A PORTAL OPENED ABOVE the Sea of Grass.
It was roughly the size and shape of a doorway, though it shimmered and blurred at its edges, appearing to any casual observer, had there been one, as some curious trick of the light rather than a gateway to another time and place. In any case, there was nobody to observe the opening: it was high noon in the heartland of the Sea of Grass, and even the local fauna were taking a siesta under the harsh sun.
Vessa stepped through.
He stood on nothing but air for a moment, then descended slowly to the ground. The grass bowed and bent beneath his bare feet, depressed by some unseen force. Even though he appeared to be standing on solid earth, he was in fact a few inches above it.
He began walking slowly southward. Caked with reddish soil, pressed leaves, and crushed flowers, his feet resembled the roots of an ancient tree more than mortal limbs. His toes were calloused and gnarled from a lifetime of shoeless travel, matching his wild hair and features that seemed to contain as much animal as human in their detail. The wildwood staff in his gnarled fist, the red-ochre robe with its legacy of stains, the piercing black eyes, all added to the impression of a force of nature rather than a mammalian being.
Indeed, after centuries spent meditating in the wild, eternal jungle in the heart of which he resided, Vessa was more animal or tree than a member of the civilized world. He felt more at home in that primordial forest than in the great cities of Arthaloka. This was the reason he preferred to arrive in private chambers, behind closed doors, or in uninhabited places such as this grassy plain, where he would not have to endure the shocked reactions and staring gazes of curious people.
The Sea of Grass was aptly named.
A vast ocean of rolling grasslands that carpeted the eastern corner of the great continent, it appeared mostly uninhabited at first glance. But like its nominal counterpart, the salt-laden sea that lay beyond its easternmost boundaries, an entire ecosystem of animal and insect life lived within its body, like the symbiotic parasites within any biological creature.
The creatures that roamed the great grassy plains, such as the enormous herds of wild uks, were mostly hidden by the waving grass itself. The grass grew as high as five yards or taller and concealed a flourishing population of predators, herbivores, and every manner of creature between the two kinds. The uks herds were rivaled by the even more numerous flocks of birds that ruled the skies above. And a whole other population of creatures resided beneath the springy roots of the grass itself, burrowing, tunneling, and traveling underground across the length and breadth of the sea.
It was these denizens that Vessa had come to seek out, not his own kind. That was why he had arrived at a place hundreds of miles from the cities and settlements of Mraashk, Arrgodi, and Gwannland. Far to the southeast lay the White Desert and the port cities and coastal villages of the White Kingdom, with its capital, Aqron, marking the southeasternmost point of the continent. To the south and west, covering an area almost as vast as the Burnt Empire itself, was the Red Desert, where Vessa’s cousin and nemesis sought to build his Reygistan Empire.
Vessa now walked in a large, roughly circular pattern, leaving behind him a trail of bowed grass. Unlike the trail of an ordinary mortal, the grass stalks in his wake were not broken under his weight; they were simply bowed down flat by the same mystic force that enabled Vessa to inhabit this space without being physically present. Every stalk pointed in the same direction: the direction Vessa was walking.
After a period of time, a bird flying overhead might have looked down and seen a perfectly geometrical pattern that followed a mostly unbroken spiral with brief gaps left at precise intervals. In this spiraling maze were smaller patterns, precisely and artistically made. The whole was the exact replica of a complex and powerful mandala. A visual pattern that was the silent equivalent of a potent Ashcrit mantra. Not merely a mantra of prayer or supplication, though there were marks and intervals that offered praise to the appropriate stone gods, but one of secret intent. The mandala was designed not to be understood or even seen by mortals—it would have seemed like nothing but the random flattening of grass by a mating uks or some such natural cause—but by the very soil of Arthaloka.
Or, to be precise, Artha herself. The mythical stone goddess whose body was the very continent named after her; Artha being her name, loka meaning “place.”
The sage reached the center of the mandala and stood motionless.
A soft breeze, indolent and heavy with the heat of the overhead sun, stirred the grass. A susurration rose and fell as waves rippled gently across the endless expanse.
The legend went that once the winds of Gwannland—which was the ancient Ashcrit name for the Sea of Grass—blew so fiercely that mortals built skiffs made of the mythical timber airwood and mounted them with musl sails that caught the legendary winds and carried mortals and their cargo hundreds of miles across the Sea of Grass, very much the way sailing ships rode the winds and currents of the oceans beyond Gwannland port.
This wind was nothing like those fabled currents; it barely stirred the fur on the rumps of an uks herd dozing on their feet some fifty miles away. But it blew across the mandala pattern drawn by the sage Vessa—and there, something remarkable happened.
The mandala glowed.
A deep bluish light marked the pattern, growing in intensity and brightness.
The sage remained standing in the center of the mandala, eyes shut as he chanted Ashcrit mantras that none but the most accomplished of his order would dare utter. The light increased steadily as he continued chanting, and the wind rose, growing more frenetic until it howled and swirled like a gale—but only above the mandala. Outside the pattern, a grass dog popped its furry head up, ears twitching curiously; its fur was not so much as ruffled by the howling wind mere inches away. But the alien light startled it, and it squeaked an indignant protest before burrowing back down into its underground residence.
The wind and light increased their frenzy until there was a blue tornado swirling above the mandala pattern. It whirled at impossible speed, producing a high-pitched whine that set animals to howling fifty miles away. It seemed improbable that the sage was able to stand at its center, his beard, hair, and robe barely touched. His face was calm, his eyes shut, his voice unchanged in tone or volume.
He finished reciting the mantras.
He opened his eyes and raised both arms, pointing the staff up at the peak of the blue tornado.
A blinding flash, obliterating the world from vision.
Then it was all gone.
The blue tornado, the howling gale, and the venerable sage himself.
Only the mandala pattern remained, burned into the grass, into the very earth. A permanent mark. Nothing would ever grow over this spot, nor any animal, insect, or person broach the space. Even birds would instinctively alter their flights subtly to avoid flying directly overhead.
The grass dog popped its head up again, prepared to duck down instantly if the strange two-legged being and the bizarre phenomenon was still visible. It saw nothing notable. The Sea of Grass stretched far and wide in every direction. To its eyes—and the senses of every other living creature—even the mandala pattern itself did not exist; it was invisible. Yet as it hopped forward, it instinctively went around the circular rim of the scorched earth, its paws never once touching that dead space.
The day wound on, sultry and lazy as any afternoon in the Sea of Grass.