Golden Age (The Shifting Tides Book 1) (4 page)

‘That is acceptable,’ Chloe’s father said.

‘Good.’ Kargan frowned at his cup. ‘Is there no better wine in this house?’

‘Chloe,’ Aristocles called. ‘Fetch the Sarsican red.’

Chloe went out to the terrace and descended to the villa’s lower level, quickly finding her father’s best wine in the cellar but missing the conversation until she returned.

‘—offer I would like to make,’ Kargan said as he downed his cup and Chloe refilled it from the new amphora, before moving on to the two consuls. ‘There is a temple,’ he continued, ‘high on the peak above the waterfront. A flame burns on the plateau, shedding light on the columns. In the middle of the summit is a chest of gold.’

‘The Temple of Aldus, yes,’ Aristocles said.

‘I asked one of your people and he said the chest is solid gold. Is that true?’

‘The Ark of Revelation is a sacred relic,’ Nilus said.

‘Hmm,’ Kargan said, his eyes suddenly intent. ‘What is it?’

When Aristocles and Nilus both hesitated, Kargan glanced up at Chloe, meeting her eyes for the first time. ‘Girl?’

Chloe looked at her father, who nodded. ‘My daughter studied at the Temple of Aeris,’ Aristocles said. ‘Chloe, tell our guest about the Ark of Revelation.’

She set down the amphora before speaking and took a deep breath, suddenly made nervous by the foreigner’s stare.

‘This is a story known not only in Phalesia, but in all the Galean nations, from Tanus to Sarsica.’

Chloe faltered when she saw a smile creep up on Kargan’s face, flushed with drink.

‘Lord Kargan . . . ?’ Aristocles asked.

‘It is nothing,’ Kargan said. ‘Merely her accent. It sounds foolish on your men, but from a woman your speech is strangely attractive.’

She glanced at her father, who looked as if he was trying to frame a response, and then back to Kargan. The Ilean waved impatiently for her to continue.

Chloe went on with determination. ‘Long ago, the first men prayed to the god Aldus, asking him to make humans supreme of all creatures.’ Kargan frowned, but thankfully didn’t interrupt. ‘Aldus consulted with the other gods and an agreement was reached. The gods gave us mining, and taught us the use of gold, silver, copper, and iron, elevating us from the beasts.’

She drew another breath before going on.

‘But the gods made their own demands in return, by way of a pact. Led by Aldus, god of justice, they said that in return for their gift of knowledge we had to abide by ten laws, which Aldus wrote on tablets and put inside a golden ark.’

‘What are the laws?’ Kargan raised an eyebrow.

‘Aldus said he would not tell us the laws, but that they were self-evident. Anyone who could live by them of his own accord would be granted entry to paradise on his death.’

Kargan finished his cup of Sarsican wine in a gulp, refilling it himself. He became expansive, gesturing as he spoke. ‘And this is the ark on the cliff? Surely you must have opened it by now.’

‘No,’ Chloe said. ‘The pact states that if the ark is ever opened the wrath of the gods will come down on us all. Those already in the lands of paradise will be ejected, and none will be granted entry again. The knowledge to use metals would be taken away from us, and we would once more become as the beasts.’

‘The nature of the laws is a source of constant debate among our magi,’ Nilus explained.

‘I still think you should just open the ark and find out,’ Kargan said. When his words were greeted by expressions of horror, he laughed. ‘Ah, this wine is better,’ he said. ‘I will tell the sun king about what I see here. You mentioned trade, First Consul. What do you offer?’

‘Copper. Olive oil. Honey. Wool. Ceramics. Timber.’

‘What of iron? What is the quality of your weapons?’

In a sudden movement, stunning them all, Kargan sat upright as he drew his dagger from the scabbard at his waist and laid it on the table. ‘This is our best work. Show me your sword,’ he met Aristocles’ eyes.

Aristocles hesitated, creases forming on his brow, but finally he nodded. ‘Chloe?’

Chloe went to her father’s chambers at the back of the villa, by far the most sumptuous private quarters in the house, passing the new work the builders had just finished on the ceiling. She retrieved her father’s scabbarded sword from an ornate wooden chest and returned to the reception, holding it out in both hands for her father to take.

‘Draw it and lay it on the table,’ Kargan said.

The whisper of steel sounded as Aristocles unsheathed the weapon, revealing a bright, well-oiled blade with an edge kept sharp by the servants. The hilt of her father’s weapon was plainer than Kargan’s dagger, but it was as good a sword as silver could buy.

Kargan spent time comparing the two weapons. He lifted the sword and carried it out to the terrace, making some practice swings, while the consuls swapped bemused glances. Returning a moment later, he laid the sword back down next to the dagger and ran a finger along the edge of both blades. He balanced the sword on a finger to find the center of gravity and then rubbed his chin as he looked across the table at Aristocles.

‘This is a fine sword. The steel is good quality. Where is it made?’

‘It comes from Xanthos,’ Aristocles said.

‘Xanthos?’

‘The neighboring kingdom to the west, located between Phalesia and Sarsica.’

‘Hmm. It seems I have much to learn, but I am only here for a short time.’ He picked up the sword again, looking sideways along the steel, with his eye close to the blade. ‘May I have this?’

Stunned, Chloe waited for her father to react. Nilus opened his mouth, then closed it.

‘You may,’ Aristocles said tightly.

‘Tomorrow we will talk about payment for the use of your harbor. Your gift will ease negotiations.’

Kargan replaced the sword in its scabbard and then, straightening, he bowed to the two consuls of Phalesia.

‘I bid you good night.’

He left with a slight weave in his step, having put away a prodigious amount of wine.

Chloe’s father let out a breath.

6

Bright sunlight sparkled off the waves, strong rays that poured from the rising sun and lent growing heat to the morning. It was a good day for sailing.

Dion, youngest son of King Markos of Xanthos, felt his spirits soar as the small sailing vessel skipped over the waves, riding the peaks one after another, the sail pocketing the wind and making the boat’s timbers groan like muscles stretched by a sprinter at the Games.

He pulled the rope that traveled from his fingers to a rounded cleat, smoothed from friction, and then to the boom. As he hauled the sail closer in with the wind coming across his beam the boat leaped forward.

He heard a familiar grumbling voice nearby.

‘If the narrows are truly blocked we are going too fast. Slow down, lad.’

‘Of course, Master Cob,’ Dion said with elaborate respect. He grinned and tightened the sail still further.

The sailing boat heeled in response, listing hard to port. Dion clambered across to put his weight on the starboard side. ‘Move across,’ he said to his companion. ‘We can still get more speed out of her.’

‘In the name of Silex, why is it we need such speed?’

‘We have a big day ahead of us.’

‘Our task is simple. We confirm the fishermen’s reports that the narrows are blocked, and then we return to Xanthos.’

Dion ignored Cob, instead looking ahead to check their course. The boat was sailing with the looming mainland cliffs on the left and the lower but still imposing heights of the isle of Coros on the right. As the boat sped along, the passage became slimmer and the opposing cliffs grew closer. The air smelled of salt and sea and even on the higher gunwale cool water splashed his face.

Soon they would be at the narrows, the place where the cliffs were at their closest. It was the only sea route between Xanthos and Phalesia. Well, there was another, but Dion wasn’t ready to talk to Cob about that quite yet.

Glancing back at Cob, he saw the old man with his hand on the tiller, glancing up at the jagged black cliffs and grimacing. He was stunted and bald, a full foot shorter than Dion, and were it not for his aptitude with boats Dion wasn’t sure what the old sailor’s place in the world could have been.

‘Just like me,’ Dion murmured to himself.

In his full growth of manhood, twenty years old, Dion should by now have been commanding regiments in his father’s service. His older brother Nikolas was not only heir to the throne, he was commander of Xanthos’s powerful army, with King Markos now too old to lead the men.

But Nikolas and Dion were as unlike each other as two men could be. There was nothing wrong with Dion’s strength or agility, but the handling of swords and shields had never come to him, no matter how hard he’d tried. Despite staying up late into the night in the practice ground, hacking at dummies and getting instruction from anyone who would teach him, the sword simply fell out of numb fingers when he tried to make a strike, and the shield dropped every time he took a blow. Still he persisted, and then his older brother suggested archery.

To Dion’s surprise, the handling of a bow came as naturally to him as breathing. He practiced in secret, developing his skill until he could hit the center of a target at seventy paces nine times out of ten. His brother was proud, and together they arranged a demonstration for their father.

But in Xanthos, archery was not considered a suitable skill for a king’s son. The army’s strength came from the coordinated phalanxes of hoplites, working together with shield, sword, and spear. King Markos didn’t even stay long enough to see Dion’s proficiency before he forbade further practice.

The young Dion could no longer entertain a position in the army.

But Nikolas intervened again. He took his younger brother to Cob and asked the old man to teach Dion the handling of boats. Despite the fact that Xanthos had only a small fleet made up mostly of fishing vessels, trade by sea between Xanthos, Phalesia, and Sarsica was increasing year by year. A nation needed wealth to pay the men who worked in the army and fit them with armor and weapons.

Sailing came to Dion even more swiftly than archery. He knew he had finally found his path in life. In a nation preoccupied with the land, where mining and farming were the main occupations after soldiering, and where athletes competed at the Xanthian Games in swordsmanship, wrestling, javelin throwing, and running, Dion instead loved the sea.

And in his time trading and traveling, as crewman and rower, purser and occasionally captain, he had come to a startling conclusion. The future of the Galean continent would not be decided by hoplites alone. It would be determined by control of the ocean’s shifting tides.

‘Look,’ Cob said, pointing.

Dion saw that the cliff ahead, on the port side, leaning over the narrows, was newly broken. The earthquake that had taken place over a week ago had opened up a seam in the peak, and the protrusion had evidently splintered from the cliff and tumbled into the water.

‘We need to get closer,’ Dion said. ‘See if there is anything we can do to clear it.’

‘Clear it?’ Cob snorted.

Dion smiled and then the smile fell, his forehead creasing as he devoted his attention to examining the water ahead. The narrows had always been more of a blessing than a curse, for on the other side of the passage was a clear run to the harbor of Phalesia, which meant that any enemy arriving by sea first had to pass Xanthos’s neighboring nation’s fleet. He considered the sense of security Phalesia provided a mixed blessing, however, for it gave his father, King Markos, little incentive to develop his own fleet. Boats were for fishing and trading, according to Dion’s father, and little else.

He finally let some rope drift through his fingers, barely registering the friction on his calloused hands. The sail slackened and the small boat slowed as he approached the place where only sixty feet separated the island of Coros from the mainland.

‘Be ready to turn,’ Dion instructed.

As often happened, the order was met by a muttered curse, directed at his back.

Dion peered into the water ahead, but still the narrows appeared clear. The tip of the cliff must have fallen somewhere, but now that steep rock walls rose on both sides the boat was in shadow. The wind picked up sudden strength, gusting the vessel forward and dangerously close to the place where the gap was smallest.

Then he saw it.

It was directly ahead, a huge boulder with a jagged spear for a point, completely submerged under the water, but with the knife’s edge just under the surface.

The razor-sharp rock, newly broken, was just a stone’s throw in front of the boat.

‘Turn!’ Dion cried. ‘Quickly!’

He released the rope and pushed the boom out as far as he could, a trick that used the wind to initiate the turn. Staring back with wide eyes, he saw Cob had the tiller hard around. The boat began to turn.

But still its motion continued. Six feet became five, then four. The point of the boulder disappeared under the boat as it completed the turn.

‘Pull on the sail, you fool!’ Cob cried.

Dion grabbed hold of the trailing rope on the boat’s bottom and hauled, at the same time holding the boom so that the wind would catch the sail as soon as possible.

The vessel started to move and then she was sailing away from the blocked narrows. Dion let out a breath, then grinned.

‘Well the narrows are blocked, that’s for certain,’ he said, looking back at Cob, whose square face was red. ‘No trading vessels will make it over that.’

‘Good,’ Cob grunted. ‘We can go home now.’

‘Cob . . . We had to get that close.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I needed to see the boulder for myself to see what we can do to clear it.’

‘Lad, what in the name of Silex are you talking about?’

‘We have to remove the blockage,’ Dion said seriously. He hauled the sail in to lend speed to their journey, taking them away from the narrows and back toward Xanthos. ‘It effectively blocks our trade with Phalesia.’

Although there was a direct land route between the two cities, via the pass called the Gates of Annika, the Xanthian side was rocky and mountainous and had to be crossed on foot, with horses led by the reins. Runners with messages traveled on land, for it was generally swifter. But transiting a boatload of goods that was easily moved on sea would be impossible on land.

‘You understand, don’t you? If there is something we can do, we must do it,’ Dion said.

‘What we have to do is return to your father and tell him the reports are true. Then we can talk about clearing the passage.’

‘Father is a soldier, not a sailor.’

‘Aye, lad. But he will care when the silver stops flowing.’

Dion saw the first sights of Xanthos come into view as they rounded a headland. Crumbling fishermen’s huts could be seen on the rocks back from shore, and then in the distance the city itself came into view on the vessel’s starboard side.

The sight of the approaching city lent urgency to Dion’s voice. ‘Cob, I have an idea how we can clear the narrows.’

‘How? There’s a huge boulder in the way, under the water. It will take weeks to move it. Perhaps months.’

‘There’s a quicker way. But we’ll need to enlist the help of Lord Aristocles.’

‘The first consul? Dion . . . You know your father wouldn’t approve of you making an unsanctioned visit. And what can Aristocles do?’

‘Phalesia needs the trade as much as we do. He might enlist the help of an eldran. They’re on good terms. A serpent could move that boulder.’

Cob pondered for a moment as the city on their right came to dominate Dion’s vision.

Unlike Phalesia there was no raised bastion over the wide bay, instead the top of the sandy beach climbed to grass and the occasional stretch of rock. The city of Xanthos spread wings around the grass, back from the beach. A narrow inlet like a scar in the middle of the harbor divided the city into two halves, the larger left side filled with workshops, tanneries, markets, and a multitude of single-storied houses with roofs of baked clay tiles. The bulk of the citizenry lived in this residential quarter, while the smaller half was home to the Royal Palace and the lofty Temple of Balal, the war god, in addition to half a dozen smaller temples.

A wooden bridge spanned the sandy-bottomed ravine dividing the city, which was filled with water only at the highest tides. Xanthos was a narrow city, built around the curve of the shore like a thin crescent moon. The agora in the residential quarter was far smaller than the square in Phalesia.

But the difference was more than made up for in the size of the Royal Palace.

Three levels high, the palace was tall and grand, with walls of white stone and crimson pennants flying high above. The three tiers were built one on top of the other in order of decreasing size, giving the middle and upper levels broad open terraces filled with gardens.

The architecture of Xanthos was sturdy rather than fanciful, with stout walls around the palace and an even stronger wall guarding the city’s landward side. Rather than the columned temples and multitudinous statues of Phalesia, the people of Xanthos lived in a city that spoke of their nature as miners, farmers, and, above all, warriors.

The largest structure in Phalesia was the lyceum. In Xanthos it was the Temple of Balal, where the soldiers of an army three times the size of Phalesia’s worshipped daily. Made of fitted white marble stones with broad steps leading to a wide entrance as high as three men, there was no way to mistake the god it was devoted to, for just outside the temple of the war god was a colossal bronze statue of an armored hoplite warrior wearing a crested helmet, standing at the ready with shield and spear.

‘All right, I will entertain the idea that a powerful enough eldran could move that boulder,’ said Cob. ‘But even so, how do you plan to sail to Phalesia with the passage blocked?’

Dion met the older man’s eyes and smiled.