Death After Death
Chapter 262: The Way North

Really, the more Simon spoke with people in caravansaries and trading posts that dotted the roads, it seemed like he had two main choices on where to go, and between them, there was no choice at all. Three weeks to the northeast was the capital of Zurari, and a week to the northwest lay one of the largest coastal hubs of Urani. Both were large cities. The closer one was apparently quite wealthy. It even did some trade with points further South, like Ionar and Abresse, along with other cities that he’d never heard of.

While he would have thought that the main reason for such a city was to trade with the wider world, the Murani largely turned their nose up at the cultures of the South and their trade goods. While Ionian pottery was prized, their bronze ingots were much more common since tin was scarce in the region, and the only thing that anyone cared about from Brin besides silver was its steel, which was apparently quite fine.

It wasn’t foreigners that Urani traded with, though, it was the other large cities of the Murani, and most of those were linked together by a single river. While they were at heart a nomadic people, the Serpent River that came down from the north crisscrossed the vast plains in a meandering path that often changed when the river flooded.

The people who lived on those barges and went up and down the languid yellow waters would never have the same status as the horse-riding clans that used their services, but it seemed to Simon that they were the people who truly connected the region.

To the Murani, land was for fighting on and fighting over, and real commerce, especially for heavier objects like grains and stone, happened nearly exclusively on the water. Simon had to pretend he knew all this in these conversations, of course, and if he misspoke, he had to feign drunkenness and accept the mockery of other traders, but really, he found the relationships fascinating.

While the three of the four kingdoms of the South seemed to be almost nascent, or proto-states, and Ionar was a real country within its small bounds, Muran was bigger than all of them combined and apparently more unified as well. The southern reaches didn’t even have monsters to speak of anymore, except for the occasional naga attack in the deep desert. One had to journey all the way to the far north, apparently, to find something to kill you that wasn’t another man.

That fascinated Simon. Because of his encounters with them up until now, he’d considered the Murani to be the barbarians, but the farther he journeyed north, the more it seemed like it was the peoples of the South who were the barbarians. Still, it wasn’t all good here. As he cut further inland, bypassing Urani in favor of Zurari, he passed by several slave caravans heading in the same direction. In fact, he hadn’t even reached the city before he decided that was the true reason why the horse clans fought each other.

It wasn’t for honor or even for grazing territory. It was so the winner could sell the loser into bondage to enrich themselves. This, combined with the fact that the South had little in the way of slavery, made the question of who exactly was the barbarian a little messier, but Simon held off on making judgment. He wasn’t here to decide which culture was better. He was here to try to stop whatever war might be on the horizon.

Still, the way people talked about the capital as he approached it made it seem like it was more than just another city. Even the log books he’d read before he burned them said the same things. He’d saved a few pages that contained maps, illustrations, and important notes, but he could still recall what some of the merchants had said in their own private notes. Their assessment ranged from calling Zurari the Crown of the World and the beating heart of the Serpent to ‘a den of thieves and cultists who will steal your money and your soul.’

Assessments varied wildly, but everyone agreed the place was grand. They agreed on something else, too, and that was that in addition to being the seat of the God-King’s power, it was also the place where the Murani trained their mages. That alone made it a must-see destination for him.

“I would stay far away from the Crown of the World,” one merchant told him while they smoked a hookah together at a crossroads. “It is the worst of all worlds. Mages and the imperial court, both.” The other men that were there laughed at that a bit before the conversation turned back to which city had the finest prostitutes and how many wives they had at home.

Simon didn’t let any of that dissuade him. He’d need intrigue, and though he didn’t care for the rumor mill, he’d learned from his time in Darndelle that simply attending the right parties was nearly as valuable as any research to do on his own.

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I can’t exactly buy my way into that sort of engagement, of course, he realized.

Simon spent the next several days trying to figure out how he might slip into the circles of the elite as he continued to the northeast. Every option, though, even the artistic ones, met with the same roadblocks. He just didn’t know enough about the culture to stay hidden for long as anything but a wandering merchant or something similar.

Still, despite whatever concerns he might have when he got there, Simon enjoyed the trip. Without the threat of goblins and bandits, it was almost peaceful. He would occasionally wander through the territory of some new clan that demanded tribute, but those gifts were small and intended to show obedience, not smother trade or rise to the level of outright theft.

He hadn’t actually had to pull his blade in weeks when he finally topped a low rise and saw Zurari spread out before him along both sides of the river. That was a surprising moment because he’d been entirely unprepared for the scale of the thing. He’d known that it was going to be a large city from what he’d read, but he’d thought that the stories he’d heard were exaggerated, at least a little bit, but that had not been the case.

Other than perhaps the jungle city in the early levels, this was probably the largest city in the world. At least it was the largest city in the world that he’d seen. Ionar was tiny by comparison. It was the size of a single district that radiated out from the center like spokes. Liepzen was bigger, of course, but it was still less than half of the size.

Now, this is something worth painting, Simon told himself as he burned the image into his mind.

The city was surrounded by two layers of walls, spaced widely apart, which spoke to Simon about its history. Not only were walls still necessary because of the size of some of the horse-riding clans, but the city had outgrown them twice. It lent the whole thing the appearance of a bull's eye, but when he thought of it like that, it was impossible not to focus on the giant ziggurat that stood at the city’s center.

There were two other step pyramids that were large enough to tower over all but that central monument. All three of them dominated the city skyline, making a dozen smaller pyramids and monuments seem like nothing but buildings. Still, of the three, the one in the center of Zurari stood out the most. It might have been thirty stories.

It was hard to say exactly from where he was standing, so far away. It was undoubtedly the seat of power for the Murai kingdom, and though he had no plans to enter or topple it, he knew he was probably going to have to figure out something if he wanted to get back to learning to see the world around him better in the Oracle’s little cult.

Simon took his time approaching the city and spent as much time watching the rest of the traffic as other people. He wasn’t afraid of the city guards exactly, but in a place where there were state-sanctioned mages, it was impossible to be sure. What if they have magical metal detectors to detect auras on the main gates? He wondered.

There were plenty of decorative markings and inscriptions around the massive forty-foot-tall gates that might have hidden such features, but Simon couldn’t spot anything like a word of power. Instead, he simply admired the way the architecture married beauty and defensiveness while he slowly approached the gate.

He had no idea how he would even start to incorporate magic into those defenses beyond the obvious, like using words of earth to strengthen the very stone. Still, as he eyed the other travelers that were coming and going, he gave it some thought, just for something to do. He was almost through imagining what an illusion-powered display might look like and was trying to imagine an interface by the time the slow line of wagons allowed him to make his way to the front.

He needn’t have worried. Only the few foreigners in line, along with anyone who was obviously poor, seemed to be given any sort of extra scrutiny. Instead of identifying Simon as a spy or a mage, the guard who chatted with him just tried to press him for a bribe. That wasn’t so strange, not after dealing with the other tribal figures on the way up here. Bribes, or as the people here called them, gifts, were just a part of the process.

It was only a few coppers. Simon would have been happy to give it to him. Still, that would have been more suspicious than haggling about it. A man who didn’t push back was considered a sucker. It struck Simon as backward since he thought things should simply be priced according to their worth, but it was a fact of life here. Fortunately, half a lifetime in Ionia had gotten him used to it, and he didn’t hesitate.

“I can hardly afford so rich a gift, even for a friend such as you, when I have yet to sell my wares!” he insisted. “Perhaps we could arrange such a thing when I am done with my business and leaving.”

That made the guard laugh, which was precisely what Simon had been going for. “Not even a small gift for the safety of our city? Surely a wise man like you can spare me at least enough for a good meal after a long shift,” the guard retorted.

The two of them went back and forth like that a few more times before a couple of copper were exchanged. They disappeared in a well-practiced handshake like they’d never existed at all, and then, with a nod, he was allowed to enter the Murani capital without even a hint of violence.