A Place To Bloom

Ulum

The city of Ulum stretched across the valley below us; rows and rows of buildings four or even five stories high hugged narrow, cobbled streets that fanned out in all directions and rose or sank with the land. To the east and to the west, the city continued for miles. To the south, the jagged white teeth of the Terbulin ridge forbade us from Carthia but for a single narrow pass.

"How... high... are we?" Geraln sat on a large stone that rested in the shade of a sparse pine with drifts of dirty snow all about us, letting out white puffs of breath as he spoke.

I answered. "I know that Ulum is about twelve-thousand feet, so we're probably about thirteen where we stand?"

Davod stood leaning his hand against a pine tree; he couldn't stop gaping at the view below us. Geraln shook his head and pushed out his words between labored breaths, "what kind of... lunatic... would build... a city up here?"

That made me laugh. "Well, remember we have to go over that pass over there," I pointed. "Just looking at it from here, that's got to be at least sixteen-thousand feet. This is nothing."

Geraln looked at me with his eyes bulged wide, huffed out a few breaths, and then rubbed his face in his hands a bit.

He didn't say anything, but I answered no less. "I say we rest the night in Ulum and set out in the morning."

Davod protested. "It's not even noon. It looks like we can make it through the city in an hour; we should make it a good ways before nightfall."

"Geraln needs time to get acclimated. A day of rest for him, we're also going to need some supplies. Dariana told me it would take about five days to breach the pass, and seeing it now for myself I believe her. It looks like the road is well-maintained, but we're still going to need fuel, some extra food..."

"Why don't we just hunt for meat like we been doing?"

"Won't be anything up there. Once we go beyond the treeline, we'll be lucky to find so much as a hare."

Davod reached into his purse, pulled out a few coins, and looked them over. "If I give you thirty-five kren, will that be enough?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Sure."

Geraln sat still with his eyes closed, rubbing the sides of his nose up to his eyes and back while Davod counted out the coins and handed them to me.

"Come on," I said. "It should be a lot warmer down there."

So we set out. The road hugged the side of a steep, rocky incline—packed dirt amid rocks and snowdrift at both sides mixed with craggy pines and small wildflowers with tiny purple blooms that filled the cold air with a sweetness like honey. As we descended, the forest grew sparse and our view gave way to the imposing buildings of the city, with a few small shacks built into the steep sides of the cliff, worn with years of moss and half-torn apart while a plump old woman looked up from a wash basin and said nothing as we passed by.

We continued, and the chill air took on a warm undertone as the bright sunlight uninterrupted by so much as a hint of cloud dominated the sky and made the whole valley rather comfortable. The road took a sharp drop into some more shacks, before the outskirts surrendered to giant towers crowded together amid busy streets with throngs of people pushing their way through.

As the narrow street descended further, sounds of all kinds filled our ears, from the calling of merchants, echoes of conversations long dissolved into a mass of sound. Water splashed on stone, drops hit my face from a woman three stories up tossing out the wash, and some man behind us shouting curses at her only for her to accuse his mother of something horrid before disappearing into her window. We muscled through another crowd of people gathered around a shop where the scent of fresh sour bread conquered all within its grasp.