Free Land of the Silver Dragon by Alys Clare

parchment long before it got to my village. Now I said, ‘I think I understand what you’re trying to do, but I’m afraid this –’ I waved a hand over the entire parchment – ‘doesn’t really mean anything to me.’
    â€˜No reason why it should,’ he replied. He drew a breath, held it and then said, ‘I am not the only man attempting to map the world, Lassair.’
Map
. I memorized the word. ‘Men of the Church are working on it, although from what I have seen and heard of their travail, their faith is the driving force, and Jerusalem is always presented as the world’s centre: its navel, if you like, for the Greeks used the word
omphalos
, meaning the same thing. Not that their world’s navel was the Christians’ Jerusalem, of course, but Delphi,’ he added, half to himself. ‘But I digress. This map –’ he put his fingertips delicately on to his own beautiful work – ‘represents a different aspect of the world; or, more accurately, the world viewed without the bias of faith. Here is the land, and here are the surrounding seas.’ He indicated first a large, amorphous shape covered with pictures and writing, and then the rippled area I’d already identified as water. ‘See these ships?’ Once more he pointed, and, now that I was looking more closely, I saw that the same little images of square-sailed ships were dotted all over the manuscript.
    â€˜Yes,’ I breathed.
    â€˜Behold the voyages of the Norsemen,’ he said eagerly, excitement thrumming in his voice. ‘Into the north and the west they went, heading out on the wide ocean that has no end.’ The left-hand edge of the map, indeed, ended in a mass of ripples, gradually decreasing in size. ‘Down into the great land mass that lies to the south and the east, those long, narrow boats edging ever onwards down the great rivers until finally emerging into seas very different from those that we know in the north. One such voyage led to Miklagard, their Great City,’ he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. I thought for a moment he was going to elucidate; explain, perhaps, that strange name.
Miklagard
, I repeated silently. But, with a shake of his shoulders, he went on in a different direction. ‘So many miles they travelled, pushing on, on, into strange lands where unknown trees and flowers flourished, where unlikely animals thrived, where a man’s very skin was of a different hue.’
    â€˜What drove them on?’ I whispered. It was all but unimaginable, to think of those men in their frail boats, so far from home, voyaging into the unknown.
    â€˜Trade, for the most part,’ Gurdyman said, grinning as my face fell in disappointment. ‘Trade, or the need to find new lands to live in. I am sorry to give you so prosaic an answer, child, but we must always face the truth, even when it is not what we had hoped it would be.’
    A memory surfaced. ‘Hrype’s rune stones!’ I exclaimed, remembering.
    Gurdyman looked at me approvingly. ‘
Yes
,’ he agreed. ‘They were fashioned from the translucent green stone that is brought out of the east.’ He grabbed a fold of the glorious, heavy silk shawl that he always wore and thrust it at me. ‘This, too, reached my hands only after a very long journey. The fabric is precious, Lassair, and silk of this quality is reserved for great kings and emperors.’ He smoothed the shawl delicately, his fingers hovering over the image of a magnificent and surely imaginary bird, with a brilliant blue head and a great fan of tail feathers that seemed to be dotted with eyes. Elsewhere, set against the same dark red background, flowers, leaves and lithe little creatures like weasels flowed together in an intricate pattern. ‘One of my own forebears brought home this shawl. It cost him dear, for in exchange he had to part with a lot more of his skins than he