A Place To Bloom

Yonim

I got up and went outside. I was alone in the freezing cold. The courtyard was cast in blue, and the sky, turning amber, clung to what remnant of stars it had left. From up on the rampart, waves of clouds with pink and yellow highlights seemed motionless, like a painting as they crashed against the black wall of the Terbulin ridge that wrapped around all the way to the eastern horizon. Behind the jagged line of gray-purple was the bright glow of the rising sun with lances of yellow beaming out across the sea of clouds before me.

Somewhere beneath that blanket was Carthia, our duty. The Emperor's shadow war. A world of pirates, black magic, and monsters in the woods.

Breakfast that morning was salted pork sauteed with spinach and cheese, corn muffins hot from the oven and slathered in butter, and a peculiar drink with an unmistakable strong, nutty aroma I would never forget.

"What is this?" Geraln asked. The men of the garrison laughed as they watched us sip from our mugs.

I answered him myself. "They have this in Ulum. They call it kafi."

Davod sipped, then turned to face me with his eyes wide. "Where the hell did you find this in Ulum?"

Faren sipped, closed his droopy eyes, and marveled, "where has this been my whole life?"

Zaken explained. "The kæfi is bitter by itself, and they add something called azukʊ to make it sweet. The Emperor don't want it coming through this way, but last year the enemy took the Gate to Hell, so he ain't got much of a choice."

Geraln's eyes bulged. "They took the what?"

Ales's fingers trembled. "Is this right? It's like a jolt of energy; I don't think I've ever felt so awake!"

The man from the porcupine clan slapped his meaty, three-fingered hand on Ales's shoulder. "Truth be told, man, Carthia's not all monsters."

Timeu smiled. "Wait until you try dokono!"

The others laughed in agreement.

Eventually, the five of us—Davod, Geraln, Ales, Faren, and I gathered in the courtyard while the heavy iron portculliexeusesai creaked open. Heavy steel chains whined in protest, and a thin layer of ice shattered across the stone floor. The bars were pulled, two to the left and one to the right, the door farted open in spurts, and we found ourselves at the top of a clearing covered with gravel and black ice scarcely ten feet from oblivion.

"Fuck it," Davod proclaimed, "let's go."

Beside the gate was a Goat totem that matched the one at the front gate. The route dropped sharply, clinging to the mountain on the left and dropping down through the clouds on the right. It wasn't even a road so much as a slanted outcropping of rock that people walked over. How in the world a merchant could get an ox-drawn cart up this way considering how steep the incline and how narrow the passage I couldn't imagine, but they'd done it—wheel wells were impacted into the black-and-gray gravel.

Then we saw some wheel scuffings that went right over the edge.

"Watch for ice," I reminded everyone. I tried to sound confident, but despite years climbing treacherous mountains back home, this slanted ledge made me very uncomfortable. Father in heaven, I do not like this cliff. I do not like it one little bit.

We clung to the other side, each of us too scared to speak lest we lose focus on where we were. Above the sound of boots crunching tiny pebbles covered in icicles was the high-pitched whistle of the wind as it swept across the rock face.

We kept on the road for hours as it dropped down, inching us closer and closer to the clouds. We'd descended to a small shelf of rock that seemed to have broken off from the main wall and settled a few feet above the ground, so we sat for a while. Geraln opened his pack and brought out the trail rolls. "This is the last of them. We have two maple-almond, a cherry-hazelnut, and two honey-coconuts left."