The City of Sand

by Tianxia Bachang

  The corpse bloom! Could it be that we were still in its clutches? It was a demonic flower, sprung directly from hell. If we were still under its control, it would explain why we all felt an urge to destroy one another.

  What was real, and what was not? If this stone chamber and the prophecy it contained were only illusions generated by the corpse bloom, then when had the illusion begun?

  My brain ached from trying to disentangle these tricky questions.

  Thinking I was distracted, Kai nudged me. “What’s up, Tianyi? Your eyes are glazed over. Do we get rid of Julie or what?”

  I told Kai to keep an eye on the professor and knelt beside Julie. “You said your grandfather was a reverse dipper before coming to America, but can you prove it? Otherwise why should I believe you?”

  “Thief,” she spat, glaring at me with hatred. “Believe me or not. That’s up to you. But if you want proof, look at the relic hanging around my neck. That ought to convince you.”

  “Relic?” I reached into her collar and found a chain. Pulling it out, I saw a medallion dangling from it—a gold-hunting charm, made from a pangolin claw.

  Pangolin-claw talismans are exceedingly rare. Even among gold hunters, not everyone owns one, or has even set eyes on one. Of course, to the average person, such a charm doesn’t look like much. A street sweeper wouldn’t bother to pick one up. To generations of tomb raiders, however, it’s invaluable—it stands for an entire history, a way of life, and owning one is a testimony of achievement.

  Right away, I could tell Julie’s was a relic of the later Han dynasty, and the calligraphy of the word “mojin”—gold hunting—that was engraved on it was mighty and virile, full of ancient energy. The sharpest claw of the pangolin had been used to make this, as clear and bright as crystal. Even after all this time, it showed no signs of wear. The whole thing hung from a gold chain and was carved with flying-tiger lines to ward off evil.

  By contrast, the charms Gold Tooth had given to Kai and me were much more recent and far less prized.

  I spent a long time staring at Julie’s charm, reluctant to give it back. It felt so good in my hand.

  “It’s mine,” she hissed. “Kill me if you must, but at least return my property to me.”

  I let the charm drop back around her neck. “If your grandfather was in this line of work, why do you keep calling us thieves? Your grandfather was a thief too. But listen, that’s not why we tied you up.” And with that, I told her the truth about the stone box and the second set of doors. “It could all be an illusion from the corpse bloom,” I finished. “But I can’t let you go until I’m sure.”

  Julie looked at me, calm now. “Then you’d better think of a way quickly or I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine someday.”

  I paced the room, then came back and stared at the pictures on the stone doors. We couldn’t afford to take any chances. If this prophecy was not a hallucination, then we absolutely couldn’t open the box without killing one of us, or the demon would manifest itself and slay us all. Whatever I did next, four lives hung in the balance.

  Professor Chen was mad, and Julie wasn’t entirely clear of suspicion. I took Kai aside and told him everything that had been going through my mind. I knew he wouldn’t be much help in this situation, but I needed to share the burden with someone else.

  Kai nodded. “Ah, so that’s what’s going on? You think that flower is still messing with our brains. You should have said something earlier. What’s the big deal? I can sort that out for you.”

  “How? This isn’t some game, so stop playing around. One wrong move and we’re all dead.”

  Kai said nothing. He simply slapped me across the face. I froze for a moment, my cheek stinging with pain.

  “How was that?” I heard him ask through the haze. “Did it hurt?”

  I rubbed my face. “You idiot. You just smacked me; of course it hurt.” But I wasn’t angry. I knew what he was getting at. If I felt pain, then we probably weren’t hallucinating. So this must be real.

  When I turned back to see how Julie was doing, I noticed that the stone door seemed different somehow. Rushing over for a closer look, I watched as the carved pictures began to blur, then vanish. It was just a plain stone box now, completely undecorated, sealed with a leather strap, as if to keep some valuable object safe.

  I stepped back and looked at the first layer, but that was unchanged: image after image of the seer’s prophecies, culminating in the picture of four people opening the first set of doors.

  So what was going on? Was this also reality? I dragged Kai over and told him to look at the stone doors. He looked confused. “Isn’t it the same three pictures as before?” he asked.

  I smacked him on the face. “Look again. Still see them?”

  He rubbed his cheek. “Ah! They’ve…they’ve disappeared. What kind of witchcraft is this?” He reached for the doors.

  “Stop!” I yelled, trying to grab his arm. “I just said look, don’t—” But it was too late: the inner doors were open. I braced myself, but nothing happened. The four of us were perfectly fine; no demons showed up to slaughter us.

  So we were actually in the stone chamber, but part of what we’d seen here was an illusion induced by the corpse bloom. It was far more powerful than I’d guessed, if it could affect us from so far beyond the stone beam.

  When I’d rushed out onto the beam to rescue Sa Dipeng, I’d fallen into the flower’s trap, until Kai and Julie dragged me back. When I’d turned around to look at it, the buds had opened, spreading their petals wide, facing us directly.

  From that moment, the plant’s range of influence had drastically widened. After our floodlight was snuffed out, thousands of black snakes appeared. There were five of us then, two unable to move, and yet not one of us was bitten. That had seemed like a miracle at the time. Now it was clear that the snakes had been an illusion.

  Why had the corpse bloom made us think we were besieged by snakes? Obviously, to force us into the crack in the rock, then trick us into burying ourselves alive, retreating farther into the fissure, and stumbling upon the burial chamber of the seer.

  The corpse bloom was mighty. It captured you not just through your five senses, but through your memory too. Once you’d set eyes on its dazzling colors, you remained bewitched until its range of influence waned. We were clearly still under its power, though it could only manage something simple like placing stone carvings where none were before. And it had made us turn on each other.

  This was the terrifying aspect of the demon plant.

  If it had had its way, eventually only two of us would have been left alive, then one—until the lone survivor went mad from having killed his own companions. That was the only way to ensure that the Jingjue queen’s secrets could be preserved forever. It was pure evil.

  While my mind raced with these thoughts, Kai had reached into the inner stone box and pulled out what lay inside: an ancient book bound in sheepskin. By my reckoning, this tome must contain all the rest of the seer’s predictions, as well as the remaining secrets of the ghost-hole and the Jingjue Kingdom.

  I reached out to open the book, then remembered that Julie was still tied up on the floor and turned to set her free instead. Although it was still unfathomable why she’d dreamed repeatedly of the ghost-hole with such accuracy, I no longer thought she might be an evil spirit incarnate, or the Jingjue queen herself. What had gotten into us? I felt a pang of guilt for how badly we’d just treated her.

  Julie was straining against her bonds, tears leaving streaks through the dust that smeared her face. As I came closer, she growled, “Tianyi, untie me right now!”

  I told her everything we’d just discovered, gritted my teeth and smacked her across the face, then loosened the leather belt around her hands. “I had no choice,” I said apologetically. “That was the only way to break the spell. Slap me back if you like. Slap me a few times.” I offered her my cheek, prepared for her to hit me hard after what we’d done to her. If she knocked out
a couple of my teeth, it would be no more than I deserved.

  As I braced myself, Julie simply wiped the muddy tears off her face, and said in a level voice, “I’m not going to fight with you. We’ll settle this score another time, but right now, let’s focus on getting out of here.”

  She reached into her rucksack for a small box containing some tiny pills. She took a deep sniff, then handed Kai and me a pill each and told us to smell them too.

  “This is highly concentrated alcohol in solid form, which is why it’s so pungent. The scent will go straight from your smell receptors to your frontal lobe, keeping your head clear. Medically, it’s used to reduce cravings. Explorers often bring some of these pills with them in case of exhaustion or hunger. One sniff of this can sharpen your focus, though it’s best not to use it too often, or there are side effects. Whether this works against the corpse bloom’s hallucinations, I have no idea—but it’s worth a shot.”

  I unwrapped my pill and took a deep sniff. A peculiar, nasty stench rose from it, making me cough for a few seconds. Immediately afterward, though, the heaviness that had been tugging at my brain was gone, and I felt much better.

  “This is good,” I said. “Why didn’t you get these out sooner? If we’d had a few of these on the stone beam, we could have plucked that pesky plant by the roots, and we wouldn’t be trapped here, buried alive.”

  “I didn’t realize what was going on till you ran back off the beam,” explained Julie. “That’s when you told us it was the flowers that made everyone who came near them see and hear things. But right after that, we were attacked by those black snakes, and I didn’t stop to think that they might not be real. Besides, I don’t think fighting the corpse bloom is as simple as that. It seems to have a direct line into our brains, and I think we were probably still too close to it.”

  Safe again, at least for the moment, we turned our attention back to the professor. He was weaving happily around the room, completely oblivious. In his madness, he made me think of the British archaeologist who’d gone crazy. Professor Chen hadn’t killed anyone, but the swings in emotion he’d experienced had done him in. First the tragedy of Hao Aiguo’s death, then the great joy of so many important discoveries in the Jingjue Kingdom, followed by sadness again as one of his students suddenly committed murder and suicide. All this would be a blow to anyone, let alone an elderly man. No wonder his mind had collapsed under the pressure.

  I could only nod solemnly at Julie. “This corpse bloom really is lethal, but we’ve pulled through.”

  Julie’s face fell. “Hu Tianyi, that’s cunning of you, pushing off all your guilt just like that. You know how I trusted you? Not only did you lie to me, you even suspected me of being…of being a demon. Didn’t you think about my feelings? Being tied up like I was a head of cattle, waiting to be slaughtered—how’s that supposed to make me feel?”

  I clutched my head. “Argh! Sorry…my brain hurts. I need to sit down. Kai, give Miss Yang the seer’s book. Maybe she can make sense of it.” Hopefully, that would distract her. I sat down next to the professor, trying to be quiet. I didn’t think I’d ever win an argument with Julie.

  Fortunately, she wasn’t an argumentative person. She grabbed the book and began sulkily flipping through the pages.

  I felt a sense of dread. She wasn’t going to forget this episode easily—I’d have to pay at some point. I’d done some bad things, and lots of people were dead. She probably wasn’t going to give us our wages now. I wished my life could be easier, for once.

  Julie looked serious, but I couldn’t tell whether she was happy or sad. Finally, I couldn’t resist. “What does the kid say? Any messages for us?”

  Julie continued turning pages. “It’s all pictures. Mostly to do with the ghost-hole. Give me a chance to finish.”

  I sighed. I knew better than to hurry her, so I waited for her to speak again.

  Eventually, she said, “You have to start at the very beginning to make any sense of this. The opening talks about how the Western Regions had two holy mountains—the Zaklaman, where we are now. Rivers flowed all around; plants and animals thrived. And there were four villages in the area….”

  Kai and I looked at each other, thinking that if she insisted on telling us the story from ancient times, it might take forever. We were both anxious to get out of this tiny room before it became our burial chamber too, but neither of us dared to rush her.

  “But the good times didn’t last. Some people discovered an impossibly deep hole within the Zaklaman Mountains,” Julie went on. “No one could reach the bottom, which made them more curious to find out what lay inside. The four villages shared a priest, and this holy man fashioned a giant eyeball out of jade, hoping to use its magic powers to see whether the bottomless hole was good or evil. After a massive ceremony, he not only failed to discover the secrets of the pit, but brought a great tragedy upon the region. First of all, the priest himself went blind and died shortly after. Then a species of deadly snake appeared in vast numbers—strange black creatures with a growth like a monstrous eye on their heads. Their venom was lethal, and they killed a great many humans and animals. Finally, the villagers sent two holy individuals who’d been touched by divinity to lead their bravest warriors to kill the mother snake, a giant serpent with a human head and four limbs, whose eggs looked like human eyes. Each egg released hundreds of those strange snakes into the world. If she’d continued reproducing at that rate, the results would’ve been unthinkable.”

  Kai gasped. “So giant human-headed snakes really did exist in ancient times?” he said, clearly awed. “Thank god those aren’t around anymore. I don’t know what I’d do if one showed up in front of me.”

  “There probably really was a holy warrior who led the battle against the snakes,” said Julie thoughtfully, “though that doesn’t mean all that stuff about a snake with a person’s head was true. The ancients always turned historical events into myth.”

  I gave her the thumbs-up. “Well said. But can you get to the point?”

  She glared at me. “After the snakes had been eliminated,” she went on, “the sages flung the reptile bodies into the bottomless pit of the Zaklaman Mountains. The gods had told them that this was a pit of disaster, and the jade eyeball had already opened the door to greater calamity. After that, a child was born to one village. This child possessed the power to foretell the future: a seer. Then there’s something about the seer’s predictions about the Zaklaman, the deaths of the sages, how they were buried among the mountains, and how the seer conducted a ritual and said an important event would happen after thousands of years.”

  I’d been listening carefully to Julie, and as I understood it, the key to our survival was about to be revealed. My heart beat a little faster.

  “Don’t look so worried,” said Julie. “I flipped ahead earlier. The final chapter hints at how we can get out of here, but I need to fully understand the earlier sections before I’m sure what it says. Take it easy…one step at a time.”

  Just as she had our full attention, Professor Chen suddenly lurched over, glaring wildly. He pointed at the book in Julie’s hands and shrieked, “Don’t—don’t—don’t read the ending!”

  The three of us looked at each other, confused. Professor Chen might have lost his mind, but why had he started talking in such an unrecognizably shrill voice?

  I grabbed him by his shoulders and shook him hard, hoping that would wake him up. Instead, all he did was shriek louder, waving both arms wildly. “Don’t go out! Don’t go out!” Then he clutched my arm, pulling hard.

  Terrified that he’d do something in his madness to endanger us all, I called Kai over to help, and together we pinned him to the ground.

  “Don’t hurt him!” Julie cried, rushing over. When she was close enough, the professor’s arm shot out without warning and grabbed the ancient book from her hand. Flipping quickly to the back page, he ripped it out and stuffed it into his mouth.

  The millennia-old sheepskin parchment was imposs
ible to chew, of course, but that didn’t stop Professor Chen, who energetically mashed his teeth into it again and again.

  Kai ripped the parchment from the professor’s mouth and smoothed it out. It looked undamaged. Just in case he was planning to get up to any more mischief, we tied him up for the time being.

  The crumpled sheet was stained with the professor’s saliva, but nowhere on the page was there a single word, or any sign that it had ever been written on.

  “Oh no,” I said to Julie. “The old fool’s licked off the prediction!”

  “Calm down,” she replied. “There was never anything on the last page. The seer’s final words were a blank.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Nothing was going right. And despite Julie’s request, I couldn’t calm myself down. There was something about this room that bothered me.

  The seer had proved himself once again. Knowing in advance what the mad professor would do, he’d left the final page of his book blank. It would seem every action we took in this stone chamber was preordained.

  Kai and I sat down on either side of the professor, while Julie continued reading. The older man was still struggling, but at least he’d stopped shouting.

  “The sage foretold that eight hundred years after his death, when his tribe had long since fled to the east in order to avoid disaster, a new settlement would arise in the Zaklaman Mountains,” Julie went on. “One from the desert to the west. They would discover the ghost-hole, which their shaman would proclaim to be the dwelling place of spirits. These newcomers were the founders of the Jingjue Kingdom. When the Jingjue queen arrived, with the ability to see the dark side, she grasped the ritual of summoning monstrous black snakes with the use of the jade eye, and with this witchcraft she subdued a dozen neighboring states. These violent acts enraged the true gods, who handed these mountains and the land around them to demonic forces, while Jingjue City was swallowed by the desert, burying everyone who’d lived here, along with the evil black snakes they had called forth.”