The Burning City

by Jerry Pournelle

  “And say what?”

  “The only thing that ever scared Morth was water! And now he claims to be at a seaside inn? It’s some kind of trap! Seshmarls!”

  The bird was on her shoulder. “I am Seshmarl’s,” it responded.

  “I finally remembered. Seshmarl is the name you used to lie to Morth! Morth of Atlantis!”

  “Help me, Whandall Seshmarl! My hope lies in your shadow,” the bird croaked. “Come to Rordray’s Attic and Morth of Atlantis will make you rich!”

  “He’s afraid,” Willow said.

  “Sounds like it.” Whandall sipped at his orange juice.

  “Afraid of what?”

  “It’s hard not to wonder.”

  Wagons couldn’t move in the spring mud, either. Two ranges of hills stood between New Castle and the sea, but the plain between was flat and well watered. Life was giving birth to life all up and down the Hemp Road. The tribes worked on the wagons and waited.

  The Lion’s messenger was a small man with an odd look to his jaw. He came alone, making his way downhill wearing nothing but a backpack. When the Placehold’s men had come to meet him he had dressed in a breechcloth and a short-haired yellow hide.

  “You’re Puma Tribe, aren’t you?” Green Stone asked him.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, Puma’s got five wagons in repair at Road’s End. This’s the New Castle. That higher hill south, that’s Chief Farthest Land.”

  “New Castle, right. I’m to see Whandall Feathersnake,” the stranger said. “Got a contract for him, and you ain’t him.”

  “You’re hard to fool. I’m his second son.”

  “You’re not wearing his tattoo. I talked to the guy that gave it to him.”

  “Wait here at the gate,” Stone said, and ran for the house.

  The pack bore thick straps intricately knotted about his shoulders. It would be difficult to remove, Whandall thought, if you only had paws to work with. The tattoos on his cheeks—“Puma?”

  The man grinned at the ambiguity. “Yes and yes.”

  The tribal names had been more than names once. From time to time a shape changer turned up. Saucer Clouds, Twisted Cloud’s first son, was claimed to be a werebison. Wolf Tribe had thrown up a werewolf; they were watching him grow with some unease.

  “That’d explain why you travel alone…?”

  “Why and how. Name’s Whitecap Mountain, and I’m here to offer a contract.”

  “With…?

  “Rordray, called the Lion. He’s a were too—they all are at the Attic, but they’re seaweres, they’re mers. Can you read?”

  “No.”

  “Rordray sends refined gold.” Whitecap Mountain reached into his pack.

  “Hold up,” Whandall said. “My wife should hear this.” And others should not! Whandall led him down the path and through the main double door.

  Willow greeted him and served hot lemon water. She was punctilious if not, perhaps, cordial.

  Whitecap Mountain generally traveled with Puma wagons, he said, but this trip he’d been sent for Whandall Feathersnake. The refined gold in his pack was a flat sheet with the letters of a message pounded into it. “Yours. More on arrival; depends on what you bring. Shall I read it to you? Rordray wants a noonmarch of rope. Two sides of bison, smoked. Mammoth if you can get it anywhere near fresh. Black pepper, sage, basil, rosemary, and thyme. Wood for construction. He’ll send back fish raw or cooked. Rordray’s the best cook known to men, weres, or gods. Also, he has sea salt, and the mers sometimes bring him treasure from lost ships.”

  “Sea salt,” Willow mused. “We’re nearly out.” She caught herself. “But—”

  Whandall nodded, grinned slightly. Salt was rare enough on the Hemp Road, and the salt found in dry lakes didn’t have the proper savor. Something was missing that was found in sea salt, according to Twisted Cloud. Without it your throat could swell up, or your children could grow up stupid or twisted.

  It sounded like two wagons’ worth of goods. Better take four, Whandall thought. Rordray was paying enough, and Whandall didn’t know the traveling conditions. Two of his own traveling with two of Puma’s should be safe enough. Pay them whatever it takes. If he was going at all. He looked at Willow, but she wasn’t sending any kind of signal.

  So he negotiated. “But fish, now, what if I can’t sell it? Not a lot of us eat fish, and those that do, they say they like it fresh.”

  “Absolutely fresh and spelled to stay that way,” the Puma said.

  “You’ve got a wizard?” Innocent smile, think Seshmarl, but cups rattled on Willow’s tray.

  The Puma said, “I only saw him once. He never comes down the mountain.”

  Green Stone made a nuisance of himself during dinner. The children had been hearing about Morth of Atlantis since they were little. Stone wanted to know everything. The Puma obliged.

  “I went up with the talisman box filled with Rordray’s cooking, and brought the box back down next morning with the spell renewed. I never slept at all that night. That wizard, he really wants to talk. And he’s got stories! I can’t figure why he stays up there.”

  Whandall only nodded. If Morth hadn’t told him about the water sprite, the tale wasn’t Whandall’s to give away.

  They took Whitecap Mountain to their guesthouse and settled him in. When they moved to the bedroom, Whandall expected to talk all night.

  “Now we know,” he said. “That poor looker. The water thing has him trapped on a mountain, all alone. He told me once how lonely it was to be the last Atlantis wizard in Tep’s Town.”

  “Why would he think you can help?”

  “Had a vision? Magic. No point trying to guess that.”

  “You wouldn’t miss Hawk In Flight’s wedding?” The household was gearing up to marry their eldest daughter to the second son of Farthest Land: a major coup.

  Whandall said, “That’s in spring. We could leave right after. The ocean, it’s only a third as far as the Firewoods…” at the other end of the Hemp Road.

  Willow nodded.

  Whandall said, “Daughters and sons are different problems. I think Night Horse will ask for Twisted Tree. Do we accept?”

  “We’d best. She’s ready.”

  “She’s young.”

  “This isn’t Tep’s Town. Girls aren’t afraid to be girls where people can see them. They grow up faster this way.”

  Whandall had never quite believed in this form of cause and effect. He said, “Sons are easier. Saber Tooth will be wagonmaster. Green Stone is shaping up nicely. Twisted Tree is a little young—”

  “You had a point?”

  “Yes, dear. Fourteen Miller and Ropewalker boys, ten of ’em nephews. We may get more. Half of ’em work the Feathersnake wagons. Half of them are married already. The Ropewalk is only so big. So is the Hemp Road, love, though that’s not so easy to see. There won’t be work for everyone by… by the time we’re fifty.”

  “They’ll find lives. We raised them right.” Willow looked at him coolly. “Or are you thinking of taking over some of Puma turf?”

  “No! That’s not the right answer, but I think I should look at extending the caravan route. Travel with Puma for guides. See another route. See if I could tell them how to do it better. It might give me ideas for cooperation.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to let you go,” Willow said. “Stone won’t let me rest until I say yes.”

  “No, love, you don’t have to put up with that. It would be very easy for me to say that this tattoo—look at me?—this tattoo is mine, and no other soul shall wear it. I could make that stick. Do you… you like it on me, right? You’re used to it?”

  She stroked his cheek as if smoothing feathers. He had to shave often or his beard would cover the tattoo. He said, “Because maybe Morth could take it off.”

  “No!”

  “But maybe you just hate the thought of seeing it on Stone?”

  “It’s more like he’s growing up too fast. I know that’s silly. Men wear t
attoos. But if he comes back with a tattoo that good, he’d better be bringing one for Saber Tooth, or there’ll be trouble.”

  “Point taken.”

  “I asked Twisted Cloud about this.”

  “You did? What did she say?”

  Willow’s eyes unfocused as she tried to remember exactly. She said, “‘In the old drowned tower your people will find what they need of sustenance.’ So she says you’re going.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  CHAPTER

  52

  Whandall had heard of ancient highways built by magic to serve ancient empires in other lands. The Hemp Road was a wilderness compared to those; but it was a highway compared to the route to Great Hawk Bay.

  It was hard work going uphill, harder going down, with everyone hanging back holding ropes to keep the wagons from plunging to their doom. The ground was rough in the valleys. They lost wheels.

  The bird spent most of its days in flight and returned to the wagons at night.

  Whandall had been a young man when last he guided a team of bison. He swung back into caravan routine with surprising ease. His Puma guide, Lilac, was a good driver and bison tender. There was work to be done, but in between you could be lazy as a Lordkin.

  Along the Hemp Road they told stories of places where a simple summoning spell would bring all the game you wanted, meat every night. Partridges, rabbits, deer, they came when summoned, and old men remembered those times, or said they did.

  Lilac sang in the evening dusk. Three rabbits came and sat on their haunches, waiting patiently for her to wring their necks. One short scream as the rabbit understood…

  The track led through high grass, past stands of scrub oak trees. The air hung heavy in the mornings, heavy dew and swirling mists.

  “No rain here,” Lilac said. “The dew is all. Good for garlic and thistle, not much else.”

  From time to time they encountered a flock of crows. Seshmarls wheeled up to them, squawking in crow language, and they would fly away in terror. Sometimes the bird chased them, but he always returned to Whandall’s arm in the evening.

  On the Hemp Road even a lazy Lordkin had to watch for gatherers from other bands: for bandits. On this route, bandits couldn’t survive. There weren’t enough wagon trains to support them. Towns were few, little more than hunting camps. Farming and hunting communities could survive… and if a badly guarded caravan passed, why, farmers might gather some opportune treasure. One must still keep watch.

  No one had ever heard of him here. The Feathersnake sign guarded his wagons on the Hemp Road, but not here.

  On the tenth day he saw a restlessly stirring black mass ahead of the caravan.

  He tried to guess what he was seeing.

  He was driving. The bird Seshmarls perched beside his ear, gripping the edge of the roof above the driver’s bench. From time to time it took wing to hunt. They were both enjoying themselves, and Whandall didn’t want company. But after a time, reasoning that anything he couldn’t identify might be dangerous, he called down into the covered wagon bed.

  Lilac poked her head out. She was a pretty nineteen-year-old of Puma Tribe who had made this trip as a girl, twice. She traveled in Whandall’s wagon rather than Green Stone’s, at her mother’s insistence. Those two found each other too interesting.

  She watched for a time. She said, “Crows. Ravens. Something like that.”

  The bird rose from the roof and flapped toward the black mass. A crow colored like a flying bonfire, he had driven away half the flock when the wagons came in range. What the crows had hidden was the white-and-red bones of a beast bigger than any wagon.

  Looking over Whandall’s shoulder, Lilac said, “Mammoth.”

  “Are they common around here?”

  She was awed. “Tribes around here dig pits for ’em. It’s dinner for two days for a whole tribe and any guests. I heard of a war that stopped because Prairie Dog Tribe trapped a mammoth and invited the Terror Birds to share, but it doesn’t happen often. No, they’re not common. Nobody I know ever saw one alive. You?”

  Fool Turkey, who drove the Wolf Tribe wagon for many years, told a tale of riding a mammoth for nearly the length of the road before slaughtering it to stave off a famine… but Fool Turkey was a champion liar. Whandall said, “No. You’d think they’d be too big to miss.”

  Lilac nodded.

  “A pit could trap one, not just kill it.”

  “Got to dig them deep. If it lives through the fall it could climb out, and it comes out angry.”

  “So? I mean, it’s big, but—” But the girl smiled and made an excuse to go back into the wagon.

  Every tribe has its secrets, Whandall thought.

  They rolled on toward the sunset. Then one night they could hear the sea, a sound Whandall had not heard for twenty-three years.

  CHAPTER

  53

  A wave broke in white spume and rolled toward the children. Lilac and Green Stone danced back, not quick enough. Foam and seawater rolled over their legs. The wave receded and they followed it.

  Dancing with the ocean.

  Whandall watched from well back. He could swim in a river, but this… he could almost sense the mass of water ready to roll a swimmer under.

  Far across the calm waters of the bay, a score of boats bobbed about a cluster of drowned towers.

  “There’s a fair-size city down there under the water,” Lilac told Green Stone. She turned and called to Whandall. “Wagonmaster? I suppose you could find drowned cities along any coastline after Atlantis sank…?”

  “My brother would know.” Whandall hadn’t thought of Wanshig in many years.

  What poked above the waves was a handful of ruins solid enough to moor boats to, and an extensive flat roof, crenellated, that stood four stories above the water. Waves had smashed the southern edge; a new wall had been bricked in.

  Any storm would make the lower levels unusable, Whandall thought, but that left two stories and an extensive floor plan. He could see gardens on the roof, as with the Placehold.

  It had been four years since Puma Tribe sent wagons.

  He should stop thinking of these two as children. Lilac had proven an excellent guide…. “Lilac, we brought twice as many people as the Attic is used to. How do you think they’ll handle it?”

  “Simplest thing is just not to send a boat,” Lilac said.

  Green Stone asked, “Why didn’t you send the bird ahead, Father?”

  “I want to know if they fluster easily.”

  Behind them the sons and nephews and grandsons of Puma and Bison tribes were making camp, tending beasts, pulling the wagons into a defensive ring, working the spells that would give them safety and clean water, all under Carver Ropewalker’s direction. Lilac and Green Stone went to join them. Whandall left them to it.

  There were mountains in view. Any of those largest three…

  “Are you really thinking of climbing a mountain?”

  It was Carver. Whandall didn’t answer.

  Whandall was master of the caravans. Carver Ropewalker stayed home and made rope. This trip had firmed him up a bit. He bore marks of the kinless: round ears, pointy nose. Once these differences had been life itself. He looked across the water for a time before he spoke.

  “Whandall, I’ve lost two belt knots and I’m stronger than I’ve been in years. I am glad I came. But do you believe Twisted Cloud?”

  “Prophecy works as well as it ever did.”

  “The magic goes away. Prophecies go vague and cryptic. They tell you less. Twisted Cloud didn’t say, ‘Eat at Rordray’s Attic and you’ll be rich again.’ “Carver closed his eyes to remember exactly. “‘In the old drowned tower your people will find what they need of sustenance.’ Whandall, it’s fifty years since Atlantis went under. Can you imagine how many drowned towers there are along this coast?”

  “Be fun to search them out.”

  “They’re sending us a boat.”

  Rordray’s Attic, kitchen and restaurant, was the to
p floor of the old Carlem Marcle Civic Center’s south tower. The roof could house an overflow. The next floor down was all guest rooms, Lilac said.

  The restaurant was full of fishermen. Rordray and his son directed some of them to push tables together to accommodate Puma’s thirty-three travelers. The sudden influx hadn’t bothered Rordray and they hadn’t run out of food or drink.

  Thone had met them with the boat: a big blond man, Rordray’s son. His smooth round strength and perpetual smile suggested one or another sea mammal. He described what his father had prepared for the noon meal, as if it were a string of amazing discoveries.

  Thone’s enthusiasm was infectious. Whandall took a bite of swordfish with only the slightest of qualms. Lilac was watching him with a grin. She laughed loud at the look on Whandall’s face.

  “Good,” Whandall said in amazement.

  All the mers were watching him.

  He said, “I don’t think I’ve ever really tasted fish.”

  “Try the vegetables too.”

  In midafternoon the place was still half full, though most of Whandall’s travelers had been rowed ashore. Rordray’s customers liked to take their time. Many must be were creatures, Whandall thought. The huge, smoothly muscled guy had to be a mer whale. He had eaten twenty headsman crabs; he had picked up a table for ten all by himself.

  Carver and Whandall loved the Attic on sight, but of course it was too small—

  “Now, wait,” Carver said. “You don’t doubt Rordray can feed a caravan, do you?”

  “After a meal like that? And I saw the size of his ovens. But—”

  “Rooms? Most of a caravan would stay in the wagons anyway to save money. And he’s got storage in those other buildings.”

  “Did you notice that everything came from the sea?”

  “Spices. He’s got spices from as far back as Beesh, and some root vegetables too.”

  Whandall said, “Caravan passengers demand every variety of diet known to man or beast. We get vegetarians. We get fat going for thin, thin going for fat, weird going for wizardry or lost youth or moral dominance games. Some won’t touch fish. Some think fish is poisonous—Lion!” Their host was just emerging from the kitchen. Wait, now, Lion was a nickname! “Rordray, sir, can you favor us with a minute of your time?”