A few days passed after the vision entered Miresh’s dreams, and they finally reached Maykren. Aralim and his fellows had awoken late the day after, when a merchant with a two wheeled cart and a small dusty mule had trotting along the road above their little camp. The merchant, a small dark-skinned man with not a single strand of hair on him, smiled to them and asked if they’d like to travel to the city with him.
They parted with him and his wares of sandals, braces, and simple leather decorations at the eastern city gate, called the Smoke Gate. A collection of torches, braziers, and incenses kept a cloud over the gate; the friendly merchant told Aralim and his friends it was to keep away the bugs that gathered from the moorland northeast of them.
Maykren, they soon learned, was built across a delta at the mouth of the Ake’ma River. Though many of the main streets were built above the water, long wooden structures packed with a gravelly dirt, more than half of the city was accessed by waterways, where pedestrians shambled through shin-high water or paid for transit aboard one of the many wooden rafts. Aralim and his friends strode through water so shallow that even Miresh managed to keep up.
There were guards at the gates, but they did not stop the followers of the Path. Like the guards in Old Numa, these warriors were armed uniquely but with similar dull iron items. Each seemed to have a large degree of control over their gear. They even saw one female guard, who had a bare stomach, compensated defensively with large shoulder plates and a loose chain robe.
Similarly, the attire of Maykren was alien to Aralim. Almost everyone wore beads, loosely knit tunics, or left their torsos bare altogether. In the lands he hailed from—even Bellasa—the shirtless body was considered nudity. Aralim didn’t ignore the first woman they passed when they entered the city; she sat with a fishing rod in a deeper section of water, with her feet hanging over the edge and her sagging breasts completely unconcealed. He soon realized it was not uncommon; in fact, people stared at his fashion instead. Aralim’s robe, though thin and loose, was more clothing than anyone else wore. His lantern staff marked him as unusual, a blue light that hung over his head as he walked through a crowd of sweaty and unusual bodies.
“Relax,” Ukanna said. “No one will tell you how to dress.”
Aralim shrugged. It didn’t bother him, it was just different; no Walker had ever come this far west or north, as far as he knew. He wondered how things might be different if they had, but the Path did not stipulate garb or custom. He just noticed the differences—the markets sold more fish, colourfully scaled ones he had never seen, and some of the wealthy people had pet monkeys, big ones with white fur and groomed faces. They moved docilely enough, but were kept on leashes, and Aralim quickly accepted it as yet another assertion of power from the more enlightened species.
They were not planning on staying long in Maykren, but first had to find somewhere to stay while they were. The best way north was, according to Hayan and Ukanna, riverboat up the Ake’ma River. The great basin could connect the whole way to Rema, a popular highway where roads were too expensive to construct and maintain.
It did not take long to find a poor man’s shelter—the big open-sided building was constructed on one of the islands in the delta, as none could not afford stilts to keep it from the water. To Aralim that seemed fair—the more power, the more money and the more money, the more safety.
A few of the beggars here saw the need to stand guard, which seemed odd. None of them were armed or even clothed well. They passed a very young woman who’s bare chest had only begun to show the signs of puberty, and she glared at them with an unwavering defensiveness that rivaled the middle aged man standing sentry nearby. They didn’t stop Aralim and his friends, but gave them a good look over as they passed.
Aralim wondered what caused such an alertness, when there were laws against slavery here. He hadn’t met many people who could find passage on the Path with symptoms of paranoia holding them back. It just wasn’t a good sign of power.
They had barely sat down, when Ukanna asked for their attention. “I’ve decided,” he said, “to stay in Maykren. I’d like to find a new job, and ultimately wandering with you won’t help me.”
“What?” Miresh asked. “But we’re seeking enlightenment!”
“It’s not an issue of what I would enjoy to do,” Ukanna said. The middle aged man grimaced, and scratched his bare shoulder. “Rather, what I feel I must do.”
“We’ll miss you,” Aralim said, more for Miresh’s comfort than his. The Path was not for everyone, and enlightenment could also be found without wandering the Path in a physical way.
“I’m leaving too,” Laney said, and walked away. The onyx-skinned woman didn’t even look at the guards as she left, wading through the waterways until she disappeared from sight past a food vendor’s stall. No one else said a word. Even Ukanna just sat there, confused, until she was gone.
“I hope she finds something to smile about,” Hayan said. “Poor woman.” He said nothing about leaving.
Aralim nodded.
Miresh looked distraught. “I know what happened to her,” she said, “or at least I think I do. I lived on the streets in Lantern Town a long time, and I know about things. But why can’t she just put them behind her?”
“Not everyone is as strong as you want them to be, young one,” Aralim explained. The shelter was home to some twenty denizens, spread out across the muddy earth on blankets or piles of dried reeds. Some were knitting, or preparing food, or playing dice to pass the time; now some were listening to the man with the lantern staff. “Everyone must move along the Path in their own way, and the Path has many obstacles. Some of which I hope you never come to understand.”
Then he sat down with them. Ukanna kept them company for a while, talking about what jobs he might get, and inviting them to visit him should they be able to. An hour after they had arrived, he set off to ‘get his bearings of the city’. A couple of the homeless people nearby shared small bits of food they could spare for his remaining friends, and Aralim found his hunger thoroughly filled.
Without much warning, someone started shouting in the distance. When Aralim looked in the direction it was, he found that one of the windowless houses that backed onto the homeless zone had become the backdrop for the death of a man. Four armed attackers were beating him, kicking him now that he could no longer stand to face their clubs. Blood was dripping into the river, and the men were shouting with a heavy accent that Aralim could not understand.
“Let’s go,” Hayan said. “That’s probably part of a gang.”
“We don’t need to leave the shelter do we?” Aralim asked.
One of the attackers had grabbed their victim’s neck and was forcing his face under the water, as the river around turned red.
“Let’s get the guards,” Miresh said. “Like we did before.”
“If that’s a gang,” Aralim said, “We’re best to not get involved. If we have to leave here, then let’s, but I don’t think this time would be a good time to go to the law.”
Miresh shrugged. “Alright then,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere else, please.”
Hayan didn’t wait, and stood up. A few of the other homeless were following suit, so Aralim and his friends followed them to another shelter several streets away. Maykren was huge, he realized. There had been no slope near the city, to reveal its size visually; but as they navigated the streets and he searched for distant landmarks, Aralim realized it was probably larger than the port of Bellasa. They stayed there a few days, before setting out once more, this time toward Rema, the city of Emperor Tag’na the Eternal.