Part 1: Surfaces

Pilgrimage

This morning, fifty gold pieces heavier, I left the boat on which I had worked for two years and held the pouch tight as I navigated the crowded streets of Drymar’s capital.

The irrational fears began almost immediately: I couldn’t shake the feeling that the captain and the crew would come running after me and demand to have the gold back, perhaps finding some flaw in the cleaning work I had done this morning. These are the kind of thoughts my mind has. All the time. My father used to tell me I was born with three magical gifts: bullshitting, being annoying, and having an overactive imagination.

But if he could have seen me step off that boat, I’m sure he’d agree that I’d picked up a few more skills in my two years aboard the Ariel Angel—a boat that delivered books to thousands of ports across the South Sea. I’d entered that boat a boy of fifteen, and I’d left it a man.

Dear Human, don’t worry. You’ll soon see that you’re not the only one who finds Nial… let’s just say “a bit tedious at times.” As I said, I have edited out his most tedious moments, leaving only a few here and there.

My overactive imagination kept me looking over my shoulder, back at docks behind me. I probably looked like someone who had just committed a crime. And to be honest, I guess you could say I did. I don’t really want to get into the details, but two days ago, on the ship, I killed someone mildly important. It was self defense, mind you. Also, I’m not an idiot: I disposed of the body discreetly, by dumping it overboard. Still, I felt paranoid as people jostled me. Ragged scraps of oxygen entered my lungs and vanished all too quickly. Not a good time for a panic attack, I thought.

My destination, the cathedral, was still a mile away; but at least I could see its towering steeple jutting up above groveling adobe buildings that comprised the rest of the city. I locked eyes on the spire and shoved my way through the torrent of people. As the cathedral’s steeple grew larger, I could see its stained-glass windows shimmering in the desert heat.

My fixation on the steeple caused me to barge into a soldier who possessed the solidity of a ship’s hull. Glancing off the man’s breastplate, I tumbled to the street. The knight glared down at me. Scrambling to my feet, I darted around the knight’s shining armor and sprinted onward, somehow convinced that he had been sent by the Ariel Angel’s captain to apprehend me for the self-defense thing I mentioned.

“Hey!” the man shouted behind me. But I kept running.

I froze, however, when I rounded a corner and brought the cathedral into full view. Its architecture—ancient and gray—clashed with the adobe houses that bowed, as if in worship, before it. Built from ten-foot stone slabs, the church looked as if gods had made it. And perhaps they had. Books on geology argued that the granite blocks could not have been quarried nearby—and had probably been dragged from the mountains two hundred miles away. Books on architecture argued that the style exhibited by the cathedral bore no resemblance to any styles currently being employed in the South Sea Nations. Books on anthropology argued that the cathedral was one of many monuments left over from an unknown era. Did I mention I’ve read a lot of books? Nothing I’d read explained how so many enormous hunks of solid rock (each of which would have taken a hundred men to carry) had been assembled into a cathedral that touched the sky. I approached it the only way I could imagine—reverently.

The double-doors welcomed me. Inside, the desert heat disappeared, unable to penetrate. Sunlight changed to a hundred colors, filtered through stained-glass. The altar seemed to be miles away, across a sea of pews. But I wasn’t headed there. Instead, I ducked into an office door whose sign read: “Pilgrimages begin here.”

Chimes sounded. The musty waiting room was lined with chairs, most of which were filled with people who were looking at me. Pilgrims, I thought. I would be traveling with them—some of them, at least. Suddenly, I was self-conscious.

A clerk with a bad case of acne sat behind a desk. He was in the process of upsetting the acne of his forehead by raising an eyebrow. “Are you lost?”

“I want to go on a pilgrimage,” I said. I fancied I could hear snickering from everyone in the waiting room.

“Pilgrimages cost money,” said the clerk.

“I have money,” I said.

“A lot of money,” said the clerk.

I glanced around at the watching eyes. “I have a lot of money.”

The clerk shrugged. “Take a seat.”

There were a few empty seats but none conducive to privacy. As I tried to decide whom to sit next to, I could feel eyes on me, judging my every move.

In one corner, a frail old lady snored. Her clothes were expensive but not extravagant. Perhaps she was looking for one last adventure before she died.

My eyes skimmed across other faces. There was a young woman wearing black. Whether she was pretty behind the thick veil she wore, I could not tell. She was in mourning. She sat beside a woman wearing the kind of light armor people sometimes wear when they’re hunting.

There was an old man in blue robes, a hallmark of a high-ranking wizard from the Great Academy.

A young but gigantic blond man with a blank expression was staring intently at a fly that had landed on his knee, just below the hem of his shorts.

The clerk cleared his throat. “Take a seat,” he said again. “Twenty applications must be served before yours. I’ll be with you in…” He rustled through a stack of papers. “…about four hours.”

I sat next to the sleeping old lady in the corner and continued scanning the room, finding stories in faces that ignored me. An individual I had not noticed drew my attention—a morl. Instinctively, I clutched my coin purse tighter. On the seas, we rarely see morls. I couldn’t help but stare, comparing what I saw with the descriptions I had read. The weirdest thing about morls, I decided then, was that they seemed to trick the light into not falling on them. They looked like a shimmer in the air, a bit like waves of heat coming off a hot street. The thing is, you’d think the morlish shimmering would attract your attention, but it doesn’t. Morlish invisibility is partially optical, but definitely mental too, messing with your mind when you look their way. As the books describe it, the morlish shimmering is always “the last thing you notice in a room or on the street, if you notice it at all.” And when it was dark, I suspected that this morl could walk around in a clown suit and you wouldn’t see a thing. My eyes slid off of it whenever I tried to focus, rebuffing my attempts to determine the morl’s age, or sex, or what it was wearing. Peering into the shimmer, the best I could do was make out a vaguely humanoid shape, not much taller than me, wearing plain clothes and perhaps a necklace. Or maybe he was very tall and wearing a crown. Or maybe he was very short and bore a sword. I saw something different every time I tried to pierce the shimmer with a sidelong glance. Eventually I had to stop because it was giving me the worst headache I’d had in years.

The clerk worked his way through the paperwork, taking intermittent breaks to pick his nose or to stare at the ceiling—or to attempt both operations at once. Sometimes he called people to his desk to answer questions. By the time he motioned me forward, more than five hours had passed.

“Name?” said the clerk, not looking up.

“Nial.”

“Nial what?”

“Just Nial,” he said. “I go by my father’s name because—”

“I don’t care,” said the clerk. “What is your destination?”

“The mountains,” I said. I’d read on the church brochures that the pilgrimage was “cleansing for the soul,” which was something I could really use right now.

The clerk looked up and assessed my torn clothing. “Do you know how much the pilgrimage to the shrine costs?”

“Fifty gold pieces,” I said.

“Let’s see it.”

I wondered if I would be able to let go of the pouch. I forced my hand to dump the contents. Fifty gold pieces—two year’s worth of hard labor on the Ariel Angel—sat gleaming on the clerk’s desk, ready to be converted into destiny, excitement, adventure, and romance—and all that stuff that books were about. Honestly, I just wanted it converted into: leaving town tomorrow.

The clerk counted every gold piece, placing each one into a box beneath his desk. “Why do you want to go?” he asked.

“Does it matter?” I said, a bit too defensively. “I just gave you enough money to buy a small house.”

“First of all, don’t annoy me. With a flick of this pen and a ring of the bell, certain bureaucratic wheels will be set in motion, resulting in your being tossed out into the street by large mercenaries and, maybe, if I feel like it, forced to lick dirt off of the cathedral steps. I need to ascertain that you do not pose a threat to the rest of the travelers. So I will ask again. Why do you want to go?”

I decided on a half-truth: “I’m writing a book.”

The clerk sneered as he wrote this down.

“Do you have any medical skills?” asked the clerk.

“No.”

“Any skill with weapons?”

“No.”

“Any knowledge of hunting or trapping?”

“No.”

“Any magical abilities?”

“No.”

At this point, the clerk threw down his pen and gave his face a furious round of scratching.

“Do you have anything to offer the other travelers at all? What can you do?”

I drew myself to full height and prepared to use one of those gifts my father always said I had. “I sailed on a book merchant’s ship for two years, and I’ve read every book we’ve ever hauled. Statistics? Economics? History? Politics? Poetry? Great works of literature? I’ve read all of them twice. I’ve taken the non-magical practice tests to get into the Scholar’s Department of the Great Academy, and I’ve gotten a perfect score on all of them. Twice. I—”

“Look, young man,” cut in the clerk. “If you can read, tell me what this word says.” The clerk snatched a brochure out of his desk and stabbed a stubby index finger at it. “There. Read it.”

“Desert.”

“Well done, young man,” he said in an infuriatingly condescending voice. “You can read. Let’s try a whole sentence now. Are you ready for that? Here. Read this.”

“‘A two hundred mile journey, a lengthy part of which will consist of a trek across the Northern Desert.’”

“Does it sound as if your skills regarding statistics and economics will come in handy?”

“I suppose not, but—”

“What about your knowledge of history and politics? Will that be useful to your fellow travelers? No. What about poetry and great works of literature? No. So basically, you’re telling me and everyone else here that you’re going to eat their food and drink their water while you sit and watch them bring it to you. And in return, you will annoy them by spouting off all the things you know. That’s what you’re saying, right? Read this sentence, if you please.” He shoved the brochure in the general direction of my face. “I’ll help. It says, ‘The trip holds many potential dangers for which the church and its affiliates cannot be held accountable, so survival skills are highly recommended.’”

The old lady, having awoken from her slumber, said, “Don’t worry about it, boy. I don’t have any survival skills either. That’s why they provide an experienced guide.” The clerk glared at her.

“Listen up everyone,” said the clerk. “This young man’s name is ‘Nial.’ If you hunt, he’ll be eating an equal portion of your meat. If you have medical skills, you’ll be patching up his blisters. If you can do magic, you’ll be lighting his fires and cooking his meals. But don’t worry. If you can’t read or have some curiosity about statistics, Nial will be happy to assist you. Does anyone here not know how to read?” Silence. “I didn’t think so. You can sit down now, young man.” He rubbed his eyes as if his job was practically murderous. “Okay, everyone. I’m going to need complete silence while I calculate the probability that you will survive your pilgrimage. You know: statistics. If the value I calculate is lower than ninety-five percent, then you can all go home. The refund you will receive will be inversely proportional to how much you screwed everyone else over. Some of you will get all your money back. Some of you…” He looked at me. “…will get nothing.”

I could feel people staring at me now. After an hour of furious pen scribbling, paper crumpling, acne scratching, forehead rubbing, ceiling staring, and nose picking, the clerk stood up. I gripped the arm of my chair even tighter than I had gripped the money that the church had just acquired from me.

“Announcement,” said the clerk. The old lady awoke with a snort. The clerk went on: “The pilgrimage to the mountains meets the bare minimum requirements—” He looked straight at me. “—for safety and efficiency. We will provide an accomplished soldier to take care of the pilgrims who don’t bring any useful skills to the operation. You can all leave now. Return here tomorrow morning before sunrise. Your gear will be ready and your horses packed.”

I left the room as fast as I could, sweating with relief. Eight other people exited too. The morl was right behind me. And the mourning woman. And the old lady. And the man in the blue robe. They scattered in different directions upon leaving the church. Nighttime swallowed them all. Suddenly I realized I had no idea where I was going to stay the night. My coin purse was empty.

“Going to the mountains?” said a voice beside me.

I jumped. At first, I couldn’t see who had spoken. I turned in a circle. It was the morl, I realized. “Y-yes,” I said, unable to keep the tremor out of my voice.

“Do you need a place to stay?” asked the living shadow.

“I have a place,” I lied, clutching my empty coin pouch tighter for no reason.

“I’m Father Ori,” said the morl.

It took me a moment to realize that Father Ori was holding out a hand, and only because Father Ori snapped his fingers helpfully and moved his hand into the light coming from a stained glass window. After taking it, I pulled away from the cold handshake as soon as possible.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” said the morl.

I swallowed. “Yeah.” But the morl was already gone, footsteps fading down the street.

Finding a dusty nook behind the cathedral, I lay down and tried to sleep. But I was too excited. So I took a pencil stub and a notebook from my pocket. In the moonlight, I began to write the first pages of what you’re reading now. Maybe (against the odds) this book will spread across the South Sea Nations like wildfire one day, but honestly I’d settle for just getting through the night and riding out of the city tomorrow morning. Good night.