After a long week of dealing with training—both his own battalion and the two new companies—and two late nights writing up the required reports to Colonel Herolt, Mykel decided that he had to get away from the compound. Immediately after a late breakfast on Decdi, late being a glass after sunrise, he saddled one of the spare mounts and rode out, heading back down the northeast high road toward Southgate. He felt slightly guilty because, while he had given his officers and rankers the day off, they were limited to the area within two vingts of the compound—at the discretion of their officers. That included a handful of taverns and shops, but Mykel intended to explore somewhat farther—the center of Southgate, in fact. Why he felt it necessary, he would have been hard-pressed to explain.
As he left the compound, on the short stretch of stone paving that connected the Cadmian outpost to the wider high road, he looked to the northeast. He could just make out the subtle change in the road surface, a vingt or so farther out, where the granite paving of the road leaving Southgate was replaced by eternastone stretching as far as he could see to the northeast. Heat waves danced above the surface of the stone.
In places like Elcien, Ludar, and Faitel, the eternal paving ran without interruption through the town. The same was true in smaller towns like Arwyn and Harmony, or small cities like Klamat. Yet, from what he had seen, there were no roads or buildings of eternastone in Southgate.
Why was Southgate different?
He turned his mount southwest on the high road, smiling wryly, because he doubted that anyone could tell him. The fingers of his left hand swept by his belt, not actually touching the leather, but close enough that he could feel, in a way he still had trouble describing, the miniature dagger of the ancients concealed in its special slot.
From his actions, Overcaptain Sturyk had clearly displayed both fear, respect, and pity for Mykel—and all three emotions seemed linked to Mykel’s unasked-for appellation as a dagger of the ancients. Yet Mykel had the feeling that the emotions associated with the term were limited to Dramur and Southgate.
Mykel reached the outskirts of Southgate, less than half a vingt from the compound. The first structure was a tavern, as usual near Cadmian outposts, but the door to the Overflowing Beaker was closed, and the windows were still shuttered. Beyond that was a two-story narrow house, narrow in front, with a deep covered porch. The main section of the house extended a good twenty yards back from the highway.
Two women wearing little more than shifts lounged on battered wooden rocking chairs on the porch. Mykel could feel their eyes on him, but neither spoke, either between themselves or to Mykel, as he rode past the house—certainly a brothel in fact, if not in name,
For another half vingt, he rode past various establishments designed to separate Cadmians from their coins. Those farther from the compound and closer to the main sections of Southgate seemed less disreputable and merged with more traditional shops, such as a coppersmith’s, a cooperage, and a fuller’s, although the fullering shop appeared more dingy than the ones Mykel had known in Faitel, despite its whitewashed stuccoed plaster outer walls. He saw but a handful of people, mostly older women, out on the stone sidewalks that bordered the high road.
Farther from the Cadmian compound, the shops gave way to small dwellings, all with few windows looking out on the high road, and all built around central courtyards. The courtyards looked so small that Mykel wondered how they could offer much respite from the summer heat, but perhaps the brilliant white stucco reflected enough of the sun to help. Still, early in the day as it was, he could feel sweat beginning to ooze down his back, and it was still spring.
He rode slowly, letting his eyes range across the houses and occasional shops. Neat and clean as they were, there was something within Southgate that did not feel right to Mykel. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t put a finger on why he felt that way or what had created that feeling.
As on the ride from the port, the closer he rode to the inner ring and the center of Southgate, the fewer people he saw, and most of those he did see were on horseback or in carriages and far better attired, generally in white. The few exceptions were young women, uniformly dressed in a light gray tunics and trousers, with matching gray head scarves that covered their hair and the lower part of their faces. They carried baskets, filled with all manner of items, from laundry to produce, even small glazed tiles in string bags in one case.
He slowed the mount as he neared the inner ring. When he looked at the center of Southgate, with morning sun reflecting off the brilliant white walls surrounding the huge central villas—also brilliant white—Mykel had to squint, so intense was the light.
He crossed the inner ring at a measured walk and continued to ride southwest along the paved road that led between the walls that surrounded two of the villas. The road narrowed to a width of ten yards. The space from the edge of the road to the base of the walls measured perhaps fifteen yards and was covered in white gravel. Not a single bit of vegetation appeared to mar the whiteness. The sides of the crenelations on the top of the walls showed no interior stone, just a white surface.
As he neared the end of the walls of the two villas, he could see a second granite boulevard, one that curved around a central park in the center of which was some sort of white stone plaza. The street he traversed ended at the boulevard, and he eased to his right and onto the boulevard. The park to his left was edged with a low granite wall, no more than a yard and a half high. Beyond the wall was an expanse of grass, broken by curving stone walks, and hedges no higher than the enclosing wall. The park—if it were such—was empty.
Mykel kept riding. Shortly, on his right, he passed one of the gates to the enclosed villas. The gates were of iron, but had been painted white with so many coats of paint that they shimmered. Behind the closed gates he could only see a stone drive leading to a covered portico.
Ahead, he saw another street entering from the right, again running in the open space between the walls of two villas. This street continued into the park. Mykel turned his mount down it, toward the center of the park-like area. Once more, the park was separated from the street by the same low granite wall.
The street ended in yet another boulevard, if it could be called that, which circled what appeared to be a raised circular platform of brilliant white granite a hundred yards or so across. Directly in front of Mykel was a stele of white stone set ten yards out into the gray granite of the innermost circular boulevard.
Mykel reined up and surveyed the area. Four streets ran through the park, each radiating out from the white stone—or the stelae set at the four cardinal points of the compass. There were no decorations or statutes rising from the circle of whiteness—just the circle itself.
After a moment, Mykel urged his mount the few yards toward the stele before him so that he could make out what had been carved upon it.
When he was less than a yard from the stele, he eased his mount to a halt and began to study the series of scenes sculpted into the stone. The bottom row depicted men at work—raising a wall, constructing a ship, plowing a field, presumably set outside Southgate. The three images above that showed men riding, hunting, and fighting another force. There was a single wider image above those—it showed thirteen men seated at a table, each holding a scepter. Mykel looked more closely. Standing directly in the center, back of the seated men, was a sculpted figure of an alector—although the stone did not convey the purple eyes or the jet black hair. The alector stood behind the center seltyr, the only one who sat on something resembling a throne. The alector was not threatening, not carrying a weapon, just there.
Mykel frowned. Except for the images on the stele, there was no sign of alectors in the construction of Southgate, even in the high roads. He flicked the reins, riding around the innermost boulevard, so that he could see the three other stelae, but all carried the same images.
Slowly, he rode out of the park—or memorial…or ceremonial plaza—turning his mount back toward the Cadmian compound. As he rode around the boulevard that circumscribed the central plaza, he noted that all the gates to the villas opened onto that boulevard and each gate was set directly in the middle of the wall facing the plaza.
As he guided his mount back up the street between two sets of walls, he realized something else. He’d sensed nothing living in the plaza, except the stunted grass and short hedge.