It was also necessary to get everyone to bed early. Even a short respite is a knockout from the working rhythm. Hence, tomorrows wakening would be that much harder.
Therefore, for today, the essential thing was sleep! Sleep a dream!
The young woman remembered last nights dream. In it, she saw the Valley of the Ancestors in all its glory, and it was exactly the way she had pictured it from her fathers stories.
The four great cities of Dalaal, Konolwar, Eavette, and Mata-Mata were located on the shores of the Lake of the Ancestors and the Huma River. A burgomaster ruled each city. The Valley had always been considered a separate state, but it would be more correct to see it as an association of the four Great Cities.
The Great Desert of the Djunits did not fall under the single authority of a particular ruler. To be perfectly precise, that was how it was before, at the beginning of the Fourth Epoch. Over time, rulers realized that every city-oasis in the midst of endless sands lived its own life, and if self-government was granted to these settlements, the entire trading system would benefit. Since then, the cities of the Djunits were governed by the izirs. The clan of Djunitian kings, originating from the Marawie Sandy Lion, became part of the clan of the izirs of Kay-Samiluf, the largest and most powerful city in the Great Desert. This family was later overthrown, and nobody knows in whose veins the blood of the founder-father of the Djunits now flows. Nonetheless, all the cities of the Djunits are subject of the will of the council of the Kay-Samiluf Academy, which retains the right to interfere in the affairs of the izirs. Hence, in a way, the Great Desert can still call itself a state.
In the Valley, everything is done differently. In extreme cases, the Council of Four convened, where the burgomaster conjointly solved economic and political issues. If no agreement was reached, the popular assembly entered the disputes, where absolutely every inhabitant of the Valley could defend his point of view.
Clans were factions united by a common idea and were an important social force in the Valley on which burgomasters and other officials relied. Most often, clans were economic or political conjunctions. The famous Justice Clan long stood on the side of law and order. Clans of scientists and researchers rarely participated in the machinations of officials; however, they were always revered and even received money from the treasury of each city.
Extending both over the inhabitants themselves and the representatives of all eight nations, there was a single law in the Valley of the Ancestors, regardless of the laws proclaimed in their lands. All trade routes converged in the Valley. There was even trade with the severe Ito Empire in the north. The valley supplied provisions, ore, and even fabrics for the emperor Tosho, and he, having only bare stones and dank fogs in his lands, paid with the best that he could offer a military force to ensure order.
Trade was not the only thing that supported the Valley of the Ancestors. The praise for its fairs, theaters, circuses, and tiltyards never stopped. The works of the writers and poets of the Valley were dispersed throughout Elinor. The Valley gave the people a Common Language, which foreigners used to communicate amongst themselves. As a result, the Guawars, the first sea merchants, were the first to completely switch to the Common Language, soon followed by the Djunits, who retained their language only for historians and scribes.
The Valley was also a den for charlatans, thieves, and other rascals. Some great adventurers also found themselves in it, those who, from vagrants, became burgomasters.
The Valley was the heart of Elinor, and the heart of the Valley was the Stone of the Ancestors a mighty relic, probably preserved from the First Race. The Stone of Ancestors emitted Power. The Djunits called it special energy, the other nations called it magic, but its nature was inaccessible to understanding. The Stone of the Ancestors could predict the future, could heal illnesses, and could confer a part of its power on the pilgrim. But not always. Not for all The Stone of the Ancestors lived its own life and used its magic at its own will. It could even defend itself. A gang of vandals who wanted to break it into pieces, thus intimidating the Valley, was simply incinerated alive by he Stone.
The Valley! The eight nations!
The colorful cities, the markets, the performances, the sounds of music and foul market language from the motley crowds, the beautiful house chambers and the stench of dirty taverns filled with both military clashes and peaceful human life, the green forests and prairies surrounding the Great Cities, the sky-blue water of the Lake of the Ancestors, and the Stone itself all this happened last night in a dream, as though it were all truly there!
And then this multicolored mess was at once covered by a black cloud.
This was the end of the dream
The young caretaker shuddered. She realized she had dozed off, remembering the dream. She shook her head and looked around. The tent was still empty, only the air was not as stuffy as before it meant that sunset was coming.
But instead of hurrying to her students, the maiden paused briefly. She opened a diary, which she had kept in her hands all this time.
She started flipping from the first page. She made these records a little more than a month ago in her parents house in Kay-Samiluf, the night before the caravan left. That night she could not manage to fall asleep.
2
Midnight. The beginning of the sixteenth day of the month of the Wolf, the year 531, era IV
As an ancestral researcher, I start the diary before the beginning of my journey. I would like to write the Great Journey, but cant know in advance how it will turn out. I can only know how I feel about myself.
About myself.
My name is Jumanna Inaiya Khaniya Amatt. I am a descendant of an ancient and noble family.
The Amatt clan became famous throughout Elinor during the construction of the cities of Min-Mirif and Til-Mirif. The construction was supervised by one of my glorious ancestors, a great engineer and thinker, Mirif Amatt. Built at the very end of the Third Era, Min-Mirif became the southernmost city of the Valley, denoting its southern boundary. Further away, the endless desert of the Djunitian began. The riches of the mines near where my ancestor built the cities were truly inexhaustible. Gold, silver, semi-precious stones, iron ore for the best, most solid steel Soft metals, meanwhile, were useful on farms, and clean flint could be taken from the earth with bare hands.
The cities were quickly populated by people, and on the outskirts of Min-Mirif, in the shadows of majestic palms and sycamores, on the shores of ponds with water of extraordinary blueness, grew the Amatt estate.
When I was six, I visited my family estate. As soon as I was old enough to leave home, my father took me on my very first trip. My birthday was celebrated on a grand scale, but the day itself I cannot remember I remember only that I yearned to begin the journey! Despite my age, the road was my strongest passion, and there was nothing I could do about it.
My dear mother, the noble Khaniya Haliya Mufa, by marriage an Amatt, the granddaughter of the izir Doyno-Kash Kharun Mufa, was distinguished by her strict views, moral purity, and undoubtful placement of the family above all else. She believed I could leave home, though only to go to school at the Academy of Kay-Samiluf; and this school was but two blocks away from our house! I did not want this I wanted to see the desert, the endless expanse. I wanted to see caravans, people of other nations, other cities and faraway lands Mum tried to hold me back until the very end, but I knew she would give in eventually.
My dear mother, the noble Khaniya Haliya Mufa, by marriage an Amatt, the granddaughter of the izir Doyno-Kash Kharun Mufa, was distinguished by her strict views, moral purity, and undoubtful placement of the family above all else. She believed I could leave home, though only to go to school at the Academy of Kay-Samiluf; and this school was but two blocks away from our house! I did not want this I wanted to see the desert, the endless expanse. I wanted to see caravans, people of other nations, other cities and faraway lands Mum tried to hold me back until the very end, but I knew she would give in eventually.
Despite her strictness, her weakness was my father, Umar Amatt, who had recently become the leader of the Old Pages Clan. Mothers love for Father knew no bounds; she could not oppose him. And my father could not refuse me, as he saw my passionate interest in everything new and everything unusual. I was growing up much too like him dreamy, windy, and thirsty for discovery.
So, my first trip was to Min-Mirif. At the end of the day, the Great Desert impressed me, but much less than the ancestral estate. What is the desert? Delight is present only at first, when you realize that there is only you and your caravan surrounded by the sand, the sky, and the horizon line between them. I watched this landscape one day, then another, and it didnt change. Yellow-reddish barchans, endless dunes, plain blue sky without a single cloud and the white circle of the scorching sun. My interest quickly died away as I sat in a small armchair on the hump of a huge camel under a velvet canopy, drinking cool water and fanning myself.
And then one night I could not sleep. I left the tent once I thought my father was asleep (as it turned out, he did not sleep and had seen everything), and found myself under the black dome of the night sky, dotted with countless glowing stars. It was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life! Many years have passed, but I still cant forget how, even though I was a clever, albeit young, child, I stood right before the cosmic abyss, as the distant, delightful stars seemed to wink at me.
And the Amatt estate Oh! It seemed to me a city within a city! Of course, Min-Mirif itself seemed boring to me after Kay-Samiluf. But the ancestral nest Mirif Amatt had clearly been built with great enthusiasm and inspiration, with greenhouses full of flowers and fruit trees from all over the continent, fountains spurting beyond the roof of the mansion, halls with statues and columns. The underground part of the estate turned out to be several times larger than the mansion itself. There was everything cabinets, a library, an alchemy laboratory, even a secret passageway to the mine. The underground halls were entirely decorated with precious metals and gems found in the local mines I squealed with delight when night fell on Min-Mirif and my father guided me into the observatory tower and taught me to position myself on the map of the starry sky.
I had many teachers in my life. My father hired the best ones so I would receive a good education. But he taught me astronomy himself because he didnt entrust it to anyone else. It was a little strange Umar Amatt had gained fame as an explorer and writer. Other learned scholars taught me literature and history But astronomy only my father!
Yes, obviously, he saw me that night when I left the sleeping tent, so small and defenseless before the whole universe.
I did enroll into the high school of the Kay-Samiluf Academy and graduate with honors. My enrollment happened when I was twelve. Before that, I spent six years on a family estate. The best sages of the Valley came to teach me the basics of science. But the best teacher remained my father I am grateful to him for his lessons on astronomy, but the most valuable lessons were those about life, which, maybe, my father gave me without even knowing it.
The Old Pages Clan had its own museum in the mansion of Amatt. There was a collection of rare peculiar things, which were brought from different corners of Elinor, that I hadnt even seen in the Kay-Samiluf Academy museum. Many relics emitted special energy; I felt it. My father didnt, but he believed me. He said that people react to special energy and magic differently.
Indeed, our scientists agree on the idea that this energy exists, but none of them can explain its origin. Even if some of the alchemists managed to equip objects with magical abilities, it only happened by the experimental method or by the long arm of coincidence. There is no scientific theory about obtaining this special energy. The Mechanicum (Tuasmatus) do not reveal their secrets to anyone. But our scientists arent sure that the force with which many of their mechanisms work is the same magic that, say, the Ancestral Stone and other antiquities emit. I believe that special energy, controlled by the Mechanicum, is more explicable by science than the special energy of the First Race.
Azir Amunjadee wrote in his works that the secret of special energy was mastered by the Ulutau mastered through self-knowledge and self-improvement. But is this the same inexplicable energy that Im talking about? The whole world still questions the role of special energy (magic) in the bodily transformations of the Vedichs. If, of course, those transformations are true
But I do feel magic! I know it
I constantly asked my father to take me to The Stone of the Ancestors in the Valley. But he always flatly refused Father, who had only ever encouraged my curiosity, refused me! He said that I wasnt old enough for the Valley.
It seems he considered traveling through the desert, where there was a small, but still existing probability of meeting a scorpio-angler or dragon, less dangerous than living in the Valley. My father had always spoken of the Valley reverently and thus had only aroused my imagination further, but at the same time refused! Perhaps thats why I still think about the Valley with some apprehension, but nonetheless with admiration also.
I traveled a lot, indeed! After all, I already mentioned this is the greatest passion of my life, and it is impossible to satisfy a great passion! I visited the Golden Ruins twice I visited the outskirts of the Nanol-Mo forest. I saw the powerful Taurs and their settlements made of logs in the middle of forest glades. And for my twelfth birthday, before entering high school, my father gave me a gift he took me to Bandabaze! Yes, to the largest city of the Guawars!
From the port of Chail, on the light and high-speed ship Lightning, we arrived in Bandabaze in four days! Four days! A caravan of camels from Kay-Samiluf to Min-Mirif sometimes takes up to two months. And here four days! And then we spent another week on a ship from Bandabaze to Doyno-Kash. Incredible! To this day, my mother doesnt know that Ive been to Bandabaze My father and I agreed not to tell her. If she knew, then probably in a fit of anger she would have killed both of us. Im exaggerating, of course. Mother is kind. Its just that the Guawars are looked upon as dirty robbers and pirates.
My father still preferred a trip to Bandabaze to a journey to Valley. Why? I dont believe the Valley markets are more dangerous than Bandabaze!