City Under the Sand: A Dark Sun Novel (Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun)

by Jeff Mariotte

  Aric reached the bottom first and ran toward the looming bulk. He heard Amoni and Ruhm close behind.

  “Damaric!” Aric called.

  The soldier didn’t respond. Damaric just stood there, looking at the mound of piled steel. Aric shouted his name again, once again earning no response.

  In the gentle glow of the rock walls, the steel gleamed, its varied tints and hues reflecting colored light back at the observer. As he neared it, Aric felt a strange sense of familiarity, as if seeing home after a long absence.

  Damaric still hadn’t turned. Aric put a hand on his shoulder. “Damaric?”

  Now Damaric whirled about, his face a twisted mask of rage. He lashed out with a clenched fist. Aric, taken by surprise, raised no defense, and the fist caught him on the cheek. Aric crumpled to the cavern floor, dazed. The broadsword flew from his hands.

  “Damaric!” Ruhm shouted. “Why—”

  Damaric stepped past Aric and toward the goliath, spinning his singing stick in his hands. Its whirling, musical tones were loud in the quiet of the cave.

  Aric pawed the ground for the dropped sword. Amoni shouted at Damaric, but Ruhm had already dropped into a defensive crouch, raising his greatclub to counter the singing stick. Damaric attacked once, the stick flashing faster than the eye could follow. Ruhm blocked with the club. The stick swept upward from below. Ruhm got his club in place just in time, and the stick clashed against it, bounced off, came back toward Ruhm’s left. Ruhm tried to swing the club, but was a fraction of a second too slow, the club harder to wield than the slender stick, even with all his might. The singing stick hit Ruhm’s shoulder, drawing blood and driving the goliath to one knee. He swung the club in a great arc toward Damaric, but the soldier stepped back and the club whistled harmlessly past.

  Aric found the sword and regained his feet.

  He had liked Damaric. Liking anyone came hard for a half-elf, trusting harder still. But he had seen the slave soldier as a friend, and he didn’t want to hurt him.

  Damaric, however, was clearly no longer himself. He was trying to kill Ruhm, and Ruhm truly was a friend. Aric held the sword in both hands, ready to strike. “Damaric,” he said, giving the man one last chance.

  Damaric turned, singing stick moving so fast it was nothing more than a blur.

  And Amoni took advantage of that moment to charge in, her cahulaks swinging at the farthest extent of their rope. When the blades met Damaric’s neck, his head was sheared off, landing somewhere off the smoothly worn path. Damaric’s body sank to the ground, singing stick clattering and bouncing for almost a full minute before it stilled.

  3

  In the sudden silence, Ruhm stood up, holding his right hand over his injured shoulder.

  “What got into him?” Amoni asked.

  “Don’t know,” Ruhm said. “My thanks.”

  “I felt something too,” Aric said. “It tried to get into my head. I blocked it, but I guess Damaric couldn’t.”

  “I hated to kill him,” Amoni said.

  “You had no choice,” Aric assured her. “He would have killed us all if he could have.”

  She looked at the soldier’s fallen from. “All he wanted was to live free, if only for a day, before he died, right? I understand that desire completely.”

  “It wasn’t him,” Aric said. “Something else was in him, possessing him. Damaric would never have turned on us like that.”

  “What should we do with him?”

  “He’ll have to be brought out of here,” Aric said. “But not now, not by us.”

  “Why not?” Ruhm asked.

  “Because we need to tell Kadya about what we found,” Aric replied. “This is what we’re here for. The sooner we let her know where it is, the sooner it can be loaded onto the argosies and we can go home.”

  “Home has more appeal for some than for others,” Amoni said, glancing once more at Damaric. “At least here, on this journey, I have tasted from time to time the flavor of freedom.” She smiled. “Besides, I was brought along to help with the heavy labor, so once we tell Kadya, then my real work will begin.”

  “Those dune reapers might be waiting,” Ruhm said.

  “If Kadya and the others haven’t defeated them by now, then we’ll all die here,” Aric said. “I say it’s time we find out.”

  4

  On the surface again, it was immediately apparent that Kadya had defiled the land with her magic. The road was littered with the corpses of insects, and what few hardy plants had tried to grow there since the shifting dune exposed part of Akrankhot to the sun had turned to ash.

  Amoni swore. “There are better ways,” she said. “Kadya doesn’t understand the forces she’s playing with.”

  “Or does,” Ruhm countered. “And doesn’t care.”

  “In either case, I see no reapers,” Aric said. “That’s something, anyway.”

  “Something, I suppose.”

  On the way back to the main avenue, they came across the corpses of several dune reapers, blackened as if burned by terrible fires. Amoni frowned at them as they passed by. “I don’t want to know how they died,” she said. “It’s too terrible.”

  “They would have killed us, given the chance.”

  “That’s in their nature,” Amoni said. “There’s nothing they can do about it. They have to feed their queen. And it’s in our nature to fight back, not to consent to being sacrificed. But we have minds that can overcome our instincts.”

  “You’re not saying we should have just let them kill us.”

  “I’m not,” Amoni said. “Just that if we’re to be better than unthinking beasts, we have to take into account the cost of our decisions.”

  Aric let the matter drop. He didn’t understand quite what Amoni was driving at. Most people hated defiling magic, as did he. But that hatred was a gut reaction—much, he supposed, the same as the instinct that drove dune reapers to hunt and to take their prey back to the nest to feed their bloated queen. Those few occasions he had seen defiling magic at work, he had been disturbed by the effect it had on living things around it—in the case of the halfling attack on the caravan, even sucking the remaining vestiges of life from wounded soldiers. He didn’t know enough of preserving magic to know, except through stories, how different it could be.

  Kadya had destroyed the reapers before they could kill every member of the caravan. That was a good thing. Rather than argue with Amoni about it, he scanned the streets they passed for the rest of the expedition.

  They saw a couple of other groups and hailed them, so that by the time they located Kadya, waiting back at the wagons with a large detachment of guards, there were sixteen of them.

  “Why are you here?” the templar demanded as they approached. A mul was fanning her, and the startling suddenness of her bark caused him to miss a stroke. She glared at him until he started again, then swung her attention back to the group before her. “I told you to keep searching until—”

  “We found it, templar,” Aric said. Ordinarily he would not have interrupted a templar, but on this occasion he expected that she would forgive him.

  “You found it? The metal?”

  “An enormous trove,” he said. “As much as the Shadow King described, perhaps more. Every kind of metal I’ve ever heard of.”

  “How easily transported will it be?”

  “It’s been shaped,” Aric said. “It’s in bars, poles, rods, blocks, and so on. It will be a huge amount of work—it is far underground, accessed by long staircases. Bringing it up will be difficult. But once it’s up, loading it into the argosies should be nothing.”

  “Excellent,” she said. “Worry not about the difficulty of that job, Aric. You have done yours, and more quickly than I could have hoped.”

  “One thing, templar. There is.… something down there. Something tried to get inside my head, but I fought it. Damaric wasn’t so lucky. It got to him. He attacked us, and Amoni had to kill him. So when the metal is being hauled to the surface, I recommend peopl
e work in pairs, at least, and probably larger groups, so that someone can always stay alert to danger.”

  “Another thing with which you should not concern yourself, Aric. I don’t know what you experienced, but I assure you that we will take precautions against it.”

  Amoni and Ruhm had stood silently by while Aric made his report. Now he remembered what Amoni had said about her work only beginning. “And … perhaps since Amoni saved our lives when Damaric turned against us, she can be relieved of hauling duty? She is only out of the gladiatorial pit because her back was broken, and—”

  Kadya made a dismissive gesture with her left hand. “Your service is appreciated, Aric. I will make sure that Nibenay knows of your rapid fulfillment of your mission. But don’t test my patience. The labors assigned to slaves are no one’s affair but my own. I know you think Amoni is your friend. I have eyes, and I’ve seen the three of you—and Damaric—together often during our journey. But Amoni is a slave, a mul bred to fight and, failing the ability to continue in the pit, to work. She is no one’s friend. You, Aric, and your goliath companion, should explore the ruins to see if there’s more metal, and beyond that you are relieved of any further obligation. But the workers will work. You can rest for the moment, Amoni, while runners bring in the other search parties. But there’s plenty of daylight remaining, and once everyone is gathered together, we’re going to start going after that metal. Understood?”

  “Yes, templar,” Amoni said. She would not meet Aric’s gaze.

  “Aric, go,” Kadya said. “Take Ruhm, get some water, get out of the sun. You’ve earned your rest.”

  Aric had been dismissed, and he knew it. He tried once more to catch Amoni’s eye, but having failed that, he and Ruhm went to their argosy, intent on a meal and perhaps a nap while the day’s hottest hours passed.

  5

  We have found it

  Found the metal?

  Yes. It’s just as the dead man described. Vast stores of it. We may actually have to send more argosies, as we lost some en route.

  Kadya had not dared report the discovery to Siemhouk until she had seen it for herself. She didn’t think Aric and his friends would lie, but that was not a risk an intelligent person would take. She’d had Amoni lead her and a few others to the trove, examined it under torchlight even though the glow from the oddly luminous walls would be sufficient for the work crews, then returned to her own argosy to contact the high consort.

  That contact would have been nearly impossible, had it not been for Siemhouk’s mastery of the Way. She did the heavy lifting, so the hardest part was reaching out and “tapping” Siemhouk, letting her know Kadya desired her attention. On most occasions, it had been Siemhouk who reached out first, and those were easy.

  Whatever we need to do, we shall do. Let me know when yours are loaded, and if we need more they can be on the way while you’re returning.

  I will.

  Who found it? That half-elf, Aric.

  Then Father was right to send him, wasn’t he? Father is always right.

  Our husband is very wise.

  Indeed.

  I will be in contact when I have more news, Siemhouk.

  The girl—the high consort—broke off the connection without replying. That was fine with Kadya. She saw Siemhouk as a path to power, not truly an ally, and certainly not a friend. The girl frightened her. Whenever she was in mental contact with Siemhouk, she was terribly aware of how easy it would be for the high consort to probe other parts of her mind, the places where her dreams and ambitions were stored. That, Kadya knew, would mean her death.

  And Kadya wanted more time to investigate Akrankhot before they “spoke” again. Wandering around the city as much as she had done, she’d had the impression that it was something more than it seemed. There was power here. Hidden, tucked away someplace, but power just the same. She meant to find it.

  All that metal, too, down in the cavern—that wasn’t just a storehouse, not that far underground. It made no sense to put metal down there, only to have to haul it up again when it was needed. There was more to that, too.

  She opened the door to her argosy, stood blinking in the bright sunlight for a moment. As always, after she had a conversation with Siemhouk, she was left with a dull headache throbbing behind her eyes. A couple of her goliath guards stood outside the wagon, and she indicated them with a finger. “Come with me,” she said. “We’re going into the city again.”

  “Just the three of us, Templar?” one asked. “Or shall I gather a party together?”

  “Just us. We’re safe enough.”

  She hoped that was true. She had destroyed the dune reapers, but there was precious little life left in Akrankhot to draw on. If faced with another major threat, her magic might not be strong enough to save them.

  But she didn’t want any others knowing what she was about, so that was a chance she would take.

  She had noticed runes, on the floor of a large, elegant building on the main avenue. The building had struck her as an important one, a center of government or some such. Something had seemed odd about those runes, but it wasn’t until later on that she had realized what. They had been inscribed on that floor, she believed, much later than the building’s construction. Possibly even later than its abandonment. She wanted another look at them.

  Another thought struck her before they left. “Wait here a moment,” she told the guards. “Then we’ll go.” She went back inside the argosy, closed the door, and opened the lid of a trunk she always kept locked. From it she removed a few essential items: a particular scroll, a phial containing crumbs of rare earth and one of the Shadow King’s blood, and a small circle of polished glass.

  Runes written in some ancient, forgotten language would be hard to translate. She had an alternative plan—she would consult with whatever mystic sages knew about this place, and from them she could learn the truth about Akrankhot.

  And about whatever was buried beneath it, along with all that metal.

  With those items gathered into a cloth purse, she started for the door again. When she put her hand on it, she felt a sharp pain between her ears, where that headache had been building. Siemhouk, tapping me? She paused, opening herself to such a communication. But Siemhouk was not there. Nobody was.

  Still, she was sure there had been something … some unseen entity reaching into her mind.

  She should find out who or what it was, block it, even destroy it.

  Instead, she found that she welcomed it. Her headache vanished, and a feeling of power—of liberation, from some near-eternal bondage—filled her. She threw open the argosy’s door and stepped out again into the light, sucking in a great lungful of fresh desert air.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “There’s much to do, and not much daylight left to do it in.”

  The guards fell in around her, and together the three of them walked back into Akrankhot. And this time, Kadya felt, she owned everything she surveyed.

  6

  The slaves worked day and night, hauling metal up the staircases—a second one had been discovered, at the cavern’s far end—and loading it into the wagons. Soldiers, too, were pressed into service, causing Ruhm to joke that Damaric would have been glad he’d been killed, since he never would have wanted to perform such menial labor.

  Aric and Ruhm, however, found themselves at loose ends. A couple of times Ruhm lent his muscles to the cause, for lack of anything better to do. Aric, however, didn’t want to go back into that cavern if he didn’t have to. Metal or no, the place made him uneasy.

  On the second day after their discovery, he and Ruhm explored the city’s farther reaches. They had walked more than an hour to get to this point. Here, the desert still covered vast swaths of Akrankhot, and sand surged down other streets as if it meant to reclaim those as well.

  The roads were narrower and more tightly packed than the ones nearer the wall. Instead of being laid out on a strict grid, they curled and wound about one another, like those in Nibenay. Some
times one was blocked, a building constructed across it, as if the builder had been oblivious to the fact that there had been a thoroughfare there first.

  “This part of the city follows no plan at all,” Aric complained, after they had, once again, followed a serpentine path only to find that it led nowhere of interest.

  “Old part,” Ruhm observed.

  “Probably. These buildings look much older than the first ones we found.” The architecture was even more unadorned than the elegantly simple lines of the structures lining the grand avenue. These had been thrown together out of wood, mud and straw. Most of them were two stories tall, but some were only one. Others had been added onto gradually, over what seemed to be a period of decades, if not centuries. Their exploration was made interesting by the things people had left behind, and which the sand had then preserved: cooking and dining utensils, furniture, even what seemed to be children’s toys.

  They spoke in low tones, their gazes roving constantly. The dune reapers hadn’t been spotted since their first attack, but unless they had left the area, the queen would still be in the underground nest, possibly surrounded by drones and plotting another assault. And there could easily be other threats about. To fail to consider that possibility, anywhere on Athas, was suicidal.

  They were just coming out of a house, apparently built in stages, one room at a time, with ladders and makeshift staircases connecting the different levels, when they heard the sound.

  Even at this end of town, where space seemed to be at a premium, the upper levels of many houses had been made inaccessible. Aric had told Ruhm about the vision he saw in the cavern, and suggested that perhaps the great conflict sweeping across Athas had frightened Akrankhot’s populace, causing them to concentrate on their downstairs and subterranean space and leaving the heights as a buffer against some potential threat from above. In this house the rooms had been so small and the ceiling so low that Ruhm had been able to see into the abandoned upstairs sections from the level below. “Nothing there,” he had said. “Sand, dust.”