As she drew breath, she shoved aside her doubt that anyone in Bingtown would agree with her previous statement. No one else from Bingtown was here to contradict her. And she knew her words to be true, and right now that was all that mattered. She spoke on, decisively, listening in amazement to the words coming out of her own mouth. “I do not believe that the Traders’ Council of Cassarick has the authority to make this decision regarding—”
“You have studied dragons and Elderlings.” It was Malta the Elderling who so precipitously interrupted her. “In all the ancient scrolls you have studied, have you ever found mention of a place called Kelsingra? I believe it was an Elderling city.”
Alise felt like a sailing boat that had suddenly lost the wind from its sails. Malta’s question was so unexpected that she lost the chain of argument that she had wished to present to the Council. The news that they wished to “evacuate” the dragons immediately had stunned her. From what Leftrin had told her on the boat, she had believed she would at least have her few days with them. Now it appeared that even that short time might be snatched away from her. For an instant, she had been filled with resolve to do or say whatever she must to win those few days back. But at Malta’s interruption, she lost the thread of her words and her courage. All her bravado suddenly fled. She glanced at the Council members, expecting them to be annoyed by Malta’s question. Instead, they seemed as focused on her answer as Malta herself did. Trader Polsk leaned forward, eyes fixed on her. Alise had all but forgotten the captain at her side, but now he reached over and set a reassuring hand on her forearm. “Go on. Tell them.”
It rattled her for a moment; how could he know that she knew about Kelsingra? Then she recalled that yesterday afternoon when he had been telling her tales of river navigation, and how quickly a channel he had used one month could silt in by the next, she, burning to distinguish herself, had nodded wisely and recounted a story from an old scroll that had spoken about how often the passage to the Kelsingra docks had to be dredged. He had replied that he’d never heard of such a city, and she had dismissed it with a shrug, saying that perhaps the river had swallowed it long ago.
She looked at Malta. The Elderling looked poised for flight; she leaned slightly toward Alise, her eyes burning with hope. The light globes that had drifted to surround her had spread again, but she still seemed at the center of all light in the room. How could Alise tell her that Kelsingra was little more than a name in a scroll to her? She glanced helplessly about and her eyes, by fate or chance, snagged on a tapestry to the left of Malta. A strange thrill shot through her. She slowly lifted her hand and pointed at it. “There is Kelsingra.” She walked toward it, her heart beating faster with every step. “Give me more light here, please,” she said, almost forgetting where she was and to whom she spoke in the excitement of her find.
In response to her request, Malta sent the light globes flocking after her. They followed her, and when she halted, they did. When they gathered around the tapestry, it was almost like looking out a window into a woven world. It was all there. The perspective had been skewed deliberately by the weaver so that more landmarks could be included. “There.” She lifted her hand and pointed as she spoke. “That would be the famous map tower of Kelsingra. From what I have read, I believe that map towers were created in several of their larger cities. In each tower there would be a large relief map of the surrounding area, and the encircling windows of the tower looked out on the depicted area. Sometimes there were symbols for more distant locations. The scrolls imply that somehow the map towers helped people to travel swiftly, but they do not say how. The map tower at Kelsingra is referred to in several scrolls, perhaps indicating that it was of more importance than some of the others.”
Distantly she heard her own voice. She had taken on a pedagogic tenor, the tone she had sometimes dreamed that she would employ someday when her scholarship was recognized and people would wish her to share her knowledge. Never had she dreamed she would lecture in a place like Cassarick or that her audience would include an Elderling. Her hand moved and she pointed again. “You can see that the map tower is in the spire of a very impressive building. The decorative frieze on the front shows an Elderling woman plowing behind an ox. The adjacent wall, as you can see, depicts a queen dragon. I speculate that the conjunction of the two is no accident, but shows that the two of them were as important to the city as the two walls that support this main city structure. We can only wonder what was on the other two faces of the building.
“Note the depth and width of the stairs that approach the grand entry doors. Humans, or human-size Elderlings, would have no need of such steps, nor of such immense doors. It’s clear to me that this structure, identified in one scroll as the Citadel of Records, welcomed both Elderlings and dragons inside its walls.”
