Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘And the reason why its ruined foundations have never been discovered.’ Quest led her back to a table in his office where one of his Catosian soldiers had unfurled a map. His finger hovered over a large swathe of territory, most of it coloured black for the unknown and the unexplored. ‘Liongeli.’

Amelia looked askance at the featureless, uncharted expanse. A jungle hell without end. An environment so forbidding that only distant cousins of the race of man such as the shell-armoured craynarbians could make their home there. ‘Your geographers must have made a mistake, Quest. All the ancient texts suggest that the location of Camlantis should lie far further north. My best guess is somewhere north of the Catosian League, or perhaps buried beneath the pampas of Kikkosico. It may even be underneath the wastes controlled by the polar barbarians.’

Quest shook his head. ‘Trust me, Amelia. I have established my place in the world by following my contrarian instincts. Would it surprise you to learn that yours is not the only academic heresy I have been following? In matters of continental geography, there is a hypothesis currently proscribed by the High Table that posits our entire world may have shifted its position many times in the past, with north exchanging its position with south and the whole skin of the world sliding in upheaval. Earthquakes, floatquakes, fire and brimstone. You are correct, professor, in a manner of speaking. The foundations of Camlantis are further north — it is just that further north is now further south by seven hundred miles.’

How could that be true? Was their world so flimsy? But if it was, if it was …

‘All those years scrabbling about the pampas,’ said Amelia, the enormity of Quest’s words sinking in, ‘petitioning the God-Emperor of Kikkosico for just one more set of travel papers for just one more province. We weren’t even searching for the city in the right country!’

Quest rolled out a second, more detailed map of Liongeli. A private trader’s map, no doubt very expensive to obtain. Depressingly large areas of the jungle vastness were still left unmarked on it. ‘But your instincts were correct, Amelia. The city is no myth. It is — was — here!’ He tapped the source of the River Shedarkshe, a vast lake-like crater that fed the mightiest watercourse known to Jackelian cartographers. ‘When the city was uprooted and blown into the sky by the Camlantean sorcerers it left a basin, one that was filled by rain and sink water. It’s an inland sea now, called Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo.’

Amelia shook her head in amazement. It was as if the Midwinter gift-giving by Mother White Horse had arrived early; a whole track of lost history opening up for her. It all made sense now. Why her digs had been so damned fruitless. The world had changed and changed again. What had once been a paradise with gentle weather systems now lay buried under a jungle.

‘You can see for yourself in some of the other crystal-book recordings. Pairdan talks to a council of his people about building up the currents of earthflow, ready to crack the land and lift their city away from the horde.’

‘Are there any clues to where the remains of Camlantis are floating now?’

Quest shook his head. ‘Sadly, no, but there are hints that the location of the city might be inscribed on other crystal-books, buried as a time-capsule for their descendents, along with blueprints of their greatest marvels. I am hopeful the ruined foundations may contain clues to Camlantis’s current location.’

‘No airship crew has ever reported sighting Camlantis,’ said Amelia. ‘It has always been my belief that our aerostats cannot yet travel high enough to spot it.’

‘That is a failing I am planning to remedy. I have my airwrights constructing a fleet of high-lifters, airships that will be capable of travelling into the thinnest atmosphere — so high we might touch the moons themselves.’

‘You’ve been reading too much celestial fiction,’ said Amelia.

‘Imagination, professor. With imagination anything is possible. You imagined a lost city where everyone else saw only myth and an absence of evidence. The first step to achieving any task is imagining that it may be possible. Without such belief you would never begin your journey and would only follow your doubts to failure.’

‘The RAN won’t authorize a goose chase of this magnitude,’ said Amelia. ‘Not even for the great Abraham Quest.’

‘What the Board of the Admiralty does not know, will not hurt them. Your task is to travel into Liongeli and find me the location of the city in the heavens. I shall provide us with the means to journey up to its airless temples and streets.’

She looked at the featureless anonymity of Liongeli on the map. The heart of darkness. Her expedition would need to travel further into the interior of the jungle than anyone had ever ventured to date.

‘Have you squirrelled away enough celgas from the navy to make an airship flight to Liongeli?’

Quest shook his head. ‘I might be able to land you at the foot of the Shedarkshe by aerostat, but not any further. The source of the river is in the heart of Daggish territory. The green-mesh. They would burn any trespassing Jackelian airship out of the sky with their flame cannons.’

Amelia sucked in her breath. She had enough craynarbian friends to have heard their tales of the terror of Liongeli. The greenmesh. A territory of animals and vegetation merged into a deadly living symbiosis of evil. The Daggish might be called an empire, considered a polity, but it was really an ancient hive, evolved out of the fierce fight for resources at the jungle’s deep interior into something alien and brooding. At best, outsiders were just rogue cells to be absorbed into its cooperative. At worst they were enemies to be slain on sight. Quest must be insane. Her expedition would need to do their work on the bed of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, carry out sensitive underwater archaeology while trying to remain un detected by creatures that would rip them apart merely for the crime of violating their realm.

‘If the city’s foundations are on Daggish territory I don’t think it can be done,’ said Amelia. ‘There must be another way to uncover the location of Camlantis in the heavens?’

‘Whatever remains of their civilization on earth is under the waters of this lake.’ Quest paced up and down, his arms waving as he became animated. ‘The legends speak of a million people in Camlantis, close to a million citizens who sacrificed their lives so their legacy could not be perverted by the barbarian hordes of their age. Think of the absolute courage of such an act, blowing your own home into the heavens, a slow death of cold and airlessness for yourself and your friends and your family, rather than turning away from your ideals of pacifism. You could spend a lifetime futilely attending digs in Mechancia, Kikkosico, Cassarabia, hoping to find some clue in a trader’s journal or a refugee’s crystal-book as to where they sent their city.’ His finger stabbed down on Liongeli. ‘This is the mother lode. That it is now underwater close to the shores of a Daggish city in the jungle’s heart is an accident of geography we must overcome.’

‘Underwater,’ mused Amelia. Then she grinned. ‘How much money do you really want to spend on this expedition, Quest?’

‘To unlock the secrets of the ancients, to give Jackals a chance of living in the prosperity and peace of the Camlantean age? How much money do you require?’

Amelia explained her plan.

Veryann watched the professor of archaeology leave the tower. ‘She is almost as mad as you are, Abraham Quest.’

‘Mad? No. Inspired,’ said Quest. ‘Her plan is quite inspired. Did you know she studied under Hull? The very fellow who translated the Camlantean language and worked out how the crystal-books could be activated.’