by Various
"There was a fire," said another. "I kept it alive all night, and it would have guided him back."
"It was the city," said a third. "They've taken him, and they'll eat him. Better than bread, as long as you have a little salt. And Piros made sure of the salt."
"And when was the last time you ate human flesh, that you know how it tastes, either with or without salt?" said Piros. He silenced the hubbub with a sharp gesture. "We will not leave a man behind. Spread out in parties of three and search the immediate area. Mark your paths with camel dung—we have enough of it—so that you don't lose your way. Call his name loudly. He is not foolish enough to have gone far. And shout his name louder if you find him, alive or dead." The men began gathering in their groups. "As for the city, who will come with me to look there?"
They stopped then and looked at him sidelong, none willing to meet his eyes.
"I'll come," said Alaric.
Piros nodded. "Anyone else?"
There was some mumbling, but no one stepped forward.
Piros pointed at the nearest man. "If you had been taken, you'd want someone to come after you."
"If I were still alive," he replied. "But he'd have found a way to come back if he were alive."
Piros took a deep breath. "Well, as caravan master, it's my responsibility. I can't fault you for fearing something so unknown. Even so, is there no one else who has either enough courage or enough curiosity to come with the minstrel and me?"
"Don't take the minstrel!" called another man. "We'll need his songs for the rest of the journey."
"The choice is his," said Piros. "As the choice of a new leader is yours if we never return."
A soft muttering arose, but still no one stepped forward to join them.
"Come along, minstrel," said Piros.
"I leave my lute behind in my tent," Alaric said loudly. "You can be sure I'll return for it."
Piros and Alaric mounted their camels and moved quickly out of the camp toward the city. They heard no cry from the searchers as they rode. Sound carried far in the desert, and so they knew that the missing man had not been found, whether alive or dead.
"He is in the city," said Piros. "They have secret ways of raiding visitors. Some say they travel beneath the sand without disturbing it, but I think they are just a stealthy lot. When they walk, you cannot hear the slightest footfall. Like dancers. They are graceful as dancers."
"You've seen them?" said Alaric.
"Of course I've seen them. I've spoken to them, as did my father before me. Their own language is strange, but they know ours, some of them. They've learned it from captives." He nodded. "Yes, they sometimes keep captives, at least for a time. That's why I have hope that he's alive. And I've brought something to trade for him." He dug into the sleeve of his desert robe and brought out a fine knife, its hilt set with what looked to be well-cut colored gems that flashed in the sunlight. "I had hoped to trade this for something better on the far side of the desert, but I suppose a man's life is worth this much. The gems are glass, of course, but finely wrought."
Alaric leaned forward on his camel. "You've been inside, haven't you?"
Piros shrugged. "Some small distance. Perhaps I'll go farther this time." He glanced at Alaric. "Only as far as necessary, though. It's easy to become lost. You'll have to take care and stay near me."
Alaric smiled a little. "It's very difficult for me to become lost."
"That will help, then."
At the wall, they left their camels hobbled together, and Piros strode directly to one of the large panels. There, he set his palm against the white surface and spoke a word that Alaric had never heard before, some foreign word that sounded like " Orbansez. " Whatever it was, whatever it meant, it caused the panel to slide sideways, revealing the dark interior of the place. Piros leaned into the opening, looked left and right, and when he was satisfied with what he saw, he stepped over the ankle-high threshold and gestured for Alaric to follow him.
Inside, the windows bore translucent covers that admitted patches of desert sunlight, revealing a long, narrow corridor studded on the opposite wall with man-tall panels, a few of them open to show small, barren rooms. But though the windows admitted light, they did not admit the hot desert breeze. Instead, the interior of the city was as cool as the Northern spring.
Piros called out the missing man's name. "Arnay!"
"Shouldn't we be quiet?" said Alaric.
"They already know we're here," Piros told him. "They knew as soon as the door opened." He started down the corridor to the left, Alaric following. Some distance along was a stairway leading downward, with handrails against the walls on either side. Piros stood at the top for a moment, gripping the right-hand rail. A pleasant breeze wafted up the stairway, as if something below were the source of the city's coolness. Alaric wondered how far down the steps continued; there was not enough light from the corridor to show. "There is another level beneath this one," said Piros, "and perhaps another below that. The city is larger than it appears." He took a single step downward. "It may be that the leader I am looking for has died since I was here last and someone else has claimed his place." He called loudly: "Ronnel! It is Piros, your old friend, come to trade." When there came no answer, he descended a few more steps and called again. There was still no answer.
"If you intend to keep going down, we'll need a torch," said Alaric.
"I think not," said Piros, and he moved down three more steps. And as he moved, patches on the walls to his left and right began to glow till they were bright as so many burning brands. He went on, and with each step another light kindled, and hard as Alaric peered at them, he could not see any source beyond the blank walls themselves. Gingerly, he touched one of the glowing areas, and it was as cool as the air around him.
As Piros descended and lights bloomed into existence one by one, he called for Arnay again, but still there was no answer. At last, the bottom of the stairway became visible, and dozens of lights flared as he reached it, illuminating a floor that stretched from the foot of the stairs to a wall far in the distance, and all of it covered densely with a layer of low, leafy plants.
Alaric gaped at the vast underground garden. He could see the lacy tops of carrots, the orange roots showing beneath, and turnips, white and purple, and green onion sprouts, celery, lettuce, radishes, and melons, beans of half a dozen varieties, and squash, yellow and green.
Piros shook his head. "There is less here than the last time I visited." He bent to finger one of the carrots, brushing the greenery aside to show Alaric that it was growing in water as deep as his hand was long. Alaric looked at some of the other plants and found they all grew in the same way, in broad, shallow vats of water. "You see," said Piros, "there is water in plenty here. It comes from deep under our feet—deeper than any desert well, so they say."
"So who says?" asked Alaric. In all that vast underground garden, beneath the lights nearly as bright as natural sunlight, he could see no movement save that of Piros and himself.
"They're hiding," said the caravan master. "They fear us. Almost as much as we fear them."
"And yet you think they stole Arnay."
"Or lured him. Fresh vegetables might have been too much for him to resist." He pushed some greenery aside with his foot to reveal a narrow pathway between vats. "Come, let's see if we can find someone. And don't take any of their vegetables. Perhaps we can barter for some later."
Alaric nodded. Stealing their food would be a poor way to convince the residents to return the missing man.
He followed Piros down the long aisle, past cross-aisles, one after another. At last they came to a cross-aisle wider than the rest. On their right side it continued far into the greenery. On their left it led to the nearer wall of the garden room, where the entrance to a broad, arching, shadow-filled passage could be seen.
"There's a gathering place yonder," said Piros, pointing to the passage. "I shared a meal there, long ago, with several of the folk who called the city home. We mig
ht find some sign of them there." He turned toward it and gestured for Alaric to follow.
As they entered the passage, newly illuminated patches on the walls dispelled the shadows, and the passage itself opened into a chamber large enough for the feasting of forty or fifty men, had there been any tables or benches furnishing it. At this moment, it was empty save for a single large bone that lay on the floor close by a man-tall opening in the far wall.
It was a human leg bone, chopped off below the knee, the flesh and skin dry and shrunken, a sandal still fastened to its foot. The severed end rested just outside the raised threshold that marked the entrance to another chamber. And inside that chamber lay the rest of the body, a man as dry and shriveled as the leg, clad in the ragged remnants of a cloth jerkin and short pantaloons.
"Not Arnay," said Piros. He made no attempt to enter the room, just looked long at the dead man. "Well, they didn't eat this one," he said at last.
"He's dead a long time," said Alaric.
Piros nodded and then reached out to grip Alaric's arm. He pointed past the dead man.
At the far end of the chamber, on a low dais, stood an elaborately carved wooden chair, its curving arms gilded and padded, as were its seat and back, with plush velvet, much rotted. And on that chair, as on a throne, sat a gray-robed man who wore a crown of gold filigree spangled with myriad cabochon gems glinting red, blue, and green in the pale light that emanated from half a dozen places on the chamber's walls. He was dead—as dead and dry as the man on the floor—his closed eyes sunken deep into his skull, a few loose wisps of his white hair fallen to his shoulders. A dead king, thought Alaric.
"This door was closed when I was here all those years ago," said Piros. He touched the wall outside the chamber door and half-lifted one foot, as if to step over the threshold, but a voice shouted, "Stop!" and he recoiled from the entrance and turned.
A small man stood behind them, at the near end of the passage from the gardens. His light hair was shaggy over his ears, and he, too, wore a gray robe, tattered at the wrists and hem. Below the robe, his feet were bare, the nails long and chipped, jagged enough to hurt a foe.
"Ronnel," said Piros.
The man tugged the collar of his robe closer, tearing the fabric slightly as he did so. "You're the one who came before. With your father."
Piros nodded. "We were both young then, you and I."
The man pointed at Alaric. "Is this your son?"
Piros shook his head. "But the men of my caravan are all like sons to me, Ronnel. You must return the one you stole."
"I stole no one," said Ronnel.
"But you did." Piros took a single step toward the man, who backed away an equal distance. "Or one of your friends did. It makes no difference to me. I offer you a handsome knife in ransom for him. It is my own, my favorite. I give it to you freely if you set him free." Slowly, he drew the glass-jeweled dagger from his sleeve and held it out, hilt first, tilting it one way and another to make the finely cut imitation gems glitter.
"I have many knives," said Ronnel. "But if you have a fat pig or a pair of goats, we might make a bargain." He licked his lips as if he were testing the flavor of the meat.
Piros seemed to consider that for a moment. "We might give you a camel," he said finally.
Ronnel grimaced. "I've been told that camel meat is…unpleasant."
"Not if you're starving."
"You've seen our gardens," said Ronnel. "There's no starvation here."
Piros smiled with one side of his mouth. "Then why steal a man?"
"He's young. His flesh is tender. With a little salt, a welcome change. You have other men."
"I won't willingly lose one."
"You might lose more than one," said Ronnel.
Alaric caught at Piros's arm. "Look," he said, pointing toward the passage to the gardens. Two men stood side by side at the far end. Both held naked blades.
Piros flipped the glass-jeweled knife around, the hilt coming to rest snugly in his hand. He stepped back then, pulling Alaric with him until their heels were hard against the raised threshold of the dead king's chamber. A heartbeat later, they had both leaped it and were inside, ready for an attack.
Suddenly, a panel hidden within the wall slammed across the doorway, sealing them into the room.
Piros's knife was caught by that closing, the blade snapped off and the hilt torn from his grip. Like the dead man on the floor, part of it was on the other side of the door.
"Well, now we know what happened to his leg," said Piros. He pushed at the panel, trying to urge it back into the wall; then he tried to shove it outward, but it would not move either way, not even when Alaric lent his strength to the task. Piros pressed his palms against the panel, murmuring the strange word that had first admitted them to the city, but nothing happened, nor when he tried pressing various places on the wall all around the panel. He took a deep breath. "Ronnel!" he shouted.
There was no answer.
"They think they have us," said Piros. "They know how to open this door, else it wouldn't have been open when we first saw this chamber." He smiled. "But we don't need them to free us." He turned toward the dais and stepped up beside the dead king. "I'll wager there's been more than one other visitor who entered this chamber. To get that. " He pointed at the filigree crown. "What fine workmanship it is."
Alaric looked all around, keeping the sealed entrance always in view. There was something about the chamber that made his skin prickle. Looking more closely at the nearest wall, he realized that its pale color was patterned all over with a fine grid of irregular lines, and for a moment he thought he could see faint lights racing through that grid, although when he leaned closer—close enough to touch the wall, though he did not stretch out even a single finger to do so—the impression vanished. Then he realized that all of the walls, as well as the floor and ceiling, shared the same delicate pattern. Seeing it, he felt a sudden chill, as if a cold wind were blowing past him. He tried to take a deep breath to dispel the feeling, but the air seemed suddenly too thin to fill his chest—so thin that his head began to spin, and the walls of the chamber seemed to loom toward him. "Piros," he choked, and the sound that came out of his mouth was thin, too, as if his body were barely able to sustain his voice. He reached for Piros, but his legs wobbled, and he knew the dais was impossibly far away, though it was scarcely more than a few steps.
In a heartbeat, he was beside the caravan master, wrapping both arms around the man's middle, lifting him clear of the floor with desperate strength, and willing them both to safety.
An instant later, they were in the North, collapsing to frost-rimed grass and gasping at cold, crisp air.
Alaric squeezed his eyes shut and rolled away from Piros, breathing harder than ever before in his life. With some effort, he lurched to his elbows, his knees. His chest ached, the Northern air like needles inside it. When he opened his eyes, the world spun around him, and so he closed them again. Long moments passed before he felt steady enough to open them again and, shakily, to stand.
Piros lay at his feet, his breathing loud and labored. Alaric knelt beside him and shook his shoulders. The man's head turned, and his eyes blinked a few times before staying open. "Minstrel," he whispered. "What happened?" He touched his throat with one hand. "I felt as if I were being choked by some invisible giant."
Alaric nodded. "Somehow, all of the air in the room fled, leaving us nothing to breathe. I felt it rush past us, sucked as if by a bellows expanding to blow on a fire."
"One more magic in a city full of magics," said Piros.
Alaric shook his head. "Ancient knowledge, I think. Hidden from the rest of the world. Light without fire. A garden without soil or sunlight. But I don't see the use of a chamber that can kill by banishing air."
Piros climbed to his feet and looked around, as if seeking other men, but Alaric always tried to use his witch's power to travel to secluded places where there was no one to observe, and this was one of them. "Perhaps the chamber was g
uarding this," Piros said, and from deep within his sleeve he drew the dead king's filigree crown.
"You took it?" said Alaric.
"They weren't going to give Arnay back, not for any food or salt or jeweled knife we could offer. You could see that as well as I. Now we have something to bargain with."
"You think they'll trade him for that? You think they haven't killed him already?"
Piros held the crown up to the Northern sunlight. "One way or another, we'll profit from our visit to the city. We have the water, a fair trade for what we gave them. Now, if I can't have the man, I'll take this. See how it gleams in the sun? What good does gold do them in the desert?" He held it out toward Alaric.
It was, indeed, a beautiful thing—Alaric could not deny that. Not rigid metal, like other crowns he had seen, but a flexible band of gold links and cabochon gems that seemed almost to drip from Piros's fingers. Alaric stared at it long and hard. Finally, he reached for it, and his hand was shaking as Piros let it drop into his outstretched palm. As it touched his flesh, the shaking spread through his whole body, as if the freezing Northern gale were biting him deep, though the day was only mildly cold. He closed his fingers about the diadem, and he could feel its strength surging through him. He felt its power, felt that it knew him and he knew it, and they could not resist each other. He raised it to his head, wrapped it about his temples, found the secret of fastening it as if he had always known it, as if he had worn the crown since childhood. The filigree mingled with his hair and came to rest against his scalp, and it was faintly warm.
Claim me.
There was no sound to the words, but Alaric heard them anyway.
Claim me.
"Alaric," said Piros, his voice no more than a whisper.
"We must go back," said the minstrel. "We must return it to the city." He held out his arms. "I will take you there."
Piros hesitated. "Pull it off," he said. "Then we'll return it."
Alaric shook his head. "You don't mean that. But I do."
"Alaric."
"I'll leave you to the east of the city. You can reach the camp from there and say you escaped."