The Secret City

by Brian K. Lowe

  I lay there for what felt an interminable time, losing count of the pairs of feet that bounded past, often missing me by inches. The sand became so thick that I could not breathe save by making a mask with my sleeve, and even then it was difficult to keep from being smothered. I began to itch where the sand had penetrated my clothes.

  I felt, rather than saw, the parade end. Cautiously I lifted my head to make sure the coast was clear.

  Except for the screeching of bird and man, I might have lost my life then and there.

  I plunged my face back into the sand and the talon of a lagging bird-mount tore my jacket into two pieces. I felt the thump of a body hitting the ground and I jumped up, shedding sand like water. The bird reared back with a harsh cry.

  The rider leaped to his own feet and seized his mount, calming it with a low, nearly inaudible tone half-way between a whistle and a hiss. Once he was satisfied, he moved to face me. His robes were not colorful like the first rider’s, but grey all over. One hand emerged holding a wickedly curved knife. He held it in a guard position, close to his body, ready but not threatening, and waited for me to speak.

  I eyed the knife. I had little doubt in my ability to take the knife from him, but so long as he evinced no hostility, the wisest course would seem to be to wait. He had been the last in a long line of riders; I could not know if his fellows were likely to return, or even if they were already watching us. My odds of survival in this wasteland were long enough without striking out at someone who could turn out to be my only chance at salvation.

  He used his other hand to pull away the scarf over his face, and suddenly I was looking into her eyes. They were almond-shaped, dark from pupil to edge, revealing nothing but an appraising, almost forceful gaze. Her features were bold but gracefully regular, with heavy brows, high cheekbones, and a straight nose. I would not have called her beautiful, but it was not a face a man might forget easily.

  “You almost caused me to fall,” she said at last. “I really should kill you for that.” Like the Thorans and Nuum, her words were a mixture of telepathy and a few sounds, most of which I understood. Hope began to rise inside me.

  I took a slow step backward.

  “Librarian, is there anyone else around?”

  “We’re alone—wait. Something’s coming,” he said urgently. “Underground, and it’s coming fast! Keryl, jump!”

  I was thrown to one side as the sand erupted under my feet and a creature from an opium dealer’s nightmare reared into the air and a fantastic claw snapped shut inches from my face. The Library went flying out of my hand. I tried to twist as I landed to face the monster, knowing it would be on me in seconds.

  And then the huge bird’s head shot forward, its razor beak scoring the creature’s exoskeleton near one of the many legs. The monster swung about again, but the bird was too fast. Of the woman I could see nothing, and the air was suddenly filled with splashes and curtains of sand as the two combatants tore up the ground in their frenzy.

  Our attacker was a cross between a multi-legged worm and a scorpion, but it was as large as a crocodile. It was incredibly flexible even with its shiny black carapace, but the scorpion-like tail was blunted, without a stinger—which I saw now had been transferred by evolution to the tips of its claws. Nor was the tail to be dismissed as it flew about with the speed of whip and the power of an oaken club.

  How the bird managed to stay clear while attacking with beak and claws, I knew not. It had actually managed to snap off one of the scorpion-worm’s legs while losing only some feathers, but the monster was unimpeded. I could not doubt that soon it was going to find an opening, with fatal results—fatal to the bird, and fatal to us, as well.

  No sooner had this occurred to me than I saw the girl charge from behind the scorpion-worm, knife bared. Darting this way and that, she reached the base of the tail and plunged her blade home.

  The scorpion-worm reared up again, turning over itself and coming to face her, all the while screeching in an unearthly keen. But the girl was already backpedaling at a speed I could hardly have credited under normal circumstances, let alone on sand, and the scorpion’s poisonous swipe missed her by an eyelash.

  All of its attention was on her now. The girl was still backing away, but there was nothing for miles but open desert, and nowhere for her to run. The bird pecked again and was knocked away with the flat of a claw, as though the scorpion’s entire evil intelligence was now focused on the human who had wounded it.

  That would be its last mistake.

  I reached for my pistol only to find an empty holster. I had lost it before I came through the silver door! When the scorpion came for me, I would not even have a nomad’s knife for protection.

  I have long subscribed to the theory, in at least insofar as I am concerned, that a hero is simply a man who acted without taking the time to consider his options, that heroism is often less a matter of courage than of foolhardiness. I have seen other men throw themselves into the jaws of death with perfect knowledge of the consequences, and I admire them. I am not one of them—I am simply an idiot.

  Because only an idiot would have run, completely unarmed, straight up behind a crocodile-sized scorpion and wrapped himself around its tail.

  Again the scorpion tried to rear up into the air, but this time it was dragging a 170-pound weight behind it. It thrashed back and forth, but it was unbalanced by the loss of a leg and lacked the strength in its tail to move me, which meant it couldn’t bring me within reach of its claws, clacking in angry futility. I actually managed to pull the thing backward a yard; although I had difficulty in finding good purchase for my feet, I had dragged heavy weights about before, and it had not.

  Now what? I couldn’t—

  A massive beak flashed down in front of me and the bird, recovered, severed one of the scorpion’s claw-arms at the shoulder. It was all I could do to hold on in its death throes, but they did not last long. The beak slashed again and again until the monster stiffened and fell still. I jumped back, releasing the tail, and it was as well I did, for the bird continued to tear at the carapace, exposing the flesh beneath, which it immediately began to devour in huge gobbets, while it kept one golden eye cocked toward me in warning.

  I backed further. The girl joined me, taking a wide detour. Apparently her mount’s loyalties were more to its stomach than to its rider.

  “Sanja Drusine,” the girl said without preamble.

  “Keryl Clee,” I replied. She looked up at me speculatively.

  “So, Keryl Clee. Who the sandy hell are you?” Suddenly I detected a smile in her voice. “You’re in the middle of the desert, buried in sand without a mount, or a tent, or proper clothing—and you save me from the sandclaw with your bare hands. Obviously you’re crazy. Your name sounds like it’s Nuum, but, if you were Nuum, you wouldn’t be out here—”

  “You know about the Nuum?” I blurted rudely.

  Sanja Drusine stared at me as if I had grown a new head. “Of course,” she said slowly. Now her expression took on a wariness. “Is this some kind of a test?” Her reticence spoke volumes.

  “How long have the Nuum been on Thora?” I asked, using the native term for the Earth.

  I had evidently now grown a third head, but she managed to answer.

  “I don’t know. Longer than I’ve been alive. You can ask the Sand, if it’s that important.”

  “The Sand?”

  The bird had finally finished its noisy feeding. Cautiously, Sanja approached the carcass, whereupon with even greater care she used her knife to extract a small black sac. She wrapped it securely in a cloth and placed it in her mount’s saddlebag.

  She remounted, holding a hand to me from on high. I took it and she helped me up to sit behind her without apparent effort. She was a good deal stronger than the Thorans I was used to.

  “The sand is all-powerful. It travels in multitudes, it destroys everything in its path, and what it does not destroy, it covers over. As you know. The Sand is the chief of our trib
e.” We were underway before she was half-finished her explanation.

  “Your friends didn’t wait for you.”

  “If I was stupid enough to let something happen to me, they don’t want me.” Nevertheless, she urged our bird into a faster trot. I noticed Sanja had picked up what appeared to be a riding crop, which she held ready.

  “What’s that for?”

  “It’s to hit the bird if she tries to bite you. She can carry your weight, but she doesn’t like it. She might try to pick you off, although not so much if she’s not hungry. If I’m quick enough, I can smack her beak and she’ll behave.”

  “What happens if you’re not quick enough?”

  “Then she won’t be minding your weight any more,” my guide said.

  I gripped the bird’s sides more tightly with my legs, and made sure my hands and arms were as close to my body as I could manage and still hang on.

  Chapter 2

  Among the Desert Men

  “My friend, I don’t know what to make of you.”

  I picked a date from the dish in front of me, popping it into my mouth to give me a chance to think.

  “I’m not much to think about. I stay inside, I eat dates, I try not to get sunburned.”

  The Sand laughed and picked up a date. I stayed inside because there was nothing for me to do outside. His tribe, the Zilbiri, had unguents that would protect even me from the sun all day, as I found when Sanja brought me in, my exposed skin bright red without my even realizing it. Fortunately, they had had something for that too.

  “You’ve already done a lot more than that,” he pointed out. “You saved Sanja from the sandclaw, and you brought back its venom sac. Either one of those would make you a hero.” The Sand was short, with broad features and hair bleached by the sun. He scratched at his two-day growth of white beard. His age was impossible to tell, since even with their sun lotions his face was deeply lined by the wind. But when he laughed, which he did often, his teeth were white and even and strong like a young man’s. “You should stay. When the Wind returns she can find you a wife. Somebody to keep you out of trouble.”

  The Sand had told me, in so many words, that I was not their prisoner but their guest—although under the circumstances, there was no practical difference between the two. Even given a full kit and supplies and a giva to ride, I could never survive the desert or find my way to civilization. According to Sanja, the desert was not completely barren; in fact, it hosted a surprising number of beasts, most of which lived under the sand and “would be happy to eat you if you came close.” And even the Librarian, whom I managed to talk to deep in the night, had no maps of this region.

  The simple fact was that I was at a loss either to ascertain my present standing or my future plans, a fact exacerbated by the majority of the tribe’s seeming indifference to me. Life in the desert allowed them little time for idle curiosity, while I was hard put to be occupied by anything else.

  But the Sand’s offer reminded me that there was something else to occupy my mind. I had no idea what year it was. Was Maire still out there? Had she grown old, waiting for me? Or had she not yet been born?

  My thoughts must have been written on my face, because the Sand’s eyes narrowed and he looked at me intently.

  “Ah. I see,” he said. “So you do have a life. You didn’t just drop out of the sky.”

  “Well, I might have,” I admitted. “I once almost fell from a skybarge. It would have been the same thing.”

  The Sand said nothing. Perhaps I had divulged too much.

  After a moment he resumed quietly, “I don’t want to pry, my friend, but is there any reason anyone might come looking for you here?”

  I shook my head. “I do not mind. But no, as far as I am aware, no one is looking for me, and certainly no one knows I am here.”

  “Then there’s no problem. Look, Keryl, I may be stuck out here in the desert, but I’m not an ignorant savage. I know there are a lot of different kinds of people out there, Thorans and Nuum and lizard-men and probably talking givas. You look like a Nuum as far as I can tell, and maybe you are, maybe you’re not. I don’t care. You want to stay, you can stay. You want to leave, we’ll send you out with the next trading party, sell the venom, give you your cut, and say goodbye. Your choice.” The Sand shrugged.

  “All right, then!” He was all smiles again, popping dates into his mouth like a machine. “When the Wind comes home, she’s going to want to get that venom to town as fast as she can while it’s still good, so you might want to think about your next move.”

  “Well, while we are sharing information, I understand why they call you the Sand. But why do you call your wife the Wind?”

  “Ah! The sand attacks, it destroys, it overwhelms. Nothing can stop it. But the wind—even the sand goes where the wind wills.”

  Over the past several hundred thousand years, the human race has evolved mentally to the detriment of its physical capabilities. The Nuum, who left Earth many generations ago, are stronger, bigger, but the largest of them scarcely equals my own size, albeit back home I was never considered an imposing specimen. The Sand was a large man by Thoran standards, but he barely reached my chin.

  The Wind was an entirely different proposition.

  We were sitting in the Sand’s tent awaiting her arrival, my host, me, and Jazil, the tribe’s sub-chieftain. Jazil was a cinema villain, razor-thin where the Wind was stocky, hook-nosed and possessed of a sparse beard that refused to grow in. Despite his looks, however, I had found him as gracious as his master, albeit he looked to have more trouble reining in his curiosity about my origins. When the Wind arrived, however, all thoughts of Jazil vanished.

  She stripped off her scarves and outer robes and leaned down to give her husband a kiss. For a wild moment, I thought she was a time traveler like myself, but I quickly realized that she was instead a throwback, a genetic primitive like me. Compared to the average Thoran, even a Nuum, she was tall, athletic, voluptuous. She wore her black hair down, her eyes were wide and dark, her nose straight and strong. No matter where she went in this world, she would have been a queen, seducing rulers and kings.

  I am not ashamed to say that, in a way, she seduced me. Because there was no one in this era like her.

  When I was able to tear my gaze away, for the sake of propriety, I saw with a flush of shame that the Sand, my host, was regarding his wife with an expression as adoring as mine had been covetous.

  A covetousness, I noticed, that Jazil shared as well.

  The spell was broken after a moment when the Sand rose to his feet and presented me to his wife, briefly explaining the peculiar circumstances of my arrival. Her appraisal of me was frank and extended, but it made me feel more like a prize bull than a potential paramour.

  “I would have taken you for Nuum,” she said at last, “but if you were, even in my husband’s tent you would have acted like you owned everything in sight. You don’t have that arrogance.” She held out her hand. “Welcome, stranger Keryl.”

  I took her hand and bent over it, placing my lips chastely upon her fingers. When I looked up, her eyebrows were raised, but she had not moved her hand.

  “Forgive me if I overreach,” I said, “but that is the protocol in my land, when one is introduced to a lady of rank.”

  The Wind drew back her hand. “Hmm.” She looked at her husband. “I think this is a custom some of our men would do well to learn.”

  “They’ll have to learn fast,” he replied. “Keryl isn’t staying. He’s going back with you on the next trade mission.”

  She shrugged. “Then we have plenty of time to get acquainted.” She spared me a smile.

  “Not so much,” he said. “We have sandclaw venom to sell.”

  The Wind blinked. “We do? What have you been up to?”

  “Not me, Keryl.” Her eyebrows threatened to lift the tent. “And Sanja. She picked it up when she picked him up.”

  “Jazil,” the Wind said in a deceptively calm voice, “would you mind
getting Sanja for me? If I wait for my husband to tell the story, we could be here until Hornsday.”

  Once Sanja had been fetched, the tale was actually told in short order. The Wind examined the venom pouch carefully, agreed that it should be taken to market sooner rather than later, and proposed a toast—to me, to Sanja, to the tribe’s fortune, to the sandclaw…and after that I lost track.

  I awoke with a splitting headache, the early morning sun in my eyes. Somewhere nearby people were arguing loudly. And my hands were securely tied behind my back.

  Chapter 3

  Condemned

  “—because I’m in charge! He doesn’t deserve a tent over his head! He deserves the fate the Sand would give him!”

  “The Sand would treat him as a prisoner, not a slave!”

  I couldn’t see who was arguing because they stood near the rising sun, but even through the aching in my skull I recognized the second voice as Sanja’s, although I could not decipher the meaning of the argument—or of my bonds, which were expertly tied and showed no inclination to loosen. What in God’s name had I done?

  Jazil stomped over to stand looking down on me, with Sanja following. Jazil motioned to someone I could not see, and I was seized and put in a sitting position.

  “You’re right,” he said reluctantly. “Leaving him outside is a waste of resources. They might want him alive.” He jerked his head. “Take him inside. But don’t waste any water on him. They’ve got plenty.”

  I stumbled but managed to stay upright long enough to bang my shoulder on a chair on my way down.

  “What is going on? Where is the Sand?”

  Jazil backhanded me. Sanja shrieked, but he turned on her as if he were going to slap her as well. From behind me, my guard held my shoulders.

  “Mention either of them again and I won’t wait for you be taken away.”

  “Mention who? And where am I being taken? And why am I tied up?”