City Under the Sand

by Jeff Mariotte

  Kadya had destroyed the reapers before they could kill every member of the caravan. That was a good thing. Rather than argue with Amoni about it, he scanned the streets they passed for the rest of the expedition.

  They saw a couple of other groups and hailed them, so that by the time they located Kadya, waiting back at the wagons with a large detachment of guards, there were sixteen of them.

  “Why are you here?” the templar demanded as they approached. A mul was fanning her, and the startling suddenness of her bark caused him to miss a stroke. She glared at him until he started again, then swung her attention back to the group before her. “I told you to keep searching until—”

  “We found it, templar,” Aric said. Ordinarily he would not have interrupted a templar, but on this occasion he expected that she would forgive him.

  “You found it? The metal?”

  “An enormous trove,” he said. “As much as the Shadow King described, perhaps more. Every kind of metal I’ve ever heard of.”

  “How easily transported will it be?”

  “It’s been shaped,” Aric said. “It’s in bars, poles, rods, blocks, and so on. It will be a huge amount of work—it is far underground, accessed by long staircases. Bringing it up will be difficult. But once it’s up, loading it into the argosies should be nothing.”

  “Excellent,” she said. “Worry not about the difficulty of that job, Aric. You have done yours, and more quickly than I could have hoped.”

  “One thing, templar. There is.… something down there. Something tried to get inside my head, but I fought it. Damaric wasn’t so lucky. It got to him. He attacked us, and Amoni had to kill him. So when the metal is being hauled to the surface, I recommend people work in pairs, at least, and probably larger groups, so that someone can always stay alert to danger.”

  “Another thing with which you should not concern yourself, Aric. I don’t know what you experienced, but I assure you that we will take precautions against it.”

  Amoni and Ruhm had stood silently by while Aric made his report. Now he remembered what Amoni had said about her work only beginning. “And … perhaps since Amoni saved our lives when Damaric turned against us, she can be relieved of hauling duty? She is only out of the gladiatorial pit because her back was broken, and—”

  Kadya made a dismissive gesture with her left hand. “Your service is appreciated, Aric. I will make sure that Nibenay knows of your rapid fulfillment of your mission. But don’t test my patience. The labors assigned to slaves are no one’s affair but my own. I know you think Amoni is your friend. I have eyes, and I’ve seen the three of you—and Damaric—together often during our journey. But Amoni is a slave, a mul bred to fight and, failing the ability to continue in the pit, to work. She is no one’s friend. You, Aric, and your goliath companion, should explore the ruins to see if there’s more metal, and beyond that you are relieved of any further obligation. But the workers will work. You can rest for the moment, Amoni, while runners bring in the other search parties. But there’s plenty of daylight remaining, and once everyone is gathered together, we’re going to start going after that metal. Understood?”

  “Yes, templar,” Amoni said. She would not meet Aric’s gaze.

  “Aric, go,” Kadya said. “Take Ruhm, get some water, get out of the sun. You’ve earned your rest.”

  Aric had been dismissed, and he knew it. He tried once more to catch Amoni’s eye, but having failed that, he and Ruhm went to their argosy, intent on a meal and perhaps a nap while the day’s hottest hours passed.

  5

  We have found it

  Found the metal?

  Yes. It’s just as the dead man described. Vast stores of it. We may actually have to send more argosies, as we lost some en route.

  Kadya had not dared report the discovery to Siemhouk until she had seen it for herself. She didn’t think Aric and his friends would lie, but that was not a risk an intelligent person would take. She’d had Amoni lead her and a few others to the trove, examined it under torchlight even though the glow from the oddly luminous walls would be sufficient for the work crews, then returned to her own argosy to contact the high consort.

  That contact would have been nearly impossible, had it not been for Siemhouk’s mastery of the Way. She did the heavy lifting, so the hardest part was reaching out and “tapping” Siemhouk, letting her know Kadya desired her attention. On most occasions, it had been Siemhouk who reached out first, and those were easy.

  Whatever we need to do, we shall do. Let me know when yours are loaded, and if we need more they can be on the way while you’re returning.

  I will.

  Who found it? That half-elf, Aric.

  Then Father was right to send him, wasn’t he? Father is always right.

  Our husband is very wise.

  Indeed.

  I will be in contact when I have more news, Siemhouk.

  The girl—the high consort—broke off the connection without replying. That was fine with Kadya. She saw Siemhouk as a path to power, not truly an ally, and certainly not a friend. The girl frightened her. Whenever she was in mental contact with Siemhouk, she was terribly aware of how easy it would be for the high consort to probe other parts of her mind, the places where her dreams and ambitions were stored. That, Kadya knew, would mean her death.

  And Kadya wanted more time to investigate Akrankhot before they “spoke” again. Wandering around the city as much as she had done, she’d had the impression that it was something more than it seemed. There was power here. Hidden, tucked away someplace, but power just the same. She meant to find it.

  All that metal, too, down in the cavern—that wasn’t just a storehouse, not that far underground. It made no sense to put metal down there, only to have to haul it up again when it was needed. There was more to that, too.

  She opened the door to her argosy, stood blinking in the bright sunlight for a moment. As always, after she had a conversation with Siemhouk, she was left with a dull headache throbbing behind her eyes. A couple of her goliath guards stood outside the wagon, and she indicated them with a finger. “Come with me,” she said. “We’re going into the city again.”

  “Just the three of us, Templar?” one asked. “Or shall I gather a party together?”

  “Just us. We’re safe enough.”

  She hoped that was true. She had destroyed the dune reapers, but there was precious little life left in Akrankhot to draw on. If faced with another major threat, her magic might not be strong enough to save them.

  But she didn’t want any others knowing what she was about, so that was a chance she would take.

  She had noticed runes, on the floor of a large, elegant building on the main avenue. The building had struck her as an important one, a center of government or some such. Something had seemed odd about those runes, but it wasn’t until later on that she had realized what. They had been inscribed on that floor, she believed, much later than the building’s construction. Possibly even later than its abandonment. She wanted another look at them.

  Another thought struck her before they left. “Wait here a moment,” she told the guards. “Then we’ll go.” She went back inside the argosy, closed the door, and opened the lid of a trunk she always kept locked. From it she removed a few essential items: a particular scroll, a phial containing crumbs of rare earth and one of the Shadow King’s blood, and a small circle of polished glass.

  Runes written in some ancient, forgotten language would be hard to translate. She had an alternative plan—she would consult with whatever mystic sages knew about this place, and from them she could learn the truth about Akrankhot.

  And about whatever was buried beneath it, along with all that metal.

  With those items gathered into a cloth purse, she started for the door again. When she put her hand on it, she felt a sharp pain between her ears, where that headache had been building. Siemhouk, tapping me? She paused, opening herself to such a communication. But Siemhouk was not there. Nobody was.

&n
bsp; Still, she was sure there had been something … some unseen entity reaching into her mind.

  She should find out who or what it was, block it, even destroy it.

  Instead, she found that she welcomed it. Her headache vanished, and a feeling of power—of liberation, from some near-eternal bondage—filled her. She threw open the argosy’s door and stepped out again into the light, sucking in a great lungful of fresh desert air.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “There’s much to do, and not much daylight left to do it in.”

  The guards fell in around her, and together the three of them walked back into Akrankhot. And this time, Kadya felt, she owned everything she surveyed.

  6

  The slaves worked day and night, hauling metal up the staircases—a second one had been discovered, at the cavern’s far end—and loading it into the wagons. Soldiers, too, were pressed into service, causing Ruhm to joke that Damaric would have been glad he’d been killed, since he never would have wanted to perform such menial labor.

  Aric and Ruhm, however, found themselves at loose ends. A couple of times Ruhm lent his muscles to the cause, for lack of anything better to do. Aric, however, didn’t want to go back into that cavern if he didn’t have to. Metal or no, the place made him uneasy.

  On the second day after their discovery, he and Ruhm explored the city’s farther reaches. They had walked more than an hour to get to this point. Here, the desert still covered vast swaths of Akrankhot, and sand surged down other streets as if it meant to reclaim those as well.

  The roads were narrower and more tightly packed than the ones nearer the wall. Instead of being laid out on a strict grid, they curled and wound about one another, like those in Nibenay. Sometimes one was blocked, a building constructed across it, as if the builder had been oblivious to the fact that there had been a thoroughfare there first.

  “This part of the city follows no plan at all,” Aric complained, after they had, once again, followed a serpentine path only to find that it led nowhere of interest.

  “Old part,” Ruhm observed.

  “Probably. These buildings look much older than the first ones we found.” The architecture was even more unadorned than the elegantly simple lines of the structures lining the grand avenue. These had been thrown together out of wood, mud and straw. Most of them were two stories tall, but some were only one. Others had been added onto gradually, over what seemed to be a period of decades, if not centuries. Their exploration was made interesting by the things people had left behind, and which the sand had then preserved: cooking and dining utensils, furniture, even what seemed to be children’s toys.

  They spoke in low tones, their gazes roving constantly. The dune reapers hadn’t been spotted since their first attack, but unless they had left the area, the queen would still be in the underground nest, possibly surrounded by drones and plotting another assault. And there could easily be other threats about. To fail to consider that possibility, anywhere on Athas, was suicidal.

  They were just coming out of a house, apparently built in stages, one room at a time, with ladders and makeshift staircases connecting the different levels, when they heard the sound.

  Even at this end of town, where space seemed to be at a premium, the upper levels of many houses had been made inaccessible. Aric had told Ruhm about the vision he saw in the cavern, and suggested that perhaps the great conflict sweeping across Athas had frightened Akrankhot’s populace, causing them to concentrate on their downstairs and subterranean space and leaving the heights as a buffer against some potential threat from above. In this house the rooms had been so small and the ceiling so low that Ruhm had been able to see into the abandoned upstairs sections from the level below. “Nothing there,” he had said. “Sand, dust.”

  “No furniture?” Aric asked. The downstairs had been crammed full of tables and chairs and benches and beds.

  “Nothing.”

  “All right. Let’s keep going.”

  In truth, he was beginning to lose interest in these explorations. The only thing spurring him on was the knowledge that there was nothing better to do back at camp, and always the possibility that he and Ruhm would be put to work if they went back there. At the rate they were going, the hauling and loading would take at least another two or three days before the argosies were full.

  As they emerged from that house’s doorway, its door long since crumbled to dust, they heard a distinct intake of breath, the kind of sound someone makes when they’re caught off guard. Aric and Ruhm glanced at each other. Aric drew his new antique broadsword from the makeshift scabbard he had cobbled together. Ruhm, as always, had his club in hand.

  Aric looked an unvoiced question at Ruhm. The half-giant shrugged. Ruhm had both been stepping out the door, Aric right behind him, and neither knew precisely where the sound had come from.

  Aric breathed quietly, through his mouth. His muscles were coiled, prepared to react to any threat. Ruhm’s posture was more casual but he was always ready for a fight. Aric almost hoped for one, because he wanted to see what he could do with this huge steel sword.

  “It’s you!” a female voice cried. Then the speaker emerged from around a curve in the road. A little younger than Aric, he guessed, she was lovely, with night-black hair and a fresh, open face. She walked with a limp and carried a staff. Beside her was a battle-scarred veteran holding two bone swords in a way that gave the impression he was good with both. Suddenly Aric didn’t hope for a fight, after all.

  “It’s who?” Aric replied. “Who are you?”

  “Myrana Ligurto,” the young woman said. “Of House Ligurto?”

  “Never heard of it,” Aric said. “I have,” Ruhm said.

  “I am Sellis,” the swordsman said. “Employed by House Ligurto to defend and protect the girl.”

  “My name is Aric.” He nodded his head toward Ruhm. “And my companion is Ruhm. Both of Nibenay.”

  The young woman came forward, the end of her staff touching the ground with each step. “What did you mean by that?” Aric demanded, halting her progress. “You said, ‘It’s you.’ ”

  Sellis remained alert, every bit as tense as Aric was. But Myrana appeared relaxed, even comfortable in their presence. It was a wonder she wasn’t dead yet, if this was her typical way of greeting strangers.

  “It’s just—I saw you, in dreams. As soon as I spotted you in that doorway, I recognized you.”

  “You saw me in dreams?”

  “Yes. My dreams … they’re more than simple sleep stories. They mean something. Recently a series of them led us across the desert to this place. And for these past several nights, you’ve been part of them.”

  Aric wasn’t sure how to take that. On the one hand, he was intrigued. She had dreamed about him—or more likely, dreamed about someone whom he resembled enough for her to think they were the same man. On the other, showing up in a stranger’s dreams was a little disturbing, as if he couldn’t keep track of himself after he went to sleep, and wandered about the world at will.

  Plus, she hadn’t said what kind of dreams these were, or what his role in them had been. Were they romantic? Was he a villain? She had given no indication.

  “You came here because of dreams?” he asked. “From far away?”

  “Far enough,” Sellis answered. “Eleven days in the desert.”

  Aric was shocked. “Just the two of you?”

  “We were three.” Myrana looked at the road, and he could read sadness in her stance. “Now two.”

  “I see. Did you see anything else in these dreams? What made you decide to follow them?”

  “Nothing specific,” Myrana said. “Except you. You’re half-elf—I didn’t realize that until last night.”

  “I am.” Dreams or no, anybody could reach that conclusion, looking at him.

  “Your father was human, and your mother died when you were very young.”

  “That … that’s true.”

  “I know. As I said, my dreams are somewhat more meaningful than
many people’s.”

  “But what did you expect to find here?”

  “That I never knew. Only that I would discover the purpose after I arrived.” Her skin, darkened from exposure to Athas’s sun, reddened slightly. “I thought that perhaps you were the only purpose. Meeting you. But I knew there must be more to it than that.”

  Aric decided to trust her. As long as he had Ruhm by his side, ready to act if that decision proved ill advised. He shoved the big sword into its scabbard. Sellis did the same with his. Ruhm couldn’t put his club away, but he rested the heavy end on the ground.

  “That’s all?” Aric asked. “Now that you’re here, do you have any other idea as to the purpose?”

  Myrana brushed long, black hair off her cheek. “Last night, the dream changed again,” she said. “I know it’s strange, telling you these things so soon after meeting you, but … I feel I must. Do you understand?”

  “Not really,” Aric said. “I’ve never had such dreams. But I suppose I’d had strange things happen to me from time to time, and heard about more. So go ahead. Tell us, and we’ll try to believe you.”

  “It was about this place,” she began. “Does it have a name?”

  “Akrankhot.”

  “Yes! I knew that, in the dream, and then forgot it upon waking. Akrankhot. There is something foul here. Something evil, and terribly powerful. It’s buried beneath the city, and protected by a magical structure of some kind, like a huge cage.”

  Aric turned as cold as if day had suddenly become night. The pile of metal, that force he had felt, trying to get into his head. The way Damaric had attacked them.

  Myrana’s brow furrowed, and she limped right up to Aric and rested a hand gently against his cheek. “You’ve seen it,” she said. “Haven’t you?”