Blankmap: Book I

27. The Chieftains' Council

When he finally made it back to the blissfully cool shade of his room within Melion's house, Solomon Hyrax found all of his possessions neatly stacked, folded, and organized in the corner of the room. A cursory glance showed him that the box had been handled, for it was no longer buried under heaps of clothes, but carefully wrapped inside a shirt. A moment of panic came and went. Whoever had moved the box--Melion, almost certainly--had not done anything with it. The lid was still locked, the secrets of whatever lay within still safe.

He retrieved his father's heavy book from the top of the pile and stretched out with a groan on the thin cot. This afternoon there was nothing to be done, nothing he was needed for, and Solomon resolved to make the most of it. Quickly he flipped through the pages, returning to the place where he had left off.

FOUNDRY: Province of Iron

While the history of Foundry is perhaps less storied than that of several older provinces, there is little doubt that it is Foundry which has led the way for Vashon to move forward into the future. It stands as a testament to the power of innovation, to production, to the successful attempts of men and women to beat and shape and mold the earth to their own purposes.

"Not gettin' a head start, are yeh?"

Solomon started. He had completely forgotten the conditions he had set in exchange for his labor on the ship, though it was clear Rip Rap had not. A sheepish grin found its way to his face.

"Sorry about that. It's just so...interesting."

"Won't argue with yeh there. Interesting and important. Yeh want to understand how Vashon works, what its place in the world is, yeh gotta read this book," Rip Rap said. "Well...that, or live a long time and go everywhere and talk to folks from everywhere. Yer a bit young to knock that off, so this is as good a place as any to start. Let's hear it."

Solomon cleared his throat and read the first paragraph aloud. With a nod from Rip Rap, who wore a look of academic concentration, the young adventurer continued.

"Foundry benefits from its unique position in the center of the most dense region of forest in Vashon outside of Sylveth. For centuries, the smiths of Foundry have harvested these trees to feed their "eternal" fires. These fires are kept burning at all in their forges and to aid the process by which ore is transformed into the iron for which this province is famous. Blessed again by geography are the Founders, as the residents are called, as these forests are nestled among a low outcropping of mountains from which ore can be extracted..."

It took Solomon quite some time to battle his way through such an unnecessarily wordy and syntactically confusing paragraph. He fought gamely, and tried to attack the words as though he were climbing a tree, the way Rip Rap had taught him aboard the Petrichor. Gruff as he was in all other arenas, Rip Rap proved himself a patient teacher, helping Solomon wade through the less rewarding pages while expertly leading Solomon to the correct pronunciations of brand new words. At the end of each page came a bombardment of questions to make sure that Solomon had not just read aloud, but actually made an effort to understand all that was signified by the words on the page. Sometimes Rip Rap would take the reins himself, reading aloud as Solomon followed with a finger, mouthing the words as he worked his way across the page.

After a few hours Solomon's head was as sore as his body. Rip Rap sniffed out his fatigue in an instant.

"That's the end o' the lesson," he growled. "Brain's a muscle. Needs rest just like any other. Yeh've done more than enough with all yer muscles today--let's pick up another time."

The young adventurer from Naweego was too spent to argue. He was quite sure that if he were to read another word, it would push out one he had already read and remembered, like pouring tea into a cup already full of it. Names and dates and places swam in his head. There was Phaestus, the first Caretaker of Foundry, who was said to wear his forge apron everywhere he went...there was Ferringom, the ill-fated first capital of Foundry, whose wooden buildings all burned to the ground after an errant spark landed on a pile of sawdust near the center of town...the settlers there had taken all the Dammerung-made weapons in their possession and melted them down to make tools and gates and furniture. There had been a public effort to remove lingering aspects of the Dammerung culture that had held on through the first few generations of the province's incorporation, facets of a culture that hacked and burned and built at will. In its stead they encouraged Founders to live more like the natives of the forest, called Genosylvans by Vashonians but called Saunee in their own tongue. The Saunee also took a great deal from the forests and mountains, carving out a comfortable existence, but they were meticulous in their choices about which trees to cut down, such that the forest was never in danger of becoming bare.