The Wizards' Eyrie

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Da Xiong muttered under his breath as he struggled to maneuver the cart around another mud-slicked rock, his dirty sleeve wiping away beads of sweat from his brow. Out here, with no one but his dozing master to overhear him, he could finally speak his mind and drop the carefully constructed facade he'd maintained since escaping the capitol five years ago. Progress along the muddy ground was agonizingly slow for a man of his size and strength, made even more labored by the weight of the cart he half-pulled, half-dragged through puddles and stones. Master Qie, as usual in the late afternoon, slept peacefully on his cushion, oblivious to the bumpy and intermittent travel. Qie had insisted that Xiong load the cart with cheap wines at their last stop, citing trade as the reason. Trade, indeed. Not even the local villagers would deign to drink this swill, or properly maintain a road for that matter. Back home, even minor roads were meticulously laid with precision-cut flagstones. Xiong noted where cutting a swale on the left would significantly improve drainage, and over there one could easily re-grade and straighten the path with an eight-man crew and two days' labor. Just a few li back, they'd passed a fine, defensible junction where, if they had any sense at all, the locals would have sited a cistern and a toll collector. Pfft. Barbarians. The only redeeming quality of trudging through this godforsaken land was that Master Qie was now safely out of reach of the Imperial Censor and his torturers. Ahead of them, the tower pierced the canopy, its peak three times higher than the tallest tree. There were temples taller than this at home, but none made entirely of stone. A narrow, irregular staircase spiraled to the top of the tower, requiring Xiong to leave the cart behind and lug the wine up on his back. The glass orb at the top glowed dimly, brighter than the sun in the overcast sky. Xiong estimated the amount of sand, coal, and workers needed to engineer a glass sphere the size of a house, concluding that either it was clever trickery or the local villagers possessed a secret foundry bigger than the Emperor's stables. Or, most likely given the Eyrie's inhabitants, it was magic. Wizards. These people knew the importance of learning and careful study, even if they wouldn't deign to apply their erudition to building a passable turnpike. Tomorrow, they would meet these mages and record their Eyrie in Master Qie's ever-thickening journal. Page by page, the catalogue of strange places and people grew, but Xiong doubted anyone in the capitol would ever read it. He still held onto hope, but daily became more convinced that he and his master would never return to silk sheets, polished rice, and love left behind. Da Xiong sighed and trundled forward. Perhaps, sweet Tianyu, I will hold you again someday.