Now that they had come together in an unknown ocean, the two Saedran chartsmen had a whole world to share. Aldo and Sherufa were colleagues from long ago, and over the years they had secretly traded knowledge about newly discovered lands, helping to complete the ever-expanding Mappa Mundi.
Earlier that afternoon, when the uneasy crewmembers mingled aboard the joined ships, Aldo recognized one of the Al-Orizin sailors with a start. “You! I know you.” The man looked startled; he pretended not to understand the Tierran language, but Aldo pressed him. “You delivered a message to me in Calay. Sen Sherufa gave you a package with her notes about the Great Desert and the Nunghal lands, and she sent you all the way from Olabar.”
Yal Dolicar flushed, feigning a heavy Uraban accent (which he had not used before). “You must be mistaken.”
Sen Sherufa frowned at him. “You know it’s true, Yal Dolicar. You are only aboard this ship because I vouched for your story before the soldan-shah. Chartsmen have perfect memories. You can’t expect him to have forgotten.”
Dolicar seemed nonplussed and embarrassed. “Oh yes! Now I remember. What a surprise to see you here.”
Aldo narrowed his eyes and continued with an edge in his voice, “You’re also the same man who sold me a fake map on the day I became a chartsman. At the Calay docks, you told a fantastic tale about coastlines you’d seen, and I paid for a chart of those foreign lands—but of course it was a scam.”
Yal Dolicar looked as if he very much wanted to be somewhere else. “I am certain that’s not true. I would never cheat a young man, and it was so many years ago you couldn’t possibly—”
“Chartsmen have perfect memories,” he and Sherufa reminded him in unison.
Dolicar flushed a deeper red and let out a long sigh. “How can I argue with you? My recollection is much fuzzier than that, but if I did something foolish and impetuous all those years ago, you’ll have to forgive me. I can repay you the money you lost—I have some very interesting coins I found on a mysterious ice-locked ship.…”
Aldo laughed. “Still telling ridiculous stories!”
“That one, Aldo, is actually true,” Sherufa said.
While the two separate crews continued repairs to the vessels, reluctantly sharing their sparse materials and tools, the two chartsmen engaged in hours of excited conversation. “Since we parted in Olabar, my life has changed.” Aldo smiled as he let the thoughts run back through his mind. “I’m married now, with two beautiful children, whom I miss very much…as well as my parents, my brother and sister. I used to long for adventure, but I have a new appreciation for home now. I miss Calay, too. And Landing Day festivities, and there’s a special kind of fruit pastry made in Alamont Reach. I liked to walk across town to one particular bakery, just so I could bring fresh pastries home for the whole family.” With the perfect recall of a chartsman, Aldo could crystallize every face, every memory. But it wasn’t the same as being there.
Sherufa sighed. “Ah, to sit at home, to cook my own meals…to relax on a spring evening during a rainstorm, with water running off the gutters and into the streets.” She smiled at him. “Imir would often join me for dinner so that he could listen to my stories. I think that’s why he wanted me to travel so much—just to give me more tales to amuse him.”
Aldo also told Sherufa about the mer-Saedrans and their lost continent, and she described how the Nunghal-Su had sailed around the southern continent up to Lahjar, proving that such a passage was possible. When the five reaches of Tierra were included, along with the five soldanates of Uraba, the Great Desert, and the southern ocean, their patchwork map sprawled across the entire tabletop.
Sen Sherufa laced her fingers together, as if to cage her excitement. “Significant pieces of the Mappa Mundi are falling into place.”
“We would know much more about the seas and the continents if Prester Hannes hadn’t offended the mer-Saedrans.” Aldo scowled at the memory. “Their undersea libraries have records of every place they’ve explored—coastlines, islands, open waters.” He sighed. “I doubt we’ll see them again.”
Working in concert, they compiled an extensive chart of the known world, piecing together details from their voyages and all the maps they possessed, the sights they had seen and the landfalls they had recorded. It was intricate and time-consuming work, but enjoyable.
As they compared the routes the two ships had taken, an obvious—and astonishing—realization came to both chartsmen at once. The Dyscovera had sailed west across the Oceansea, heading past the islands of Soeland Reach, then south…and the Al-Orizin had voyaged east, crossing the Middlesea, yet the ships they had both arrived at the far side of the world.
Aldo blinked at the implication. “How did we both end up here?”
“How, indeed? We have long known the world is round, and this is proof that the great seas are connected.” She drew in a sharp breath. “Continent after continent—the world is vaster and more amazing than I could imagine. Such a marvelous creation. Why would Ondun have left it?”
Aldo wasn’t sure how to accept Ystya’s stories about Iyomelka and her island, or what Mailes had explained to them in the Lighthouse at the End of the World, but his pulse quickened as he looked at the compiled map. “Do you think the Mappa Mundi is nearly finished? Is there more to explore, or are we merely adding fine details from this point onward?”
Sherufa ran her palm along the edge of the last piece of paper. “Or maybe Ondun created something greater than we could understand in a hundred more generations. All that we have seen might just be one grain of sand on a vast beach.”
“We still have to find Terravitae,” Aldo said. “From the charts Mailes gave us, and with Aiden’s Compass pointing true, we know we’re close…if our ships can survive long enough to get there.”
Sherufa gave a wistful sigh. “The only thing that matters is that someone describes the world…the whole world.”
The prophecy known to all Saedrans, the very creed by which chartsmen memorized the knowledge collected over the centuries, was clear enough. Aldo recited it. “Ondun will return when the Map of All Things is complete.”