The City of Sand

by Tianxia Bachang

  Julie nodded at me, ignored Kai altogether, and got out her water bottle to hydrate the professor and Little Ye. Professor Chen still looked shaken by Aiguo’s death, but a drink seemed to bring him back to himself. We discussed the matter quickly and decided to bury Hao Aiguo in the sand near the entrance to the valley. He’d spent his life studying the culture of the Western Regions, and would probably have wanted to remain here, occupying this mysterious city in the desert for all eternity.

  After digging a pit in the sand, we wrapped his body in a blanket and lowered him in. Once we’d covered the grave, I stuck a shovel in front of it. That was all we could provide by way of a tombstone.

  Eight of us left now. We stood in silence by Hao Aiguo’s grave for a long time before we felt ready to move on.

  Having dealt with the deceased, we had to do what we could for the living, which meant finding a water source as quickly as possible; otherwise it wouldn’t be long before Little Ye was buried in the sand too.

  We began gathering our possessions, getting ready to enter the city. Now that we were finally at our destination, I hoped there wouldn’t be any more trouble. If we lost anyone else, I didn’t think I’d be able to bring myself to accept my fee for this job.

  Julie was trembling slightly, though I couldn’t tell whether out of fear, anxiety, or excitement. She pulled out a crucifix and said a prayer in a low voice, then turned to us and said, “Let’s go.”

  Unexpectedly, it was Asat Amat who now dragged his heels. He shook his head violently like a baby’s rattle, refusing to set foot in the Jingjue ruins. He said Hao Aiguo’s death was a bad omen, and the poisonous snake was a demon’s familiar.

  There was no convincing him, so we decided Asat Amat could set up camp at the foot of the Zaklaman Mountains, where he’d watch over the camels and wait for our return.

  I thought of telling Kai to stay too, to keep an eye on Asat Amat in case he thought of running off. We needed him—and needed the camels even more. It was hard to imagine how long it would take us to get home on foot without them. But then I thought Asat Amat had stayed with us this long and still hadn’t received a cent for his work, so he’d probably stick around. After all, he’d been promised a generous amount of money, enough to support him for the rest of his life.

  Still, I’d been cheated enough times to know it was best to take precautions. Pulling Asat Amat to one side, I asked him, “So tell me, how does Old Hu punish liars and traitors?”

  “Oh, their home and money turn to sand. And all the salt in their food turns to sand, ah, so they starve to death. Like dying in the Black Desert. Afterward, they end up in a part of hell that’s full of hot sand, where one thousand eight hundred types of punishment wait for them.”

  He seemed sincere, so I relaxed. His religious beliefs would keep him honest.

  Seven of us entered the ancient city, with Chu Jian carrying the unconscious Little Ye on his back. The rest of us had to carry all our equipment and weaponry between us, not to mention food and water supplies. It was a considerable burden.

  I remember my grandfather telling me an old army saying: you can tell a soldier by the extra forty pounds—meaning the minimum weight of a regular soldier’s battle pack is forty pounds. Those chosen to carry machine guns or wear antitank armor had to shoulder even more.

  Kai and I were used to carrying heavy loads, but Professor Chen and the other eggheads were clearly struggling.

  It wasn’t far from the mountain pass to the ruins, and we only had to stop for one meal before reaching the gates. The walls around here were full of cracks, and the moat was filled with sand, so there was nothing to stop us from walking right in. And now we were in the ancient city itself, the ruins around us filled with a deathly silence.

  It was nothing at all like I’d imagined, and I couldn’t help being disappointed. The streets and buildings had all collapsed, or at least were badly damaged. What looked like a magnificent city from a distance turned out, close up, to be nothing but rotting wood and crumbling stone poking out of the sand. What treasure could possibly be in a place like this?

  Only in the vast wooden beams could you still see a trace of the former splendor, even though they too were falling apart and most of the scarlet paint had long since peeled off them.

  We tried to enter some of the houses close to the wall, only to find that even though they appeared sheltered from the desert, every one of them was filled with sand, almost to the roof.

  The legend was that the city had been destroyed in the fires of war. The invading army had marched right up to the palace; then, as the battle drew to a close, a black sandstorm swept over Jingjue, burying both its inhabitants and the attackers indiscriminately beneath a deep layer of sand. It wasn’t till the nineteenth century that the sand shifted again to reveal the ruins.

  Everything we saw was just as the story predicted, apart from the lack of dried-out corpses—but for all we knew, they were buried beneath the sand.

  I quickly decided there was nothing here, but Professor Chen and his students seemed fascinated by everything to do with the ancient city. You could probably have sat them in front of any disintegrating wall and they’d have happily stared at it for hours on end.

  Before they got too engrossed, I reminded them that Little Ye was still unwell, and we had to make sure we saved her before doing anything else. It looked like sand had filled every crevice here, and we had no hope of finding any wells, so why not go have a look at the palace? That was probably our best bet for finding any drinkable water.

  Professor Chen smacked his forehead. “I’m an old scatterbrain. You’re right, we should make sure Little Ye is all right. Let’s go straight to the palace, then. Every kingdom in the desert was built on top of underground rivers, and sometimes they flowed right through the main buildings. The palace is usually in the center of the city.”

  We oriented ourselves and made our way toward the center. Kai murmured to me, “Tianyi, do you know what my mouth is watering for right now? I’d love some honeydew melon, or some of those really plump purple grapes. Or even just a slice of watermelon.” He sighed. “All this talk is just making me thirstier. I swear I can feel smoke rising in my throat, it’s that dry. If we find this underground river, I’m going to jump right into it and have a long soak.”

  “The Jingjue queen was known for her fancy lifestyle,” I told him. “I’m sure she always had watermelons soaking in the cool underground streams. Of course, any that are left will be fossils by now, and the remaining grapes are surely raisins.”

  “What kind of place is this?” grumbled Kai. “I can’t believe anyone actually wanted to live here. Next time, never mind twenty thousand American dollars. You could offer me a mountain of gold and silver and I still wouldn’t set foot in the desert. Of all the ways to die, thirst has to be the worst.”

  His mention of death reminded me of Hao Aiguo. He hadn’t lived long after being bitten by that strange snake, but who knew how much he’d suffered in those few moments? And that snake—its head hooded with a black tumor that turned out to be filled with poisonous liquid, able to leap up and bite even after being cut in half…Even Julie hadn’t seen anything like it before. Would there be more of those creatures in this place?

  The seven of us made our way cautiously along the path, ruined buildings to either side. Where they blocked the road, we had to make our way around them, so it took a long time to reach the center of the city. There, the streets were wider, and although they were still covered in sand, it was easier to tell their layout.

  Apart from the leaning black tower, there were no other large buildings around here. Never mind the grand palace, there weren’t even any decent-looking houses. All we saw were mud walls, wrecked from years of weathering.

  Professor Chen said the palace might have been built underground, to keep out the sand. Our best bet was to climb the tower and look around, hoping to spot the entrance.

  The tower looked like it was built of Zaklaman stone. It was
six stories high and, apart from the slight tilt, appeared reasonably sturdy. We hadn’t seen these building materials used anywhere else in the city. The other odd feature was an olive-shaped black stone topping the structure. The lowest level had several entrance archways, but they were all blocked with sand.

  Professor Chen fussily put on his glasses and looked up, then looked again with his binoculars. “That’s right—why didn’t I think of this before?” he muttered to himself.

  Before I could ask him what he had discovered, he’d hunched over and burrowed his way through the main door, as if desperate to check on something. We quickly followed as best we could, clambering over the sand. Fortunately, once we rose past ground level, the way was relatively clear.

  The walls of the tower were covered in densely carved words in some mysterious language, and a black stone statue stood at the center of each level. On the first floor was a perfectly ordinary goat, while the second had a kneeling human figure, more or less life-size, with a high nose and sunken eyes. On the third level, we were startled to see the twin of the statue we’d encountered in the little town where we’d taken shelter from the sandstorm, with the same enormous eyes.

  Professor Chen was jubilant. “So I guessed right! The big-eyed statues that have appeared all around here originate from the Jingjue Kingdom. And they must all be made of black stone from the Zaklaman Mountains.”

  “Professor, what’s this tower for?” Sa Dipeng asked. “Why is there a statue on every floor?”

  “My theory is that this tower was used to represent the city’s different inhabitants. The first floor, with its goat statue, stands for domesticated animals, and if my guess is right, there should be an underground level below it for the hungry ghosts stuck in hell. The second story is for regular people, most of them Muslims and slaves from the Western Regions. Then this large-eyed creature whose stone oval right on top is the shape of an eye. My guess is that this place is also a totem showing how important seeing is to this culture. Let’s hurry and see what’s above us—what the upper levels of the Jingjue world look like.”

  Kai butted in. “Even a dummy like me can figure that one out,” he boasted. “I bet you the next stage has to be the queen herself.” With that, he rushed up to the next floor. I followed closely behind.

  The sight that awaited us was completely unexpected. The statue on the next level had the body of a serpent with a human head, plus four sturdy limbs, the back two belonging to some wild animal, the front two like human arms, one hand holding a sword and the other a shield. The face was a man’s, ferocious, with staring eyes, like some kind of sentinel, with a fleshy black hood around his head, just like the monstrous snakes we had encountered in the desert.

  One by one, the professor and the others huffed their way up the stairs. They were all stunned by the bizarre statue. They muttered among themselves about how it might be the guardian spirit of the kingdom, and how the black oval on its head was the same shape as the one on top of the tower, maybe showing that the Jingjue people really did think the eyes were the source of all power. If this deity was below the queen, that must mean she really was regarded as a goddess. We hurried up to the fifth floor to see.

  Before we got there, though, the morning breeze gusting through the tower seemed to revive Little Ye, and her eyes suddenly opened. Julie quickly knelt beside her, feeding her a little water from her bottle. Little Ye was still weak and badly dehydrated, but now that she had regained consciousness, we could treat her with large quantities of cold salted water over the next day or two. She would get back to full health.

  Still eager to know what other mysterious objects were waiting for us in the tower, not to mention hoping to find the location of the palace entrance, we carefully helped Little Ye up to the fifth level.

  As we trudged up the stairs, all kinds of possibilities flitted through my mind—every combination of humans and beasts—except the one that confronted us: nothing at all. The fifth floor was completely empty, without even a plinth to show where a statue might have been. The only difference was that the mysterious writing on the walls was denser than below.

  “Could the statue have been destroyed?” I asked Professor Chen. “Or taken by looters?”

  The professor considered the matter. “That’s hard to say. Let’s look at the top floor to see if that sheds any light.”

  Filled with curiosity, we made our way up to the final level. Here we found a massive black throne, on which had been placed the statue of a woman dressed in fine robes. A veil covered her face, obscuring her features. Even so, it was clear that this was the Jingjue queen, exactly as represented on the wall paintings in the ancient tombs.

  Immediately, the students began squabbling, guessing what her face must have looked like.

  I didn’t understand. “What’s the deal with this lady?” I asked. “Why not let anyone see her face?”

  Kai snickered. “My guess is false advertising. She claims to be the great beauty of the Western Regions, but I bet she’s some freak show under that veil. Otherwise, what’s she got to hide? Still, I’ve got to say that her figure isn’t bad.”

  “You’re a pig,” Julie snapped in disgust. “Imagine saying that about any woman, let alone one who’s been dead two thousand years!”

  “That’s right,” I chimed in. “Besides, everything we’ve seen in the city is exactly like in the legends. For all we know, the queen really is a demon, and if you say one more word this statue might come to life and bite you in the throat. But enough wild guesses. Let’s hear what our professor has to say.”

  Professor Chen had been silent ever since we reached the sixth floor, as if pulling together the various clues in his head. He seemed to have reached a conclusion and, seeing us all look at him inquiringly, obligingly explained: “Just as I said earlier, this tower is probably a representation of this society’s spiritual beliefs, with a clear gradation of status from lowest to highest, from least to most noble. The Jingjue Kingdom is made up of descendants of the Guidong tribe, a people who’ve been completely wiped out and who haven’t left a single artifact behind. We have no information about their origins or ancestry. Our greatest discovery so far has been this totem of the eye, which will definitely be an enormous breakthrough in the study of the Western Regions. With this as proof, many riddles that have been puzzling scholars for years will finally be solved.”

  “But why was the fifth floor empty?” asked Kai.

  Suddenly, I remembered Julie’s words as we stood in the Gumo prince’s tomb, and blurted out, “An empty space—like a parallel dimension!”

  Professor Chen nodded. “That’s exactly right. Above the guardian spirit is an indescribable space, and only after that do we come to the queen, as if to indicate that she controls the space of unknowing. And above her is that great black eye, to show that the queen’s powers stem from her eyes.”

  This sent a shiver through all of us. Could it possibly be that this world contained something that lay beyond human comprehension, a space that none of us could ever hope to understand? If the queen could control this strange realm with her eyes alone, then she really must be some sort of demon. Fortunately, she was safely dead.

  Seeing how worried we were, Professor Chen quickly added, “Don’t be scared. Ancient rulers often used these kinds of myths to control their peasants, as well as to strengthen their own positions. Look at all the emperors in the Central Plains who claimed to be dragons in human form, descended directly from heaven. In the end, weren’t those all legends made up to fool the commoners? It’s not at all surprising that this queen would make a big deal of never showing her face, creating all kinds of rumors and stories around herself. When I talk about the significance of this tower, I mean its archaeological importance. All this information will be invaluable to academics.”

  As the tower contained nothing but these statues, the only thing left for us to do was to go out onto the balcony and survey the ruins. From up here, even with the sand blurring the outli
nes of the city, it was clear that the ruins lay in the shape of an eye.

  Staring down at Jingjue, Professor Chen said to me, “Comrade Hu, your knowledge of feng shui is unparalleled. What do you think of this layout?”

  I silently cursed the old man for quizzing me at a time like this, when our first priority ought to be finding the palace and its water source. Or did he believe the queen’s tomb also lay underground? I began studying the geography carefully.

  Pointing at the Zaklaman Mountains to the north, I said, “Professor, look. That black mountain range resembles a dark dragon slinking through the sand, or it would, if not for the mountain pass cutting it in two, turning it into a couple of snakes. My uninformed guess is that the gap is man-made, and the stone that used to fill it was taken to make this tower and all the statues we saw. After all, every ancient emperor began preparing his grave almost as soon as he seized power. If there really is an underground river beneath this city, then it should be an echo of the Zaklaman, following the same path. The Jingjue queen must have been an intelligent, determined woman. She knew black dragons were unlucky, so she got her subjects to cleave this one in two, nailing it in place and forcing it to guard her tomb for all eternity. And so this city has become a treasure trove. If her grave really is right in the center, then it must be huge. That’s what I don’t understand, sir. I’m sure she’s buried beneath the ground, but you say her palace is there too. Would there really be room for both?”

  The professor smiled. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down. That’s exactly right. I think her tomb and palace are both underground, but not squashed together. Rather, there are likely three levels: a fortress up top, the palace below that, and then, right at the bottom, her eternal resting place. The Jingjue Kingdom was powerful enough to enslave hundreds of thousands from neighboring lands. If they had enough manpower to carve a hole through the Zaklaman Mountain range, surely it wouldn’t have been too much of a problem to create a massive underground complex too.”