Chapter 2

Chapter 2 (S1P2)

        The morning exodus of the wind haulers still amazed him, despite thirty some odd years of watching them depart with the rising sun. The sea of black machines more closely resembled a funeral procession than any trader's caravan he had ever witnessed. Although they did serve a rather important purpose he surmised. Transporting items was a very necessary and honorable profession after all. The fact that it was his chosen calling had nothing to do with his opinion obviously. He prided himself on his reasoning skills, favoring reason as the most valuable trait any individual might desire to have in ones repertoire of abilities. However, just as that particular thought arose several turnips lurched rather violently in his cart, bringing his mind back to the importance of transportation.

        Transporting goods to Valenoch was necessary and important, especially food, due to the rather lacking nutritional quality of the soil. If one could even call it that. He hadn't seen dirt in several decades in fact. That bizarre monstrosity of a transportation system was the cities lifeline, and he really did value a full belly even more than having good reasoning skills. He then pondered whether a person's bodily needs aught to be held separately from their mental needs. He decided it was a sound philosophical decision and congratulated himself with a broad grin that surprised several half asleep pedestrians staggering out of a local tavern rather hastily. He purposed that the large angry individual wielding a cudgel behind them might be the cause of their untimely exodus from alcoholic paradise. There was one thing that Valerians were good at after all, and that was making beer. That, and drinking it of course. Which just so happened to be one of his favored past times and was really quite enjoyable to boot. That, and considering that which required consideration. Or rather reasoning that which needed logical analysis from one of his intellectual caliber. He decided that anything that received his mental capacities must be of extreme import after all.

         The dangerously unstable turnip positioning within his cart suddenly decided at that moment that it required all his phenomenal faculties. With an ungainly flop he half rolled, half dove forward to save his precious cargo from upsetting the delicate balance of his cart. Luckily his tactical shift of weight was precisely calculated and delicately executed with such grace and poise that he managed to stop the untimely demise of said turnips. He then proceeded to extricate himself from the offending turnip pile and shuffle the contents of his cart to better distribute the weight to prevent a second event. Phineas felt quite proud of his turnip rescue and congratulated himself with a mental pat on the back accompanied by a second broad smile. He then decided that “thinking about thinking” was quite possibly a perilous pursuit at this hour in the morning and wondered whether meta-cognition was a subject better saved for after the fourteenth tankard. His head was beginning to hurt as it often did when he out thought himself. A difficult task no doubt for one of his stellar intellect, but he was proud to say that he was the only person who could out think himself, or out consider his thinking perhaps.

        A yelp of dismay brought him back the world outside his own mind as he realized he had nearly run over an older woman carrying a basket rather slowly across the road. He then decided that he should save his pondering for when his cognitive skills were not necessary and thus stored this most important of topics in his well oiled machine of a memory. He placed it right next to that other rather important thing he was thinking about the other day, something about this or that or something or other.

        His brain thusly freed of its taxing task he decided to revert to his second favorite morning distraction of examining the cities peculiar architectural features. While he truly did enjoy philosophizing during his morning haul it tended to give him rather impressive headaches and without ale to alleviate said discomfort, he decided not to carry said musing too far. And besides, the city always fascinated him. The buildings of course were odd by most individuals standards, but it was the ground that held the greatest interest for him. Made of dark black rock shot with veins of red, blue, purple and various combinations in between. It shimmered magnificently when the early morning light hit it just so. He had spent enough time gazing at the streets of Valenoch to notice that the odd stone only shimmered at dawn and dusk. He had spent years considering the why of said oddity, but reverted to his previous decision concerning too much analytical thinking in the morning and let the mystery remain unsolved for now. The great road was worn as smooth as polished marble due to the heavy traffic it endured on a daily basis. However, other less traveled boulevards and avenues within the city had strange lumps and mounds oozing from them at decidedly interesting angles. It reminded him of when he had once considered taking up baking as a new profession, a decision made in passion without the careful reasoning process he now professed to follow. It had all been a result of the most amazing pastry, and as such he couldn't really be blamed for his rash decision. Anyone who had eaten such a magnificent treat would be compelled to become a baker as well. He thought for a moment that perhaps others had eaten said treat before, but dismissed the idea offhand as pure foolishness. He knew for a fact that that tart was one of a kind and could never be replicated.

        Regardless, his ill fated attempt at baking had produced some very interesting concoctions that had oozed at odd angles when he had tried to mold them into some semblance of a cake. He imagined that eating the rock would probably produce a taste similar to his own creations inedible flavor. He shook his head in disgust at the memory, muttering “skeefo” under his breath. The curse brought more unwanted attention as several cultist's stared him down with their patented, “shame on you” expression. He had seen it a thousand times and it always made him smile. This of course unnerved said shaming cultists and ruffled their feathers in a very satisfactory way. He decided this would be a good day with such a fantastic start. Humming contentedly to himself he considered whether the city had been molded out of dough, or perhaps out of clay. It certainly looked like it was made out of dark ceramics, it was completely devoid of straight lines and even the streets had a mild curve to them. They were certainly clean and orderly, but they never ran in one direction for any length of time. He then remembered that the city was not set up in a grid like his birthplace and shrugged, forgiving himself for the understandable mistake.

        He then pondered whether the entire city was once liquid and something had frozen it into place, hardening it like clay in a kiln. Now that was a novel idea, he would have to store it in his fantastic memory next to that thought he had this morning concerning drinking about thinking, or was it clinking when drinking? Regardless, it was a good thought and had served to exercise his mental fortitude as intended. Speaking of intention, he now recalled that architecture was his chosen subject for the morning hall and returned to it with a vigor. The narrow alleyways caught his eye as usual. They had seen the least use over the past millennium as was was distinctly evidenced by the sharp contrast between them and the adjacent well traveled thoroughfare upon which he was currently traveling.

        They reminded him of the rapids near his grandmothers cottage on the banks of the river Lascia. As a child he had sat for hours entranced by the unpredictable torrents raging within their churning roil. The stone here rose and fell in a similar fashion, cresting in small waves generally less than a quarter of a span in height, but no less interesting for their diminutive stature. He considered his own span and a quarter height and agreed with himself once more that important things were generally small, and larger things could often be overlooked as commonplace objects that didn't require as much thought as minuscule mysteries such as himself. This brought his thoughts to one of his favorite alleys that just so happened to be approaching his esteemed personage. It still had tiny lines seemingly carved in it that marked the eddy and flow of a once turbulent river of a stone, at least he assumed it was turbulent at one point. Though he surmised that perhaps it was a placid stream of stone, stone always seemed calm to him. Although on occasion it did have a wicked sense of humor. It tended to have a decidedly dry wit, he liked that of course, finding it rather fitting after all.

        He had always loved the stone, like was simply not a strong enough word for his connection with the earth. It understood him as nothing else did. Or perhaps it simply put up with him as no one else did, he thought with a loud chortle followed by a happy snort. The snort startled a group of religious zealots mumbling under their breath and brought down a new series of curses upon him. He listened for a moment, always game for learning new insults. Unfortunately they were of the common variety, insulting his mother and his birth. He pondered how people could assume that an act on his part reflected on the ranking of his parentage. He thought this especially valid as his impression of nobles was decidedly low. His experiences with the gentry thus far had placed them below most of the common laborers he dealt with daily. Following this perfect logic he decided that clearly this transformed said insult into a complement and thanked the angry cultists with his usual face splitting grin. This of course unnerved them to no end and they shuffled off into some dark place to continue their incantations. After all, he had known a number of fantastic fishmongers as wonderful drinking companions. As such he considered being “a no good son of a fishmonger” as a rather positive thing. Especially as the fishmongers had been far friendlier than his real father!

        This train of thought threatened to stop on a subject he felt best left banished to the recesses of memory and never again returned to the fore. As such he decided that extolling the virtues of stone was a far more beneficial activity than ruminating on the sins of his father. Most especially in terms of his mental health, something individuals seemed to question on a daily basis. Stone was solid, dependable, helpful in any number of situations and generally quite reliable unless neglected. This foreign earth was not quite as familiar to him as his native limestone hills, but he didn't hold that against it. People can't help where there from and he had never been a fan of all that racist gibber jabber tavern folk seemed so fond of. This strange earth had become closer to him than his family ever had been. He decided that although it wasn't quite in the same species as himself he could still consider it a distant cousin. If he wasn't racist against the humans he might as well not be racist against the stone either. The stone was certainly a better companion than most of the greedy men he had met in his time.

        This stone did feel slightly off however, it seemed unnatural somehow. He loved it all the same, he was after all a tolerant sort of fellow and he did love his strange companion all the more for her eccentricities. He certainly had his fair share of them after all. He pondered the list of his own oddities for some time until a gentle humming brought his mind back to the world around him. He looked up just in time redirect his cart out of the path of a rather large patrol of city guardsmen and silently thanked the stone, receiving a gentle thrumming in response that sounded decidedly bemused to his ear.

        He listened to the gentle chorus for a time until he recalled his previous distraction of examining architecture. The buildings of Valenoch did not look built so much as born, the children of the black rivers of volcanic glass surrounding them. They varied in height immensely as well. The monsters of the warehouse district dwarfed the various official buildings bordering them. The customs and excise house he was now approaching displayed the typical Valerian utilitarianism. Squat and functional he doubted it had changed in its last thousand years of use. The nearby and much larger city guard post held a great deal more interest for him. A three story, somewhat rectangular mound, it was littered with carvings. The most obvious were the crenelations and cornices that truly brought the building to life. Each corner was a wealth of beauty, with mostly natural themes. An understandable subject matter considering the distinct lack of greenery in Valenoch. He paused a moment to examine a particularly beautiful leafy facade until the angry shouting of the traffic behind him forced him to instruct his faithful steed to initiate their sojourn once more.

        Legend had it that there was so little crime in the city that once the guardsmen had needed a separate police force to monitor the guards who were often bored to madness watching crime free streets. Supposedly, one clever sergeant had been an apprentice stone carver before he had signed the pact. As a result he found a hobby among his idle hours in this particular guard house. It had started with his room and he had kept it quite secret, fearing reprimand. Oddly enough, when the captain of the guards had inevitably discovered the sergeants' redecorated quarters he had complimented the work and suggested he train others in his hobby. Soon after the officers mess was dotted with a number of crude carvings. Eventually others took up the chisel and unofficial training sessions began in the quiet off hours within the officers' mess hall. Slowly the caliber of the carvings improved as more skill was discovered in particularly interesting places, or so the legend goes. He remembered hearing the tale while waiting in line to pay his taxes. A guardsmen had been explaining a rather crude carving in the excise office. A merchant had asked why the outside was so beautiful while the inside was quite the opposite. The guard had explained that the first carvers had started on the inside, and only the best were allowed to work on the outer facade.

        The proof was plane in the elaborate carvings that illuminated the otherwise gloomy barracks. His favorite was an ancient carving, still beautiful despite being worn by the gritty and frighteningly consistent eastern wind. It consisted of two falcons soaring over a forest. The detail was exquisite and their eyes seemed to glow in the morning light. It reminded him of his youth, escaping from the great hall and playing amongst the trees. The reprimands and whippings were well worth the afternoon hours spent daydreaming in the groves of the dryads, when dryads had still inhabited those woods, he recalled with a fond melancholy.

        His gentle reverie was ripped from him as he was plunged into gloom. After a moment his eyes adjusted to the heavy shadow cast by the inner walls of the city proper. He nearly ran over a silk clad fellow wearing the distinctive tattoos of the deep south. The arrogant sod soon began cursing in the strange rasping dialect of Qul'At as Phineas's cart trundled on unperturbed by the foreigners colorful tirade. He was quite sad that he couldn't understand, he found the art of insults to be a lively and entertaining exercise of the mind. He decided at some point he must learn more languages, seven was simply not enough.

        He pondered where he might find another teacher, generally he tended to learn from sailors. Unfortunately, they often remained in the city for only a few weeks or a month at most, always claiming the sea was calling them. This of course made consistent teachers very difficult to find and as such he was often in the process of learning four or five languages at once and he sometimes mixed them up and blended them together, making a rather wonderful new language he liked to call the Phinetian dialect. Despite their truancy, sailors fortunately tended to know many tongues and generally were more than happy to teach him the choicest bits of any language for a few pints. He had found that a few years of said bribery resulted in a tolerable handle on a language. It also allowed him to curse in more than twenty tongues. A boast he was quite proud to prove on request at any number of taverns.

         As such he had earned a certain notoriety and was often consulted on matters of extreme import, such as how to best insult a particular person based on his country of birth or race. This of course brought up thoughts of his own country of birth and how best to insult himself. Naturally this digressed into his reason for finding succor in Valenoch, which naturally reversed his thoughts back to architecture.

        He looked up at the eastern gate and smiled. Like the outer gate it was surmounted by a huge Raven. The similarity between the structures ended there however. This creature was constructed entirely of darksteel and she called to him with her sweet morning song. He had many reasons he could easily list ad nausea to leave the city, but the sight of her banished them all. Her feathers arced out from her body along the sides of the tunnel seamlessly transitioning from obsidian to the deep purplish blue of darksteel. Her pinion feathers curled down towards him lovingly, teasing him with their proximity. The tantalizing tips were so close that he could almost reach them if he stood on the top of his cart on his tip toes. He had tried jumping to reach them on a number of occasions, but his beloved stone was an unforgiving mistress when he crashed into her bodily. He decided he did not need any new bruises this morning.

        Tall amongst his own people, his span and a quarter height was quite tiny compared to the average Valerian's two spans. He stared longingly over his shoulder at the claws descending from the base of the sculpture one hundred and fifty spans above him and wished they would lift him up into their gentle caress. His desire to fly was still strong after two hundred years, he wondered if he would ever be granted his wish and soar amongst the clouds. He had constructed a great number of fabulous devices to this end, much to his dismay. He had never hurt anyone with his creations, well, not on purpose anyway.

        His sigh caught on his lips as he saw the vendors preparing for market. Called the gateway to the east for good reason, Valenoch's exotics market always held some new contraption or gizmo for him to investigate. Occasionally he would save enough drakes to acquire said novelty. He would test his willpower to the limit playing with it until he would succumb to inevitability and give his curiosity free reign. He would spend days carefully diagramming its inner workings and examining their intricacies. He just couldn't resist discovering all the wonderful cogs and contraptions within. Unfortunately, despite precise reassembly they never seemed to function correctly after his ministrations. He wondered if all the spare parts left over had something to do with this particular predicament and dismissed the foolish thought out of hand. They were simply extra pieces placed within the device in case something failed and needed replacement.

        He diverted his cart from the main road filled with the morning haul and continued on a minor detour or two through through various treasure troves of machinery. He meandered through the stalls with his cart, occasionally listening to the curses and cries of anger caused by his inattentive wandering. Or more specifically by his mighty steed's occasional sampling of this and that. He couldn't blame her, donkey's were curious by nature, much like himself. One simply must satisfy said curiosity at some point or the mind will naturally explode with an over abundance of curiosity . He could appreciate this as he was often a victim of terminal curiousness himself. Here and there he glimpsed various glorious bits of this and that. He wisely kept his distance by maintaining his perch upon the seat of his cart. He had learned that placing himself in too close a proximity of shiny things was detrimental to his pocket book. He really loved shiny things. Eventually he forced himself to turn away from the market brimming with mechanical goodies and headed back to the now much less congested thoroughfare.

        He surmised that lost time would be made up for by the greatly decreased traffic and turned through the great eastern square fronting the foreign quarter and continued south to the coopers street. He trundled past the cobblers and barrel makers and lost himself in their work as his faithful companion guided the cart onwards. She knew the way at least as well as he did and she was much less easy to distract. Her curiosity was roused by edible things rather than items of a reflective nature. Thus, the reason for their avoidance of the various food markets in the city as a general rule. It was an understanding they had, when passing the metalworkers he allowed Matilda to lead and as such he was less likely to start conversations that detracted from his timeliness.

        Onward they trundled, leaving the wagon wrights and barrel makers and entering the street of the unnamed smiths. It had achieved this particular title due to an ongoing feud between copper and bronze smiths. He chuckled as they traded clever insults across the road, pausing now and then to take mental note if one was particularly clever or novel. On the left the coppersmiths cast fine kettles, handles and various assortments of cookery and household items. On the right bronze smiths cast items of a similar ilk as they loudly extolled the virtues of bronze to their apprentices in the familiar and generally quite friendly banter that filled this particular avenue of the bustling city. He enjoyed their jests and especially enjoyed frequenting the nearby taverns of this district and asking his favorite question of: “why isn't the street named bronze or copper street?”. He would then allow some fine, and generally very drunk, copper or bronze worker to explain that it really ought to be copper or bronze street. This would assuredly start a fantastic drunken debate on the true name of the street and degenerate into insults and the infrequent scuffle. It was all very good natured generally and many copper smiths were extremely good friends with bronze smiths so long as “the discussion” was not started. He was well known in the area and generally well liked, having been dubbed “the instigator” some twenty odd years ago for his habit of starting “the discussion” on any number of instances.

        The iron and steel smiths were far more somber, calmly forging instruments of death every day must take a toll on ones sense of humor he mused. Not all forged weapons, some made plows or various items requiring more strength than copper or bronze. There were a few machine shops that specialized in making parts for Valmora's more eccentric desires. Namely the engineers school held the majority of their contracts, but sometimes foreigners would ask for something requiring quality and skill that was difficult to find in the field of machinery outside of Valenoch as her smiths were something of a legend in the outside world. Only the Dwarfs competed with Valenoch where machinery was concerned, but four thousand leagues of distance between them dampened that considerably and competition wasn't particularly fierce. Especially since half the Valerian smiths were Dwarfs and staunchly refused to speak of their northern brethren. The Valerian tradition was not to speak of your past or why one arrived in the dark city, but the Dwarfs took it to extremes, refusing to even speak of their kin. Once again he considered his own previous home, not so far removed from the Dwarven halls beneath Auroch's spine and quickly reverted to thoughts of shiny things.

        He had often pondered becoming a metalworker of some sort as he watched the smiths beating on intensely glowing shards of molten earth. Something had always stopped him however, metal was nice and all, but it was no stone. The stone was his love first and foremost and despite his infatuation with trinkets and machinery it could not displace the earth from the core of his soul. He quickly dismissed dreams of trinket creation as the his favorite building appeared before him. The steel foundry and its massive smokestacks always made the hair on the back of his neck rise, of which there was a great deal. He desperately wanted to go inside and see all the different types of stone that were smelted into metal pulled from the never ending mines beneath the cairn. He considered perhaps finding work inside, just to see how it worked and immediately dismissed the idea. It involved far too much work and he had long since discovered he had an extreme allergy to that particular malady. He decided that manual labor allowed too little time to think and required too much strain on the body. He believed his body to be very picky about what it did, and keeping it in perfect condition with as little work as possible was a high priority for him. It was difficult to think and work at the same time and it often caused accidents, or so he had discovered on multiple occasions. He concluded that with his brains he really aught to be on the design end of things anyway.

        Finally he approached the stone masons college. It was his second favorite building, second only because of the unfortunate religious aspects associated with it. He had been disabused of the notions of religion at an early age and that was a particular lesson he had never engendered to forget. Human sacrifice was an extremely strong motivator after all. His love for humans wasn't particularly strong, but watching their hearts burned while they were still in their chests was just more than his stomach could take. Belael had never been his favorite among the gods anyway. After all, it was what lay inside the building that he was curious about. Supposedly, stone from every land in the known kingdoms was housed within for research purposes. He fondly remembered years ago when a fellow wagoner was accepted as an acolyte. He had told him of the wondrous stones and how different they were from anything he had ever seen here or in his native southern forests. Soon after he had moved into his new quarters within the college and had not exited since. At least no one had seen him after his acceptance letter and successive celebratory pub crawl.

        Many, many times he had thought of masonry, far more than any other possible career he had considered. He feared the mysticism associated with the cult like profession and knew zealots too well to surrender to his desire for greater knowledge of the stone. His love after all was for the earth, not some religious ceremony. He still loved the building though. It wasn't the structures fault that it housed lunatics obsessed with ridiculous incantations. Erected of solid black marble and carved from end to end in fantastic reliefs, it told the story of Valenoch's construction and served as a history of the city's initial construction and eventual expansion starting with the citadel and outer castle followed by the inner city and various quarters as well as the massive undertaking that was the outer fortifications. Some day he would examine them all, when he found the time. Some day...

        For now he must calm his donkey, Matilda never liked the southern bridge across the dark river. Her obstinate refusal to cross it had become something of a daily ritual for them. He still wasn't sure if it was the bridge or the river she didn't like. Both presented unique difficulties to a donkey. Finally, after much begging and pleading concluding with the usual bribery she tenuously stepped onto the gigantic structure munching on a turnip.

        It stood out in stark contrast to all of its surroundings. Its brilliance immediately separating it from the gloomy backdrop of the dark city. Built entirely of brass it required an army of laborers polishing it indefinitely to maintain its incredible shine. The perpetual polishers, as they jokingly called themselves, took the position for life and spent a month or two polishing the bridge from end to end. After which it naturally required the process to begin again due to the tarnishing of the initial portion of the bridge. It wasn't the best job, but it paid fantastically well for a job requiring little or no skill. This was due to the constant hazard of falling into the river whilst polishing the more difficult locations, it was an aspect of their job they never spoke of as falling into the southern branch of the dark river was supposedly a fate best left for nightmares and bed time stories.

        The result of their labors however, was really quite spectacular and very, very shiny. As if the material wasn't enough to steal his attention, the construction of the it was like nothing else in the world. It was a suspension bridge, supported by a network of posts starting at ten spans and increasing gradually in height until reaching the final central pillar of nearly two hundred spans in height. Each post held massive half span thick cables in place and was cast in the guise of birds of prey, each one increasing in size and scope as they neared the center of the bridge. Each was different and incredibly unique and he wondered how many years and how many artists it must have taken to create such a structure. Not to mention the size of the molds involved in such an undertaking. He supposed each must have been cast in pieces and assembled afterwards. However, he could find no evidence of seams or wielding in any of the creatures, making him wonder if they had actually been cast as single pieces. The central post was by far the most magnificent of all. It alone on the bridge had a twin, on each side of the bridge the twin phoenixes faced outwards to the north and south. Their wings stretched the length of the bridge and served as supports, connecting the various posts and gargantuan cables holding the bridge in place. The phoenix's seemed particularly fitting since the whole bridge looked like it was on fire in the morning light.

        The burning bridge, as it was often called, created a fantastic point of reference in the city. It was visible from the entire southern half of Valenoch as a blazing beacon between the outer and inner walls, straddling the dark river like a caged bird trying to escape its gossamer prison. He wondered if the great foundry had been created solely for the bridge's construction as he began his descent into the merchant quarter. By now the sun was well above the horizon and he was very, very late.