep Pantheon. Public summoning of healthcare is permitted, but summoning of creatures is not.
Kryanic Day 676, 20:00: On this world I weigh half as much as at home, and we just came from a world where we were almost a quarter heavier than at home. When we stepped across the middle of the conjunction passage, the change in our weight was sudden. Our sandals were slipping on the passage floor. I stumbled and fell, but the fall was so slow I caught myself with my hands and then I was able to push myself right back up to my feet again. We jumped up and down on the Kryanic end of the conjunction passage while we waited for the door to Igneus to close and the new door to Kryanic to open. Naitee can jump over a meter into the air. I ran up the curving wall of the passage and touched the ceiling.
When both doors were closed, which was only for ten breaths or so, the walls of the conjunction glowed with a faint yellow light. The door to Kryanic opened and we stepped out onto hot paving stone and into the shadow of a tall, rocky mountain. We were still slipping and laughing when eleven raptors bounded across the paving stones with their mouths open wide. They were scrambling over the stones, looking less graceful than usual, but their claws gave them some grip on the edges of the paving stones. We fought them with our staffs as best we could. I had to swing my staff with only half my strength, or my feet would spin beneath me. We wounded or killed seven of them and four ran into the rocks at the base of the cliff.
The conjunction sits on a circular, paved ledge one hundred paces across. This ledge is half-way up the eastern slope of Fillik Mountain. When we stand on the west side of the ledge, we see the ocean. After the fight with the raptors, the sun set in the east, behind the mountain. The sky was clear. The air was hot and the paving stones were hot. We pushed four dead raptors off the edge of the cliff. There are two houses on the ledge. On the north side is the Day-House, which is made of spirit stone with a high, domed ceiling, and two short tunnels to get in. On the south side is the Night-House, which is made of spirit stone also, and has two iron rails coming straight out of its entryway. On four iron wheels there is an iron frame, and on this frame is a bed of granite blocks, mortared together. The rock heats in the sun during the day. We slit the bed into the Night House and we believe it will keep us warm at night. The Night House has a short entrance passage, and on either end of this passage are curtains of a sparkling, gray material I have never seen before. It is thick and heavy, but when I push it sideways it moves without resistance, then falls immediately back in place. Dharmesh calls it "spirit cloth". There are two fountains of fresh, cold, running water on the ledge, one the north and one on the south edge. There are two paths that go past the pools to a place where one could throw things down, but not climb down.
We found a raptor hiding in the Night House, and two in the Day House. Two escaped, the other two we killed and pushed off the cliff. In both houses we found glazed clay jugs, stopped with lids and wax. We just opened those in the Night House and they contain pickled herring, hard tack, pickled mushrooms, pickled kelp, and dried figs. We are wondering about whether we should eat any of it. I want to. There is a toilet and bathing room in the Night House, with its own spirit curtain. We turn a metal wheel and hot water comes out into a porcelain sink. We turn another wheel and cold water comes out. There are clay jugs that fit under a bench with a hole. Dharmesh went out to use the toilet in the Day House because he did not want to make a smell in the Night House. On the way, he was attacked by three raptors. He ran back to the Night House and there Naitee and Bhavin joined him to fight. They killed two. One ran away. We think there are still three or four surviving. We are wondering if we should eat the food. I want to. The pickled mushrooms smell delicious. But first we are going to sleep. It is warm in here, lying on the stone bed. We don't need blankets. The night will last for one and a half Claran days.
Kryanic Day 677, 02:00: We slept well. We ate some of our own food and then went outside. Dharmesh can tell the time by looking at the stars. Only three Kryanic hours had passed since we went to sleep. It was cool outside, but not cold. The conjunction was closed. We cannot go back to Igneus. We played in the starlight, trying to walk without looking stupid, trying to run without slipping and falling, jumping over one another. We jumped up on the conjunction until Dharmesh said it might lift up at any time and leave, so we stayed off it after that. With Hemmendra to watch me, I did a backward somersault. Naitee can do all kinds of jumps and tricks.
When we went back inside we were hungry with headaches. Hemmendra believes these headaches are caused by a lack of the tea we were drinking on Igneus, so she put some Igneus tea leaves in water from the bathroom and she hopes it will brew in there if we give it long enough. The water from the hot pipe in the bathroom is not as hot as it was earlier. I forgot to say earlier: there are four magical lights in the Night House. Two in the main room and one in each of the two smaller rooms. They are buried in the ceilings. We decided to eat some of the food in the jugs. We tried different things and waited, then tried some more. The kelp makes my tongue tingle. We sharpened knives and repaired our equipment.
Kryanic Day 677, 06:00: The sun has risen and the conjunction is gone. All that is left is a brown shell. The ledge is covered with white frost. It is so cold that our fingers begin to freeze in seconds. The sky is clear and a wind is blowing around the mountain from the west. Our cloaks are well-made, but they cannot keep us warm. We are sitting inside. Dharmesh is reading from the Almanac. I am frightened of the cold. If the Night House had not been here, I think we would have died last night. Perhaps we could have climbed down to the trees below the cliff and started a fire. But I think we would have died.
We took turns peaking out the curtain to see if anyone visited the ledge. We don't want them to be attacked by the raptors. We sparred for an hour or two inside. We are trying to become accustomed to being so light. When we were really warm, we went outside and searched for the remaining raptors. We found them frozen to death at the base of the mountain, among the rocks, all huddled together. We dragged them down one of the paths at the edge of the ledge and pushed them off. We opened the curtains of the Day House, thinking we should cool it down in preparation for spending the heat of the day. It was still terribly cold out when we found the raptors, but the sun is shining brightly and it is warming up fast.
Kryanic Day 677, 12:00: Dharmesh is telling time from the position of the sun in the sky. When it was 10:00, it was cool and comfortable outside. We looked out across the ocean to the east, with the sun on our right cheeks. We are not sure how high up we are, but the trees at the base of this mountain appear to be enormous, and the waves in the ocean are enormous too. We were admiring the view in this way when a boy of about twelve years came flying over the ledge on a terranodon, which I now know should be spelled "pteranodons". He was lying on his tummy on the back of the creature, and when it landed, it stood on its rear legs and wings. He stepped off the beast and used both hands to raise a pair of goggles off his eyes and stow them on his forehead. He wore a felt cap tied beneath his chin. With his hands now in his pockets, he walked towards us, a smile on his face. His shirt and trousers were wool, fitting him perfectly. The shirt was hemmed with expertly-sewn feather stitching on the hems. His trousers were baggy, with narrow bottoms, and catch stitching on the pockets.
"Welcome! Are you monks of Hashawami? I'm Kipper Bloomquist. My father is Conan Lasere. He's responsible for maintaining the houses. You'll need a ride down to the village." He spoke Greek with an accent unfamiliar to us. But we had not trouble understanding him.
We agreed that we could very much use a "ride to the village". A hippogriff rose up from the south side of the ledge, with mighty beats of its wings, carrying a carriage of wooden struts tied together with cords. On its back was a large man with a scowl on his face. The griff set the cage down near the night house and sat on top of it. The man leaped down from the back of the griff, which was a drop of about four meters, and landed on his feet.
"That's Blowfin. He's here to take all the pots of food back to my father. He could give you a ride in the carriage."
Blowfin wanted two guineas to take us to the village. Dharmesh said one. Blowfin shrugged. He and Kipper gathered all the pots and put them in the cage. We helped. He instructed us to take the poop pots and throw them down at the end of those paths, and when we looked down we now realized that the brown shattered stone we had observed were shattered pots. Shattered poopy pots.
When his carriage was loaded, Blowfin said, "Right, I'm off." He climbed up the carriage, vaulted onto the back of his griff, and with a great flapping of wings, the griff flew away, leaving us with Kipper.
"I can help you," he said, and he did. He flew around the mountain and came back half an hour later with three pteranodons following behind him. Bhavin, Dharmesh, and Naitee mounted these three and flew away.
"What if they don't come back?" I said.
Hemmendra smiled. After a while he said, "Let's pull the rock bed out of the Night House." This required a significant amount of pushing, which I feel is one of the few things I am good at, and eventually we had it out in the sunshine. We sat on the bed and watched the waves until Kipper came back. He brought two pteranodons. The way you get on a pteranodon is like this. You walk up behind it, because it is standing at a slight angle, and you put your right foot in one of two wooden stirrups. You stand up and lie on its back, which has a saddle cloth. You take in your hands two wooden horns at the base of the beast's neck. You put your other foot in the other stirrup. The stirrups had leather straps and you adjust these straps until you can push up onto the horns with your legs. The stirrups and horns are attached to the pteranodon in some way, but I have not had time to examine the saddle closely.
When Kipper took off, he called to the other two pteranodons, and they jumped into the air. I don't know what would happen if one of them went upside down. I would certainly fall off. No amount of hanging on to the horns and pushing on the stirrups would save me. But the pteranodon does not fly in the erratic way as a griff, swerving and pushing up and down. They fly in a straight line with rapid beats of their wings. The hippogriff is more like a pigeon, the pteranodon is more like a duck. The wind was in my eyes, so I could hardly see ahead of me, but I know we came down from the ledge and flew around the side of the mountain. We landed in a clearing of red grass at the base of a sandstone cliff. All around us were pine trees a hundred meters tall. Blowfin's hippogriff was sitting on his carriage, all the pots had been taken out.
Conan Lasere runs the Fillik Village Hostel. The village is dug into the sandstone cliff. The apartments are caves joined by passages. The hostel has ten rooms, six of which were available. He was willing to give us two for free: one for the women and one for the men. We gave him two gold pieces and we have five rooms for one Kryanic day. It's not clear to me when these people sleep. Conan's wife is Cordite Bloomquist. She tried to explain the sleeping schedule to me, but I did not understand. Right now, people are going outside. I am sitting in the hostel common room having some Igneus tea. We were served a stew for lunch, or maybe it was dinner. I don't know what to call it. The stew was made of shrimp, kelp, and mushrooms. It was delicious. Naitee liked it very much, but it made her break out in a rash. Bhavin has been sneezing.
So we went to the doctor. Her name is Clara Mosely. She must be about sixty years old. She recommended that Naitee not eat anything with shrimp in it. She said Bhavin is allergic to the saporling spores, which are everywhere here. The allergy can get better or it can get worse. If it gets worse, he'll need medicine, and the medicine is expensive: one gold piece a week.
There are all sizes of pteranodons. Little ones for the children, big ones for the men. There is are stables in the cliff where they keep the creatures. When the weather outside is not too hot or too cold, the people of the village go fishing and gathering kelp with little boats in the bay. Large rabbits live on the red grass beneath the trees, and these they hunt with bows. Saporling mushrooms grow everywhere, and these they pick when they are fresh. When it is too hot or cold, they sleep, or they make little metal gears out of thin sheets of steel. They sell these gears to workshops on Tentabi. Blowfin and his carriage bring grain, cloth, rabbit felt, and steel sheet. He carries away the gears and rabbit pelts. Anyone who needs a ride to Tentabi can pay to sit in the carriage and go with him. We hear that he carried our friend the blind wizard Hamid Ghorbani yesterday. Conan tells us that the Night House and the Day House were made by a wizard from Tentabi before the conjunction opened. The village caves and tunnels are lit by luminous stones just like the ones that Hamid could make, and some people have their own stones to carry around. The light is bright and steady.
There is a poster on the wall here: a drawing in charcoal of a man and a woman. The woman has wavy hair and looks pretty with pale skin. The man looks darker with a scowl on his face. They are Genevieve Welche and William Galveston, otherwise know as Black William. They are wanted for the murder of two village residents, John Baptiste and Sarah Baptiste. There is a reward of 100 gp for anyone bringing them in alive. My comrades are talking to Conan Lasere about going after the alleged criminals. Conan Lasere also happens to be the Justice of the Peace. It is a very small village. Cordite said, "thirty families".
Kryanic Day 677, 16:00 We have all gone to our rooms to sleep. It feels like we have been up for two days. It is hot and humid outside, with clouds overhead. There is a luminous stone in my room, on a stand. I can cover it with a cloth when I want it to be dark. I will make a sketch of the murder scene before I forget. We are now deputies of the Justice of the Peace. We have examined the murder scene. We have read the autopsy reports. We have spoken to the doctor. The murders took place ten days ago. The two victims have been buried already, but Conan described to us where the bodies lay, so I have added stick figures for them.
Kryanic Day 678, 03:00 Here is my understanding of how the Kryanics sleep and wake. I am keeping time in their hours, which are each three times as long as our hours, so three Kryanic hours of sleep is nine of our Claran hours. The sun comes up at 06:00 and sets at 18:00. What they call "morning" is 08:00 to 13:00. The sun is up and they are awake. On a normal day, the temperature is −10°C when the sun rises. By 08:00, it is around 0°C. By 13:00 it is 35°C and too hot and humid for comfort. From 13:00 to 17:00 it is getting hotter and hotter outside, and this is when the Kryanics have their "sunrest". From 17:00 to 22:00 is their "evening". The sun goes down and it is warm and humid outside. During the evening, the saproling mushrooms sprout and people go out to harvest them. Soon after midnight, it usually snows. White crystals of ice decend from the sky and land upon the ground, where they accumulate, making a white layer. From 22:00 to 02:00 is "first sleep". From 02:00 to 04:00 is the "waking". They get up and sit with one another and have a light meal. They wear their "waking robes", and stay indoors. It is waking now. We had a meal and conversation in the common room, where I now sit. After the waking is "second sleep" from 04:00 to 08:00.
When we woke up from our sunrest, it was raining outside. The rain stopped after the sun went down and the clouds cleared. It was warm and humid. The stars came out, and they are all in different places, although Dharmesh tells me they are the same stars. Kryanic has one moon with a period of about ten Kryanic days. The locals say their moon is one day from being new, but it set before the clouds cleared, so we did not get to see it. I am told that it takes two fingers at arm's length to cover the Kryanic moon. That's twice as big as our moon on Clarus. Some of the villagers lit charcoal fires on metal braziers and cooked outside. We ate what was served us in the hostel, which was another good rabbit stew.
Black William once killed a man in a fight here in Fillik village. Everyone agrees on this, from Conan Lasere to Black William's friend Marcel. The man he killed was called Ben. Marcel says Ben attacked William with a knife, after William told Ben to leave the village. Marcel claims that Ben was harrassing Marcel's daughter Colette. Conan says William was jealous of Ben because Colette preferred Ben to William. William dodged the knife and struck Ben once with either his elbow or his fist, depending upon who we ask, and Ben fell down dead. Colette has since moved to Tentabi. After this incident, William set up his own home somewhere around the coast of Fillik, but nobody seems to know where exactly, except for Marcel. Naitee approched Marcell and asked if he would tell us where "Black Willy's" house is, but Marcel refused to answer, saying Black William is not a man he wants to betray, and saying Black William would not like anyone calling him "Black Willy". Black William is also said to have spent time in jail on the mainland for his involvement in some worker dispute in the submarine docks. He was involved in a street brawl and was sent to jail for fighting with the police. When he came to Fillik, he had just been released. He fished and hunted for a year or two before the incident with Ben.
Cordite and Kipper both expressed their opinion that Genevieve Welche was angry at her husband for having a long-standing incestuous relationship with his simple-minded younger sister Sarah. All agree that John and Sarah Baptiste moved here when Sarah was only eleven years old and John was eighteen. Clara says the Baptiste's parents visited every couple of weeks, and the four of them seemed close and content together, the parents staying a night in a room in the hostel. The parents live high in the mountains on Tentabi, next to a conjunction. John and Sarah moved down to Fillik for their health. Something in the mountain air was not good for them. Once in Fillik, they were both much healthier. Clara is not allowed to tell us any details of any of her patients' health and treatments. These matters are confidential here on Kryanic. Federe, a friend of John Baptiste's says John loved his wife, and he believes his wife loved him back. He says no, there was no incestuous affair.
This is where we keep notes upon which to base Tanvi's later diary entries.
Kryanic 678, 8 am: Morning. Eat breakfast of fresh baked bread, smoked mackerel, pine nuts, and chopped saproling fried in fish oil. There is hot coffee and tea. Put on their cloaks and go outside. The bloodgrass is covered with snow. They can hear the waves crashing against the harbor mouth, away through the trees. Take part in snowball fight with kids and adults for ten Kryanic minutes (thirty Claran minutes). Set off to look for Black William's home, walking beneath the trees through the melting snow in their sandals. Naitee notes that it should be possible to make a home in the trunk of one of the redwoods, which are over ten paces in diameter. Cross a stream, find a dugout boat, follow tracks to a door in the base of the sandstone cliff. Black William is above on the pternadon balcony. He is wearing studded leather armor and a helmet. He has a sword on his hip. He is also tripping on some kind of psychadelic. He warns them they are in danger because men are coming to kill him. Fifteen fighting men and women on pteranadons, led by Scarface Crass, with his deputies Slice, Mace, Crusher, and Punch (nicknames) come flying under the trees from the West. The monks stand outside Black William's door. Scarface confronts them, telling them to get out of the way or be killed. They have come for Garath Wallace (Black William's real name). Garath opens the door behind them. They rush in and Garath closes the door just as six arrows thud into it.
Inside the house, Garath is pacing about trying to figure out what to do. Genevieve comes down the spiral staircase and he tells her what is going on. They are on the first floor of his home. There are four floors. He ascends the spiral staircase, passing the second floor, and proceeding to the third floor, where the staircase ends. Here he goes into his study with Genevieve and the monks following close behind. In the study, Garath sits and writes on a piece of paper with ink. Outside, Crass's men are making noises as if chopping with axes. The windows of this room consist of a tunnel from outside just big enough for a person to crawl along, and then tight wood shutters and a heavy curtain. The shutters are now open to let in the fresh air. The monks see men with pteranadons land on the balcony. They start to pry open the door up there with iron crowbars, and they shoot down through one of the windows.
Garath writes a will giving all his worldly possessions to Genevieve in the event of his death, or in his absense they will be hers until he returns. He signs it and asks the Hashawamis to witness. They agree. They decide to fight with Garath. Garath opens a safe with a combination lock on it, which sits on the floor. He takes out six shiny eggs. He puts some of these in his own pocket and gives some to others, but can't remember how that went down. The eggs are armed by rotating their two halves to the ready position. They go off when they strike something while flying fast. All go down the corridor to the stairs that lead up to the stables, where there are four pteranadons. Before the men on the balcony can get the door open, Garath unbars it and pulls it open, charging out, followed by Naitee, Bhavin, Hemmendra, and Dharmesh. Tanvi stays at the inner entrance to the stable, Genevieve is watching with her bow strung.
The fight is five goons, all men, versus Garath and four black-skinned, un-armored monks with staffs. There are more men on pteranadons circling around, waiting to take a shot at the defenders, but they do not shoot with their comrades packed on the same small space. When Hemmendra enters the fight, he jumps over Garath fighting one of the goons. At some point during the fight Dharmesh shouts at Genevieve to get out and shoot. Bhavin and Naitee fight steadily. The goons are driven off the balcony, with the exception of one, who receives a broken leg. They capture one pteranadon. Gareth drags the young man with the broken leg into the stable. Five goons on pteranadons circle, two of them women, and fire at the monks on the balcony. Dharmesh stays out there and fires his sling at one of them, and almost takes one of the flying mounts down. Withdraw into stable and close the door. They leave one injured pteranadon on the balcony and take another with them, so there are five in the stable now. Garath closes the stable door.
"I just heard voices down the spiral stairs," Tanvi says, "They are in the house." Garath props the man with the broken leg against the wall. He stands up and faces the group. He is about to say something.
Kryanic 678, 11 am: "Good fight," he says to Naitee and Bhavin, who are standing near one another, with a pteranodon's head, big eyes, and beak between them. "You," he points at Dharmesh, "Don't try to order Genevieve around again. Is that understood?"
"Yes," Dharesh says.
"And you," Garath points at Hemmendra, "No more fancy acrobatics. Just fight."
Hemmendra shrugs.
Garath turns to the captured goon. "Lauren, I'm surprised to see you here."
Lauran grimaces and holds his leg.
"We'll fight them in the corridors where they cannot outnumber us," Garath says, and strides out.
The monks have a brief discussion. Tanvi and Hemmendra remain behind to tie up Lauren using some leather harness straps. Hemmendra straightens his leg. "I'll set it later, we're in a hurry."
"Thank you," Lauren says. Dharmesh, Bhavin, and Naitee follow Garath and Genevieve brings up the rear. They descend the spiral staircase to the third floor, where they see one of the goons rushing out of the study and down the other spiral staircase that leads to the second floor. The study has been smashed about: the desk overturned, the tapestries pulled from the walls and thrown upon the ground, the heavy iron strong box slid across the stone floor almost to the door. The shutters of one of the windows have been smashed open.
Descend the spiral staircase that connects the third, second, and first floors. When they reach the second floor, a deafening clap and boom from below is followed by smoke rising up the stairs. "They have set a fire in the entrance hall," Garath says. Dharmesh throws a surrounding sponge egg down the stairs. It goes off and blocks the smoke rising up, trappping some of it in the invisible sponge so that the smoke appears to freeze in the air. The party checks the two bedrooms and the kitchen on the second floor. They find no goons and these rooms appear to be undisturbed. Garath pushes Genevieve against the corridor wall. She gasps. He covers her with his body just as another deafening clap and boom come up the stairs. Hemmendra and Tanvi are descending the stairs from the third floor. They crouch instincively when they hear someone gasp below. A blast of heat and light shines on the walls of the staircase. Something unseen strikes Tanvi on the head, but not hard enough to hurt her.
"They annihilated our sponge with one of their own thunder eggs," Bhavin says.
Naitee creeps down the stairs, which are once again filling with smoke. In the entrance hall a bonfire blazes on the floor, made of piled up redwood sticks and branches. The beautiful carpet is burning beneath the wood. Air rushes through the open doors and up the stairs. In the entrance, with the light behind him and the fire in front of him, is Scarface Crass. Two of his men enter and throw more wood on the fire. "More!" he shouts, and they go back out. He turns to watch his men for a moment, and as he does so, Naitee sprints across the floor and attacks him with her staff. Her aim is true and Scarface would have died right there if it had not been for his stepping suddenly to one side to frown at what one of his men is doing up on the balcony. The staff swipes through the air, grazing his shoulder. He turns to fight the diminutive black-skinned woman who has assailed him, but she is joined immediately by Bhavin.
Bhavin and Naitee fight with Crass. Crass is soon joined by Punch. Dharmesh and Garath sneak behind the door and start to push. Hemmendra joins them. They push the door shut as Naitee slips inside, then Bhavin. Crass and Punch try to keep the door open, but the three men on the other side are too strong, and the door slams shut. Naitee and Tanvi put the bar in place. Hemmendra turns to face the fire, which is filling the hallway with dense, choking smoke. "I'll put it out with a sponge!"
Kryanic 678, 11:05 am: The temperature outside is 10°C. Clouds have moved in off the ocean. Hemmendra throws a sponge egg into the middle of the fire. The invisible, expanding sponge smothers the flames and rises to the ceiling, freezing the dense smoke in place. The embers of the fire still glow, but no smoke escapes the sponge. Upstairs in the study, Bhavin the carpenter repairs the broken shutter. Hemmendra sets Lauren's leg and questions him. He says he is working for Falcon Grist because he owed Falcon money and this is the only way he can pay. He has a wife and son. The iron safe has not been opened: it is a combination lock. Naitee looks out of the study windows and sees an archer perched in a tree with a pternadon perched nearby. The archer takes aim and fires. The archer is a woman. Her arrow enters the window tunnel, but misses Naitee. Close all shutters. Make a sortie on the balcony and fire slings at the archer in the tree, only to find that there are eight archers in the trees, all of whom fire at the monks and Black William, so the monks and Black William retire quickly and close both doors, but not before seeing that the rest of Crass's men have set a pile of wood burning against the inner door downstairs. Fetch six buckets of water from the water closet, which is three rooms, one a toilet, one a bathroom with a spring of water, a hot stone in the clean water outlet that can be placed in the bath tub for warm water, and one an insulated ice room for the ice that Black William and Genevieve have brought in recently.
Carry six buckets of water down to entrance hall, where the surrounding spong has dissipated. The original fire in the center has died down, but is still smoldering and generating smoke. The inner door is hot, with smoke seeping under it. Open the inner door and throw buckets of water on the fire to douse the flames of the burning pile of wood, which falls down into the entrance hall as they open the door. Crass and four others are outside, twenty yards away, and they shoot the bucket-bearers, but they cannot stop the fire being put out. Hemmendra holds a door up as a shield and advances into the entrance passage. An arrow pokes through the shield with a thud, and others strike but do not penetrate, but none get past. Black William and Dharmesh scatter the fire, close the outer door, bar it, and bar the inner door as well.