Wander West, In Shadow

ETERNAL SULAYID

1.

The island-kingdom of Sulayid had stood since time immemorial, as unchanging as the endless blue oceans which surrounded it, stretching out to meet the sky at the distant horizon.

The island itself was a fortress, ringed all around by sheer sandstone cliffs worn smooth as pale bone by the waves that crashed against them in futile, hopeless assault. But then again, stone and water live a different life than man, and perhaps, by the ocean’s estimation, it was winning, slowly eating away at the cliffside. But they had never come close to victory while Sulayid stood, and it had stood for thousands of years, far back into forgotten history.

Only in one narrow stretch did the island dip down to meet the water in a gentle shore of fine white sand, and it was here that the men of Sulayid had built their homes, carved into the sandstone cliffs themselves. The buildings had stacked upon one another over the countless years, baked clay and mud stucco homes, square and squat on narrow streets, the thin veins of the city, leaning together like exhausted strangers packed into a tight crowd, holding one another up. Grand, granite spiraling towers thrust up above them like jagged ribs, collapsing and falling in on themselves, peaked with minarets and golden spires gleaming in the sun, and the higher up the city streets went the more ostentatious and decadent the buildings became. And above them all, carved from marble and nearly half as big again as the entire city, the Palace of Stars rose like a barbaric crown, its towering columns visible from anywhere below. There the Patriarch lived, and the nobles held their forums, and made their laws and designs upon Sulayid.

Nearly as impressive as the palace were the docks, stretching out into the water, where on either side great walls of sharp black stone rose like jagged daggers, forming a bay. These were called the Teeth of Minos, for it was said that a past Patriarch of that name had raised this stone from the ocean’s floor itself with the Art, for the city’s defense. Between the sheer cliffs and the bay Sulayid had its independence guaranteed, for it was a kingdom of learned men and great wizards, and if any fleet dared to come against them they would use their magic to summon wind and storm and turn the bay into any invader’s doom. It had been so long since any had tried that all records of such had been lost.

Traders came, though, to the docks, stone-built and lined with collapsed towers, with room for berthing well over a hundred ships, and all along the shore were grand warehouses for use of the great fishing fleet that fed the city and the cargo that came from overseas. And along the docks waved hundreds of flags, collected by the harbormasters of Sulayid from the kingdoms they did trade with. Many represented kingdoms which had disappeared, their flags turned to faded, sun-bleached ghosts, and others were nothing more than wispy tatters, dead skin, that the wind would soon tear from their poles and dash into the water, forgotten forever. Ancient Sulayid had seen countless flags disappear this way, had watched the glory of empires crumble; it was said that the men of Sulayid had themselves been the subject of some now-forgotten empire. And if it seemed, over the long march of time, as if the flags became a bit less grand, a bit more clumsily-made, well, that was just the way the world was. It faded, it all faded, kingdoms grew tired and fell, all except Sulayid, Eternal Sulayid, Sulayid-that-ever-will-be.

2.

The men of Sulayid traded for many things. They shipped out olives, and olive oil, and delicate jewelry of gold and silver and rubies, for the island was rich with these, and in fact beneath the ground was a great honeycombed warren of mining tunnels. They mined and extracted, too, a substance they called starblood, for it was said to come from the ancient remains of a divine star that visited the earth. This went straight to the Palace of the Stars, for the Patriarch and his wise men there.