[center][h3]Upriver[/h3][/center]

By the time the spirit set foot on the barge, it had seen much. By the time the second full moon of the flooding season rose, the men of the raft were becoming unnerved.

Calign didn’t stand on the boat. It stood on a small mass of sphagnum that had sprouted on its wooden surface the day it had come on board. Each day, or sometimes every few days, the sphagnum would move, often when the traveller itself had disappeared from view. It was the only indication the river men had that the visitant wizard was alive. They never learned its story. It seemed more confused than they were when they asked. The men wondered whether they had adopted a ghost, but the beasts it brought with it grounded the wizard firmly in the dirt of threatening reality.

The big crocodile-pig the wizard called Buaya treated them like a particularly contented cow might if it had sea legs. The gut of the beast weighed heavy on their laden raft, but it seemed content to eat no more than a few reeds each day, fed from the wizard’s hand. It was the long leggy lizard that had to be tied down, in the end, with a papyrus cord. It seemed to grow longer and leggier every day, putting on thin flappy skin rather than scales or muscle, and looked… wholly inedible.

The laughter with which the river men normally passed the second cataract (there was no longer a first cataract, not since the building of the great dam Al’ba, from which they had set forth) never materialised, and they found themselves discussing in low voices how readily they could pawn their sea-abalone and salted porpoise here, now, no more than a third of the way up the river. To their relief, it was Calign that put a stop to it.

[colour=aquamarine][i]“Halt!”[/i][/colour]

The wizard stepped out of a sunset sunbeam with its fist upheld, a gesture far too firm for the taste of these civilised men (rough as they may be). They stared into the orange light that veiled it and found a faceful of panic. [colour=aquamarine]”Halt! Stop! Stop moving your long sticks! Listen.”[/colour]

The river men listened to a wizard that was no longer facing them, or anything of theirs. Calign leaned over the fore edge of the raft and fell into the mud.

The planks of the barge creaked a little. The men eyed one another.

“...Spirit?”

No, said the mud. Nothing here.

When the river erupted, it did so in a heaving flurry of silt and splash and slashing blades of bone. The fish was as brown as the mud beneath it, and its mighty rostrum longer than a two-edged sword. By the time the water had stilled enough for the men to judge its length by its smooth, broad forehead (at ten or eleven cubits, as long as six men head to toe), the white robes of the wizard had reappeared, shining in the ripples.

[colour=aquamarine]”The fish!”[/colour] They saw Calign’s teeth for the first time, grinning like a skull. [colour=aquamarine]”Gergaji, the fish, the fish! It was living here for a hundred years, and its mother was living more! I trace its line back to Lalinc. Good speed be upon you! I will meet you in the great city!”[/colour]

Calign mounted the leviathan [url=https://images.theconversation.com/files/44219/original/gdyx5m8f-1395180337.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip]sawfish[/url] with bare hands and bare feet and disappeared deep down and far ahead in the silty river, leaving them with a barge of coastal goods, a crocodile pig, and one leggy, leggy lizard.

[hr]

The river lazily snaked across to what might have been a hundred distant horizons. Here and there were small villages, date groves, and farms; elsewhere the bulwark of  larger cities rose up to either side, and still in other places the river seemed like a wild swampland or jungle, ruled by crocodiles and other great beasts.

The river grew narrow and swift in parts, lazy and fat in others, but always it kept going. There seemed no end, and in truth, after so many days it began to seem like all parts were the same, or close enough. But then there came a part of the river where the banks had something very unusual--there were hundreds of humans, swarming about like little ants, bearing shovels and stones. They had dug out a great ditch through the land, perpendicular to the river, and begun the process of shoring up the trench with a lining of stones. Only a narrow piece of land remained intact to separate this ditch from the great river’s edge.

It was no one’s fault, really. The retaining earth had been reinforced as much as was reasonably necessary, and the spirit was only curious. Neither it nor the company of its distant kin working on the other side had reckoned with the softness of the riverside silt, or the bulk of the elder sawfish.

The sandal-trod earth between the trench and the river gave way in a wet, slow, and heavy slide under Calign’s mount the moment it beached itself on the strip of land, and to its pleasure and the further shock of every workman present, a great gush of river water followed. The trench eagerly served its purpose, guiding the torrent up and up the canal, sweeping fish, wizard, and workman all together in a muddy catastrophe up the length of the stone-lined ditch.

Under the shade of a palm tree in the distance, Ninazu sat upon a stool. There were many a cuneiform tablet strewn by his feet; his reference figures and earlier designs had been cast into clay for safekeeping. He had before him a makeshift table though, and on it he scratched at a papyrus sheet with a piece of charcoal, making sketches and working out more ephemereal ideas...until he heard the panicked screams of his laborers, that was. The diggers and stonemasons, many of them not knowing how to swim, howled wildly as they flailed in the rushing water. Those with presence of mind tried to grasp at the stones along the sides of the channel, hoping to find purchase and climb out before the sudden rush of riverwater and the debris that it carried could drown them.

At once a bead of sweat formed upon Ninazu’s temple. “No, no,” he desperately muttered. “Everything was going right!”

He spun to face one of his attendants and a foreman on break, both of whom just stood there besides him in the shade of the tree. “This is not what we had planned!” he roared. The two flinched from his voice, but he had already broken into a sprint (or at least, as much of a sprint as he could muster in those fancy blue robes) towards the channel.

Panting, heaving, he grew close and saw a [i]thing[/i] that defied reason and all expectation; there, amidst the mass of drowning men and churning muddy waters, was some sort of strange being locked in a sunbeam. But Ninazu paid it no mind, of course.

Ninazu was tall and well groomed, with a long black beard that was square and braided, clothes that were worth a small fortune, and a calm disposition. At least that was the picture that most who knew Ninazu conjured in their minds whenever they recalled the man, and that was as he’d been mere minutes past; now he was a disheveled and sweaty mess standing beside the canal, spots of muddy water having already splashed onto his azure clothes. He stooped down onto his knees and offered his hand to a man below. The desperate workers grasped at it and pulled so hard that it nearly brought Ninazu down into the waters too, but the noble steeled himself and heaved, and just barely managed to pull the man up. But he did not suffer the coughing man any respite. “Help the others!” he demanded.

The half-drowned man that he’d just saved could only wheeze in response, and it was only then that Ninazu took in his surroundings and saw the dozens of other people standing around uselessly, gawking at him. With another cry of frustration, he snatched up a shovel that had been lying by the edge of the trench and threw it to the closest foreman. “What am I to do with thi-”

“Save your men, fool!”

The foreman half-scrambled and half was pushed to the edge of the canal, and there he fell to his knees and with outstretched arms held out the shovel for the drowning men to take hold of.

As the trench filled and the rush lost its white edge, water-tossed men crawled, flailed or were hauled onto the bank. Shim was one of the younger foremen, not a strong swimmer, but strong enough to keep a head above water against the surge when a palm branch was held to him. It was on his powerful back that the spirit alighted, soaked to the lips in mud. The magnolias in its horns had folded into buds.

[colour=aquamarine]”Where is my fish?”[/colour]

Shim turned a weary and sickened head to look at the stranger with the absurd question. He could only sigh in response, and Calign didn’t get much of an answer from anybody else either. In the distance, further up the canal, he saw the familiar blue of Bal Ninazu, taking command and issuing orders for the medical treatments that were to be given to the men pulled from the waters. Some were still down there in the muddy mess, limp and having to be dragged out by the others. 

The young foreman soon joined their number, thrust out onto the bank by strong, sharp hands from below. The next time the wizard emerged from the water, it was carrying another man by the wrist, its loins girded, kicking against the mud with the strength and swiftness of a frog. This time it crawled out with him, dripping and slick.

[colour=aquamarine]”My fish has startled,”[/colour] it elaborated to two men beating water out of the chest of a third, whom they pulled a little further away. Calign swiftly realised that these men were quite useless, and followed the pretty one like young does follow the aged mother. With some and rising caution, it let its robe fall and approached the shimmering peacock, skipping awkwardly in between the much larger men.

[colour=aquamarine]”Sire,”[/colour] it said (for it had learned much!), [colour=aquamarine]”What is the meaning of all this?”[/colour]

The Bal straightened his back and regained some of his lordly composure when he was finally approached by the strange [i]thing[/i] that he’d witnessed earlier. “Disaster!” he spat. “Weeks of toil has been stymied; it might take days to block the breach and repair the channel again. And who knows when the laborers will recover!”

A deep scowl appeared on his face, only thinly veiled even by his beard. And then he pointed an accusing finger right at Calign. “All of this project was carefully planned, the channels perfectly designed my own hand and the digging done under careful supervision. Are you the cause of this...this…?”

Calign looked out over the settling waters and the extent of the trench. It observed carefully the dropped and scattered tools, the bruised and heaving men, and finally turned its head back to the breach connecting it all back to the river. It rested its chin on one knuckle and thought hard.

[colour=aquamarine]”No,”[/colour] said the wizard. [colour=aquamarine]”I just brought my fish onto the earth separating the waters, that is all.”[/colour]

“In one breath you deny the crime, yet in the next you freely admit to breaching the gap! Do you not understand the gravity of the destruction and mayhem that this recklessness has caused? And what do you mean ‘your [i]fish[/i]’? That beast that was thrashing in the waters? A man who cannot control his animals and property is one worthy of little respect!”

Calign reacted to the scold as it might have reacted to being struck, raising arms, then lowering them again. That was not the way things were done here. [colour=aquamarine]”She is the heir of an ancient line. She [i]belongs[/i] to no man! Now she lies in your… pool, and I must calm her. You can,”[/colour] it waved its wrist, [colour=aquamarine]”address… your problems as you like. I want my fish.”[/colour]

“And what, pray, are you going to do with the beast once you calm it?” he demanded.

[colour=aquamarine]”Begone from this place, to be sure,”[/colour] said the wizard. [colour=aquamarine]”You are very loud and do not know how to swim.”[/colour]

“Oh? And what will be done in the way of compensating those whose work you have disrupted and whose bodies you have harmed? I think that you do not know where you stand. This is the civilized realm of Akk-ila, a kingdom of law and order, not some backward swamp where men and fish come and do as they please. And downstream, where I think your accent tells your origin to be, is Aïr, a place of similar customs. You think that the Lugal (who rules with wisdom and strength!) will suffer any crime that the masters of other kingdoms would not?”

[colour=aquamarine]”I don’t think he would find any quarrel with me. The Lugal and I --”[/colour] 

“Blasphemer!” a dozen voices called out. Where before they had just been gawking, now the peasants began to encircle the bickering duo and eye Calign more maliciously. It slowed.

[colour=aquamarine]”...are very similar. He is a man of lush gardens and many creatures. And I am also a magos...”[/colour] 

“You disrespect the Lugal (crowned with wisdom is he!) with your refusal to give his name the veneration that it is owed, and with the audacity to compare yourself to him and to refer to him as a ‘magos,’ as if he is some practitioner of petty tricks rather than a king invested with the power of the gods! And in disrespecting the Lugal (eternal glory unto him!) you disrespect the entire Akkylonian kingdom, and you insult me too, for I am named Ninazu and I am the fourth of his sons.”

The murmuring silence that followed was not punctuated by a growl. It could have been. Calign’s lips had retracted slightly from its teeth. They were not the kind that bit apples. The unsettling display had many of the murmering workers step back and tighten their fists or their grasps on whatever tools they had.

[colour=aquamarine]“I do not [i]owe.[/i]”[/colour] The witch’s eyes found Ninazu more fully this time, observing in him the curves and lines of strength it would one day see again at the source. [colour=aquamarine]”When I meet your father I will respect him with peace, as I respect you with calm. [i]Ask nothing more from me.[/i]”[/colour]

The righteous indignation began to seep out of the scholarly man; near any Akkylonian would have been inflamed by the stranger’s, the [i]invader’s[/i] destruction and its disregard for society and manners, but Ninazu had the rare presence of mind to know when it was best to deescalate. Though he had been blinded at first, the realization that this was indeed a being of power had begun to dawn upon him, and he was well aware that provoking a fight, justified as it would be, would be unwise.

“It is clear that you are not accustomed to our ways,” he began once more, now keeping a much more level tone and composure. “So, for my part, forgiveness can be attained easily enough. You have rendered neither apology for your wanton destruction nor offer of reparation, but those two things are all that I could demand. Should you encounter the blessed Lugal (crowned with wisdom is he!) then I know not how he should react, but I would be wary, for he is more wroth than I, and his might surely surpasses your own as it does that of all others.”

It was the labouring men that his words served to calm, ordering them around his wise request, and it was the change in the breath of those men that Calign followed, gradually, to calmness. [colour=aquamarine]“...That is all, then. This is my apology.”[/colour] The spirit plucked a bud from its muddied antlers and held it. Water spilled from between its fingers, and when the bud was given, leaning forwards in a slight bow, it had bloomed into a clean, pure blossom. [colour=aquamarine]”There will be no such trouble by the time I reach the Lugal… who I am sure is very great.”[/colour]

The disheveled Bal gingerly accepted the flower in an outstretched hand, taking a few moments to look at it with curiosity. “A good start, then, would be to display your admiration for the Lugal (who is wisdom, arisen!) with your words, for one’s words are a reflection of his thoughts. You have blasphemed many times today, hopefully only out of ignorance, for if you should ever mention my father you must halt there in the middle of your thought to offer him a just praise, lest you would deny him the veneration he is owed by all, and risk offending the men of this country, the beasts, the very hills--all of the things beneath the sky that have ears to listen.”

[colour=aquamarine]”...I see,”[/colour] said Calign, and nothing more. It knuckled its eyes, smearing the mud around and wiping a little off, then walked back to the edge of the nearly full trench, head flicking to catch the eyes that were on it. [colour=aquamarine]“I will repair the breach on my way out, if it matters so much. What is this?”[/colour]

Ninazu and the assembly of men did not seem entirely satisfied with how the enigmatic…[i]barbarian sorcerer[/i] received the explanation of his error, but the offer to stem the flow of the water was well received.

“The canal is an irrigation channel,” Ninazu answered to a blank face. “Think of it as a small river! We shall make a whole system of these channels, branching them every way to spread the lifegiving water far and wide. When it has been finished and we are ready to flood it, it will carry water a long ways inland to quench the parched drylands, and many more ploughmen will be able to till their fields and make something more productive from what has been a desolate stretch of land fit for little more than grazing. Farther downriver in Aïr, you may have seen the Al’ba--a mighty dam built under the guidance of the one called Elmer, not simply splitting the river’s flow but stopping it in its tracks altogether so as to create a great reservoir. One day, I shall build one even more glorious and magnificent, but until such time I make content with more humble projects of a modest size and nature.”

Calign’s fingers stirred the pulsing water. [colour=aquamarine]”...desolate.”[/colour] The broad tip of something vast and serrated stirred just enough to touch its submerged fingertips. [colour=aquamarine]”When I swam in the lake of the Al’ba, I found trees on its bed. So great was the reservoir.”[/colour] The saw of the great fish emerged from the water and nuzzled against its resisting hands like a dog finding its master. [colour=aquamarine]”You people are quite strange.”[/colour] It leaned forwards and tumbled into the water.

“Nature is a cruel, uncaring, and petty foe. The men that do not bring her to heel are left to suffer whenever she deigns to make it so. So, we who like to fancy ourselves great must bend nature to our will. To do anything less, be it from sloth or from fear, would make us lesser men.” 

Perhaps the spirit didn’t hear him.

The waters of the trench gave a heavy, languid pulse, the sign of some great tail turning in the mud. They saw the water bulge with little fanfare, and the workmen of the river bore memories ever after of the body of the great gergaji, seen for a moment but seen clearly, skirting the shallow water of the breach and departing that place, only the peak of its highest fin breaking the river.

With its passage the water of the breach bloomed green, as green as crushed leaves. Mats of knotted, fibrous green scum bulged up from the waters and locked together, and died, their soggy mulch swiftly consumed by the sturdy roots of tall ferns. In an instant the broken earth was plugged by root and moss and wood, shaded by the fronds of a little grove, where before there was only mud.

A hundred water-lilies bloomed in the trench, and the spirit was seen no more.

[hr]

Far down-river, where five barge gondoliers were having tremendous trouble sating the appetite of a huge crocodile-pig and had lost their lizard charge to a gnawed rope, the buaya stood and shrugged its horny shoulders, and splashed placidly into the water. With good speed and great gnashing of nails the men came upon the city Akk-Ila. But there they found no mossy spirit, nor any sign of its beasts, nor was any news of such thing heard for many miles around.

[hider=Notes]
Cal passes Elmer’s giant dam and travels upriver with some terrified raftsmen.
It finds a sawfish to ride instead, leaving its increasingly leggy lizard and aetosaur with them.
It accidentally damages an irrigation project managed by Bal Ninazu, a mature and noble son of Lugal. There is some chaos and flooding, and a stand-off ensues between the wizard and Ninazu and his labourers.
The Akkylonians are quite displeased by Cal’s behaviour and his lack of etiquette, but everyone calms down in the end, and some reparations are made.
Cal decides not to visit Akk-Ila just yet.
[/hider]