A Tatharian merchant’s journal of the western voyage and five years on the Holy Coast, TC 298 to 304.
Kept by a merchant of Tatharia, for my heirs and for anyone who thinks the western route is not worth the risk.
Dracones 3, 298 TC
Left Tatharia today with the cargo, a letter of passage, and enough coin for two years if nothing goes wrong. Al-Zaluma buys luxury goods and sells gemstones, spices and textiles at prices nobody at home will match, and that is reason enough. The other reason is Alessandra. She is called the Golden Empress of the West because the west is where she came down at the end of her journeys, and the Holy Coast is the west. I have prayed to her all my life and I mean to stand where she stood.
Transgressus Gladios 21, 298 TC
Three kingdoms north of our border in three weeks. Four tolls to crowns, one to a bandit chief who gave a receipt, and a fifth to a man who was not a bandit chief but was standing in the right place. People say the road west by land is worse. I have not met anyone who took it.
Venatio 10, 298 TC
Reached the port on the Dagger Sea. The way west is the Serpent’s Belly, the long strait between the two continents that ends at Gorgon Bay. Every captain I asked said it can be done and that it is hard. The one I hired will not sail in Nautae Vae, which the calendar marks as dangerous for sailors, so we wait out the month in port and I pay for the berth.
Rotam 19, 298 TC
Seventeen days into the Belly. This morning two giants stood on the heights to starboard and watched the ship. One threw a boulder. It landed well short. The captain had moved us toward the far shore an hour earlier and did not say why until it was over.
Imperiatrix Quietem 6, 298 TC
A galley came out of a cove yesterday and took a toll, and the captain paid it without argument. Today we passed a merchantman still burning, with green-black flames that the rain did not put out and a smell of brimstone. The captain said things like that come down from the frontier lands, and that the owners had probably paid the wrong toll or none. That night I counted my cargo twice.
Lotus Secundus 14, 298 TC
Out of the Belly and into Gorgon Bay. After a month of empty water the bay is crowded with merchant ships and fishing boats, and the captain relaxed for the first time since the Dagger Sea. The fishermen here eat what tries to eat their nets. One hauled up an armored, many-legged thing as long as a hound and cooked it on the quay, and I bought a portion. It was good. I left a coin at the harbor shrine to Keraunee, as one does. Children were fishing from the quay with hand lines and nobody watching them. A bay this busy looks after itself, with too many boats for anything dangerous to get at one.
Horarium 9, 298 TC
West along the coast, then south. Slow weeks with nothing to report. At a harbor three days back I saw the name Sahil Al-Muqaddas painted on a marker, and the harbor master told me it means the Holy Coast. I asked whether the Caliphate had named it. The harbor master said the charts used it before any living ruler, and that the fishing songs use it too.
Dracones 14, 299 TC
Arrived at Bir Al-Bahr at the end of the day. The sun went down over open water ahead of us. I had heard of the western sunset all my life and had never watched the sun go into the sea.
Visitors are entered in one of three ledgers. Scholars and pilgrims go in the first, merchants in the second, and “the others” in a third kept in a shed behind the customs house. The merchant’s ledger needs a license, which in Al-Zaluma costs a great deal, and I paid it. It keeps the market honest, since nobody sells in the Merchant District who cannot afford to have their word good. The deckhand on our ship, a man of halfling family who had worked the Belly beside us without complaint, was kept aboard under guard while we were in port. The captain said that is the usual practice. I tipped the guard who carried my chests and the guard who watched the deckhand.
Aranea 9, 299 TC
Rented a stall in Suk Al-Balad. Demand here is for sun amulets and hymn scrolls, not the goods I brought, so I am adjusting stock. Carpets carry passengers and small freight over the rooftops and charge by weight. I do not trust them with anything I cannot replace. The main streets are paved in stone that glows blue after dark and mends itself by dawn. The priests say each stone carries a prayer. I watched a crew of laborers find a street whole at first light that had been broken the evening before. The coast roads between settlements are laid the same way.
Orcus 18, 299 TC
Caught at dusk on the coast road between two settlements, with the cart and two hired hands. The road glows blue at night, and I understood why when the dead came out of the long grass on both sides. There were at least a dozen. None stepped onto the glowing stone. They stood at the edge and looked at us, and the hired hands prayed loudly enough to hear. I have heard of the dead at home but never seen so many at once.
A company of knights of the Holy Order came down the road before midnight with lanterns and bright swords. I expected fast work. I know the Order of the Golden Blade at home, who burn first. These knights knelt at the edge of the road and said the funeral rites over each of the dead before they struck. One of them was crying. I asked why. The knight said the dead were somebody’s family once.
Lotus Primus 11, 299 TC
Rode a day inland with the cart to see where the city gets its water. A dam of fitted stone holds back a large lake. The river that fills it comes down from mountains north of the badlands, and those badlands run east to the Vast Desert. The water is cold and sweet. The fields outside the city are watered from the sea, treated with a preparation from the alchemists that takes the salt out, and the barley is taller than any I have seen in dry country. I asked the engineer at the sluices whether Alessandra gets thanked for it. The engineer said the masons built the dam. When I repeated that to the priest at the next stall, the priest said Alessandra guides the masons’ hands.
Rotam 8, 301 TC
Two years here and the stall pays. I run the coast road to the third settlement and back every season now. Today near dusk a girl of about five walked toward us on the road alone, a clay pot on her head, swinging a stick at nothing. No escort, no dog, nobody within a mile. I asked the guide whether her family were fools. The guide said it is the road. I do not know a place in Tatharia where a child that age is left alone after dark. I have told three customers about it since, and told them whose doing it is.
Lotus Secundus 17, 302 TC
I have the case in order now. The name is on charts, in songs and on milestones, and it was there before any living ruler. Seven tall rocks stand in the water in a bay south of the city. The Zalumans call them the Seven Sisters and say they were the city’s founders. Those are the seven women who came ashore with the Empress. The Zalumans have forgotten whose companions they were and kept the rocks, and when I said so to my host, my host smiled and did not argue. The Chronicles of the Golden Empress is kept in the city. I was not allowed to handle it. A priest read me a few pages aloud, with the offering box in front of me the whole time. Nothing in them puts her anywhere else, because she was never anywhere else.
A Zaluman scholar told me the old Al-Zaluma is under the sea, that the sea elves hold it now, and that the Caliphate handed it over instead of losing it. I said it was a good story and the wrong one. I could not sell it to anyone, since the only copy is underwater. The Empress came down on dry land, on this coast.
Spiritus 28, 304 TC
Sailing at dawn. Five years here. I made more money than I expected and spent more than I planned on fees. I also did what I came to do. Alessandra came down on this coast at the end of her journeys. The people who live here call it holy because it is. The dead will not walk its roads, its knights say the funeral rites before they strike, and a child walks home alone after dark because she is watching over it. I will say so to anyone at home who asks.