Elinor. The Deserted Valley. Book 1. Mikhail Shelkov

sleep and had seen everything), and found myself under the black dome of the night sky, dotted with countless glowing stars. It was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life! Many years have passed, but I still can’t forget how, even though I was a clever, albeit young, child, I stood right before the cosmic abyss, as the distant, delightful stars seemed to wink at me.

      And the Amatt estate… Oh! It seemed to me a city within a city! Of course, Min-Mirif itself seemed boring to me after Kay-Samiluf. But the ancestral nest Mirif Amatt had clearly been built with great enthusiasm and inspiration, with greenhouses full of flowers and fruit trees from all over the continent, fountains spurting beyond the roof of the mansion, halls with statues and columns. The underground part of the estate turned out to be several times larger than the mansion itself. There was everything – cabinets, a library, an alchemy laboratory, even a secret passageway to the mine. The underground halls were entirely decorated with precious metals and gems found in the local mines… I squealed with delight when night fell on Min-Mirif and my father guided me into the observatory tower and taught me to position myself on the map of the starry sky.

      I had many teachers in my life. My father hired the best ones so I would receive a good education. But he taught me astronomy himself because he didn’t entrust it to anyone else. It was a little strange… Umar Amatt had gained fame as an explorer and writer. Other learned scholars taught me literature and history… But astronomy – only my father!

      Yes, obviously, he saw me that night when I left the sleeping tent, so small and defenseless before the whole universe.

      I did enroll into the high school of the Kay-Samiluf Academy and graduate with honors. My enrollment happened when I was twelve. Before that, I spent six years on a family estate. The best sages of the Valley came to teach me the basics of science. But the best teacher remained my father… I am grateful to him for his lessons on astronomy, but the most valuable lessons were those about life, which, maybe, my father gave me without even knowing it.

      The Old Pages Clan had its own museum in the mansion of Amatt. There was a collection of rare peculiar things, which were brought from different corners of Elinor, that I hadn’t even seen in the Kay-Samiluf Academy museum. Many relics emitted special energy; I felt it. My father didn’t, but he believed me. He said that people react to special energy and magic differently.

      Indeed, our scientists agree on the idea that this energy exists, but none of them can explain its origin. Even if some of the alchemists managed to equip objects with magical abilities, it only happened by the experimental method or by the long arm of coincidence. There is no scientific theory about obtaining this special energy. The Mechanicum (Tuasmatus) do not reveal their secrets to anyone. But our scientists aren’t sure that the force with which many of their mechanisms work is the same magic that, say, the Ancestral Stone and other antiquities emit. I believe that special energy, controlled by the Mechanicum, is more explicable by science than the special energy of the First Race.

      Azir Amunjadee wrote in his works that the secret of special energy was mastered by the Ulutau – mastered through self-knowledge and self-improvement. But is this the same inexplicable energy that I’m talking about? The whole world still questions the role of special energy (magic) in the bodily transformations of the Vedichs. If, of course, those transformations are true…

      But I do feel magic! I know it…

      I constantly asked my father to take me to The Stone of the Ancestors in the Valley. But he always flatly refused… Father, who had only ever encouraged my curiosity, refused me! He said that I wasn’t old enough for the Valley.

      It seems he considered traveling through the desert, where there was a small, but still existing probability of meeting a scorpio-angler or dragon, less dangerous than living in the Valley. My father had always spoken of the Valley reverently and thus had only aroused my imagination further, but at the same time refused! Perhaps that’s why I still think about the Valley with some apprehension, but nonetheless with admiration also.

      I traveled a lot, indeed! After all, I already mentioned this is the greatest passion of my life, and it is impossible to satisfy a great passion! I visited the Golden Ruins twice… I visited the outskirts of the Nanol-Mo forest. I saw the powerful Taurs and their settlements made of logs in the middle of forest glades. And for my twelfth birthday, before entering high school, my father gave me a gift – he took me to Bandabaze! Yes, to the largest city of the Guawars!

      From the port of Chail, on the light and high-speed ship “Lightning”, we arrived in Bandabaze in four days! Four days! A caravan of camels from Kay-Samiluf to Min-Mirif sometimes takes up to two months. And here – four days! And then we spent another week on a ship from Bandabaze to Doyno-Kash. Incredible! To this day, my mother doesn’t know that I’ve been to Bandabaze… My father and I agreed not to tell her. If she knew, then probably in a fit of anger she would have killed both of us. I’m exaggerating, of course. Mother is kind. It’s just that the Guawars are looked upon as dirty robbers and pirates.

      My father still preferred a trip to Bandabaze to a journey to Valley. Why? I don’t believe the Valley markets are more dangerous than Bandabaze!

      By the way, the Guawars do seem wild and scary at first. Especially for those brought up in the noble Djunits families. But I had traveled enough to understand the beauty of these sea people. And I fell in love with the sea! It was then that I decided that, one day, I would sail away on the Guawarian ship to the east… To the Edge of the World!

      I thought Kay-Samiluf was a noisy city, and no other will surpass it. I was mistaken! The buzz of commercial areas, complemented by music from taverns and street chants, cannot be drowned out, even if you stuff your ears with Ayno-Sufic cotton wool. Your nostrils are always tickled with the sugary smells of fruit and hot spices, which are mixed with the aromas of fried fish and the stink of foul fish. To the rhythm of the Guawarian gulps, tamed beasts tingle from all-around – screeching monkeys, small fluffy tics, and huge talking parrots shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow.

      In the middle of the city, opposite the Royal Bay, towers the palace of the Governor of Bandabaze. The palace of our izir is a yellow-golden hue like the sandy djunes. On the contrary, the Guawarian Governor’s one is snow white! A snow white palace, with azure sea and evergreen forests all around.

      Thank you, Father! I will never forget that journey! It was the best birthday of my life!

      My father and I returned to Kay-Samiluf from the port of Doyno-Kash. And since then, I haven’t seen him… Father went to the Valley. Later he visited the caravan in the Shohan, the capital of the Ito Empire, and the kingdom of Reyro, a Tuasmatus abode. He was going to visit the Vedichian.. Oh, he would have definitely discerned their secrets.

      He wrote and wrote about his travels… About the fact that he visited the reception of the Emperor himself, that he saw the golems in the Mechanicum (and, by the way, didn’t feel any magic) and rode mammoths, the huge shaggy elephants of the north. Meanwhile I dissolved into melancholy in the stuffy walls of my school in Kay-Samiluf. I dreamed that one day, I would go on a new fascinating journey.

      My father didn’t make an appearance in Kay-Samiluf. At first, this upset mother greatly, and then she became angry with him. Day and night, all she did was berate him. I was sad too, but I didn’t reproach my father. I was melancholic, lonely without him, but I knew that if he hadn’t returned in so long, it meant he was on the path of a very important discovery. I was eager to graduate from school and join my father as quickly as possible; I could not wait to join the Old Pages Clan myself.

      I have an older brother, Khasim Umar Amatt. His full patrimonial name includes the first name of father; mine is from mother… Perhaps this is a mistake – whilst I’m exactly like father in everything, Khasim is a copy of our mother. Home means the world to him!

      Khasim