At the crack of dawn we were whipped awake by the slave drivers and formed into two lines side-by-side. A caravan of extra guards and supplies had arrived during the night and they were unpacking an incredible amount of equipment consisting mostly of long wooden poles and hundreds of long leather straps. At first I was worried they were going to hang us all at the same time but there was murmurings that we were being taken to a slave market to be sold.

Our hands were bound together using leather bracers and every third pair of men had a wooden pole placed across their backs with their arms backwards around it, binding the two together, with the leather straps attached to the wrist bracers of every person, linking each pair together forward and back into a massive train of people which would pull the supply wagons at the back. The extra trouble to bring in a small fortune's worth of leather, let alone the weight, seemed excessive when hessian rope would do but this was clearly not the driver's first rodeo and they had the process down to an art; within an hour of dawn-break the caravan was rigged and ready to go. Being late to market meant money lost and cheap hessian rope probably broke too easy and lead to delays. There was little risk of escape anyway, four camel riders lead the front to set the pace and the remaining guards followed on camels spaced along either side of the train. If anybody even tried to make a run for it, they wouldn't get far.

We set off not knowing how many days we would be travelling. It was practically a death-march, we stopped for nothing; anybody who fainted was dragged along and those presumed dead were cut loose and stepped over. We walked from dawn to dusk. At night, the guards built a fire and we formed a circle around it, still bound and reined together into a train, now curled around the only warmth during the freezing night. Sleep was difficult with your hands bound behind you and every part of your body aching, but I eventually passed out from exhaustion into a death-like dreamless sleep. At the crack of dawn and of the whip, the whole process would repeat.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I kept my mind occupied and distracted myself from the heat through the day by reciting the 500 fables in my head to make sure I didn't forget any. I remembered the confusion I experienced the first time I saw clay writing and I blessed the wise women of my clan for preserving the 500 fables for generations which I needed more than ever now. We had string numbers where the types of knots and spacing recorded numbers in strings, for managing the clan's food supplies, but no writing; everything was passed on orally. Every child in the clan was expected to memorise the 500 fables -- I'm not sure if there were exactly 500, I had never counted them out, but there were hundreds of stories that every child heard, first as bed time stories and tales told by elders around the campfire, and then drilled into us at school. The girls with good memories and recital skills were then tasked with learning the greater oral histories and the best of those who wanted to become the next wise-woman had to pass a week-long cross-examination of knowledge followed by a recital of the entire oral histories, fables and all, in front of the whole clan without getting a single word wrong.

I was only 7 or 8 years old the last time anybody had to do the test, I didn't understand the significance of it at the time, I was just glad I got time off school to spend all week watching this game where the wise woman asked the lady questions about the fables and I had fun trying to guess the answer to as many as I could. Then she recited everything; the history bits were boring and I didn't understand it all, but I was utterly enthralled by the recital of the complete 500 fables. She finished the last fable and everybody clapped and then there was a big party. Later I learned that apparently she was the youngest person to have ever passed the test at just 25. Passing this test granted a woman the title of Keeper and they worked directly with the wise-woman as more able-bodied assistants until the wise-woman's memory began to fail and a new one was selected which was every 30 years or so. My mind wandered back to the clan... would there be a new wise-woman by now, who was selected, was it that lady who I saw pass the test back then? It was the first time I had thought about my previous life in terms of the present, but I had to put those thoughts away; right now I was a prisoner being dragged to sun-knows-where to do moon-knows-what, probably involving back-breaking labour until I was no longer useful and finally put out of my misery.

For three days we trekked through empty sands. Those who hadn't died were looking pretty rough, I was holding up much better than expected, I had the fables and my deep-trek training in the months leading up to my departure from the clan had prepared me for surviving on minimal provisions for days on end. We were given water only twice a day, once at dawn before we set out, and again at midday. None in the evening, but before the sun set on the third day we arrived at a watering hole and there for the first time we were unbound and allowed to drink our fill and wash the dried sweat and faeces from our bodies. As I sat and watched the sun go down, I wondered why the slave drivers had afforded us this one small dignity... it must be because we would arrive at market tomorrow and they wanted us to be in our 'best' condition for sale. I shared this idle musing with my yoke-mate and soon the whole convoy was buzzing with anticipation -- anything was better than this but I reserved my relief for the day I was once again free.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

We were up early and on the move immediately, the pace was quick but we were all mentally prepared, it couldn't be more than half a day at this pace. Four hours later, the sands inclined into a vast, wide hill. A well worn path lay diagonally across the slope to minimise the incline and then curved through a small v-shape cut into the hill that meant that we wouldn't have to scale the entire hill face-on. As we rounded the bend and saw the other side of the hill for the first time I realised we had crossed the lip of a giant crater-like depression and at the centre of the crater lay our destination:

The city was called "Pebble Rock" for at distance it looked like a small pebble set into the sand and the mass of people arriving were as ants; little black dots in close ranks and tight lines mindlessly following one another, streaming from every corner of the crater and converging under the pebble.

Small openings pock-holed the surface of the pebble everywhere, the windows and balconies of thousands of homes. The people of Pebble Rock valued property above everything and above everything, sitting atop the rock, was the only external building, a city atop the city, a palace, the exclusive property of the wealthiest, one above all and all beneath them. Naturally, property extended to people too. Slavery was the grease that kept Pebble Rock running. An entire class of people that never had to sweat lived upon backs of those who did the sweating for them.

Our convoy merged with others and came to a standstill. There was much jostling, shouting and camel snorts as rival slaver gangs and merchants argued over who was in front of who. The next few hours of shuffling forward under the scorching midday sun was more torturous than the walking. I could see the shade under the pebble (the rock tapered in at the bottom giving it its pebble appearance from a distance) but forward progress was but a few steps at a time. As we edged nearer, and the pebble towered over us, the rabble grew into a cacophony of shouts, animal noises from livestock and the jangle of reins everywhere. Finally under the shade I could begin to discern order amongst the chaos: porters in coloured tunics were separating out merchant caravans and goods from slaves, arguing with caravan drivers over the semantics of this-or-that trade good and which entryway to go to and generally screaming at anybody and their camel who decided to stand in the wrong place and block the way.

As the crowds pressed in all around us, guards went down the line unhooking the reins followed by a porter who was throwing red cloth collars over each person's head -- a way of identifying which batch of slaves came from which slave merchant. The crowd of slaves behind me had continued to shuffle forward despite the slow movement up front and I soon found myself trapped in a mass of bodies, heads and differently coloured collars everywhichway I looked. I had lost sight of the guards and most of the other captives I had travelled with as the mass of bodies pushed forward in to a frightening cram. There was sudden movement up front and the whole mass of us was swept along uncontrollably. Porters with long whips appeared out of nowhere and were directing the rush of slaves ahead and before I knew it I had been sucked into the darkness inside Pebble Rock.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I had expected pitch-black darkness and solid rock scraping my head but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I looked up a saw a high ceiling, light rays from slits cut into the rock slicing across the room through smoke and... people! balconies upon balconies, several floors of people above us, some looking down, some engaged in conversations, or just going about their business as if nothing was happening below. The noise within was worse than outside, the shouting, clucking, bleating and clanging echoing back upon itself into a thunderous roar coming from everywhere at once.

The rush of bodies petered out and I began to see what was going on. We may have gone through the slave entrance but we were as cattle to them: four men were sitting on very high stools between wicker fences dividing the way forward into five 'gates'. The men held very long sticks and with the assistance of bouncers in the pen, the men sorted through us, diverting people down different pathways based on some criteria or other. Bodies jostled and bounced around as the long sticks prodded and divided us. A long stick came down suddenly on my left side and I was sent off through one of the gates into a long switchback of wicker fences designed to act as a buffer for slaves coming in quickly with the queue ahead moving slowly.

As I stood in queue for whatever came next I looked around and there were not many people in my gate but the other gates were being flooded with all kinds. I tried to make sense of what they were dividing us up for, the weak, old or sick-looking; the strong and able-bodied men; and my group which was maybe the cleanest, healthiest looking. Was I going to be put to the worst kind of hard labour because I was the healthiest looking one here? Peering around my queue mates as I shuffled forward I could see more porters, this time with desks stationed along the fence, each had an assistant that was picking coloured beads from a box and threading them onto a string.

I was straining my neck and ears trying to listen in to what was being said up front when suddenly a porter barked in my ear "Name?", I hadn't noticed the desk to my left and I stared in shock at the porter, my ears ringing. His assistant had the string prepared with a bead already threaded. "Americ?" he barked again. This was the word people used for language and it suddenly clicked, he was asking if I understood his language. "Oh, yes" I said. "Good, name?" he said quickly without any hesitation whilst his assistant threaded another bead on the string. He obviously did this every day and no longer had any patience for anybody so I tried to be as clear and direct with my answers as possible, lest I end up shovelling shit for the rest of my days.

The porter had on his desk a clay tablet in a frame and a metal stylus in his hand and he was putting my answers into the clay; the writing was a series of closely spaced vertical lines, some angled or crossing and wasn't like writing I had seen elsewhere, a lot more words could fit onto a tablet with this narrow writing and it took fewer taps, he was very efficient and could tap out words almost as fast they could be spoken. "Can you read and write?" came the next question. "No", I had said instinctively before realising that my answer could be the difference between back-breaking hard labour and a job with a chair like this guy. The assistant already had what must be the "uneducated" bead prepared before I quickly blurted out "I can do numbers! I know string-numbers, and I can read clay numbers!". They used different clay numbers here, but they would be easy enough to learn compared to writing which was as far as I could tell, completely random.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

When I first encountered clay numbers it was at a market and a lady had a display of her fruit and vegetables and beneath each tray was a clay plaque decorated with a pattern of lines. She had spaced them out across her stall assumedly to stand out rather than have them all together. I thought these were maybe ornaments or decorations for the home so I picked one up and turned it about. For an artistic design it was pretty crude and asymmetric but then it all fell into place -- these were warding symbols to drive off the flies and rot! I wanted to know more so I asked the lady "What are these symbols for?" and she looked at me as if I had just called her mother the offspring of camels. "The price" she replied as if she couldn't believe her ears. "No, I don't want to know the price, I want to know what these warding symbols are used for" I explained. "No, the symbols are the price... were you abandoned in the desert as a baby?" she bit back, "Look, here, it says three-eighths!" pointing a finger at the lines. I stared at the lines and I couldn't make sense of them; maybe the lines counted the numbers but that would mean there would be three lines and then eight lines, but there weren't even enough lines for that and they were all different angles and sizes. I think it finally clicked with her that this was new to me and it seemed to amuse her enough that she softened a bit. "Have you never seen writing before? My, you really were raised by wolves! Here, this says '3'", pointing to the first set of lines, "this is the solidus" (pointing to a longer line between the two groups of lines), "and this is '8'". It appeared that they didn't use string numbers but made drawings in clay but I couldn't discern the connection between the lines and the numbers. I looked around at the other plaques to see what other symbols were used. There was a variety of them, so there must be at least 10 or 100 different symbols and each one meant a specific number somehow. "Could I buy this from you?" I asked her. "You mean the plaque?" she asked dumbfounded. I suppose from her perspective it sounded as if I wanted to buy sand off of her. "If it helps, sure" and not one to let a deal walk away she added "do you want any of the others too?" so we picked out plaques that had a variety of numbers on them and haggled out a price and she wished me luck, waved me goodbye and I went around the market looking at the plaques, asking about prices and within a few hours I had the whole number system worked out and memorised.

Raising his hand to stay his assistant's bead, the porter seemed to relax a little and leaned forward to ask "Math?". "Yes", I said, I mean I could do market numbers no problem but I wasn't sure if he was expecting geometry. "What's 57 times 36?" he said pulling numbers out of the air. "twenty hundreds, two and fifty" I replied immediately. "I have a good memory too!" I added trying to improve my chances. The porter eyed me up and down trying to discern if I was bullshitting him. He thought for a moment and then looked over his shoulder to his assistant and said "We'll check this one further, purple". The assistant replaced the previous bead and fumbled for a purple one, threaded it and then tied the string into a loop and hung it around my neck before shoving me down the line without so much as a goodbye.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I was under the balconies now and the roof sloped down and the walls enclosed us as we approached the end of the fenceways, every person was now pooled together, each with their own necklace of colour-coded beads to identify them. Hot air blew against our faces from the back of the cave-like area we were in and orange light danced over the rock ceiling. Then the muffled screams began. I looked about trying to understand what was going on and there was much murmuring as everybody else was doing the same. Were they killing off the worthless ones? What barbaric insanity was this!? Word fed down the crowd, they were branding us. Up until now I had been trying to remain calm and make sense of everything, if I was going to escape I had to remember where everything was and plan carefully but now I was scared and panicking. If waiting outside in the midday sun was torture, this was terror; the screams emanating from up front weren't helping. Another batch of slaves began arriving from the gates behind asking what was going on and so the fear spread through the ranks quickly.

As much as I didn't want to move forward the thinning crowd ahead was the only direction I could go, over their shoulders I could see several open fire pits with hot irons heating in the flames. Men wearing leather tunics to protect them from the heat were feeding the fires with fuel, others were pumping bellows, and at each fire pit sat on a stool was the iron master doing the branding. He was juggling several hot irons at a time in the fire to keep things moving which only meant fresh screams came every 10 seconds or so. There were many guards, all with metal swords in the belt and armed with a club, tasked with keeping the flow going. People were grabbed from the front of the crowd and pulled over to the iron master and made to sit down on a stool. A rag wrapped around a stick was shoved into their mouth to bite down on and the guard held their arm in place whilst the iron master selected a red hot iron from the fire. Anybody who resisted got beaten and branded without the bit between the teeth. Those screams rang through the head like a bell. Another worker was ready with a cloth which he dunked in a bucket of water, slapped it on the fresh burn and tied a tourniquet before shoving the victim to the back of the cave past the fire pits.

The wall of flesh behind pushed me closer and closer to inevitability. My heart was pounding, my head light from my panicked breathing. I was trying over and over again to think of a way out of this, some way to take control of the situation but my brain was spinning in circles. I didn't even see the hand grab my arm and yank me with such force my feet left the floor. The rest was a blur of senses, "purple" the guard uttered to the iron master as I was thrown to the chair, my legs giving way easily. The searing heat of the fire. The smell of burning flesh in the air. "Head" came the voice of the iron master and the guard clamped his beastly hands on top of my head and under my chin. Do I not get the bit!? The iron master's hands passed over the hot irons and instead selected a long fine needle. Were they going to poke my eyes out because they didn't want anybody reading their secret numbers!? I was done with caution, I'd rather die fighting than have my eyes poked out. I tried struggling but with my arms still bound behind my back, my head in the guard's vice-like grip and my legs as weak as aspic, I was utterly powerless. As the iron master raised the red hot needle I grit my teeth, held my breath and scrunched my eyes shut as tightly as I possibly could, I was going to fight with everything I had left. A hand grabbed my ear and pulled, there was a sharp pain in the side of my head, some rustling, a crunching sound, and a sudden disorientating rush as I was lifted off the stool and pushed away.

I stumbled and flopped forward, my whole body shaking, my jaw having been clenched so hard it ached. I was caught by a porter in a purple tunic but before I could even stand on my own I looked back. I couldn't tell you what I was expecting to see, my brain just assumed that I'd see myself, to witness what I had just been through because I didn't see it. I didn't understand what had happened -- I wasn't blind -- but I did get my answer because the next person was getting the same treatment. The iron master took a short leather lace from a box at his feet and with that hand gripped the guy's ear whilst picking up the hot needle with the other hand. Ear-piercings! That was what that pain was and the strange feeling like something is stuck to the side of my head. The iron master pushed the lace through the ear-lobe with the hot needle and then wrapped the two ends together in a leather tag he had palmed all whilst putting down the hot needle and picking up some kind of pliers in the other hand, crimping a metal stud through the leather tag to seal it.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"This way please" the guy in the purple tunic said, directing me away as another purple tunic swept by to catch the next guy. My head was still spinning and I completely lost track of which directions I was being lead. Dimly lit tunnels, this way and that, some stairs up, more tunnels, a door, a room, bracers removed, a chair, "Wait here for now". I sat massaging my wrists trying to get the movement back into them. There was the door I entered through, four chairs on each side of the room, another door on the opposite wall and some kind of oil lamp sculpted into the bare rock wall providing the only light. I had hardly finished looking around the room when the door I think I came through opened and several people entered the small room; a purple tunic, a guard and three other people like me, two women and one guy. The purple tunic was explaining "you just need to wait here and you'll go through some basic tests soon" as the guard was undoing the bracers. The three other captives dropped to their seats around the room and we all stared at each other in disbelief. The man was all hair: beard, sideburns, eyebrows, the lot. The women had their hair tied back highlighting their pale-faces and one was holding her hand over the ear tag unsure if what just transpired was real.

The guy spoke first. "I think we just narrowly escaped a nasty fate there!" he said trying to force a bit of joviality. "We're not out of the fire yet" I added, trying to temper expectations. I had no idea what came next, this was the first moment I'd gotten to think since being sucked into the rock. What was all this about? Why did we get ear tags instead of being branded. "I think it's because I can read" the man announced trying to keep the conversation going, "can you read and write?" he asked in the direction of the two women. The one who was holding her ear and staring into space stammered out a "yes" as if it were expected of her. "I can't do words, but I can do numbers" I butted in so that she didn't have to explain herself any further. He continued unabated, "I reckon we're going to be sold to some merchant or other and do accounts or scribing -- it sure beats breaking rocks!". The shocked lady was opening and closing her mouth like a sand lizard whilst the other woman held her hand and comforted her; the thought of having to break rocks may have broke her mind. "Rogert, by the way" he introduced himself. "Oh, Sarah" said the calm lady and she nudged the shocked lady to produce another word from her, "Esmae". Both women looked to be in their 30s with Sarah somewhere in the lower half and Esmae in the upper half.

I kicked my feet out, leant back on my chair and stared at the ceiling trying to figure things out whilst the 'I got it all worked out guy' regaled the women with his life story. After 10 minutes of having to listen to tales of adventure and fisticuffs of questionable veracity, the opposite door opened and in stepped a tall, older woman in white robes with purple hem and an unusual metal armlet around the upper arm that was kind of maze-like. She was carrying a clay tablet in a frame much like the questions people earlier. "Oh, four people today, that's nice!" she said as if to nobody, and then "this way!" in a sing-song voice as she left the room before we had even stood up. We filed out of the door, the talkative guy whispering "I'll tell you later" to the women. The next room was larger with the walls cut flat and many desks and stools. 4 down the left wall, 4 down the right, and then at the end of the room against the right wall the sing-song lady already sat at her desk. In the left corner, on a chair, sat a guard who wasn't expecting much trouble from us. We all chose desks and sat down on the stools. Each desk had a lamp, a wax tablet and a metal stylus. The sing-song lady began at once, "I am Julia Principa of The City Skills and Labour Department, my job is to ensure the city has all the necessary people and skills available to function. There will be a series of tests to determine where you fit in but for now just write down an informal introduction, if you can't write words please just write the numbers that you know" and with that she was eyes down looking at her tablet as if we had vanished from before her.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

What in the worldglass was wrong with this crazy woman!? Had she no idea of the trauma we'd just been through -- kidnapped, beaten, marched through the desert for days on end and treated like cattle -- we were still in the rags and loincloths we'd started out in! I had half a mind to go over there and shake some sense into her where she sat but then the guard would have to get off his chair. I turned to the others to see if they were showing the same exasperation but they were already heads-down etching away at their tablets. I can't be left behind here I thought to myself, these people can already write and I can't and it's going to be much easier to escape chained to a desk than it is chained to rock. Even though I could read clay numbers I hadn't ever actually done any writing. It looked simple enough, just press the stylus into the clay but the wax was hard and you couldn't just press straight down into it so I had to scratch away like trying to etch a stone. It was messy and looked like the aftermath of a chicken fight.

There was a tut from the calm lady and she picked up her tablet and waved it over the flame of her desk lamp a few times and then returned the tablet to the desk before using her thumb to press flat the wax. She had made a mistake and was rubbing it out! I felt stupid for not realising this myself and after warming my wax tablet and covering my tracks I etched out all the unique number symbols plus a few words I had learnt from sight due to how common they were, such as "IN", "OUT" and "NO CREDIT" even though I didn't know how the individual lines were chosen to make one word into another. I had some space left at the bottom and, worried about not knowing enough to fill the tablet, I added the warding symbols I knew; I needed all the luck I could scrape together right now.

When I was done Esmae had already finished and Rogert was spinning the stylus across his fingers whilst Sarah was holding up her tablet and examining her work carefully. As soon as her tablet touched the desk our overseer looked up from her work reading a handful of tablets whilst tapping out another one, "Excellent!". She strode between the desks collecting up our tablets and eyeing them over, "All very good work, now let's have some refreshments shall we?" she announced as she returned to her side of the room, opened the door beside her desk and stuck her head through just to warble "Cleoooo dear, refreshments if you could!" before returning to her seat, setting down our wax tablets and getting a fresh clay tablet from the shelf that ran under each desk for such things. Not a second was wasted with this woman, on anything.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

Not a minute later a youthful woman walked in, her hair was short and tussled, and she was also wearing a long white robe with purple trim although the metal armlet on her upper arm was a simple band, not elaborate like Principa's. Cleo was carrying an ornate pitcher and a stack of... glass? She set the pitcher and strange tower of glass down on her mistress's desk and plucked a piece from the top, placed it next to the pitcher and then poured water from the pitcher into the glass. I could not believe my eyes what I was seeing: pure, completely see-though, polished-to-perfection glass, crafted into a mere cup. I had never seen such a thing, I couldn't even begin to estimate its worth, and there were five of them here! And the water! As pure as the glass. When the water stilled, it's as if it simply disappeared! I turned to the others to see if this was normal where they'd come from. Rogert was sucking air through his teeth. Sarah had merely raised her eyebrows and Esmae was gawping, wide-eyed and transfixed, although this was normal for her thus far.

Once the assistant had poured water for her mistress she picked up the glasses and dispensed them one by one to us before returning to pour out water. As I waited I turned the glass around in my hand mesmerised by the play of light, bending and shifting around. How was such a thing even possible? I was familiar with glass, we used glass knives in my clan but that glass was a muddy black-brown colour and whilst it was sharp it was brittle and couldn't be sharpened many times before you needed a new blade. We had almost no metal because we could only get metal from scraps of iron ore found on loose surface rocks and forging iron required a strong furnace and that required a lot of firewood and there were not many trees around and we mostly used brush wood and tumbleweed, although all of our tent-pegs were metal because nothing else was as strong and reliable. Digging for metal was a new concept to me when I left the clan, if you had enough metal to start with you could make a tool that was a cross between a hammer and a knife -- a pick they called it -- and you could force your way into a rock with this and pick the ore out from inside. Everywhere I had been metal was used to barter so there was lots of it about which meant that there had to be well-fed furnaces which meant that higher quality glass could be made, which was a milky colour like crystal, and this could be polished into beads and jewellery. But glass like this cup? There was only one place I had ever seen this type of glass before.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I was twelve. On your thirteenth birthday (to reflect the thirteen moons of the year) you had a coming of age ceremony and were considered an adult and had to provide for the clan whichever way you were able. Every 10 years an expedition of those who had since come of age was arranged to go see the edge of the worldglass. It was a five day trek there and those going would be expected to catch their own food. My birthday would have been during the trip so my mother said I had to wait until next time but I was burning with the need to see the edge of the worldglass that I had heard of in the fables and when I asked anybody who would talk to me questions about everything: why was the sky blue? Where did the sand come from? Where was it going? When my mother said I couldn't go I asked my father. When he said no I begged, pleaded with them, to go -- can't my coming of age ceremony be delayed until I got back? Again, no. Preparations were already under way and you couldn't delay your coming of age ceremony, it was the most important day in your life. I even tried cajoling: "But the whole clan won't be there until they get back anyway, surely you want everybody to be there?". Final no, that was that. So I sneaked out at night and went to the wise woman to beseech her for permission to go. She listened patiently to my pleas and asked me to wait whilst she checked the stars and consulted the bones of the ancient wise-women before her. Finally, seeing that the winds were good, she agreed and told me to sneak back into bed and not to tell my parents and that she would handle everything. I'll never forget the wink she gave me when I slipped back into the night, my heart racing from the excitement of knowing I was going. I didn't sleep.

Sure enough, days later, the expedition was packed and, waving to one and all, we set off. It was a long journey and it was tough -- I was the youngest one there and I was always trying to prove I was just as good even if I fell short. As the days passed the sky darkened ahead of us, at first I hadn't noticed, but by day 3 there was a visible difference in the colour of the sky in front of us compared to behind us. By day 4 the difference was stark, like we were approaching an impossibly huge mountain or we were uncovering where the night hid during the day. On the 5th day it was a vast black wall that filled your eyes and we rode in silence, partly in awe, partly afraid of the enormity of it. Eventually the stars came out in front of us, even though it was not night. Behind us was day, but there in front of us was night. We were going up hill now and then the sand became clumpy, and then it was wet and it got wetter and soon the camels got bogged down. "We're here", the expedition leader said. He was the most experienced shepherd in our clan who could spend months away at a time grazing the goats.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

We put on mud shoes to stop us getting stuck and started for the edge. Ahead of us was an embankment, the top of the wet sand hill we had been trekking up for the last hour, no horizon beyond, just the darkest night sky full of the brightest stars that you ever saw. It looked as if you could just fall off the edge of the world. "Is it solid?" I asked the expedition leader. "Go, see for yourself" he said and smiled at me. "I'll get there first!" yelled one guy and we were all off, running as best as we could in the wet sticky sand up the embankment. We pushed and shoved each other and we got soaked and caked in sand all over and some stopped to throw sand balls at each other and we laughed and screamed and I fought and tugged and climbed until every muscle in my body hurt and my heart felt like it was going to explode. On my hands and knees I crawled upwards, dragging myself one hand in front of another until suddenly my hand hit the stars. I couldn't believe it, I stared at my hand, catching my breath, and watched as water clear as the glass ran down my arm. Condensation, thousands and thousands of miles of it. The glass was cool, smooth and absolutely solid as a rock but utterly flat and completely see-through as if it were not there. I laughed at the absurdity of it as I began pulling myself up. I pressed myself against the glass, arms out and let the night sky swallow me whole. The laughing and screaming behind me fell silent, I could feel the others' eyes fixed on me in awe. "It's solid!" one whispered, and they all stopped their in-fighting and rushed to reach the top.

It was all true; the fables, the wayfarer; all of it. It was real, and I had touched it with my own hands. At that moment I knew in my heart that Journey's End was real too and my purpose in life was to go there, that nothing would stop me or turn me away from it. Before now, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I became an adult, I had tried just about everything and I was not the best at any of it. Now I knew with certainty what I needed to do. Anything I could learn from the Keepers of the oral histories that could clue me in. Whatever prepared me for the journey; hunting, butchering, knife making, surviving in the desert. That day I turned thirteen, and my parents had been right -- it was the most important day of my life.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"Water?" came the voice of Cleo and snapped me out of my daydream. "Oh, yes please, thank you" I stammered putting the glass cup down. She poured the water out and picking up the glass I turned it about tilting the water one way and another. It was like I was holding the worldglass in my hand and I imagined a worldglass somewhere out there that was filled with water instead of sand. What would it be like to live there? How would anything survive? It would certainly make for an interesting story. "Phew, that really hits the spot, eh?" came the voice of Rogert. I had been daydreaming again. Not wanting to come across as disrespectful I took a swig of the water and was almost knocked off my stool by the impact. The taste! How could water have such distinct flavour? Surely it was just the lack of food I'd had in days. I peered into the glass to double check it was actually water I was drinking.

"A man could retire and live very comfortably on one of these!" came Rogert again. Turning the glass about in my hand I murmured "It's as if it were cut from the worldglass itself", half to myself. "Nonsense!" he snorted, "that's an old wives' tale, everyone knows the world's a bowl that rests on the back of a tortoise!". I didn't even think before I reacted -- "That's not true, I've been to the edge of the worldglass and touched it with my own hands!". Idiot! I wasn't supposed to mention that but it just came out of nowhere. He wasn't prepared to back down, "Liar! Nobody's ever returned that tried to go to the edge of the world, it's at least a hundred days travel away!". I chose to hold my tongue, better to be thought a liar than endanger my clan. How could he be so confident that we were on the back of a tortoise when he hadn't seen it. I had stuck my nose against the glass and looked down and there was no tortoise there.

"My my, we are feeling refreshed now aren't we?" chimed in Principa. We finished our water and thanked Cleo as she collected up the glasses and the water pitcher and left the room. We were then questioned on numbers and math, it was like school all over again (except the four day march and starvation). You could tell the two women were educated but the guy was not as sharp as his bragging would suggest. He struck me as someone who picked things up as he went along and filled in the gaps with bravado, however his knowledge of metal weights and how to convert between them when bartering was excellent. He could tell you exactly how much tin you needed if you wanted change from two fifths brass and one of copper. My clan had almost no metal and certainly no concept of "buying" or "selling", everything we had was for the survival of the whole clan and it was carefully managed so that nobody starved and nothing was wasted. Learning to barter was a rude awakening for me! It had not even entered my mind that a merchant could be dishonest, in fact dishonesty seemed to be the entire purpose of trading. After the numbers came an increasingly incomprehensible series of tests where we were taken individually to other rooms and poked, measured, and even asked to count the number of lines we could see on a tablet held at a distance whilst covering one eye and then the other.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

At long last the mad woman was satisfied, "You've all done splendidly well and must be tired. You'll be shown to your quarters where you can get some rest and someone will be along in the morning to get you" and just like that she about-faced and was off. "What was that all about?" asked Rogert. "I thought I knew and then I didn't" said I. "Did she say quarters?" asked Sarah. A guard and a purple tunic entered the room and was somewhat taken aback for an instant that we had been left unattended but recomposed himself and directed us out the tiny chair room we had started in many hours ago and along a number of twisty passages until we arrived at a slightly more elaborate door with two guards either side and through that, a straight passageway with a set of doorways (though no doors) left and right, beside each being a series of shelves carved into the rock and each room's shelves had at least an oil lamp and a bucket that I could make out but when we had gone beyond the guarded door we were first hit by the smell of food! The purple tunic showed us the shelves and explained, "Take a room each, there's a bucket of water in there to wash yourselves down and put your old clothes and the dirty water here", patting one shelf, "and change into your new robes here", tapping another shelf that had some folded cloth on it. "There's drinking water in each room and some food, and when you're done with the night bucket, please put it back here", he added, using his foot to poke the bucket that sat on the floor in the lowest cubbyhole cut into the wall. We all bade our guide goodbye and goodnight enthusiastically, eager to eat and sleep. Rogert was practically giddy with excitement, "Do you smell that? I haven't eaten in a week! We sure lucked out here!". He was right, we'd all been through a lot and this outcome was honestly better than we could have expected even if we were still slaves.

I had already been standing nearest the first room on the left so I took that, Rogert took the room opposite me and the two women who always stuck together took the next two rooms opposite each other down the hallway. I picked up my lamp and took a look in my room. It was a small cube cut out of the rock. To the left was a cot bed: strips of fabric weaved over and under each other and pulled tight around a cheap wooden frame. The only floorspace paralleled the doorway and at the other end of the room, next to the cot, the rock had been cut only down to waist-height rather than all the way to the floor and this acted as a table of sorts. In front of this was the bucket of water, and on the table was a water pitcher and cup, clay, but they were glazed however so not the lowest quality, and lastly a glazed bowl of stew and it smelt simply incredible. My stomach nearly leapt out of my body with the violent gurgle it made in anticipation. This was not the thin watered down gruel I had last eaten five days ago, this had vegetable chunks and actual strands of meat in it! Loud slurping noises were already coming from the other rooms and Rogert was positively vociferous with his praise for the stew. For me, just savouring the smell was not a moment to be skipped. The smell hung thick in the air like the fat-rich smoke of a hog roast around a camp fire. I sipped carefully and the warmth flushed all through me and the flavour burst forth like a fire, roaring like a lion. It was so good to finally appreciate food again rather than eating out of necessity to survive. I tried the water to compare. It was clear but it didn't taste nearly as good as the stuff from before. Maybe it was the stew that had altered my taste, or that I hadn't eaten for five days, or maybe it was the glass cup? Either way it was unlikely I would ever experience that again.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I sat down on the edge of the cot and began to drink deeply from the stew whilst I thought about the events of today. Before all the Principa stuff my plan had been to sneak out at night, steal a camel and make for the water hole half a day away that I'd stopped at on the way here but this plan was full of flaws. I could hardly be the first slave to think of escaping in the dead of night, this place was way too organised to fall for that. There was two guards outside our quarters and a few more through the tunnels and I wasn't even sure how I got to... wherever we are now... I just remember there being stairs at one point. It simply made more sense to bide my time, play along, learn the layout of the place, movement of the guards, where the water and camels were stored etc. and not give any inclination to my captors that I was thinking of escape. So long as I had escaped hard labour, haste was not the solution yet. If I got caught, death would be the good outcome, the alternative wasn't worth imagining.

I put the bowl down thoroughly revived and went to my doorway to fetch the clothes they had provided. It was a pair of leather sandals and belt, and a set of undergarments and robe: white but of a common grade of cloth so slightly yellow in colour though thankfully not the terrible coarse itchy hemp stuff. A cloth had been provided with the bucket and I washed myself down, changed into the undergarments and put the bucket of dirty water and unspeakable rags I had been wearing on the shelf. Rogert was snoring loudly. Sarah and Esmae were whispering to each other, I think they were both in one room finally taking the opportunity to have a proper conversation without having to constantly deflect the questions of the man who couldn't even be quiet whilst sleeping.

What I couldn't figure out was where the slave drivers who brought us here were amongst all this? I had been expecting we'd turn up at an open-air market and we'd all stand around whilst buyers prodded us and inspected our teeth like camels and there'd be heated exchanges of words and then I'd be carted off someplace else. This place... this place was more like a cattle market. Was the price agreed beforehand or some kind of estimate made before we went in? Why not just line us all up and let the buyers choose? Surely the price couldn't be set before the 'quality of the goods' was established otherwise the slave drivers could pull one over the buyers. Is that what the questions were for? And then I saw it, I had been staring right at it -- the ceiling! This was no open-air market where people just turned up and competed with each other; the city owns and controls the market! The city decides what's good quality and what's not, the city sets the prices and the city runs the auctions! We got the ear tags because we're the quality merchandise and maybe buyers don't want it branded, less risk of gangrene, who knows. The buyers come here because they know everything is measured by the same scales no matter where the goods came from, and the the sellers come because even if they're not getting the best possible deal they at least know none of their competitors are getting a better one. On top of that, not only does the city get to skim a bit off the top of everything, it also got first pick of the bunch for itself. It was all so insidiously clever, nobody could cheat and the city always got its cut.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I thought back to the meeting with Principa. Where did she fit into this scheme? The questioning was obviously for grading our abilities, I could do numbers but not write whereas the others could. That's what the wax tablets were for, to make sure nobody was lying! Only once it'd been established we weren't lying did they bring out the water. But why the glass cups? Surely not everyone here drank from glass cups. Just one of these was more than all the wealth I had seen up until now. When I thought about it, it made no sense to allow a slave -- the lowest of the low -- to sample from such a treasure. Why even bother? What did it prove, that the city was rich? That was already evident and what does that matter to us if we were going to be sold on? We had no say in the matter. Wait, that was it -- that was what the glass cups were about -- a simple merchant's trick, a bait-and-switch! The cups were there to suggest "there's more where that came from", motivate us to do well in the tests which increases our resale value. Those five could be the only glass cups in the entire city, maybe in the whole of the worldglass, and whilst she might own one of them the rest are being borrowed for effect. I had to admit I respected the audacity, to drink from a glass cup like that would be a lifetime opportunity for anyone.

And this stew -- they could have given us gruel or stale bread and we'd still live until tomorrow (and even been grateful for it!) but the city was playing tricks with us again; "you're safe here. Be obedient and there's more where that came from" it was whispering. I thanked the wise-women and blessed my clan because even though I was being taken advantage of, as a slave and with the tricks the city seemed to be playing on us, none-the-less my clan had spared me from greater horrors by teaching me many things. I doubt the branded slaves were being given stew and their own water pitcher, or even a bed for that matter. I knew all of it could be taken away from me in an instant if I displeased the city. Hopefully tomorrow wasn't going to be more tests, but if that wasn't the case then did that mean I was going to be auctioned off? If I did get sold to a wealthy merchant then that would mean I'd be out of here and that would give me ample opportunity to escape. Whereas most people needed a caravan to travel between places, I knew how to survive in the wilderness and could make the journey on my own under the cover of night. The night. Was it night? I hadn't see the sky since I'd entered Pebble Rock. Regardless my body was crying out for sleep now. I blew my lamp out, climbed into my cot, put my hands behind my head and stared at the darkness and let out a deep sigh. Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this place and what had happened.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I was in the desert, it was night but there were no stars just total blackness even though I could see clearly by moonlight. The wind blew gently but where one would normally see sand sprays cresting off dunes, the desert was featureless. No vegetation, no rocks or landmarks, no dunes, a flat horizon. Suddenly the sand shook violently almost throwing me off my feet as a momentary mist of sand grains leapt into the air and then scattered with a hiss not unlike the sound of pouring grain from a sack. A conical shaped impression in the sand opened up in front of me and even though the chunks of sand around the edges gave way and slid down the cone, it never seemed to fill. More and more, the edges gave way and little plateaus of sand slid down the slope and were torn apart but as the hole kept growing bigger so it grew deeper.

I began to walk away, keeping my eyes on the hole. Big chunks of the desert, big enough for me to stand on, were tumbling into the hole now. The rim of the sink-hole expanded as it took bites out of the desert in all directions. The sand was moving fast now, producing a hissing noise as grains streamed over each other down to the centre where they were sucked under. I had to start running to get away from it. The hole was vast now, big enough to swallow a village and deeper than any hole that could be dug by men. The hiss was now a roar. I kept running, looking over my shoulder trying to put some distance behind me but it felt like I was starting to run up-hill now. The hole was as big as a city, the edge approaching rapidly as the sand fell away at terrifying speed. It became sticky underfoot and I was definitely going uphill now. The hole was as wide as the horizon and yet it still approached. I fought hard against the wet sand but kept stumbling and still the hole got bigger. I could run no more, it was a struggle to get one foot in front of another. I was practically climbing now, using feet and hands to scale the hill, all whilst the hole sucked everything away into the black void below. I couldn't out-pace it any more, I was too exhausted. The hill fell away around me and, reaching out in desperation, my hand struck the worldglass.

Suddenly I felt like I was falling forward and I stuck my other hand out to grab at the glass and fell flat on my face as the entire worldglass tipped over on its side. I felt a sickening dizziness as up became forward but it didn't stop there and forward started to become down. I tried to hold on but the glass was coated in condensation and I found myself sliding uncontrollably along the glass, faster and faster, until I was practically falling. I was screaming my lungs out knowing I was going to die when I hit the bottom but the glass curved gradually inward below, scooping me up, and I was sliding again. I had to shield my face from the water which whipped my face like a fierce sandstorm as I careened across the wet surface. When the slope eased I felt the glass was beneath me again and I was sliding down a hill and the hill became a gentle slope and then I was sliding across flat glass on my back, spinning this way and that, eventually coming to a stop. I was drenched to the bone and my arms trembled in terror. I caught my breath and with a shaky hand, I wiped the water from my face and opened my eyes. That's when the all the sand in the worldglass fell on me.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I jolted awake terrified, out of breath. It was pitch black. I couldn't see! I'm blind, they've poked my eyes out! I grasped around with my hands, solid rock around me I couldn't grip onto. I found the bed frame underneath me and I pulled myself upright. Where was I? I couldn't tell. I held my breath and tried listening. A sawing sound, going back and forth... snoring! I was in... Pebble Rock. It was starting to come back to me. Outside my doorway was a faint orange glow flickering back and forth. I wasn't blind, someone had left their lamp outside their room and it was just barely lighting the hallway. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then the need for another kind of relief hit me; my bowels had stopped working around three days ago and after last night's food they were making themselves known. I leant out my doorway to fetch my night bucket and looked up the hallway; the others were still asleep. What time was it even? It could be the middle of the night or the middle of the day and there'd be no way to tell. How do the people know when to get up? We were deep in the middle of a rock, something that must have taken centuries to mine out. They could have just built a city around the outside of the rock like anywhere else, like any normal people.

I was in the midst of relieving myself when the door to our quarters opened gently and a man carrying a large wicker-basket stepped in quietly. He had a bushy moustache but was not dressed like anybody else I had seen yet, just a regular hessian shirt and under-knee trousers that might be typical anywhere in the worldglass. We locked eyes for a moment and then he said "Oh, you're up early. I'll send for a porter" before walking past my doorway. I quickly fixed myself and leapt into my new robes and, tightening my belt, I looked out my doorway and was hit by the unmistakable smell of bread -- warm, freshly baked bread! The man was placing a stick of bread on a shelf outside each doorway and was making his way back. Seeing me, he slapped the last baton in my hand before bending down to pick up his basket full of bread and letting himself out he whispered "Thanks!" in a somewhat satirical tone as the door closed behind him. I think I was the one gawping like a sand-lizard this time. There was nothing better in the worldglass than the smell [and taste] of fresh bread. This freshness meant that they had to have a baker here, inside Pebble Rock, what a thought! I bit into the stick of bread and it made a satisfying crunch. It was the first properly solid food I'd eaten in a week and the first bread that wasn't stale in many weeks. Were we being spoiled again? Thinking about it, the market meant that the city probably had access to every ingredient that could be found in the worldglass.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

As I polished off the bread the others began stirring from their sleep. In the absence of sunlight, the smell of fresh bread could rouse even the heaviest sleeper! To think yesterday it had been a whip. A purple-tunic entered through the door, he was a well-built, if short, man. All the porters had shaved heads for some reason. "Mornin'" he acknowledged in a gruff voice, "You're wanted at t'Labour shop" and then, as if remembering something he had been commanded to do as he was almost out the door, "Follow me". We were going a different direction through the tunnels this time. "What about the others?" I asked, not expecting to be whisked away before I had a chance to say goodbye. I hadn't really thought about it last night but we might never see each other again. "There be someone who'll fetch them after t'first bell" came the reply in his brusque, dismissive tone. I couldn't tell if I was annoying him or he was just like this so I opted to not ask about this first of supposedly many bells. We emerged from the small passageways into a much bigger tunnel, wide enough for traffic to go both ways comfortably and there were already porters and bread-baskets and men carrying buckets using a long yoke over the shoulder with the buckets hanging by rope in front and behind them to balance them out. Water maybe? As one went past the smell violently corrected me; night buckets. Where did it all go? If there were a thousand people living here, it would be a considerable amount of waste. They didn't throw it out the windows otherwise the rock would have been stained all over and there'd be flies everywhere. I hoped my job wasn't going to be finding out.

From the wider tunnel we emerged into the open, or rather what at first I thought was the open -- dawn light crossed the hall sideways through a myriad of openings in the rock face. We were on a balcony level and there were already dozens of people criss-crossing the space, carrying one thing or another from one tunnel to another. This must be one of the floors I saw from below yesterday when the slaves came in. In the centre of this above-sand plaza was a water fountain! On the second floor! They must have an incredibly high-pressure aquifer here to have water flowing this far up. The centre of the fountain had ornate statues of naked women pouring the water from jars and around the basin the wall was low and wide so that people could sit and reach the water. Cups were sprinkled around the basin for people to use and there were guards and other people in robes filling their waterskins.

"That'll be t'first bell" came the voice of my porter over the hubbub of activity whilst I was struck by the water fountain and just as I turned my head his direction the loudest sound I'd ever heard rang out in the hall; I nearly soiled myself and ducked reflexively. Over the balcony, but still roughly level with us, held aloft by a scaffold tower of wood and metal was perhaps the largest bell in the worldglass, big enough to stand under. It thrummed so strongly, I could feel it in my body as I held my hand to my heart trying to calm myself from the sudden and intense shock. I meandered off course to look over the column-and-railing parapet at the edge as we went by the bell tower. It was hard to see the floor as there was no sunlight coming in -- a series of tall wooden doors covered the wall end-to-end with immense crossbars to keep them shut, much like a walled city's gates. This couldn't be the slave entrance which meant there were TWO great halls; they never stop at just one incredible thing here do they? This must be the market hall, and it was likely that all external doorways were similarly closed during the night. Nothing could get in and nothing could get out.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

It made more sense now why the city hadn't been built outside. From the top of the rock you'd have the perfect vantage point and the crater meant that an army couldn't sneak up because they'd have to go over the crest which was a mile away in all directions, there was literally nowhere to hide. Anybody who approached could be shot at with arrows from any of the thousands of windows that went all around the rock. You'd be hard-pushed to starve the city out as well, there appeared to be ample water supply -- so much so they could afford to just splash it about -- and given the market, probably a good stock of food. Surely the city wasn't here back in the Wayfarer's day I thought, that was almost 350 years ago now. As we exited the plaza on the opposite side and entered the tunnels again I tried to think of any fables that hinted at Pebble Rock. Nothing about big rocks, but the only one that seemed relevant was the story of the boy who bragged he was the bravest and that he had fought off many wildcats. The other children jeered at him because he never had any proof so in a huff he walked out of the camp claiming that he would slaughter a wildcat and bring back its skin. He was walking the wilderness trying to gather the courage to face the embarrassment of returning empty-handed and apologising for lying when a wildcat surprised him. Though he had his knife, he was scared and fled, climbing a tree to escape the cat. The cat would try to climb the tree but he could easily kick it away. Seeing that he had bested the cat he laughed and hurled insults at it, but the cat knew patience and it skulked around the tree for a day and a night, waiting him out. Realising that he would die of dehydration before the cat gave up the boy was forced to face his fears. Finally having found the bravery to fight he began to descend the tree as the wildcat watched from a distance but having to climb down put him at a disadvantage and, sprinting at him, the cat was able to leap and sink its claws into his back, pulling him to the ground before tearing him apart. Right now I felt like I was the one up a tree and wondered how I was going to get out of here without putting myself in danger by doing so.

The porter had brought me down a particularly wide and very well decorated tunnel, the walls had been carved in a way one would see painted on fine pottery -- a patterned zig-zag band at the top and bottom and throughout the middle an artistic procession of people, here labourers of all kinds carrying their wares and tools; farmers, stonemasons, metalsmiths and so forth. The oil lamps to light the tunnel had been made an integral part of the procession with evenly spaced craftsman holding some light according to their profession -- a torch, a candle, or even an astrologer holding the 'sun' in the palm of his hand. It must have taken a decade to carve all this out of solid rock. We weaved through a number of people congregating in this area, mostly those in white robes, many having purple adornments of some kind, they were conversing in pairs or otherwise speaking to porters of different colours: red, green, blue and so forth. We arrived at a door that was likewise ornate and made to be a part of the whole stone tapestry by having a woman reaching for the door handle carved onto the door itself. Outside of this door hung two purple banners flanked by two guards and flanked further by two long benches on which a few other white-robed women sat with non-purple markings deep in discussion with one another. My porter stopped, about faced and announced "This be t'labour shop, you're expected so just go in" before about-facing again and disappearing up the corridor in the direction we had been going. Nobody here seemed to be aware of my presence excepting the minimum amount of eye-movement required to send a message from the guards. Oh well, I had chosen venturing into the unknown as my fate and I wasn't going to stop here so I reached for the door handle, taking it from the lady carved into the door. I didn't want to come across as scared or timid but at the same time I didn't want to burst in like a bandit.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

Again I was hit by the disorientating impression that I was outside: the room was flooded with sunlight, not the orange flickery lamp light of before. I was in a wide room that was filled with many neatly arranged desks and though the room was not too deep it looked spacious, as on the wall opposite me there were windows from end to end and the beautiful gentle sunlight of the morning poured in and completely filled the room. Every window had a pair of wood shutters either side and wide rolls of white muslin cloth above for blinds. The air was cool and there was no smoke anywhere. Everything I was feeling was telling me that I had just stepped from inside a cave into the lovely cool and breezy buildings of the white city. Whereas to the left of me the desks were set in rows facing the right-side of the room, one against each opposing wall with an aisle between going the length of the room, to my right sat Principa with her own desk in the middle of the space in front of the rightmost wall which had two more purple banners hanging the height of the wall and two doors either side of those. Principa's desk was a masterwork of craftsmanship, the top had a purple dyed leather surface with brass beading around the border. The sides were of carved wood panelling and each foot was metalwork hawk talons clutching a smooth metal sphere. The desk itself was so large that it had to have been crafted in the room, and the size was warranted because there were several small piles of clay tablets organised across it and Principa was busy reading from one tablet whilst in front of her was a plate holding a very fine piece of pastry. It was a sort of puffed-up triangle as if sheets of fine pastry had been rolled diagonally from corner to corner to make it thicker in the middle and thinner on either end and the whole thing had the impression of a small double-ended horn if such a thing could exist. Next to this stood a fine pitcher and, exactly as I had expected the next time I met her, one cup made of flawless transparent glass.

"Ah, you're early, that's what I like to see" Principa spoke, looking up from her tablet. "Uh, yes" I said, not sure what to say -- I hadn't chosen to be up early, I didn't even know what hour it was when I woke. "What about the others?" I hesitantly asked. "That's what I'd like to talk to you about" she replied, putting down her tablet, "take a seat" she added extending her palm to offer the chair directly in front of her desk. I sat down and found myself feeling somewhat small in front of the large desk. Was she tall or was this chair just short? Picking up another tablet, she held it at arm's length, looking down her arm at it and began "The City has decided to loan you on a trial basis as a general courier until a more specialised position becomes available, on the condition that you meet the requirements, and you complete some additional training satisfactorily". "Loan?", I asked, "am I not going to the market to be sold?". "Oh no," she scoffed, "slaves with useful skills are put into a silent auction open only to the city and its residents to determine who gets what. I put in bids for Sarah and Esmae for my own department and the city for you because I think you'll fit in somewhere here. I won the bids for you and Sarah but whoever got Esmae paid through the nose for her, it's not every day talent like that walks through the door". Her understanding of just "walking through the door" obviously didn't include a death march through the desert, and what was so special about Esmae that had them fighting each other to get her?

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"If I'm not being sold, then isn't the city just paying itself?" I asked trying to piece together where I was being passed around. "No, the city compensates the merchant who brought you in with credit whilst we work out if you're up to the task of being part of the city. If the city chooses to purchase you at the end of the trial period, then the account is settled". The sheer gall of this woman to call that bastard of a slave driver a merchant! I mustn't get angry I thought, I need to think clearly and understand how this all works. The city wants the best pick of the bunch, they get to evaluate us and set the price. They want us to go for a high price on the market if the city doesn't want us because that means a bigger cut, but at the same time the city doesn't want to pay the highest price to the merchant if we're kept on so they needed to lower the price as much as possible...

"Less the expenses for food, water, housing and training?" I suggested, putting myself out on a limb. It was wise to be extravagant when entertaining a merchant but doubly so when he was the one paying for it. A broad, coy smile grew across her face. "I knew it was worth taking a punt on you, keep that up and I might have some competition" she said somewhere between cordiality and seriousness. I wasn't sure what to make of this... she was talking about us as simple goods to barter over but on the other hand I had landed a job at the city that didn't sound too hard; a courier delivered stuff, I could do that."What about Rogert?", she hadn't mentioned him yet. "The hairy guy? I didn't put a bid in for him, but given how good he was with metal rates I suspect the Department of Merchant Relations will snatch him up, they always need people who can speak the lingo these merchants use".

We both turned to look when the door opened and in stepped a tall, pale and mostly hairless man wearing white robes with purple trim and a purple armband on his upper-arm, he had not finished closing the door behind himself before reporting to Principia, "The new girl is on her way, and I see the other hire is here already". Principa was already three steps ahead; "Just the person I was looking for! I need you to show the new courier the ropes, you can start by going down to the equipment room and getting them kitted out", and then turning to me, "This is Persius, he's going to show you around, what you need to do, et cetera. If you have any questions just ask him". Prersius just stoically replied "Yes, ma'am". I felt bad for the guy as I had arrived early and he stepped through the door at the wrong time. Persius opened the door and stood aside to let me through so I stood up, said an awkward goodbye to Principa before leaving the room. Stepping out of the light back into the cave, I looked both ways trying to reorientate myself when Persius swept past with a "follow me!" and was off down the ornate corridor. Catching up to him and matching his rapid walking pace that was practically a jog for me, he began reeling off information: "You've been brought in as a general courier, that means you just have to take stuff from one place to another. Now you've probably noticed the coloured arm-bands everybody has; an arm-band signifies you're a worker for the city, there are different colours for different departments and a few special cases you'll find out about. You'll be starting out as a 'white-band', which means no special affiliation, that means anybody can give you orders -- and I mean anybody -- the only people who cannot order you around are other white-bands and branded-slaves. If you are given orders, you must fulfil them, no matter what. Fail to fulfil orders and you'll be branded and put out to sale".

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

We exited the tunnel and out in to the great hall; the sun was a little higher now and as it had rose, the light shafts from the rock face had angled downwards casting light across the plaza floor. The holes in the rock face extended all the way up many floors above where the top of the hall narrowed away to nothing as the outside curvature of Pebble Rock met the stack of balconies, each pushed further back than the floor below to make the most of the sunlight and space. The first bell must have woken the whole city because the plaza was packed with hundreds of people! Everybody was in a rush to be somewhere and I saw lots of white-bands, guards, and what appeared to be specialised craftsmen carrying hammers, tongs, picks and so-forth; they wore regular tan leather arm-bands.

Along the parapet at the edge of the plaza were benches where those with coloured arm-bands who could afford to, sat and talked, and between those sitting along the parapet and the mass of moving bodies going in all directions there was a two-way channel of those who just wanted to cross the plaza directly from one side wall to the other. As we followed the flow of people ahead I peered over the balcony parapet: there was the large wooden doors and though they were not open, each had a regular sized-door built into them that was open, allowing porters to come and go to the outside. The sunlight from these doors let me see the space more clearly and I realised that this wasn't the market hall -- there was no bell, for one thing, but I saw straw covering the floor, the four tall chairs and the wicker fences and I knew that we were above the slave entrance.

Suddenly we plunged into the relative darkness of the tunnels and my pace-setter up front resumed his speech, and his pace: "I'm a purple band, that means I work exclusively for the Department of Skills and Labour; only department heads and the palace staff at the top can give me orders. Officially, my title is Liaison but really I'm just a glorified courier, my job is to manage official communications between my department and others. If you get lost or need help, ask your fellow white-bands or myself -- do NOT ask another colour-band for help unless you want to make enemies early on". I asked "What about the guards?", managing to insert my question into the verbal onslaught, "they don't have arm-bands". This did not slow the flow of words; "The guards are not the property of the Governor, so they don't live here permanently. They're hired for the task and do shifts of three-months in, three-months out. They do not answer to the city or its citizens, only to the Captain of the Guard, who answers directly to the Governor -- the city guard is a completely independent body to the city municipality. They do not like you, and unless you REALLY want to make enemies then don't speak to them".

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"Who is this governor? What do they do?" I asked, this having been the first time anybody had mentioned this person. "Have you been living under a rock all your life!?" Persius scoffed, "Governor Julius Xerxes Vitrix* the sixth, only the richest man in the world, owner of you, me, the city, and the sands thereabout for two days in all directions!". He can't be all that important if I hadn't heard of him anywhere I had been in the worldglass thus far, but I opted to be merely non-committal rather than rude by saying "Sorry, didn't know". "Well I'm sure people of his fine stature don't get discussed in whatever goat-herding circles in the middle of nowhere you were dragged from". That much was true; unless this governor guy had killed a lion with his bear hands, he wouldn't much impress me or my clan.

(* names are just made up on the spot so may change and could do with improving)

In my travels I had seen plenty of people that thought they were so damn impressive just because they had lots of metal. The whole thing was a scam -- anybody could buy anything if they had enough metal to trade for it, they didn't have to do any of the work actually making something, or even mine and smelt the metal in the first place! A skilled craftsman would make a quality table and a merchant would come along and buy it for metal and then the merchant would sell it to the local land-lord for even more metal and the land-lord would brag about how great his table was. He could have just bought it from the craftsman in the first place who would have benefited the most from the extra metal. All the merchants seem to do was rob from the poor and sell to the rich whilst lining their own pockets.

Down the stairs we went and through some winding passageways and then straight through the middle of an intensely hot and loud space where metal forging was being done. There were fire pits, furnaces, anvils and massive men hammering red-hot metal. Nobody acknowledged us as we marched through the scene to the other end, through another passageway before Persius stopped in front of a plain door where sat a guard twiddling his thumbs who had a small table next to him with a box lamp on it. Picking up the box lamp, Persius opened the door and we entered a small, dark room that had rows and rows of narrow shelves cut into the walls, all filled with various cloth and leather items -- arm bands of different colours, porter's tunics and so forth. Persius shoved the box lamp in my face and I held it up whilst he rummaged through the shelves. Finding what he wanted, we stepped out of the cold, dark room and he swapped the box lamp in my hand with the stuff he had taken from the equipment room: a white arm-band, and a waterskin and knapsack, both on long leather straps. "This is your equipment -- don't lose it or you will be expected to do without it, and if you don't have your armband the guards might run you through. The only reason you're being left alone is because I'm with you" explained Persius as I slung the waterskin and knapsack over my shoulders and put on the arm-band. "The knapsack is for your food and stuff you're tasked with carrying -- misplace anything valuable and you might be sold off to cover the loss." and, putting down the box lamp next to the guard, "Follow me, we're going to go up to third now" before he was off again with his long legs carrying him away.

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We didn't go back through the metalsmiths but continued in the direction away from the slave hall we had come from. I was trying my best to keep track of where we were but once you entered the narrow passageways it was total confusion because they never went in a straight line, they would zig-zag and change direction suddenly, split and recombine and there was no sense I could discern in any of it. We were however still on the same floor so by my reckoning we were heading to the market hall. "Are we going through the market hall?" I shouted ahead as I tried to keep up. Looking over his shoulder, Persius noted I was lagging behind and slowed down a bit "Yes, we are, actually" he said, somewhat surprised, "the market opens on the second bell -- you're not to be on the market floor between then and when the market closes on the third bell". We popped out of the narrow passageways and into a thoroughfare where there were a lot of yellow-bands and various coloured tunics going both ways. "The department of Merchant Relations has its own slaves for looking after the merchants and their petty demands, they will not be happy if you interfere and you will not like what happens if you upset a merchant. You should avoid the merchants entirely, but if one does accost you, your best bet is to relay any demands to the first yellow-band you can find, then it's their head on the chopping block. Merchants aren't your job, the yellow department fought hard for that right and we aren't going to spoil their fun. They won't touch me because I'm from Skills and Labour and we get to decide how many slaves they get -- they don't want to start a fight they can't win."

Entering the market hall was not so much like entering a room as it was stepping outside: it was vast, bright, airy and impressive in every way the slave hall was not. The floor was tiled in beautiful coloured geometric patterns, there could be a hundred thousand individual tiles here and the whole thing was spotlessly clean. In the middle stood the bell tower and there were already slaves up the scaffolding polishing the bell. There were a few merchants standing around in pairs greeting each other, you could tell they were merchants because of their long pointed shoes, richly embroidered robes with tasselled trim, the fingers clustered with rings, and the uniquely three-pointed hat that was the typical wear of merchants and their ilk. As we crossed the floor we caught the eye of a merchant who lifted his hand to interrupt his friend as they were conversing and stepped aside towards us with arms raised, "Greetings, my esteemed friend!" he announced in his loud and rich accent. "Medved, my good man" said Persius offering his hand. The merchant took the hand and slapped his other hand over it and heartily shook Persius with both of his. "Thank you for the slave recommendation, she is most pleasing to the eye and her work is very satisfactory; she will be managing the inventories at the new warehouse after I kicked out that worthless good-for-nothing mongrel I bought from Bartoz!". Whatever charm the merchant exuded Persius could match, "I'm so pleased that she's working out well for you, if ever you're in the need for something particular don't hesitate to call for me and we can discuss it further over some drink". Clearly our purpose cutting through the market was really for this 'chance' meeting to happen.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

As they exchanged pleasantries and small talk I looked around the market hall. One of the great doors was open, the outside being so bright that the sand appeared as white as the sunlight pouring in. Outside was already a mass of people and camels, the early arrivers and their goods. I cannot deny that a strong animal-like instinct almost compelled me to make a run for it, such was the effect of seeing desert sand once again but I thought better of it. Outside, there would be guards and any number of other people who could stop me and even if I could hop on a camel and make a dash for it there might be archers on top of the rock, and even then if I somehow managed to get out of arrow range, everybody would know exactly where I was going and give chase -- they might even have zebras here! Zebras were much faster than camels but couldn't travel far like a camel could, but that didn't matter if your only goal was catching up to a runaway slave. Of course, actually getting a zebra out to this remote place was nearly impossible, but impossible seemed to be the normal routine here so I couldn't rule it out.

I thought about the first time I had seen a zebra and how much it terrified me. It hadn't occurred to me that there were animals in the worldglass that our clan had never encountered, separated by an impassable desert as we were. I had bumped into one on a busy street whilst I was looking the wrong way and knocked myself to the ground, the zebra reared up its front legs in fright. For the first time I felt the terror of having no instinct that could respond to this; was this thing vicious like the wildcats -- the lions, the leopards, the lynxes -- that pounced, or was it like the wild dogs -- the hyenas, the foxes and the wolves -- that used their jaws? Was it swift like the impala and gazelle, or was it dumb and skittish like the zebu? It was tall like a camel, but muscular like an ox. I didn't know whether I should go for the throat with my knife or get around behind it where it couldn't attack me. The owner had managed to yank the animal aside saving me from the hooves coming down on me and he yelled obscenities as he tried to calm the animal. I simply laid there on my back in disbelief before finally coming to my senses, scrabbling to my knees and running away.

In my clan we were always taught to be prepared: the huntsmen shared everything they knew about stalking prey, about looking for the telltale signs and exactly how every animal reacted, how they attacked. Where their strengths and weaknesses were, where to stick your knife and if you were unarmed, how to use your arms to defend yourself without getting gored or torn to shreds. I listened to it all and took it seriously, unlike some of my peers. The experienced huntsmen would say that fear was something to feel after a fight, that you had to hone your knowledge, your strength, and your movements until it became instinct because life-or-death was a matter of what your instinct would choose in the moment. Thinking was too late. The first time you had to fight a wildcat had to be the ten-thousandth time your body and mind had practised the motions. Beneath that zebra was the first time I had been unprepared.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"But who is this that you bring before me?" the merchant said expansively, snapping me out of my daze staring out the open gate. "Oh, this? Just a new hire I'm showing about. Very good with numbers you know, but can't do merchant shorthand yet". The merchant turned his smile to me and lent forward, I felt very uncomfortable being towered over. "Well now, I look forward to hearing of your progress; a friend of Persius is a friend of mine!". I didn't know what to think of that, I was a slave and he was a merchant that bought slaves, I don't think friendship factored into this. I just smiled back and said "Thank you sir, I will try my best". The merchant seemed to be satisfied with this response and returned unfazed to Persius. The two made their long and elaborate goodbyes before Persius looked down at me and said "Sorry about that, an old friend, let's get going" and began marching off.

Rushing to catch up with Persius and his gazelle-like pace, I asked him "So how long have you been here?" as we joined the main tunnel on the opposite side of the market hall and headed to the stairs. "About twenty years now, come to think of it! I was just seventeen when I came here you know; an orphan, had nowhere to go; some merchants brought me here and the city took me in". Around the stairs we went and on to the thoroughfare for what should be 2nd floor. "Worked my way up from nothing -- goes to show you can get somewhere in life if you work hard". We marched out on to the second floor plaza the porter had taken me over first thing this morning. There was the bell, workers with polishing cloths clinging to the scaffolding, trying to reach every part of the immense piece of metal the size of an ox. We walked over to the fountain in the centre, the floor was calmer than the rush of bodies on the 2nd floor plaza over in the slave hall earlier. The workmen were gone and there was mostly coloured-bands ambling along and white-bands zipping in straight lines from one end to the other.

We stopped at the fountain and Persius picked up a cup and swept it through the water in the basin, "You can fill your waterskin here, or at any of the other fountains, and get a drink any time you come past but don't waste any time on your deliveries, so try and fill up as close to first bell as you can". He sat and drank calmly from his cup whilst I plunged my waterskin into the water basin and worked the air out of it. It was a new waterskin so it was stiff and inflexible and it resisted mightily being held under. "Do you happen to know how old the city is?" I asked over my shoulder, wrestling with the waterskin. Persius finished a sip of water and ruminated before answering, "Who could say? Official records only started a couple of centuries ago. Beyond that, I think you'd need to speak to the archivists in the records department, but YOU", pointing a finger at me from the hand holding the cup, "should be focusing on passing your trial period first and not dallying around or I might end up selling you to Medved!". I lifted the waterskin from the water, shook off what excess I could and threw the strap over my shoulder. It was going to soak my shoulder and hip but I under this sunlight and all the running about I could see I'd be doing I wasn't going to stay wet long. "Oh? You think I'm just a goat-herder who doesn't know their left from their right?" I said sarcastically, "By the time the moon is over, not even Medved will be able to afford me!" I grinned with a joking smile. Persius just laughed saying "That's the spirit!". He put the cup down on the basin and stood up, "Right, next we go pick up food and I want to do a tour around each of the main departments but we'll be going past legal first".

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

For now the goal I had set in mind was to learn everything I could, do whatever they wanted done and most importantly, not end up branded and sold off. I was determined to search out every nook and cranny of the city so that I was absolutely prepared for anything. If an escape attempt failed and they had to search for me, I wanted to be able to disappear into the darkest crevice nobody even knew existed. Sure, if someone like Medved bought me I'd be out of here, but that hinged upon me being just bad enough at the job that the city didn't want me, but just good enough that a merchant would snatch me up. That was a fine line to walk and if I went to open auction I'd have no certainty over who bought me or where I'd end up. No thank you, I thought, I want to be the one who decides how and when I escape -- I had no desire for another death march for my supposed freedom.

We headed off to the stairs and up to the 3rd floor plaza of the market hall, this plaza was smaller than the 2nd floor and had a completely different style: whereas the back of the 2nd floor market plaza was a mass of various tunnels and passageways, here a wide semi-circle facade of houses had been built into the back wall. A raised colonnade ran in front of the row and each 'house' had a few steps up to a column-framed door and there were window openings all along the terrace. At the middle of this semi-circle was a massive two-story doorway framed by the two largest columns atop very wide stairs that descended gently to the plaza. Those standing on the stairs and conversing wore black toga, similar to our robes but over one shoulder. There were many black-bands standing around or walking about and a lot less white-bands, or running in general, for that matter.

This plaza too had a fountain but its centre piece was a column around which was wrapped a two-headed snake and the water poured from each of the mouths. "Why a two-headed snake?" I asked Persius as we went past. "Oh that? You don't know? It's an old legend, something about a snake with two heads where one head tells the truth and the other always lies. I don't know the exact story, but it's the symbol for the Department of Law and Judgement". Was this a fable I hadn't heard of before? This was most interesting! "Who would I need to speak to if I wanted to learn more?" I asked looking back at the fountain as we passed it. "About the snake? Probably anybody in legal, I expect it's the first thing they learn on their first day, it's the foundation of their whole profession". It must be a very important fable I thought and put a mental knot in my mind to see if I could find Esmae and ask her about it another day.

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