The Phoenix Endangered

by James Mallory

  Ciniran knelt beside the carcass, running her hands over its flanks in wonder. She turned her face up to Shaiara, and Shaiara knew that the expression of grave concern on Ciniran’s face matched her own.

  The Nalzindar did not keep goats. Goats required water—much water—and good forage. Not so much as a sheep, but far more than a shotor. Certainly more than any of them had seen anywhere here in Abi’Abadshar. Nor could it have simply wandered here—the journey had been nearly enough to kill a shotor. A goat could not have survived.

  She put her hand on Israf’s collar. “Seek,” she said, gesturing back in the way the goat had come. The two ikulas began moving in circles, searching out the trail. Shaiara walked after them, and Ciniran followed, as behind them, Kamar gathered up their unexpected prey.

  But the trail ended only in another mystery: one of the empty openings in the ground, with terraces leading down into it. This one was small, and made of black stone, and heat radiated up from it as from the embers of a cookfire. Even though this was obviously where the path ended, the ikulas did not wish to go down, and Shaiara saw no reason to make them, for all that was there was smooth stone, and a small hole low in one wall that only a child could crawl through.

  Or a goat.

  With that thought in her mind, Shaiara redoubled her efforts to explore the caves-made-by-Demons in which the Nalzindar now lived. Goats must come from somewhere, after all. And if she shared this place with others, she wished to know about it.

  THE GREASE FROM the flesh of the fat goat, carefully collected, could be used to saturate strips of fabric carefully cut from the edges of the remaining tent. Tightly braided, and forced over the head of a hunting-spear, the grease-soaked cloth made a crude if serviceable torch. Armed with a handful of these, Shaiara and several of the bravest hunters redoubled their explorations. This time they brought with them axes and hammers as well, for she was determined that the barriers of wood that blocked the archways to the sides of the tunnel would block it no longer.

  Her people quickly learned the best method of releasing the barriers, especially once they discovered that they were hinged, like the lid of a wooden box. A few blows with an axe at the edge where the large metal ring was, and nearly all of them could be swung inward. Those that could not be, they left untouched, for Shaiara suspected that beyond those doors lay enough piled sand to bury them all, should those barriers be removed from their stone archways.

  They had removed the first of the barriers entirely—before they had known about the hinge-mechanism—and when they had, beyond it all that there was to see was another tunnel, and at its end, sunlight. She had walked down that tunnel to its end, and seen more wooden barriers, drifts of sand and dust upon the floor, and then, at its end, a great round emptiness. She’d shrugged, turning back. It might well be the work of more than one lifetime to learn all of Abi’Abadshar’s secrets.

  The deeper they went into the tunnel, the colder it became, until it was as cold as a desert midnight, and Shaiara shivered, wishing for her warm cloak. They had been walking since dawn, and had come so far that now, when she looked back, Shaiara could no longer see the light of the entrance. None of them feared to make the return journey in darkness—should their explorations take as long as that—for the way was straight and smooth, and ears and noses could guide a hunter when eyes could not. And Israf and Ardban would sense far more than even the sharpest-honed senses of the Nalzindar, though, like any sight-hunter, the ikulas preferred the light to the dark.

  Shaiara shivered once again in the cold, then sniffed at the air suspiciously and frowned, glancing at Kamar. He stepped to the nearest wall and ran his fingers over the stone, running the pads of his fingers together, and there did not need to be words between them for Shaiara to know what he had found. The stone was wet.

  Was there another Iteru here within the tunnels? Shaiara had once visited a spring deep within a cave, and the air had been wet in just this way. But for the first time since they had begun exploring the tunnels, Israf and Ardban seemed eager to forge ahead instead of wishing to remain close at the heels of the five Nalzindar, and Abyaz and Zirah, barely out of puppyhood, were now straining at their leashes.

  “Go,” Shaiara said quietly, and with a bound, the two ikulas leaped ahead into the dark.

  A few moments later, Shaiara could hear stuttering high-pitched yips echoing back over the stone. She nodded, and Kamar unleashed the two younger ikulas. They bounded eagerly after their elders. Holding her torch high, Shaiara led her band of hunters after them at a swift ground-eating lope.

  They had barely covered more distance than might be compassed in three arrow-flights before strangeness abounded everywhere. The walls were no longer smooth, but covered with a web of root and vine, nor was the floor beneath their feet smooth stone either. It held a thickness of sand—far thicker than what they had found earlier in the tunnel—and not sand alone. Sand so mixed with water that it was as moist as uncooked griddle-bread, and so filled with the wet scent of plants that it was as if Shaiara stood in the middle of Sapthiruk holding a basketweight of figs and desert plums in the folds of her robes. All along the tunnel, where the floor met the walls, there were strange soft growths the color of the palest leather.

  When they reached the place where the ikulas eagerly awaited them, Shaiara saw that more of the strange pale things covered the wooden barrier. The water in the air had rotted it, as sunlight rotted cloth, for the ikulas’s sharp nails had dug away deep curls from the wood where they had attempted to dig beneath the barrier. A click of her tongue summoned the hounds back to sit at her heel, and when Shaiara put her hand to the metal ring—reaching carefully among the growths—it came away in her hand, leaving her fingers covered with sharp black flakes and a thick coating of red. She dropped it, and the ring struck the sand with a dull sound. Cautiously, she pressed at the barrier. It scraped inward a double handspan, then stuck.

  But no dangerous cascade of dry sand billowed out through the opening, and the ikulas were all but dancing with impatience to see what lay beyond. She passed the torch to Ciniran and set her shoulder to the door. Kamar and Natha joined her, and soon the barrier had been shifted enough that Shaiara could slip through. The four ikulas followed her immediately, and dashed off into the gloom.

  For it was only twilight here beyond the barrier, and not true darkness. She paused to help the others force the barrier the rest of the way inward—kneeling down to dig away the thick mast of spongy sand-and-plant matter that covered the stone so that the barrier could move freely. Kamar doused the torch by rubbing it out against the inside of the barrier, and the five Nalzindar walked cautiously forward.

  Only in the wildest tales exchanged around cookfires at the Gatherings of the tribes had she heard of anything remotely like this place, and those were of the “orchards” and “gardens” kept by the dwellers in the Iteru-cities. Here—impossibly—there was a whole garden beneath the earth.

  They walked among trees the like of which Shaiara had never seen. She caught the familiar scent of figs, the less-familiar—but still-recognizable—scent of naranjes. Beneath the trees there were enormous bushes, but in contrast to the tiny gray-green leaves of the desert plants Shaiara was familiar with, the leaves of these were enormous and brightly colored, and between the leaves, their twigs were heavy with clusters of unfamiliar fruit. The very ground itself was covered with plants—a thick lush grass as shockingly green as if someone had spilled an entire vat of dye here. She stooped down and ran her hand over it. The blades were soft as fur.

  In the distance, Shaiara could see bars of strong sunlight filtering down from somewhere above, though when she gazed upward, most of her view was blocked by branches and leaves. Through the few gaps between them, she saw the blackness of stone, and gained the sense of great space. As they walked—Kamar a little ahead, Ciniran beside her, and Natha and Turan following warily behind—she heard the sound of scuffling through the debris on the forest floor, and no matter how unfamiliar
her surroundings, Shaiara was a hunter first. She recognized the sounds of small animals—mice, sheshu, perhaps others as strange as the trees and the bushes—fleeing from the approach of something large and unknown. Though it was difficult to see clearly here—the sight-lines were so oddly cluttered, unlike the familiar desert, and it was not possible to see clearly for even so much distance as would be covered by two tents of the Nalzindar—the farther they came, the more certain Shaiara became that this space was vast, larger than the largest oasis she had ever visited. Nor was the terrain beneath her feet level. It sloped downward as she walked, so gently that it was a handful of heartbeats before Shaiara realized that she walked along the side of a hill.

  Even though her people had only begun to explore Abi’Abadshar, Shaiara doubted they would have discovered this hidden world from above no matter how long they searched through the sand and the ruins. She could now see that much of the ceiling above was intact, and the places where the sunlight filtered down were often tiny. Seen from above, it would be easy to dismiss them.

  “There is much to hunt here,” Turan said. He peered up into one of the strange trees. A small black-furred creature peered back, then grabbed a fruit from a branch and flung it at him. Turan caught it and sniffed at it suspiciously, tucking it into his hunting bag as Shaiara watched. She shared his suspicion. In a strange land, who knew what might be safe to eat?

  She raised her hand, stilling Turan’s chatter. She had not heard—or seen—the ikulas in too long. In the desert they were trained to run down prey and either kill it outright or hold it at bay until the hunter could come—in either event, to stay with what they coursed. She did not think that was prudent here, and so from beneath her robes Shaiara drew forth a small whistle carved of antelope bone. Any hunter who might need to call their hounds to heel wore one such; the sound it made could be heard by few Isvaieni and by all ikulas. And it carried over a great distance.

  She put it to her lips and blew—Ciniran winced—and a few moments later, the four ikulas came bounding back through the trees. All four were filthy and blood-matted, and the Nalzindar quickly ran their hands over the animals’ bodies, but the blood was not theirs.

  It took nearly (so Shaiara judged) as much time to reach the place where the ikulas had been as it would have taken the sun to cross two handspans of the sky, for they moved carefully, and would not let the hounds run ahead. But when they reached it, Shaiara was certain at last that the Nalzindar had found not only a refuge, but a true home.

  The bodies of six goats lay upon the grass, each one killed with the single efficient killing bite of an ikulas. The surrounding area was deserted, but it was plain to all that until the hounds had arrived, a great herd of goats had grazed placidly here, for the ground was thick with tracks and droppings.

  Shaiara breathed a prayer of thanks to the Gods of the Wild Magic. Here was more than food. Here was wealth. Goat-hair to weave cloth—though her people were not weavers, there were one or two of them, born to other tents, who yet knew the skill. Food for more than a moonturn, more than a season, and every kind of plant and herb they could possibly need. Their only conceivable lack was salt, but the Barahileth was known for its deadly wastes where salt replaced sand, and even that, the Nalzindar could supply to themselves.

  “Come,” she said. “It is time to return.”

  Three

  The World Beneath the World

  BEFORE ANOTHER MOON had waxed and waned in the sky above, the Nalzindar had taken full possession of their strange new home. No longer did the shotors graze among the ruins above, for there was more-than-abundant forage here below. Now day upon day might pass without anyone venturing up to the sands of the surface, for all that anyone might need was here in the world below.

  The long tunnel down which Shaiara and her people had ventured in their first days here at Abi’Abadshar was only the merest fingernail’s-breadth of the city’s subterranean realm. As her hunters had tracked the herd of goats, they had been led through a maze of passages that intertwined like the strands of a hunter’s net. Some passages led to other open spaces such as the first one they had found, vast underground chambers that teemed with a shocking concentration of life. These underground gardens were filled with trees and grass and vines and bushes; with animals such as no one in the desert had ever seen, such as the large fat fluffy-tailed tree-climbing mouse and the chattering black-furred manlike creature the size of a young ikulas puppy. There were other animals here such as belonged in the Iteru-cities: the shaggy red-coated swine, the goats, the bright-plumaged birds larger than the largest and plumpest rock-dove. Doves there were as well, and bright tiny birds such as no Nalzindar had ever imagined could exist.

  At first the hunting falcons were confused by this new place, a place that had no sky. But the Nalzindar trained their creatures well, and soon both falcons and ikulas were bringing down game in abundance. The Nalzindar tested each new beast cautiously before adding it to their menu, and the plants and fruits even more cautiously: what a goat or a shotor could safely eat might kill a man.

  With the slaughter of fat goats, and swine, and fur-mice, and great-doves, there was fat for the lamps and wool to twist into wicks, and between the lamps and the creation of more and better torches—for the Nalzindar used the bounty of their new home to replace much that they had been forced to leave behind, weaving baskets and mats from twigs and vines and grasses, and harvesting wood to carve into bowls and cups in addition to creating new sources of light—the exploration of even those places which the sun did not reach continued. Beyond the refuge of the gardens, they found chambers where dry sand had drifted in through holes they could not find, and other places where great stone cylinders had fallen, and broken, and blocked further exploration. Seeing these, Shaiara was grateful that so much of this underground world seemed to have been carved from one piece of stone, much as an artisan might carve an object from a single bone. In any place they came to that was built from one stone set upon another, those stones had shifted and fallen.

  Shaiara had moved the tribe down to live in the first of the garden-places they had discovered. Kamar had suggested, in the first handful of days after they had come to dwell here, that watchers should be set at the bounds of the city to warn them of discovery. Shaiara had held his words against her heart, then taken them to the tribal elders, speaking against them with a combination of fatalism and practicality. Upon the surface, sentries could be seen as well as see. In day, they would be punished by the fierce heat of the sun; in true night, there would be little to see.

  But no hunter would go upon the hunt with only one bowstring for his bow, and the Nalzindar were master hunters. Shaiara was unhappy with the thought that there was only one entrance and exit from their underground home, and set her hunters to the task of finding others. Though her hunters found that there were many openings to the light and air on this level, most of them could only be entered and departed by birds, and the rest would only permit one person to climb out at a time, and that after scaling several feet of wall. If disaster struck, it was possible that all of the tribe could win its way to freedom through the many escape routes of this sort they had discovered in the time they had been living here, but they would have to abandon all of the shotors and all their supplies—and to do that would be to condemn themselves to a lingering death instead of courting a quick one. For that reason, each day Shaiara set a few of the hunters to searching out ways to the surface that the whole tribe at once might be able to use, ways that would allow them to take the shotors as well. Once such were found—and better more than one—then supplies could be stockpiled at each exit, and the exits carefully hidden again, and Shaiara would simply hope it was never necessary to use them.

  But so far, their searches had been inconclusive. Though they had found what seemed as if they must be many upward-leading openings with terraces, all were choked with sand. Even if they could dig them out, there was no place to put the sand, and to shift it at all was to risk
burying themselves.

  And there was the hard truth that must be grasped in the hand as well: if this refuge were discovered by their enemies, there was simply no place for the Nalzindar to flee. While it was good to seek ways to escape, it was better still to follow the way of the sheshu as it evaded pahk and fenec, and trust that the Wild Magic that had brought them here would spread its cloak over them. Sentries at the mouth of the tunnel, yes, and at any other entrance they might find, for one did not grow to adulthood in the Isvai by having sand for wits. But for the rest, they would play the sheshu in its burrow.

  And it was a more luxurious burrow than any of the Nalzindar had ever dreamed might exist. Here beneath the ground, the ground was soft and the air was warm, and there was arrow-cast upon arrow-cast of space. The first day’s explorations had led them to the Iteru at which the creatures of this place slaked their thirsts, and there was not even any need to return to the Iteru-courtyard that was exposed to the heat and the sun in order to fill their waterskins. Only a few of the people hunted now, always careful, always watching to be sure that their presence did not upset the Balance of this strange and wonderful place, for it would bring sadness to all the Nalzindar were they to destroy the world beneath Abi’Abadshar, even if they did it to ensure their own survival.

  Surrounded by so much bounty, there was more freedom for the Nalzindar than ever before, and in their newfound freedom, many Nalzindar followed terraced paths ever deeper beneath the earth, and there the explorers discovered the first traces of those who had been in this place before.

  THEY HAD ERECTED their single remaining tent within an open space upon the flatness beneath the trees. The ground, so they had discovered in the few sennights of their occupancy, was unpleasantly damp, and it was Natha who had come up with the idea of bringing dry sand from one of the other chambers to lay beneath the skins and the sleeping-mats. Between the new woven mats and the sand, a growing carpet of well-tanned hides provided a further barrier to the damp ground—Shaiara had never imagined in all her life that there could be so much water in the world.