Under any other circumstances, our journey from Falchester to Hlamtse Rong would be enough to fill half a book all on its own. Our party consisted of myself, Suhail, Tom, Thu Phim-lat, and one Lieutenant Chendley, on loan to us from the Royal Scirling Army for mountaineering assistance (largely because they did not trust Thu). We travelled in separate groups, the better to deflect notice; three Scirlings (one of those a woman), an Akhian, and a Yelangese man form a sufficiently motley assortment as to sound like the beginnings of a banal joke.
From Falchester we travelled in stages across the Destanic Ocean and along the eastern coast of Dajin to Alhidra, where we boarded river boats travelling up the Mahajanya into the interior. This is of course the “Father of Vidwatha,” one of the two great rivers between which ancient Vidwathi civilization sprang up, and I could have remained there for months, quite happily. Like much of Dajin, Vidwatha boasts a number of river-dwelling dragons, who are often venerated and propitiated by the local farmers in the hopes of preventing destructive floods and drought. I was particularly curious to know whether there was any truth to the folklore which said all the dragons in the Mahajanya were male and all those in the Mahajani, female, the two coming together during the River Marriage Festival to mate. If so, it would have been a fascinating echo of the swamp-wyrms in the Green Hell, where the Moulish bring select males up to the Great Cataract to mate with the queen dragons in the lake there. (As it transpires, the folklore is not true; the physical differences between dragons of the two rivers are a matter of species differentiation rather than sex.)
But our aeronautical carriage awaited, and so I fixed my attention on the west and went onward. Unfortunately for us, the Mahajanya was in those days only partially in Scirling control: the people of that land did not much like seeing one of their spiritual parents in foreign hands (which is why Scirland controls none of it now). We returned to land once more and skirted the disputed stretch—a task which ultimately involved disguises and a good deal of lying, when my party discovered we had not skirted quite far enough—and then, after a brisk gallop away from bandits who attacked both sides indiscriminately, finally convened in the village of Parshe. But this portion of the journey, however lively a tale it makes in its own right, is a mere prelude to the true story, which is our flight into the Mrtyahaima peaks.
Here Lieutenant Chendley took the lead, as he was the only one among us who knew precisely where the Scirling caeliger base was located. Indeed, I never did find out its location, for the lieutenant went off alone and came back with soldiers, who blindfolded us and led our horses the remaining distance. All I know is that it lay approximately two days from Parshe and as close to the Tser-zhag border as they dared, so as to shorten our flight across the closed territory.
Even at that distance, we could see the Mrtyahaima.
Not in any great detail—though I’m told that when the air is truly clear, the vista becomes crisp enough for the knowledgeable to identify individual peaks. For the short time we were in Parshe, though, the air was sufficiently humid that the mountains were simply a dark haze, a hulking mass on the horizon. I thought at the time that we were seeing where we must go, and I marveled at the sight. I did not realize that this was only the edge of the great range, the chain geographers identify more precisely as the Dashavat Mountains. The Mrtyahaima proper lay behind, beyond my vision, rising even higher than I could imagine. Had I seen what I faced while still in Parshe … I believe I would have continued, for my life has been a recurrent tale of my failure to truly understand my peril until it is too late for me to turn back. But I cannot be certain.
The base had a rather slapped-together look quite at odds with the usual Scirling military standards. I suspected it was a temporary arrangement, which did not surprise me; we were some distance from the nearest garrison, and of course they would not want their caeligers to spend much time out where others could seize them. It positively swarmed with activity, though, and the first person I saw when I dragged my gaze away from the mountains was my brother, Andrew.
I dismounted in a trice and threw my arms about him. “I suspected I would see you here! But no one would tell me for certain.”
Andrew pounded my back as if I were a brother rather than a sister. “It’s all very hush-hush, isn’t it? Fear of spies and all that. But of course I’m here; I couldn’t send my favourite sister off into the Mrtyahaima without so much as a farewell.”
His touching concern might have been a little more touching had he not called me his favourite sister. Since I was his only sister, the phrase was invariably a sign that he wanted something from me. “Andrew,” I said, “you aren’t hoping we’ll bring you with us, are you?”
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t mind—You there! Be careful with that!” He darted off to chide a private who was handling our belongings with insufficient care. That clinched it: my brother was never so diligent in showing his use unless he had some ulterior motive in mind.
Unfortunately for Andrew, I had no authority to bring him along. It is easy enough to add a person to a journey made by boat, horse, or foot, at least if rations are not too limited; but caeligers are another matter. The great limiter there is not space but weight, and all of the crew for long-range missions were at least twenty centimeters shorter than my brother. (Indeed, the army had made an exception to its usual regulations, actively recruiting into their nascent aerial corps men who would ordinarily have been deemed too slight.)
Even with our small party of five, we needed three caeligers for the journey; a single one, or even two, could not carry all of us, our gear, the pilots, and equipment for the caeligers, such as fuel for their engines and canisters of the lifting gas which made it possible for them to fly. “Will they go straight on after they leave us in Tser-nga?” Tom murmured, eyeing the vessels in their row, and the quantity of fuel in a depot some distance away. None of us knew the answer, and would not get one if we asked.
The caeligers themselves made for a striking sight. It is a very great pity that peacetime never spurs development as quickly as war: these craft bore as little resemblance to the caeligers of the Broken Sea eight years ago as an ancient longship does to a modern frigate. Those early vessels had been wired together out of natural dragonbone: shaped with saws where possible and fitted together most cunningly, but still peculiar and not quite suited to the purpose. The frameworks of these caeligers, being made from synthetic dragonbone, consisted of tidy rods and slats, with propellers far larger than any dragon species could provide (which I learned was a necessity for flying in the thinner air of high altitude). All of it looked quite ordinary, with nothing but its pale colour to hint at its origin.