They knew of the sink hole, Journey's End, and maybe there really was a tower there when the Father of Creation poked the hole into the worldglass. There were many ideas about the shape of the world, but for this story to so closely fit the fables even though our clan hadn't any outside contact for 350 years was proof that the sinkhole in the centre of the world was real, despite all the nay-saying I had heard. If the tower was 2000 years ago, the Wayfarer may not have known the story in her time, or perhaps chose not to pass it on because she was uncertain of its truth. It was uncertain, yes, but there was a kernel of truth here that had survived 2000 years and it made the first fable feel more real to me than it ever had before, like the day I touched the worldglass.

I turned to Persius, tears running down my face. He leapt back in shock, one arm raised, "Are you alright!?". I swallowed the lump in my throat and spoke in a wobbly voice, "Yes... I'm sorry... It's just that it's so very special. I've never seen a story in stone before. It... reminded me, of a story... from when I was a child". I wiped my face with arm and tried to straighten myself out. He looked concerned, "Yes, well, I suppose you get used to these things when you live here". He put an arm around my shoulder and we looked up at the relief. "This may very well be the greatest sculptural relief in the world, it took thirteen sculptors seven-and-a-half years to complete -- they were still finishing it when I came here. It was commissioned to honour the founding of the newly combined craftsmen's department. Speaking of which, we're here already". He gave me a little a shake to cheer me up and walked away along the back wall which was decidedly not elaborate; except for three wide tunnels which themselves were full of piles of wood, bricks and stone in various stages of carving, a wide 'slot' was cut into the wall as a window into a room behind, although it had no outside-facing door. Seated here at a wide desk abutting the window slot was a low, round-man with a leather cap balancing on his bald head. He had a stylus resting over his ear and he had piles of clay tablets around him. He wore a plain shirt, untied and open at the neck, but he did have a metal arm-band which, even though it was a single band, was engraved with a pattern of lines, possibly writing but I couldn't tell.

"A'right Percy" he said in a voice loud enough to be heard over the bustle in the plaza but in a kind of mumble that was hard to discern. "Mornin' Reg'" Persius replied with his best attempt at copying the style. The round man picked a tablet off a pile and holding it out said "You going past Recs at all on y'travels?". I think it was a question, but I wasn't sure. Persius took the tablet and, without turning, immediately swung it aside in front of me saying to Reg "Sure thing, no problem". It took me a split second to realise the tablet was meant for me, so I took it and put it in my knapsack whilst "Percy" said his goodbyes, "Catch you later Reggie" to which the man replied "On yer legs!". The words I recognised, but it may as well have been a different language for all I could understand it. Why would Persius need to catch him, and where else would Persius be other than on his legs??

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The Father of Creation made the worldglass from the scattered sands,
The stars of the night.
The sun was his furnace.
When he scraped the impurities off the molten mass and cast it away,
The moon was formed.

He blew into the molten mass to give it shape,
Creating the air and the wind.
But the mass was still molten,
So he quenched the mass in the waters
That divide the night sky, The Milky Way.

The waters cooled the molten mass.
Where the water touched the outside,
The mass became glass,
But inside, where there was no water,
The mass became rock.

Seeing that his work was good,
The Father of Creation left the worldglass to cool.
But his wife, The Mother of Creation,
Had played a trick,
For she had scattered the seeds of life
Amongst the stars,
Such that they may be scooped up with the sand
And thus enter the worldglass.

First, the trees and vegetation sprouted
And their roots spread all throughout the rock,
Splitting it apart and grinding the rock to sand.

Then, the animals sprouted,
To eat the vegetation
So that it may not dominate the worldglass.

Lastly, the people sprouted
To eat and domesticate the animals
So that they would not eat all the vegetation.
But there was no one
To dominate the people.

The Father of Creation,
Returning to see if his creation was ready
Was angered to find that his wife had tricked him
And his creation was full of life.

So he poked a hole in the bottom of the world glass,
That the sand would pour out, saying
"Because there is no one to dominate the people
And they will come to destroy
The animal life and the vegetation,
I have numbered their days
For everything that has a beginning,
Must have an end."

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Persius walked around behind me and pointing at the left end of the wall he explained the story: "This was 2000 years ago or so, but don't quote me on any of this, when people used to live at the centre of the world. Here, you see the people of all skills gathering together in one place because they wanted to build a tower tall enough to reach god, or maybe escape to the stars, I don't know". He began walking along the relief and I stepped out of the way. Persius continued, raising his hand to the tower in the centre part, "Here, they were constructing the tower and, because they were succeeding, god poured out his jealous anger over them -- here represented by the water," He swept his palm down the half of the tower that was being destroyed by the flow of water, "which opened a sink-hole in the sand below and swallowed up the whole tower", pointing to the conical basin underneath the tower that was catching the water and swirling it around in circles. This must be their 'fountain', given the lack of space in the middle of the plaza. As with the other fountains, around the basin were a number of cups. These were unique as although the cups were of glazed clay, each was held within a fine filigree metalwork 'cage' around the cup that gave the cup a handle.

Persius walked onwards to the next section I hadn't examined yet, "All the craftsmen scattered, those that survived at any rate, to different places in the world". The figures here were running in fear, leaving their tools behind them, some were smashed under stone blocks falling from the tower. I could hear the screams in my mind so vivid was the scene, it really was like the images in my mind hearing the fables. The people in the carving fled to buildings and cities in the distance. "So, mankind built many cities across the desert and never returned to the centre of the world". Persius pointed up to a circle to the right of the cities, "Here is Pebble Rock, and the craftsmen returning to be together again". The right end of the relief was like an opposite facing copy of where it had started on the left with lines of craftsmen heading inwards to Pebble Rock, the trail shrinking away to little dotted lines just like I had seen with my own eyes when Pebble Rock first came into view. In the upper-right where the relief met the back wall was the moon. The whole thing had a beautiful symmetry to it with the sun and moon at either end and the tower in the middle.

It couldn't be just a coincidence. The echoes were there. It wasn't exactly what I knew from the fables and the oral histories, but they didn't have wise-women and Keepers like we did and what was written down wasn't readable by most people, if it even survived at all what with all the wars I had heard of. But I couldn't escape the overpowering feeling of the past speaking to me; yes, the words would have changed and got corrupted over time, but the deepest truth was still there at the heart of it. The words of the first fable spoke themselves in my mind:

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What I had not seen, hidden as it was behind the people, blocks of stone and piles of bricks, was, across the entire side wall of the plaza, an immense carved sculptural relief -- similar to the procession of craftsmen at the labour department but this had many layers of depth and it was astonishing in detail with hundreds of little figures all carved to the minutest detail.

Here on the left-most side was the sun and many lines of people and craftsmen from different places were amassing into one line at the fore-front. There, the workers and craftsmen spread out, each doing their particular craft, stone workers chiselling, wood workers building cranes, and the metalsmiths forging and shaping metal on anvils. Then, lines of slaves dragging stone blocks up ramps and the ramps became walls and doorways and pillars and floors, one above another, smaller and smaller as they ascended. At the top of the wall, at the apex of the tower, a large bearded face with an open mouth and water gently flowed from the mouth and down over the tower, flowing mostly to the right side where the tower's floors were crumbling and collapsing -- the water trickling through the doorways, around the pillars, down each floor and spreading out wider and wider until reaching the base where the water flowed off the relief and swirled around a circular, conical basin that extended away from the wall. The water swirled around continuously, draining away into a hole at the bottom to who-knows-where.

I stood in awe looking up and down the wall, at the tiny details in everything, the grandness of the whole. I had completely forgot about Persius or that I was supposed to be following him. I wasn't sure what this thing meant but it was speaking to my soul somehow, I could feel it. "Impressive, isn't it?" came Persius' voice and I nearly leapt out of my skin like a surprised cat. "Oh! I'm so sorry!" I apologised, "I didn't mean to stop, but this is just so amazing. What is it?" Persius looked up the wall at the tower, "What is it? It's the story of the ancient Tower of Balal, of course". A story? A story, but made in images of stone rather than written symbols? I had never come across such a thing, I didn't know you could put stories into stone like this, what a fascinating idea! Written words had to be taught and they conveyed nothing of the oration like voice, pacing and tone. The carving couldn't either, but it could show you the images just like they were in the mind with our oral histories.

"Have you never heard of it?" asked Persius as I was drifting away again. "No" I said still staring up at the wall. "How is it that you're so good with numbers yet you aren't educated and don't seem to know a thing about history" Persius replied. "Er, I guess because I used to do the inventories in my clan; I really like numbers". My go-to cover story was that I came from a remote goat-herding clan -- there were still many of these about at the fringes of society -- nobody had to know that my clan in particular had been separated from the rest of civilisation for 350 years though.

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We left the food display and headed to the exit beyond the plaza tables. Since we were crossing from the third floor market hall, this should logically take us to the third floor slave hall. "This is the construction hall, home of the Department of Stone Masons and Craftsmen" explained Persius as we entered the plaza which looked every bit like a stone-mason's yard found at any quarry: there were neat stacks of bricks dotted everywhere and a few singular blocks of stone taller than a man that were in various stages of being chiselled into statues or other forms of stone decoration by craftsmen.

Between all this there were lines of branded slaves formed into work parties. Each man had a metal anklet which was hooked to a leather strap that linked each man to the next in line. Beyond a basic loin-cloth, the men wore harnesses to which some had hammers and chisels attached where others carried picks over their shoulders. They had an odd bow-legged, hunched-over stance, their hair and beards were wild and uneven and their eyes were sunken and hollow with a fixed stare that didn't wander. They did not wear arm-bands for the branding was indication enough and there was no chance of promotion for them, ever.

An involuntary shiver ran through my body, some mixture of horror and revulsion. These were broken men and they were beyond help, even freedom would not save them. Guards were standing around the lines, in addition to the swords on their belts, each held a spear -- if a slave suddenly snapped and went at the guards with a pick, their spears would easily give them the reach to overwhelm him.

"Why the third floor!? Wouldn't it be easier to do this on first floor -- at sand-level?"

"There simply isn't room; first floor is occupied by the markets and storage, second floor has our department, the merchant's department and most of the slave housing. Third floor used to house an amalgamation of smaller departments, but Principa unified them into the craftsmen's department it is now. Only the Department of Alchemists and Apothecaries remains and even that used to be two separate departments long ago -- if you get injured or fall ill, go there, but try not let that happen during your trial, it won't look good on your report" explained Persius as we walked around the balcony parapet rather than cutting through the stonework and slaves.

I looked over the edge and could see the 2nd floor balcony and the slaves market floor a long, long way down below. "How... how did they get the stone up here!?" I asked shocked by the height from this position. The 'floors' here were at least the height of 3 floors in any normal building so we were almost 100 spans above sand! I turned my head the other direction and looked above -- another two much smaller balconies, the 5th was small enough to be a regular balcony you'd see in an outside city and was wedged right at the top of the hall where the outside rockface window was almost directly in front of it. Surely they didn't carry the rock up the stairs, there didn't seem to be enough height or turning room in the tunnels!

"Oh, that's easy -- The craftsmen's department has its own private sloped tunnels at the back that go to each floor -- you're absolutely not allowed to use those. If a block is needed that's too big, it's lifted by crane to the second floor and then up to third". My mind boggled at the image of hoisting a giant stone block vertically that distance up the hall and over the balconies. Of course, it was so much easier to do incredibly difficult things when they had slave labour to do all the hard work.

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"What about you? You've been here twenty years, isn't that enough for citizenship?"

"I think I've done enough, but they don't like to hand out rewards until as late as necessary, it creates a lot of work for legal. You just have to work hard and believe that when your time of need comes, the city will be there for you. If I went around pestering them for approval it would just put them off the idea for good. Why, are you expecting to stick around for a while?"

"I thought I didn't get a choice? If the city buys me at the end of the trial then I'm here until I screw up and get sold off."

"It's not that bad! There are plenty of opportunities for promotion. As a white-band any department can choose to buy you and you get better quarters and food, and a better job where the other departments and citizens can't boss you around. If you've got years of good service behind you and you really don't want to stay here, a private sale is possible."

I wasn't going to wait around for years to get out of here, and yet still be a slave. Didn't he want to make his own fate rather than keep chasing citizenship that the city was dangling in front of him like a carrot, ready to whip it away at any moment. "But what about freedom?" I asked, indignantly.

"Freedom!? To do what? Be a beggar on the street? To have no roof over your head, nothing to eat? A job, solid security, food and water is more than most ever get with their freedom. There's nothing worthwhile out there when you have access to the best of everything available in the world right here!". I had struck a nerve somewhere, probably his past as an orphan before he came to the city, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. Just that, is there any way to not be a slave any more, if someone wanted that? Has it ever happened before?"

"Oh. Right. I suppose if you worked here long enough, and could prove that you had generated more than enough wealth to cover your buying price and everything that had been spent on you, then you could in theory make a case to legal that you should be freed. I've never heard of it happening though, what tends to happen is that people who have raised to high positions, like department heads, might be sent to work at one of the Governor's outside concerns -- he owns a number of businesses and several residences for when he's travelling. But you should be getting your head down and focusing on the here and now, this is still your first day and you've got a long way to go if you're aiming for department head!"

I just smiled back not wanting to trip myself up further on a touchy subject -- it mattered not to anybody that I had been kidnapped against my will and forced into slavery. It was just a given that permeated the air everywhere I went that if you were a slave, you must have deserved it somehow.

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"So what happens when she retires if she doesn't own a home here?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure; her living quarters come as part of the job and her family has been running the department for a century. She doesn't have any children, so there won't be another Principa heading up the department after her -- Cleo's her niece by the way, did you know? Principa hired Cleo just to stop the constant begging from her brother. The girl is too wet behind the ears and doesn't have the fire in her to go far, there's no way she'll make department head."

"Would it be up to her brother to house her then? Principa, that is."

"Not if she could help it, no! Principa is probably banking on the Governor gifting her a home when, if ever, she retires -- she's more than earnt it, having run the department for 40 years! It was before my time, but she was apparently something of a firebrand in her youth, waging war with the other departments to enact change and grew her department from little more than a rubber-stamp operation to the linchpin of the city it is today. In her father's time nothing was made here, it was all imported. Principa was instrumental in bringing in the skills to make stuff in the city. Apparently the food was awful before, no bakery, just flatbread every day!" What was wrong with flatbread I thought, I grew up eating flatbread most days and it was perfectly delicious.

"Speaking of food," Persius noted, "when you're working there won't be time for sitting around so don't use any chairs, anywhere. Eat on the go, and -- for the love of mercy -- don't think you can refill your waterskin in this basin because you forgot to do it at a fountain, unless you want to be on the first caravan out of here on your first day!" Something told me this last bit of advice was based on some poor soul's experience.

"By the way", Persius warned, "don't let Principa find out you know any of this, or that I told you. There's only one thing she hates more than people meddling with her department, and that's people talking about her behind her back -- if she finds out I told you about her past I will get away with a scolding, you however, won't get hired at the end of your trial no matter how good you are!". I nodded along. Principa could have made a good wise woman; my clan's wise woman said that you had to appear as harmless as a sunning lizard but be as immovable as the boulder it was resting upon like the lizard and the rock were one, its grip absolute and unyielding.

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