Death After Death
Chapter 261: The Edge of the Map

That night was a busy one for Simon. He was no longer in a hurry to find the zombies before they caused further havoc. Now, he was in a hurry to leave the scene of this massacre before someone decided he’d done it, and he had no idea when the next trader might come through. There were only so many places that one could stop for more water in the middle of nowhere.

So, he worked quickly. First, he found the largest wagon, which was small enough to be drawn by a single horse. Then he removed everything he didn’t think he’d need, keeping only basics for camping along with a barrel of water and plenty of flatbread and spiced meat that the locals seemed to prefer.

Once that was done, and he had room, he started to load his newfound wagon with the trade goods he thought were most appropriate. He didn’t take all of the richest items with him. Anything that was particularly distinctive he decided to leave behind. Instead, he went with a mixture of spices, bolts of cloth, and tools. He also brought a few sacks of grain and a cask of dates, though the last one was for eating more than trading.

This deep in the desert, he was worried about running low on supplies, though. So, he took things with a dual use whenever possible.

When all that was done, he gathered the journals and logs from all the wagons to review. Those were incriminating documents he’d have to get rid of before he reached a major city. But between their maps and notes he could learn much about the world around him, both geographically and politically.

This was probably a southbound caravan, and most of those items had been chosen for the value they’d been bringing in southern lands, but that didn’t bother Simon. He didn’t care about the exact price he got. The whole thing was worth less than the gold he had hidden in his saddlebags. The wagon and everything in it was just a tool for blending in along the road ahead.

It was only after he got moving and made camp an hour away, in a place where there was nothing but sand and a star-filled sky, that he finally slept. He fell asleep with ideas about the last change he’d need to make if he really wanted to blend in.

For a long time, Simon had both the words of flesh sculpting and the talents of an artist, but other than a few minor tweaks to make himself appear to be someone else during his lifetime as Ennis, he’d only barely used them to disguise himself. Instead, he’d really only used them to make himself a little skinnier at the start of each new life.

That was going to have to change this time, though. He’d only read a few works that dealt with the desert dwellers, but he knew they were a clannish people and that he would make few inroads in learning about them as an outsider.

That was what he did the following morning. He didn’t start with magic, of course; that would have been foolhardy. The first thing he did, even before he drove the wagon back to the trade road, was to make a mirror from a silver coin and draw his reflection into one of the log books.

He wanted to be the same man he’d been when he’d traveled north years before for Zoa, more or less, and that would be impossible without having some idea of what his face looked like. Once that was done, he sketched a second image of one of the zombies he’d just recently killed.

He’d never know the man he was stealing the face from, and truthfully, he didn’t want it to be exactly the same face lest someone recognize it on the road ahead. Still, he paid attention to the shape of the ears and the slightly larger hooked nose, along with the bushier eyebrows.

When he was done, he compared the two pictures and decided the two people he’d drawn couldn’t even be considered distant cousins.

He was happy enough with that. Simon stilled his mind and fixed the image he’d just made in his mind. He imagined what it would be if it came to life off the page with dark tan skin and black hair. Then, with the words “Celdura Hyakk,” he took on the identity of the dead merchant, more or less.

A strange tingling shot through his skin, and the muscles of his face went numb and then tight as the magic took hold. It was like he’d lost control of parts of his body, and the muscles were spasming at random, but he knew that was just the magic forcing reality to conform to his will at the cost of a month or so of life.

Simon waited for all of that to die down, then he opened his eyes and looked in the mirror again. He found that he no longer recognized himself. More importantly, he hadn’t made himself look like a monster in the course of the magic.

He followed up his first spell with a second, lesser word of flesh shaping. This one adjusted a few of the details he’d missed the first time, deepening the lines in his forehead and putting more wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. That was enough to satisfy Simon and make him feel like a real person, even though his new identity had only recently come into existence.

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As he put away the mirror, he found that even though his skin was only a few shades darker, and his features had only changed a little, he couldn’t recognize himself at all. The change was even more stark when he stripped and donned the clothes and weapons of one of the dead men.

He kept his vampiric dagger tucked away in the folds of his dun-colored robes, but he hid his vorpal sword away in the wagon and donned a scimitar in its place. It was a good-looking weapon, but he’d need to practice with it if he wanted to be halfway decent at fighting with it. The balance was unfamiliar, and the reach was slightly shorter.

All of that took hours, and the sun was approaching its zenith by the time Simon set off again. First, he headed east toward the road, and then when he reached it, he headed north toward the nearest oasis.

Later that day, he passed another wagon, and when the other man waved at him, he waved back. That was enough to make him feel comfortably anonymous, though the fact that all languages still blended together made him feel somewhat uneasy about the whole thing. Well, that and the fact that I don’t yet have a name, Simon reminded himself.

That was what he did that first night. He went through the logs, not for information about where he was or for where he should be going. He just read the names of people and got a feel for how people were addressed. Eventually, after some consideration, he decided to name himself Nijam. Though it only had a passing resemblance to his real name, he’d seen it used several times in different logs, which meant it was common enough for his purposes.

A new name and a new face didn’t make him feel any less like he was in familiar territory. Even if the Murani were not yet at war with the South, he’d only ever known them as the enemy, and that was a hard switch to flip overnight.

Still, as he shared his dung-fueled campfires on the long road north with other travelers, he slowly began to see that however different their ways were, they were just people, by and large. Sometimes, he met people who seemed likely to try to rob him, but never someone who was suspicious he might be anyone but Nijam, the humble merchant. There were still inns, though they were often large caravansaries rather than humble little establishments.

The foods were different, and so was the alcohol. The former was a nice change of pace. He ate well on steamed rice served with peppers and spiced olives instead of the breads and stews he was more used to. Drinking, on the other hand, he did much less of. He didn't care for their bitter alcohol and drank little of it as he continued north.

He did indulge in gambling, but only as ever, to learn things from strangers. The best way to make a man see you as no threat at all was to lose a silver or two to him over a couple of hours. After that, he’d say just about anything.

Simon learned more about people this way than any amount of trading. He learned that the culture here really was more tolerant of magic, though only of the sanctioned magi who wore the amulets that Simon had seen many times before. No one knew that those amulets were suicide bombs waiting to go off or anything. They just knew that it was death to cross a magi, and at the same time, abominations who used magic without allegiance to their God-King should be stoned to death.

In time, Simon learned that it was political will more than even the desert that stymied attacks to the South. The Murani mostly warred with each other, which was why larger wars were so rare. They had a capital and a number of large cities, but much of their strength existed in the nomadic tribes of the plains.

He interacted with them a few times when he tried to sell his wares in some of the larger villages he ran through, but the things he’d brought with him didn’t appeal to rural herdsmen. All of these were detours, though. His destination was never in doubt.

While there were many nomadic and semi nomadic tribes, there were only a few large cities worthy of the name. As the desert faded to a vast and endless steppe, all of those little encounters steered him toward the same few cities as the books he’d long since devoured did.

“Does that mean I’ve just crossed the equator?” Simon wondered as the land began to blossom around him. He had no idea where he was on the globe, but he knew of at least two large deserts now. Surely one had to be caused by its position on the planet. The other, though? That had to be because geography, probably, and because of all the mountains to the south he was betting the area near Darndelle and Crowvar was because of rain shadow, and not latitude.

The same didn’t seem to be true for this place, though. Simon hadn’t exactly mapped the whole thing out yet, but at least according to other traders, the coasts up ahead were warm and clear with hot summers and mild winters. The Murani had a few coastal towns and cities, but they lacked the tools for navigation, so they clung to the largest inland rivers instead. Apparently, one had to travel a lot further north before the forests dominated things again.

Simon was well aware that the Greeks had figured out the world was round with math thousands of years before. He was even pretty sure they had some idea of where they were on the planet, but he had no idea how any of those equations worked when he’d been on Earth. After being in the Pit for centuries, though, even most of what he had known was lost to him. He might remember the words ‘Pythagorean Theorem,’ and that they had something to do with Triangles, but he no longer knew the equation involved.

“That’s something I can do with one of my lives,” Simon told himself as he rode north. “I can invent math.” That made him laugh. It was a fine goal, but he put it way down the list of things he needed to do. He didn’t think math was going to help improve his magic, or save kids from owlbears.