Brassworks

The Blacksmith, the Salesman, and the Poodle

"The First Woe is passed. Behold, two more Woes come after this."

Words of the Prophet

Chapter 3, Verse 12

THE man in the desert sat in his study and pored over a map. Light from the morning sun spilled into the open-floor room, catching swirls of dust floating in the air. The man's pen scratched noisily against the treated papyrus. Bits of dried ink clotted the old quill, and every few lines the nib would fail, forcing the man to tap it against the wooden desk until black liquid spurted out.

His map wasn't anything special. The hand-drawn lines were less accurate than the master cartographers from the north, and some of the detail work had bled together into an indecipherable mess. The man didn't care. Maps were expensive, and this had been free. Well, free enough. It had been hard earned over the years, bought with blood and sweat rather than coin.

The world, or at least his small part, stretched from the frozen lakes in the far north all the way to the flooded pass in the south. On the western border, the King's Wall separated the plains from the Sunset Kingdoms. There was more, of course, beyond the great oceans to the east. Only the bravest or most foolish merchants chanced those journeys, and of the few that returned, none could be bothered to share their knowledge with the map makers.

With a thin brush, the man carefully traced over the boundaries of the various states: Powerton County, the Redland Barony, the Gentle Shores. He flicked his wrist, marking small inverted V's to mark the various mountain ranges that crisscrossed the landscape. The bristles of his assorted tools were various shades of brown, black, and red human hair, all donated willingly. The inks and oils were an assortment of home-made, bartered, or stolen.

Using his forefinger, the man in the desert traced the borders of the different governances. First he ran around the jagged rectangle of the Vale, his home. Then the Singing Lands below, Judah's Wood to the southeast, and Green Hill to the east. Powerton, he thought bitterly. A land of the corrupt, the destitute, and the dead. His ink-stained fingers danced around the other counties, north and south of the sandy land. He didn't know the names of the individual towns or hollers, only the lands under which they fell.

His eyes leapt to the large, untouched space to the west. A huge scar ran north to south, splitting the land mass in two. The Vale and all the other counties lay to the right. The Sunset Kingdoms--a collection of secretive nations--controlled everything on the far side of Abaddon's Wake. No one venturing their way ever returned. 

Every few years, an incursion would come from the west. Sometimes a merchant train would arrive, gilded and laden with rare gems and jewelry. They would laugh and sing and share their wines and stories. When they left, whatever towns they passed would become hotspots for "Sun-Seekers," groupies of the mysterious kingdoms. 

Other times, the Sunset folk sent their armies. There were no battles, or at least no survivors to speak of them. The only trace of the western folk would be a large mass grave and the skeletal remains of a township. Nary a loose shell or fallen soldier would be found.

The man in the desert adjusted the weights on the corners of the map and stood, stretching his stiff back. The day had broken and there were chores to be done. He took a lingering look at his work, focusing on a small collection of letters near the edge of the Vale, just on the border with a Badlands. He read the word three times before finally walking away. He had to get to work before Queen caught him, otherwise there would be hell to pay. As he made his way down the stairs of the compound toward the smell of cooking food, he thought about the small mark on the map. To anyone else it was just another insignificant town. To the man in the desert, it was a place from another time.