Farmers & Mercenaries by Maxwell Alexander Drake

giant spider’s web. This one consisted of a large, flat dirt area, squarish in form. On the far side from where he stood, the ground rose to create a small, steep hilly area where the land had been allowed to grow as it willed—hardwood trees and undergrowth, for the most part.
    Arderi’s group had spent the entire tenday so far working this one section planting wheat. This particular field had lain fallow for several turns of the seasons, and the number of small stones that had collected here during that period amazed him.
    Where do all the stones come from? This field has been planted over and again for hundreds of turns of the seasons! Surely, some fielder before me should have removed them.
    He was glad they had finished more than half the field already. They should have no problems completing the rest by Holiday.
    When they reached the tool shed, Tinim Wilk, a rotund man who served as equipment keeper, handed Arderi a hoe. Continuing across the field to where they had left off the prior day, Arderi bent to his labors, letting his mind drift off to Alant’s Crystal that waited at home. Near two winters had passed since the last communication from his brother.
    In the first Memory Crystal, Alant was newly arrived in Mocley. He had not seen much of the city, yet the sights and sounds he had imbued for his family to experience were wonderful. It had been Arderi’s first experience with a Memory Crystal—they were expensive and not for simple folk like fielders. Alant had explained that all new Initiates of the Academy were allowed the use of one Crystal when they arrived at the school. The Crystal had allowed Arderi and his family to see and hear Alant. However, the most wondrous part was that it allowed them to experience the city as if they had actually been there themselves.
    What a fantastic device! Yet, Alant has been in Mocley long enough to know the city much better. I wonder what he will show us with this one.
    Alant had imbued the memory of his approach to Mocley on that first Crystal. He sat on the front bench of a wagon, Grand Master Grintan sitting proudly by his side, in the caravan that had taken him to the city. The Memory Crystal made the user drawing from it feel as though they were the one on the bench, sitting next to the old Sier. Arderi remembered feeling the strong breeze they rode into—how it felt as it blew across his exposed arms and tussled his long hair about. It carried the smell of salt in it, something Arderi had never smelled before. While the caravan drove down the road, Arderi was amazed to see houses and barns and planted fields sitting out in the open, exposed, with no protective walls. When he commented on them—in his brother, Alant’s voice, and not his own—the driver said they were called farms, each housing a single family who tended their own set of fields. Arderi could not imagine the feeling of sleeping so open and vulnerable. There was much on this Plane that could end the life of a fielder tending his crops.
    I suppose not everyone can afford the protection of a stead.
    When the wagon crested the last hill, the city of Mocley spread out before them like a wondrous blanket. He could not believe how large it was. The outer walls of the city snaked off into the horizon, and he saw no end to them. A vast, blue-green ocean rolled off the left side of the city. The sheer size of what he beheld terrified him.
    Alant said the city itself held over a thousand thousand people, yet I never dreamed…
    Rows of houses and shops, tens of buildings deep, clung to the front of the massive city wall like moss on the side of a tree. There were more buildings and people, wagons and animals, on the outside of this place than were contained within all of Hild’alan! The walls rose high—three or four times the height of his own stead’s walls—and Arderi marveled at how they could even stand at all. Over the tops of those walls, great buildings climbed even higher—reaching for the