Marie Brennan - Within the Sanctuary of Wings

“And that,” Suhail said dryly, “is again just as likely to happen without his help as with. If not more so.”

He did not exaggerate. Although we had done a bit of mountaineering in recent years, this was like someone who has dog-paddled across a quiet lake proposing to swim the channel between Scirland and Eiverheim. Of the lot of us, Mr. Thu was by far the most experienced. “We could take other mountaineers with us; Mr. Brucker has been to the Mrtyahaima before. But none of them will know the place we seek.”

I looked at Suhail, and at Tom. It was not only my own life I would be placing in a stranger’s hands.

My husband nodded. “We need someone. Let it be the man who found the specimen to begin with.”

I got up and went to my desk, where I slid a fresh sheet of paper onto the blotter. “Then first let us see if he agrees.”

Thu Phim-lat stared at me as if I were mad. “One day, I cannot be allowed to listen to a lecture without being thrown out. Now you trust me with this?”

“I see no reason not to.”

His mouth opened and closed once, as if he had too many possible rejoinders, and none could make it through the scrum. I would not have heeded them regardless. He drew in a breath, then said, “And what if I do not wish to go?”

“Then I would ask your reason.”

Mr. Thu spread his hands. “Here I am safe—as safe as I may be, at least. You ask me to go into danger again.”

“We will be travelling for the most part through Scirling-controlled territory in Vidwatha, and Yelang does not have an eastern foothold yet. Would they have any cause to expect your return to Tser-nga?” He shook his head, and I gave him a bright smile. “Then one could argue that you will be even safer there than here, for the simple reason that no one will be looking for you there. Though I must allow that the risk of avalanches and rocks falling on your head is greater in the Mrtyahaima.”

“Rocks and avalanches I fear only as much as they deserve.” This statement reassured me more than if he had declared no fear at all. A man who has no fear in the mountains is soon rendered a dark smear upon the valley floor. Mr. Thu held his breath, considering, then asked his final question. “If I refuse, will this harm the Khiam cause?”

“No,” I said. The major-general did not even yet know we wanted Mr. Thu to come, for we judged it best to get the man’s cooperation before that of the authorities. In that moment, though, I wished we had done it the other way around, for I was certain my truthful admission would cause him to refuse.

He said, “But it would aid my people if I came.”

“Among those who would take your participation as an encouraging sign of cooperation, yes. Among those who suspect treachery every time you sneeze, no. I cannot begin to tell you which might win out in the balance. But if this carries any weight with you, I should like to see you come. And not only,” I hastened to add, “because your expertise would be useful.”

“Why, then?” he asked curiously.

The last time I brought a man along on an expedition of this kind, it was because I loved him. In the case of Thu Phim-lat, my answer was much less scandalous. “Because you found the first specimen. You deserve to be there when—if—we find the second, and document it for the world.”

I spoke with pure honesty, not out of calculation. My acquaintance with Mr. Thu was so short, I had no way of anticipating whether my words would move him or not.

Despite my ignorance, I chose the perfect reply.

Thu said, “Then I will come.”

On the very day we received our permission to go, I sat down in my study for one final conversation—this one with my son.

“If you tell me not to go,” I said, “then I will not.”

Jake gaped at me. “Why would I say that?”

“Because the Mrtyahaima peaks are possibly the most lethal region in the world. I cannot promise I will come back alive.” No more than I could have promised my survival in the Green Hell… but back then I had been grieving for my first husband, fighting to establish myself as a scholar, and fleeing a responsibility I had never particularly desired. Moreover, I was young and naive enough not to realize just how much risk I was facing. Now I knew, and a portion of my heart would have been content to remain at home, secure in what I had already achieved.

But not all of it—and Jake knew that. “If I wanted you to stay here,” he said, “I would have already told you so. This is who you are, Mother. If you don’t go, you’ll always wonder what might have happened. What you might have learned. Besides, you need something new to shove in the faces of those—” (He used a phrase to describe the gentlemen of the Philosophers’ Colloquium that I will not repeat here.)

My eyes pricked hot, and hotter still when he added, “But don’t get yourself killed. Or arrested by some foreign government. Getting arrested at home is quite enough.”

“I have only done that the once,” I said. Our tones were light, but the sentiment behind them was not. Sniffling a little, I embraced my son; and not long after, I left Scirland for the heights of the Mrtyahaima.

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.