Cephas said, “Mattias Farseer told me that this was once a forest, and that there is still a great stretch of woods farther south called the Mir. I know nothing of dragons, though, or of the other monsters you named, ssri …?”
“Ssri Tel’Quessir,” said Sonnett. “It is what the dark elves call themselves. I hope you never have to learn anything of the drow, Cephas. They are a great challenge to peace.”
The siblings made the sweeping, open-palmed gesture as one when Sonnett spoke, and Cephas made a clumsy attempt to copy them, eliciting a giggle from Marashan. He thought anything but peaceful thoughts, remembering Grinta’s advice regarding drow: fire, light, open ground.
The three were seated together among the boulders, for once relatively still, and Cephas could see the family resemblance was tempered by their ages, and by other characteristics. They shared something close to Cephas’s own deep red skin color, and like all the genasi of the village, they were smooth skinned even to their scalps. The familial connection was told by their similar noses and crooked grins. But what set them apart from one another most was the whirling, looping network of the szuldar lines. Even between Sonnett and Marashan who, despite their age difference, resembled each other almost as closely as Shan did Cynda, the patterns of the softly glowing gold lines were distinct, individual, unique.
On Jazeerijah, the freedmen refused to answer any questions from Cephas about the intricacies of his own skin. Azad had even told him the lines were signs of disease. Here in Argentor, the genasi celebrated the bold, singular szuldar patterns. Cephas had seen men and women with tattoos designed to accentuate the lines, and the clothing styles of all the villagers, even those of Elder Lin and Sonnett, were tailored to show the lines on each person’s arms, legs, stomach, and back.
He had much to learn, indeed, and not just about his earthsouled heritage, for here was Tobin come to fetch him back to the grounds that would house the circus’s performance.
“It is time to raise the tent!” said the goliath. “And we don’t even have to sink poles, because we can use these marvelous spires!”
Cephas meant to ask his new friends to forgive him for leaving them, but they were on their feet and headed for the wagons even before him. Tobin laughed. “You watch and see if Whitey doesn’t put the talking girl to cleaning out Trill’s nesting ground.”
Though he had not mentioned the faith of Grumbar since the night on the plains, and none of the circus folk thought it wise to ask him about it, Tobin had expressed relief that Corvus’s information about these genasi being followers of his people’s god proved only partly correct. Asked about Grumbar, Elder Lin said, “Our Old Mother has many lovers.”
Marashan quickly distanced the others, but when Flek and Sonnett saw they were leaving the visitors behind, they stopped and waited between a pair of spires flanking one of the village streets. The earthsouled of Argentor used no wagons or beasts of burden, but their avenues were broad and smooth. This was one of the signs that told a visitor they were in the village instead of the wildlands of the Sarenstar. The ground deeper in the spires was a jagged chaos of boulders, gravel fields, and shear, bottomless crevasses.
The dwellings and workshops of the village were located inside the spires themselves, sculpted by the power of the earthsouled over decades. According to Mattias, even the shortest of the spires towered above the mightiest trees of the Realms, and some of those in the village were honeycombed with chambers all the way to their summits. The view from these highest chambers, through crystal windows or cleverly concealed turrets, took in the pass to the east and the looming bulk of the Marching Mountains to the southwest.
They were tightly packed in most places, but where a natural clearing occurred, the genasi dressed out broad courtyards and squares. One of these, at the end of the short road through the Sarenstar from the prairie, was called the Welcome Terrace. Here, the circus had set its wagons and marked off the area to be enclosed in the largest tent.
When Cephas, Tobin, and the Elder’s children arrived at the terrace, circus folk were already scattered amid the spires high overhead, stringing up thick hawsers of hemp. Melda directed a team of oxen in pulling hard against a yoke attached to a vast scrollwork of canvas. Slowly, the tent spread out across the ground and the smell of sailcloth filled the area. Cephas discovered he was crouching, ready to strike.
Tobin put a hand on Cephas’s shoulder as he stood. “No fighting today, Cephas,” he said. “You are a strongman now.”
And it was time to put that to the test, but not yet in performance. Once the tentworks were laid out and the supporting lines strung, the walls and enormous draped ceiling of the tent had to be hauled up by main force. Whitey and two of his many brothers hung from a dubious network of lighter ropes above the hawsers, ready to direct the placement of the canvas.
“Usually that would be Shan and Cynda up there,” Tobin said.
Cephas was curious to see their acrobatics played out on the high wire. But the twins had yet to return from whatever errand they’d stolen off on days before. Cephas hoped they would find their way to the village in time for the night’s show.
Shortly before the circus was to begin its performance, Corvus called Cephas and Whitey to his wagon. Rummaging through a trunk, he withdrew a small wooden box and a set of three interlinked rings. Giving these to Whitey, he said, “Show Cephas the way of these. I’ll see to the lights.”
Whitey was already costumed and made up, deep in character. The clowns of his tradition did not speak, so he sketched a comical bow to the ringmaster as acknowledgment and motioned for Cephas to follow him to the tent.
He handed off the box and rings for Cephas to carry, then took the short walk across the Welcome Terrace as an opportunity to warm up for the night.
Walking ahead of Cephas in a curious, shuffling gait that was half dance and half waddle, Whitey reversed direction, whipping toward Cephas in a lurching backhandspring. The clown spun his arms, dropped his shoulders unevenly, and landed on his backside.
A hissing noise sounded, and Whitey’s confused expression mirrored Cephas’s own. The clown peered over his left shoulder, over his right, and then rolled backward into an impossible pose, his feet flat on the ground but his back arched so severely that he was still looking straight at Cephas. He was bent in two with his hands around his ankles, his head tucked between his legs, peering out over the seat of his pants, with his generous bottom pointed at the sky. It was his pants that were hissing.
Like all his brothers and sisters, and now Tobin, Whitey wore colored pantaloons in performance that were woven of enough cloth to make a four-person tent-if four people could be found willing to sleep in a pink and green tent edged with silk sashes. All that cloth stretched to its limits as the seat of the clown’s pants inflated, ballooning larger and larger, and Cephas saw it being lit from within by flickering yellow light.
Whitey clapped, and Cephas looked down to see that he had somewhat untangled himself, enough that his chin rested on the flagstones. He released his hold on his ankles and wormed his hands up into his pants legs. In the glowing balloon above, Whitey’s hands appeared, his delicate wrists and long fingers recognizable to Cephas even in silhouette.
The silhouettes became something different, as Whitey wove his fingers together into the shape of a dragon, a castle, a man with the head of a crow.