“Are you really going back to Shulara?” Asha asked.
Kelder looked down at her, and his anger dissipated.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“It’s only two days from here to Shan,” Irith said. “At most; we could make it in less if we pushed.”
Kelder looked at her, remembering the long walk from Shulara, and then looked down at Asha again.
“No,” he said, “no, I guess I’m not going back to Shulara. Not yet, anyway.” He turned back to Irith. “Two days?”
“Less, really,” she said. “It’s three and a half leagues to the Castle of Dhwerra, which is right on the edge of the desert — after that we’re out of the Small Kingdoms entirely. There’s nothing but the Great Eastern Desert from there to Shan — it’s about another three and a half leagues. Seven in all. Most people make it two days because of the heat.”
“What heat?” Kelder asked.
“The heat of the desert, of course! But it isn’t bad this time of year, really.”
“Seven leagues,” Kelder said, considering.
Irith nodded. “I could fly it in a couple of hours,” she said.
“And we’ve come how far since we met?”
She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe fifteen leagues?”
Kelder thought for a moment longer, then asked, “Do you really think we can do anything for Asha?”
Irith pursed her lips. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know about anything really, you know, long-term, or anything, but it shouldn’t be all that hard to get her brother’s head back and build him a pyre.”
Kelder mulled this over, and Irith added, “Besides, don’t you want to see Shan on the Desert? I mean, it’s a really interesting place. The market — they call it the Bazaar — is wonderful. They specialize in sorcery, or at least they used to.”
That did sound interesting — one of the great cities he had been promised.
Really, the prophecy was still holding up just fine. His bride, the cause he was to champion, a great city to be seen — it was all coming together, wasn’t it?
He couldn’t just give it all up and go back to being a boring old farmer, with no special destiny.
“All right,” he said, “let’s get going. We’ll all walk at first, and if you get too tired, Asha, we can stop, and maybe Irith can turn into a horse again...”
Irith glared at him.
Kelder glared back.
Asha ignored them both and started walking, and a moment later they followed.
Chapter Twelve
The Castle of Dhwerra, unlike most of the castles along the Great Highway, was not actually very near the road. Instead it was built atop a huge mass of rock that thrust up from the sandy earth, half a mile or more to the northwest of the highway’s closest approach.
The highway was no longer heading east. From Amramion to Sinodita it had run east by northeast; from Sinodita it had run due east for three leagues; now, though, it curved around and ran due north.
In doing so it described a quarter-circle around the Castle of Dhwerra, and around the great stone promontory upon which the fortress was built. Along that arc were located a dozen or so inns, but no real town.
And at the end of the arc the road arrived at the top of a long, steep escarpment.
Kelder had grown up among mountains — small ones, but mountains — and was not particularly bothered when land went up or down, but he had never seen anything quite like this particular feature of the landscape. The cliff seemed to extend endlessly in both directions, a dividing line across the world, as if something had long ago split the World in half and then put it back together without lining the pieces up properly. The higher portion, where he stood, was sandy, but still mostly green, and had various features of interest — the castle soaring up on his left, the inns behind him, the occasional bush.
The lower portion, at the foot of the slope, consisted of nothing but golden sand, shining so brightly in the midday sun that he could not look at it without squinting.
It was undoubtedly a vast plain — another phrase fulfilled, at least in part.
“The Great Eastern Desert,” Irith said. He turned, startled; a moment before she had been a horse, with Asha on her back. Now she stood on two feet again, instead of four, and Asha stood beside her.
“But it’s north,” Kelder said.
Irith glared at him. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “The boundary isn’t perfectly straight, silly! There’s a piece of the desert that sort of sticks out to the west, and Shan’s in the middle of it, and we’re on the south edge of it, here.”
“Oh,” Kelder said, looking out over the gleaming sands again.
Far away, on the horizon, he thought he could see something glistening. He wondered if it were their destination, the fabulous city of Shan on the Desert.
Were they really going there? Was he really going to see someplace that exotic?
Vast plains, great cities, and beside him the bright and beautiful girl he intended to marry — even if the prophecy somehow didn’t all come true in every word, he was already sincerely grateful to Zindre. Her words had at least given him the impetus to make this journey, and despite his sore feet and empty purse, that was something he wouldn’t want to have missed.
Especially since meeting Irith had been a part of the journey.
“How big is the piece that sticks out to the west?” he asked. “It must be pretty big if we can’t see across it.”
Irith shrugged. “Oh, maybe ten leagues across,” she said. “Not all that big.”
“Ten leagues isn’t big?” Kelder threw her a startled glance.
“Not compared to the whole thing,” Irith replied. “I mean, they don’t call it the Great Eastern Desert for a joke, Kelder — it’s huge. Covers one entire side of the World.”
“What’s on the other side?”
“Of the World?” Irith stared at him as if he were quite thoroughly mad.
“No, no,” Kelder explained hastily, “I mean the other side of the ten leagues!”
She shrugged again. “Empty grassland. Lots and lots of it.”
He nodded. “And Shan’s about three or four leagues from here?”
“About that,” she agreed.
Kelder looked down the escarpment, down at the empty sands, and asked, “How do we get there?”
“Walk,” Irith said, pointing.
Kelder followed her finger, and discovered that the road did not vanish at the top of the cliff, as he had first thought; it turned a sharp angle to the right and wound its way slowly and torturously down the slope, to disappear into the sand at the bottom.
“The sand blows onto the highway, but there are markers every half-mile or so,” Irith explained. “It’s paved, really, but the sand covers it.”
Kelder sighed and looked up. The sun was slightly past its zenith.
“I guess we had better get going,” he said.
Irith nodded. “Asha,” she said, turning to the girl, “can you walk for awhile? It’s sort of steep along here, and it’s not good for horses, and besides, I’m getting tired of being a horse.”
“All right,” Asha agreed. She immediately started walking on ahead, picking her way carefully down the rather abrupt drop that took the road over the edge of the escarpment and down the first five or six feet.
Kelder and Irith followed.
“Is it uncomfortable, being a horse?” Kelder asked, genuinely curious, as they made the turn and the road leveled out somewhat as it cut sideways across the face of the slope.
“No, of course not,” Irith answered. She giggled at the idea. “It’s sort of nice, being big and strong like that. But I get tired of not seeing any colors, and not being able to talk, and my fingers that aren’t there get stiff, sort of, from being hooves and being walked on.”
“Not seeing colors?” Kelder asked, startled.
“That’s right,” Irith said with a nod. “Horses don’t see colors, just greys and
black and white. Sort of like in the evening, when it’s mostly dark? Except that it’s not dark, there just isn’t any color.” She hesitated, then amended that to, “At least, when I’m a horse, I don’t see colors. I don’t know about natural horses, really.”
“Oh,” Kelder said.
A moment later he said, “Could you ask them?”
“Ask who?” Irith asked, startled.
“Natural horses. Can you talk to them, when you’re a horse?”
“No, silly!” she said. “Horses don’t talk!”
“Not even amongst themselves?” Kelder asked. “I mean, I know they don’t speak any of our languages, but don’t they have languages of their own?”
Irith giggled again.
“Well,” Kelder said defensively, “they do in all the old stories.”
“Oh, Kelder,” Irith said, “those are just stories! Hardly any of them are true!”
“Well, how should I know that?” he asked.
“Because it’s foolish! Horses can’t talk unless they’re magical, somehow. The gods taught people to speak, not animals!”
Kelder marched on half a dozen steps in silence, then said, “What about the other things you can turn into?”
“What other things?” Irith asked, not looking at him.
“You said you could change into seven different shapes,” he said. “Can the others see color? Can they talk?”
“Well, it doesn’t matter whether I have wings or not,” Irith said, “I’m still me, and I can still see colors and still talk.”
“What about the others, though?”
Irith sighed. “Which others?”
“All four of them!”
“I can’t talk in any of the others. I can see colors in two of them.”
“Which ones?”
“None of your business.”
That effectively ended the conversation, and they trudged on down the escarpment in silence.
The silence continued for the entire descent, and well out onto the sands. Kelder simply didn’t have anything to say except questions that Irith didn’t want to answer, Asha was concentrating on walking, and Irith’s thoughts were her own.
It was finally broken when Asha wailed, “This sand gets into everything! Irith, could you be a horse again?”
“No,” Irith snapped. She marched on.
“Here,” Kelder said, “you can ride on my shoulders for a little while, until you get the sand out from between your toes.” He reached out his arms.
Asha looked up at him, considering, and then shook her head.
“No, Kelder, but thank you all the same,” she said. “I’ll walk.” She turned and trudged onward, slogging through the drifting sand.
Kelder dropped his arms, then shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, a little annoyed. Was that any way for a person to treat her champion?
He marched on, frustrated and resentful. Fulfilling a prophecy wasn’t turning out to be as much fun as he hoped.
He glanced over at Irith, at her flowing golden hair and the curves that showed through her garments as she walked.
On the other hand, he told himself, it did have its points.
He trudged on, thinking about the future.
Chapter Thirteen
They covered the last mile or so largely by the glow that spilled out over the walls of Shan on the Desert; the sun was down, the greater moon not yet up, and the lesser moon not enough to help.
Shan, though, blazed like a fire before them, lighting the sky orange.
Asha was staggering with exhaustion, and in the end she gave up and let Kelder carry her the last hundred yards, through the city gates and into the Bazaar.
They had not caught up with the caravan; Kelder had secretly hoped they would, but they had seen no sign of it.
He hoped that they hadn’t passed it, perhaps safely tucked away at Dhwerra. It should be waiting for them in Shan, Kelder told himself.
Once inside Asha stared about, wide-eyed, as Kelder lowered her to the ground. They were in the central square of the Bazaar, and Kelder and Asha both looked about in wonder. Irith waited impatiently for them to get over their awe.
The Bazaar at Shan was unique among all the markets Kelder had ever seen in that it was built on two levels — at least two levels, perhaps more. The ordinary open market was surrounded, not by the usual taverns and inns and shops, but by a maze of galleries and arcades, alight with torches and lamps of a dozen varieties, with merchants of every description lining every side, displaying their wares to crowds of eager customers.
And atop the galleries and arcades, on their flat roofs, there were still more merchants, still more customers, to be reached by innumerable staircases.
Most of the upper level was unroofed, or covered only by tents and awnings, but in a few places the upper tier, too, was partially enclosed by more substantial structures. Kelder could not see, in the tangle of firelight and shadow, whether there were still more merchants up on a third level.
Where there were no permanent stalls there were blankets heaped with goods, or blankets covering momentarily-untended goods, or wagons or carts or other vehicles. Entire caravans had set up shop under the colonnades around the market square; some of them had obviously been there for quite some time.
Nor was the Bazaar simply a single square. Oh, there was a central square, and a larger one than Kelder had ever seen before, but the galleries and arcades, colonnades and courtyards, stairways and stalls all extended for blocks, to left and right and straight ahead, inward from the city walls. Kelder could see no end to the labyrinth of buyers and sellers and goods.
It seemed to him that the Bazaar must surely occupy the entire interior of the city walls — but that was absurd.
Wasn’t it?
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Where do they all come from?”
“Where do all what come from?” Irith asked, startled. That was not the question she had been expecting.
“The merchants,” Kelder said, with a wave of his hand. “Look at them all! Where do they live? And where did all these people buying things come from? We didn’t see that many on the road, certainly. And we’re in the middle of the desert, and I don’t see any farmers here with their crops — what do they all eat? Where do they get all those things they’re selling?”
“Oh, don’t you know?” Irith replied, startled. She giggled. “Really, Kelder, sometimes it seems like you don’t know anything!”
Slightly resentful, but too awed and curious to worry about it, Kelder asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s all done by magic, of course! We aren’t in the Small Kingdoms any more, you know — they take their magic seriously here.”
“What sort of magic?” he asked, eyeing her cautiously. Magic, after all, was something she knew far more about than he did — and while he wanted to know more, he had a fair appreciation of how dangerous it could be. In fact, the thought of unfamiliar and perhaps hostile magic made him distinctly uneasy, especially after what had happened to those bandits back in Angarossa.
“Oh, I guess wizardry, mostly, these days,” Irith said, “but a lot of sorcery, too — it used to be mostly sorcery, but these days sorcerers aren’t what they used to be...”
“What are you talking about?” Kelder demanded. “What do sorcerers have to do with all this?”
Irith put her hands on her hips and glared at him.
“I am talking,” she said, “about this place — about Shan on the Desert!”
Kelder glared back, waiting for her to continue. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered that she had told him that the Bazaar specialized in sorcery, but he was in no mood to admit it.
She threw up her hands in disgust.
“Aah! Don’t you know anything about Shan?” she shouted.
“No,” Kelder answered, “I don’t. Except that it’s at the end of the Great Highway and is supposed to be the best place in the World to buy certain things.” He glanced around at
the Bazaar and added, “Which I can believe.”
“All right, then,” Irith said, “I’ll explain.” She took a deep breath, and began, “Shan isn’t part of the Small Kingdoms — it wasn’t part of Old Ethshar. What it is, is the last bit of the old Eastern Command, that fought under General Terrek in the Great War. You know about that?”
“A little,” Kelder said. “I mean, of course I know about the war, and I’ve heard of General Terrek, I think. He got killed by a demon, didn’t he?”
Irith nodded. “A whole bunch of demons, actually. His whole command got wiped out, pretty much — all the demons of Hell got loose at once and went running all over the east, blasting everything. That’s where the Great Eastern Desert came from — it wasn’t desert before that.”
“Oh,” Kelder said, thinking about the vast, empty wasteland that surrounded Shan, and trying to imagine what could have caused it. By comparison, the demons who wiped out the bandits looked pretty trivial.
That reminded him of the caravan they had come to find; he glanced around, but recognized none of the wagons in sight.
A few did have heads on pikes, as it happened, but none of them were recent. Two were actually just skulls, rather than heads, and the others were approaching a similar state.
Irith continued, “Right, the demons did all that, and they were going to go on and destroy everything else, but the gods themselves came down from Heaven and fought the demons and defeated them.”
Kelder nodded, partly listening and partly still looking for the caravan; that part, about the gods coming and stopping the demons, he had heard before.
“But it was too late for General Terrek, of course, and all of his people — except for Shan.” She made a sweeping gesture, taking in the entire Bazaar. “See, this was Terrek’s main supply depot, and he had all his magicians here at the time, and they had all their protective spells up and everything, and they were able to hold the demons off until the gods came and rescued them.”
“Oh,” Kelder said again, still looking around.
“Anyway,” Irith continued, “after the war ended, there were all these people here, magicians and supply clerks and quartermasters and people like that, and they had all these supplies intended for General Terrek’s army, but the army was gone, so they just kept all the stuff themselves, and started selling it.”
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