The Vanished God

By Loretta Johnson

The foreign mage Heliodore enjoys a quiet life in Traipse until she's drawn into an illegal plot to find the vanished god Nicabar. Fearing execution, she flees to Karse with her neighbour Sinath, a templeman who insists he met the god as a child.

But their hopes of finding a safe haven are short lived. In a stunning reversal of policy, the Temple Elders announce they will attempt to call the god. The region descends into chaos as Heliodore and Sinath race to discover why Nicabar disappeared and what will happen if he is forced to return.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Loretta Johnson
• Release date: Sep 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9780992114916

Loretta Johnson

Loretta Johnson was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario.

Book preview

The Small Ocean Series, Book One

THE VANISHED GOD

Loretta Johnson

Copyright © Loretta Johnson, 2013, 2015

Cover design copyright © Loretta Johnson, 2013, 2015

Image copyright © RetroClipArt, 2013 (dragon)

Image copyright © Nella, 2013 (parchment)

Both images used under license from Shutterstock.com

This cover was designed using Gimp 2.8

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Find all the author's published works by searching for Loretta Johnson at your favourite ebook retailer.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: A Tour of the City

Chapter 2: Three Royals

Chapter 3: A Gift from a Civilized Race

Chapter 4: Hot, Loud and Smokey

Chapter 5: Dumplings and Dandies

Chapter 6: Visible Invisible

Chapter 7: The First Sign of Morbidity

Chapter 8: The Formula

Chapter 9: Greeneyes

Chapter 10: The Cost of Peace

Chapter 11: Not Much in Common

Chapter 12: Tirconnon

Chapter 13: The Fountains

Chapter 14: A Concerned Citizen

Chapter 15: Souvenirs

Chapter 16: Betrayals

Chapter 17: What Rats Fear

Chapter 18: The Care of the Community

Chapter 19: Euphoric Disorientation

Chapter 20: Scholars and Alchemists

Chapter 21: Thirteen Doves

Chapter 22: A la Mode

Chapter 23: The Final Word

Chapter 24: Church and State

Chapter 25: The God Calling Spell

Chapter 26: The Neev Library Presents

Chapter 27: Pilgrimage

Chapter 28: Beyond the Veil

Chapter 29: Vessani Spring

Chapter 30: No Way to Fight a War

Chapter 31: Family Secrets

Chapter 32: Maker

Chapter 33: Aftermath

Chapter 1: A Tour of the City

The young mage poled her raft toward the centre of the shallow lake that covered the haunted battleground. It was an intensely bright, sunny day. The sky was too blue, the hills surrounding the lake too green. The warm wind smelled of clover. It was a day for a picnic not for raising the dead, and yet by nightfall all the ghosts trapped beneath the lake would be free. Heliodore felt a mixture of pride and fear at her part in the necromancer's plan. He stood on his own raft at the centre of the lake, a tall, thin man with a heavy spellbook in his hands. She stopped her raft beside his and he frowned as her pole screeched on the glassy lakebed.

Shall we begin?

She nodded.

He opened the spellbook and chanted. The curses etched into the fused ground loosened and ghosts escaped up through the gaps. The sun dimmed then vanished. Faces peered at Heliodore through the mist, hands reached out. She called the ghosts to her and ordered them into ranks and columns. The familiarity of standing in formation calmed them, made them forget they stood shoulder to shoulder with their enemies.

More came. She soon lost count of the different uniforms. How many battles had been fought here? How many ghosts were there? She pushed away the panic. When the lake was covered, she began stacking them in the air above the first group. It was so cold. Everything was grey. She couldn't remember the colours she'd seen an hour before.

Are you tired?

The necromancer's voice was soft and kind. Heliodore turned toward him. His eyes were two black pits sucking her power in. Impossible to fight. He laughed with a black hole for a mouth. She could see now this was always his plan. He never intended to free the ghosts, only to steal her power. The betrayal was sickening. His draining spell expanded until she was at the centre of a spinning black vortex and she knew this time she wouldn't escape . . .

Heliodore woke screaming. The room was a dim, murky green like being underwater and it took her a few moments to recognise her apartment. She got up and opened the round stained glass window at the end of the small room, letting in cool air. Doves murmured on the courtyard balconies. Not yet dawn. She was in Traipse, a country free of magic, at the other end of the continent from her mountain village of Beih Din and the haunted battleground and the necromancer.

Her heart hammered in her chest. Thirty years of going over the same hour again and again. Surely her subconscious would get bored with it by now? But no. The fear came back every time. Heliodore forced herself to stretch, move around, grin, because someone had told her once smiling made you feel happy.

After fleeing the battleground, she'd buried most of her power inside herself and told people she was a magician, the weakest type of sorcerer. No one attacked magicians. She still didn't know how she'd broken the necromancer's draining spell but she had. He was dead, she was alive, and now that she had settled in a country with no magic it would never happen again.

She knocked on the wooden window frame for good luck then frowned. Her Traipseni neighbours normally banged on the walls when she had nightmares so they had to be away. Sinath, the templeman on her left, did it to wake her up; the unnamed potter on her right did it to complain. She always wanted to ask Sinath about the Kenchakin Cycle, the Traipseni holy book, but he got nervous when they talked for more than a minute in the hallway and a foreigner inviting a Traipseni into her apartment was simply not done.

Sticalo and Karse, the other two countries in the Satako region, were more open despite being ruled by Traipse but openness led to curiosity. She'd originally settled in Sticalo but had to move when her neighbours got too nosey. Better to be snubbed by the Traipseni than to face a lot of awkward questions—how could she see in the dark, why did her hair stand up when she was startled, did everyone from her country have amber eyes that changed colour—and the inevitable requests for impossible feats of magic. No doubt the Traipseni noticed she was different but they were far too superior to mention it.

Heliodore washed her face then looked in the mirror as she braided her long, black hair. Round face, light brown skin, slanted amber eyes. Still no wrinkles after forty-six years. She blended in well enough with the taller, brown haired, olive skinned Satakans if she kept her head down and didn't wear yellow, which made her eye colour impossible to ignore. People often mistook her for a girl because of her height.

She looked out the window. The sky was getting lighter. The cookshops would be open by the time she got to Blue Lantern plaza where she worked as a scribe. Maybe a leisurely Sticalen breakfast before work would improve her mood.

Downstairs, the foyer was littered with satchels and toolboxes: the first hallmark of a holy day. Heliodore groaned and set her writing box down by the wall. Sure enough, the hostel courtyard was filled with wide robed Stical'ni and Kasreni in tunics and trousers; not a slim Traipseni robe to be seen but hers. There would be no work today. No buying or selling. The Traipseni had gathered in their great golden-domed temple before dawn and would remain there until sunset, praying to their absent god, Nicabar. That explained where Sinath and the potter were.

The Sticalen plumbers sitting on the steps nodded to her as she went down into the courtyard. Were you off to the temple library, scholar? one of them asked.

No. I thought I was working.

Didn't we all. The cooks are doing pancakes instead of porridge this time so you don't have to go back upstairs to get a bowl.

Great. It would be a Sticalen breakfast after all.

Heliodore made her way between the small groups of foreigners and joined the breakfast queue. To get around the buying and selling prohibition, all the foreigners in the hostel donated money to run a free kitchen on holy days. She gave generously but anonymously; no point in drawing more attention to herself than she already did. The queue moved up and she passed the small courtyard fountain. The fountain statue usually made her smile: the god Nicabar as a plump, bronze crow spewing water boisterously from its mouth. Today it only reminded her of how wraiths spoke through the mouths of their followers.

The cook handed her a thick buckwheat pancake that covered her two hands and she spent the next few minutes getting the monstrous thing under control. The tart plum jam on top was a good compliment to the heavy, slightly nutty pancake. Heliodore wandered over to the hostel gates as she ate and looked out into the large plaza. It was deserted, as blank as an architect's sketch and far more sinister. The shuttered shop fronts and clean flagstones seemed to conceal unnamed terrors that would burst out if she glanced away. She deliberately closed her eyes. Why had she read so many sorcerers' accounts of cursed cities in her travels?

Jam ran down her arm to her elbow. She attacked the pancake again, to the amusement of her upstairs neighbour, Andech, who joined her by the gate. He was Karseni and also worked as a scribe in Blue Lantern.

They could make you a smaller one, he said.

She swallowed. No. It's perfect.

I think this is the first holy day where I bought groceries the day before.

Mark it on your calendar.

I will. He gestured at the plaza with his half eaten pancake. Our capital would never be this empty unless there was a plague. You'd think that after two hundred years they'd stop praying to Nicabar and admit he's gone.

Would you if he were your god?

We Karseni don't need a god. And we especially don't need a Traipsen god.

That's the sticky point isn't it?

Ya. Maybe we could convince the Stical'ni to stop paying the tithes and see if Nicabar comes back and burns their capital down again. Problem is the Stical'ni are hoping we'll do the same thing. Andech threw crumbled pancake onto the flagstones and the doves came down to feed. You're going to lose our bet by the way, Helio.

Heliodore swallowed the last bite of pancake and licked her fingers. Don't think so. Celemno will marry M'shar Jol before the year ends.

Celemno, the ambitious leader of the Physicians Guild, had been publicly courting the Traipseni ruler for several months. Most Traipseni supported the match but the foreigners in Traipse were more cynical. Heliodore had no idea of how it would turn out, not having lived in the region long enough to see a royal wedding, but arguing strongly for the marriage produced more interesting conversations than naysaying did.

Not a chance, Helio. The Temple Elders won't let Jol marry a woman from the plazas. He's got to pick a royal or the wedding's off.

M'shar Hin married from the plazas. His consort Allaerio was from Long Fountain court, right?

Ya, but Hin was an exceptional ruler: liberal, enlightened, generous. Jol's nothing in comparison.

Nicabar disappeared three years after M'shar Hin's death, making him the last Traipseni to rule in the god's presence. Having read Hin's conversations with his beloved god at the temple library, Heliodore was grateful for Hin's sake that the god hadn't disappeared earlier.

Andech lowered his voice. What do you think happened to Nicabar?

I don't know.

Come on, Helio. You've travelled across the entire continent almost. You've never heard of a god disappearing suddenly?

To be honest, no. And she hadn't searched for a place that was free of magic so she could start asking why.

So why do you study their holy book?

It has more depth than a Sticalen shadow show.

That's not a real answer.

Are you seeing Torilben today? They usually helped their Sticalen boss explain the holy day rules to the confused newcomers who gathered in Blue Lantern plaza.

Andech sighed. No. I have letters to write.

Me, too.

You still haven't finished that geometry proof, Helio? I thought you said that Sticalen scholar's theory was full of holes.

She shrugged. It is but proving it concisely isn't as simple as I thought.

He grinned and tried to poke her with a jammy finger. She dodged away. So maybe he isn't wrong. Maybe you're just prejudiced.

Would you care to read it yourself?

Mmm, maybe if I have trouble sleeping.

Har, har.

Back upstairs, Heliodore noticed a thin line of brown light on the hallway wall: Sinath's door was ajar. Had it been open earlier? She couldn't remember. She knocked, then peered in. The room was dappled brown and gold. His window was one of the better ones in the hostel, like an illuminated vat of beer. His bed was empty. She stepped inside and closed the door, breathing in the scent of paper, ink and incense. No cooking smells, so no dinner the night before. Few clothes and no writing materials. The brazier on the little iron balcony had been cleaned out.

Heliodore frowned. Had Sinath spent the night in the temple? As a templeman maybe he was required to but she'd seen him in the evening before other holy days. She pulled a few threads from his robe, whispered a simple witch charm for seeing traces of past auras and looked into the spirit world. Anonymous grey shadows—auras of people she didn't know—surrounded Sinath's bright green aura and dragged him out the door.

Her concentration broke and the aura tracings vanished. Who would abduct a templeman right before a holy day? She expanded her sight but could only see the surrounding five plazas, which unsurprisingly showed no sign of Sinath's green aura. If her power wasn't buried, she would be able to see the whole region, all three countries, and across the Small Ocean to the next continent. Better not to think about that.

She shut Sinath's door and went into her own apartment. There was no point in trying to work on the geometry proof now. She draped a scarf over her head in the Sticalen style so the guards wouldn't mistake her for a Traipseni girl, shoved the offending proof in her satchel and went out for a walk.

Heliodore expected her walk to be silent but the streets were filled with the sounds of nature. So strange for a desert city. Songbirds trilled in cages hung on balconies. Doves cooed in the shade. And from every direction she heard the splash and hiss of a thousand courtyard fountains. They were a gift to thank Nicabar for making the holy waters of Vessani Spring when he first came to Traipse. By law, each courtyard had to have a fountain and each fountain statue had to depict a different scene from the Kenchakin Cycle, the Traipseni holy book. It fuelled an entire industry of Cycle scholars, artisans, smiths and plumbers. And, of course, lawyers who fattened on the fountain disputes.

Round Hin windows studded the white washed walls of every building like giant sweets. Those made from recycled glass were dull and dark like the ones in the hostel but the new ones glowed with every jewel tone imaginable. Two hundred and fifty years earlier, M'shar Hin had taken his philosophy of enlightenment literally and cut windows into the defensive walls of the new palace. The plazas followed suit, bringing light and air into the dark cells the Traipseni called home.

The few foreigners Heliodore passed walked quickly and stuck close to the walls. She cut through the plazas and stood in the middle of intersections, looking up and down the streets. The guards on patrol to ensure the shops stayed closed ignored her. The temple's golden dome appeared and disappeared over the rooftops. Without the ever-present crowds, she could tease out the original design of the city, trace the grand courts of the founding families among the hostels and plazas and smaller common courts that had come later.

The Avenue was wider than she remembered. The one original undivided street in the city, it ran from the palace to the northern gate then turned into a caravan route to Vessani Spring and the port town of Pharec Harbour. Even this far down the Avenue, she could see the palace: a spreading jumble of white marble blocks backed by the purple stripe of the Glimmin mountains.

Cirr was a city built for the glory of a god. Hundreds of years of human habitation and the god's disappearance couldn't diminish its purpose.

There were three palace guards and a carriage outside the hostel when Heliodore got back. The royals often asked her to recite passages from the Kenchakin Cycle as a novelty but never on a holy day. She pulled her scarf back so the lead guard could see her eyes clearly; no other identification was necessary. How can I help you, ser?

The man frowned. Where have you been?

Walking.

For five hours?

I have a project that I'm avoiding.

The man stared at her until she reluctantly handed over the geometry proof. He turned the papers around, looking at the diagrams from various angles. How does this relate to the Cycle?

It doesn't. She explained why she was writing it.

So what's the flaw in this scholar's theory?

Other then the fact that he's Sticalen?

The guard didn't smile but he did return the papers. Asera Tuan wants your advice about something urgent.

Tuan's family was second to M'shar Jol's, a big step up from the minor royals she usually worked for. What is it?

Don't know. You'll have to ask her.

There was no point in arguing. Royal prerogative allowed them to call anyone to the palace at any time for any reason. Payment, in their opinion, was optional. Heliodore sighed and climbed into the carriage.

Chapter 2: Three Royals

Lorc reclined on his least comfortable sofa, the one stuffed with prickly horsehair, and watched the foreign scholar and his cousin Tuan over the top of a Cycle criticism. Tuan sat upright on one of his diningroom chairs while the scholar was hunched over Tuan's scroll, as she had been for the past two weeks. Both were short and slim but the scholar was darker: long black braid instead of brown, gold-brown skin instead of olive. Same intense expression. It was like Tuan had employed her own shadow to study the scroll.

He had to get the scroll away from Tuan somehow and burn it. Even if the scholar said it was a fake, the scroll was too dangerous to allow it to exist. How had he gotten into this mess anyway? His older brother Pash could talk Tuan out of it if he tried but he was too busy pickling himself with Sticalen wine to care. The scholar rubbed her face. Lorc was certain her eyes had grown darker, not just the bags under her eyes but her irises, mustard yellow instead of amber. How was that possible? She was straightening her notes now. Surely she couldn't be finished yet? His hands were trembling.

The scroll is genuine, asera.

Tuan clasped her hands and let out a long sigh. Very good.

Lorc struggled to sit up. Wait. How can you be certain?

It fits one of the, ah, less detailed parts of the Kenchakin Cycle that concern General Kolb's movement from Karse to Sticalo after he burned the docks in Tir Argath.

There are other gaps in the Cycle that are more important.

The scholar shook her head emphatically. No, ser. The Cycle is whole and perfect, a true record of how your god Nicabar helped you vanquish your neighbours in Sticalo and Karse. There are no gaps.

That wasn't true of course. Anyone who read the Cycle knew there were parts that were unclear or simply missing. But since the Elders had a habit of imprisoning anyone who pointed this out, the scholars learned to allude to these parts as 'less detailed' or 'open to interpretation'. Lorc pounced. Then what is the scroll? If it's real, why wasn't it included in the Kenchakin Cycle?

The scholar glanced at Tuan who was frowning dangerously. Do you want me to answer that, asera?

Can you?

The scholar nodded. The Cycle is whole and perfect but it is known that before the book was sanctified it was a document written by the holies based on eyewitness accounts of your god's arrival and the war. The Cycle was first used in your temple two years after the end of the war. Clearly the holies were working to a tight deadline but they would never destroy the documents they couldn't include.

Tuan laughed, a little insanely in Lorc's opinion. Yes. That makes sense. I found the document in the temple library. Perhaps Nicabar guided a holy to move the scroll from the archives so I could find it. Tuan flicked Lorc's little bronze heron paperweights off the scroll and rolled it up.

Lorc felt ill thinking of the holies writing what would become the Cycle or maybe it was from hearing the scholar talk openly about it without fear. It showed how constrained his own life was. Could you leave the scroll here tonight, Tuan? I'd like to study it.

Tuan slipped the scroll into her sleeve. Leave your notes for my cousin to read, scholar. I'll show you to your room.

A servant could do that, Tuan. We need to talk–

His apartment door swung shut behind the two women. Lorc set the crushed Cycle criticism on a side table. It was hard to breathe. Soon, Tuan would attempt to call their absent god, breaking the Elders' ban, and the Elders would kill them for heresy. He would die. The fashionable nihilism he cultivated to fit in with the other royals had vanished in the past month, replaced by a surprisingly strong desire to live. He couldn't get the scroll and even if he could he lacked the courage to destroy it now he knew it was real. So what could he do?

Heliodore yawned as she followed Tuan down the white marble hallway. Her royal patron was hard to figure out. Tuan was notoriously devout but wore a fashionable pink and yellow silk robe instead of pious white linen. Her perfume was equally opulent: oleander and rose. She owned the scroll but insisted on studying it in Lorc's apartment rather than her own. Lorc was so high strung that Heliodore expected him to bolt from the room when she looked at him. Not her choice of confidante but maybe some residual childhood friendship made Tuan ask Lorc for help in this private matter.

Tuan turned left instead of right, away from the mouldy little suite Heliodore had grown to hate. What was going on now? May I go home tomorrow, asera?

No. I might have more questions.

Wonderful. She'd worked sixteen hours a day to give Tuan a quick answer and this was her reward? She scowled at the royal's back. The faint hope of earning at least a tip vanished. But if she left without Tuan's permission, the palace guards would arrest her and bring her back. Was she in one of those plaza horror stories of people stuck in the palace for weeks and weeks, losing jobs, apartments and businesses, even fiancés and spouses? No, Torilben would take care of things for her; he always looked after his scribes.

Tuan stopped by a door into the old palace and lit one of the lanterns hanging on the wall.

Heliodore yawned again. Where are we going, asera?

The roof. All the stairs are in the old palace.

That explained why Heliodore hadn't found them in her brief, early morning excursions.

The unlit rooms were filled with old furniture and boxes but the paths between the piles were free of dust. One room led into the next in the old style, before the Traipseni had discovered how useful hallways were. Tuan switched the lantern to her other hand and the yellow spell mark Heliodore had accidentally left on the scroll glowed accusingly through Tuan's sleeve.

Heliodore frowned. Maybe using a sorcerer's provenance spell to covertly confirm the scroll's age hadn't been such a great idea. At least the strange, indelible yellow mark was invisible to the Traipseni. Why was it that she could perform witches' spells perfectly but sorcerers' spells always gave her unpredictable results or produced bizarre side effects?

Tuan stopped beside a ratty, grey velvet curtain and held the lantern up. They were the same height. Tuan's eyes were hazel. Heliodore fought down another yawn. It would be so easy to touch Tuan's mind and make the royal grant her permission to leave the palace. Tuan wouldn't feel a thing. One undetectable nudge and she could sleep in her own bed again.

Tuan frowned. You look upset, scholar. Not having second thoughts, I hope?

Heliodore forced a smile. No, asera. I'm certain the scroll is genuine. Nudge things too often and she'd be running from a mob—or ruling the country, which was in many ways worse. She didn't want the responsibility.

Tuan nodded then pushed the curtain aside, revealing a wide spiral staircase leading upward.

It was cooler on the roof. Tuan led her past a large, blue pavilion with low couches and potted palms, and leaned against the parapet on the city side. The temple's golden dome nestled in the middle of spiralling plazas like a dragon's egg. The last of the settling sun coloured the buildings orange and red, and turned the all fountains into flames.

What do you see, scholar?

The visible power of Nicabar.

Tuan snorted, Quoting Scholar Ubor? Spare me. Those insipid fountains are our only industry and they cripple us. Everything we own is manufactured by foreigners. All our food is imported, not as a luxury but out of necessity because the hills have parched. There is nothing for us to live off now. Come and look.

So much for labelling Tuan a typical zealot.

On the other side of the pavilion, the Glimmin mountains were a sudden purple wall that blocked out the southern horizon. How could they be so immense? Heliodore stepped up on the edge of a potted palm and looked back at the city. It was much lower than the palace and sloped away toward the north gate and the desert beyond. She jumped down again. The design was brilliant and disturbing. Clearly Nicabar was the main architect. By building the city in a depression, he'd reduced the huge natural boundary of the mountains to an ornament, a decorative purple line that emphasized the whiteness of the palace. So where was the god now? Why had he left? Not questions to ask if she wanted a peaceful life.

You see? Tuan said, misinterpreting her reaction. M'shar Hin wrote about hunting game in the forests behind the palace. Where are the forests now? The green land Nicabar promised us when he made Vessani Spring is gone. But instead of using the water we have for irrigation, we squander it in fountains built for a god who no longer answers our prayers.

The sun dipped below the Sticalen hills in the west. The foothills darkened and the tops of the mountains glowed red. Heliodore looked up. A few stars were visible. The desert air made them seem farther away than in other countries.

The Elders used the words of the Ken'cha to call Nicabar to them before he disappeared. Tuan removed the scroll from her sleeve and cradled it in her hands. The yellow spell mark made the skin around her fingers glow as if she were cupping a candle flame. Now my copy of the Ken'cha is more complete than theirs. I will call Nicabar and he will come back and I will ask the questions the Elders are too afraid to voice. Why are we so dependant on the ones we've conquered? Why do we still live in a desert? What does our god want from us?

Tears ran down Tuan's cheeks; she thought her grief was hidden in the darkness. Heliodore looked away. No point in explaining that Tuan's faith alone would draw Nicabar to her if he were still here. But the god was gone, and the bond between him and his followers was broken. What comfort could she offer the royal, then? The Ken'cha, of course. Heliodore slowly recited the opening lines of The Arrival of Nicabar. When Tuan nodded her approval, Heliodore continued the Cycle passage to its end. The stars seemed to spin overhead.

Pash lounged on a low couch, the foreign scholar perched on a stool to his left and a fresh bottle of Sticalen wine on the table to his right. He was in no mood for company at two in the morning but he could hardly tell his servant to send the woman away after insisting earlier that he simply had to talk with her before dawn. What had he wanted to ask her? Every practical question left his head. Lorc would know what to say but Lorc was terribly boring. Pash decided to have some fun.

The scroll is a good way to commit suicide isn't it? he said.

The scholar stared at him blearily.

If the Elders find us with it we'll be executed for heresy and if we do succeed in calling our dear god he'll likely kill us for our presumption. Either way, we'll soon find the answers we are so desperately seeking. So why bother with the whole exercise when a dose of hemlock would produce the same results?

Pash paused, looking reflectively into his wine glass. Why? To make an active choice. We will have our questions answered sooner rather than later and at our pleasure. Or pain, more likely. He glanced at the scholar but she showed no emotion beyond fatigue. Enough about me. Tell me where you're from.

The mountains.

You're not Glimmin.

True, ser. The mountains are far from here, to the west and the south.

I've been to the top of the grand tower of Rosheem in Sticalo and I didn't see any mountains in that direction.

They're farther than you can see.

"So are the mountains in Arceneigra across the Small Ocean and those are real enough. Plausible. And all of it could have been ours