City Under the Sand Page 3

  “We’ll take a couple of samples, ones we can carry easily. We’ll show them to Nibenay, and let him pay us for the location of the city.”

  “Or torture it out of us, or simply reach into our minds and pluck it out like low-hanging fruit.”

  “The road to riches never runs straight, Shen’ti. There’s always some risk.”

  “Very well, then,” Shen’ti said. He started collecting chunks of metal small enough to be carried.

  “Not yet, man! We just got here! Whatever it was up there might still be lurking about. Anyway, my ankle won’t stand up to climbing those stairs so soon. We’ll rest here—surrounded by our new treasure—for an hour or two, then if it’s clear we’ll get out of this city for good.”

  Shen’ti dropped the metal he had gathered. Once again, Avra noted how agreeable he had become.

  But surrounded by all this steel, he didn’t care to complain.

  6

  The climb back up the winding staircase was indeed painful, especially laden as they were. But at the top, whatever had stalked them seemed to be gone, and nothing interfered with their escape from the city. By the time the two moons rose into the night sky, they were encamped at a small oasis, far from the city. The ache in Avra’s ankle had started to fade, as if walking on it had been beneficial.

  Both soldiers felt safer here than they had in the city, but they still planned to sleep in shifts, to keep watch for anything that might attack them. The water in the oasis was fresh, and Avra drank deep, slaking his thirst at last. But oases, he knew, tended to draw all sorts of visitors, including the kind who would not hesitate to kill them for a handful of ceramic coins.

  Avra was sleeping soundly, dreaming about lying back on a soft divan with a nubile young lady pouring wine into his mouth, when a strange noise disturbed his slumber. He opened his eyes and saw Shen’ti walking in a tight circle, muttering to himself.

  “It’s in there,” he said. “It’s in there. I saw it in there. I saw it.”

  “What’s in where?” Avra asked him. “Are you standing watch, or walking in your sleep?”

  Shen’ti didn’t react in any way, just kept walking. His hands opened wide, then closed into fists, then opened again. “It’s in there. In there. It. Is. In. There.”

  “Shen’ti.”

  “Must go back,” Shen’ti said. “It’s in there. Must go.”

  “Shen’ti!” Avra called. He rose to his feet. His companion was bewitched or sleepwalking. Either way, he needed to be brought around, before he hurt himself.

  But Shen’ti ignored him. Leaving his refilled water bladder, his trikal and everything else behind, he started walking back the way they had come. Back toward Akrankhot.

  “Shen’ti, stop!” Avra cried. “Come back!”

  Shen’ti didn’t stop. Avra started after him. His ankle gave out under him and he pitched down into the sand.

  Avra tried to scramble to his feet again, because Shen’ti was already disappearing into the darkness. But he had strayed too close to an elven rope cactus. A spiny red vine twisted around Avra’s right ankle—his good one—and tightened there. Instantly, burning agony gripped Avra as the cactus drove its needles deep into his leg. At the same time, more of the tendril pushed up from beneath the sand and snaked up his leg.

  Avra screamed. If the cactus responded at all, it was just to clamp down even harder on his leg.

  He had never encountered an elven rope cactus, but he’d heard stories. Those needles were digging into his veins and sucking down his blood, draining him into the plant’s inner parts, deep underground. What he didn’t know was how long it would take to remove enough blood to kill him.

  And he didn’t know if he would be able to break free of it in time to catch Shen’ti.

  He didn’t dare grab the thing, because it would just ensnare his arm as well. He could cut it off, if he could just get to his sword. But he had left that where he was sleeping, hadn’t thought he would need it simply to grab Shen’ti and shake him into wakefulness.

  Gritting his teeth against the pain, Avra pushed off with his arms and tried handwalking to his left. He couldn’t get any distance from the cactus, but he didn’t expect it would care where he was as long as it had its grip on him. He made it a few “steps” and collapsed again, the pain too severe. He lay there panting for a few minutes, feeling himself being weakened by the second, and tried again.

  In this way, slowly and painfully, he made his way back almost to where he had slept. He could see the dark wood of his sword, resting atop the few pieces of metal he had brought out of the city. He could almost reach it.

  Almost. He strained his arm, fingers splayed out, but they fell just short. He tried to lurch forward, but the cactus held him fast.

  The night seemed to be growing darker, as if the stars had slid behind a semi-opaque film. He didn’t have much time left. Do something, he told himself. Anything, while you’ve an ounce of strength to do it with!

  He stretched his arm out again. He couldn’t reach the sword, but he could get his fingers on one of the slender metal rods he had carried from Akrankhot. If he could tip it, slide the sword to him …

  Moving slowly, cautiously, he wiggled the rod. He had to move it just right, try to raise the far end and lower the near so that the sword would shift the right way. He got the sword moving, little by little and then the elven rope hitched itself up higher, slithering around his waist, setting off an entire new wave of agony. Reflexively, Avra jerked the metal rod, and the sword went clattering off the far side of the pile. He would never get to it now.

  It took several long moments for the realization that he did have a weapon to penetrate his pain-clouded mind. The rod. It was shorter than a sword, not much bigger around than one of his fingers.

  But it was metal. With all the strength he could muster, he rose to a sitting position, ignoring the pain stitching across his midsection. He raised the rod high and brought it down fast, into the elven rope just beneath his foot. The angle didn’t give him as much force as he would have liked, and the cactus clung tighter in protest, but he did it again a second and third time. On the fourth blow, the cactus seemed to relax a little. Avra yanked his leg and was granted more leeway than he’d had just seconds before. He adjusted his swing and struck again, pounding the cactus into the dirt.

  Finally, the thing split in two. Blood—his blood, Avra knew—gushed from both severed ends as the tendril gripping him went limp. Avra plucked it from his body and threw it as far as he could, scrambling away from the plant in case it sent out more.

  Free of it at last, he collapsed into the sand. He had lost so much blood, when he tried to raise his head, the stars above started spinning. He lowered it to the ground again, and slept.

  7

  Avra didn’t know how long he slept. Surely not more than an hour. When he woke up, blood still seeped from his wounds. With considerable pain, he managed to stand up and retrieve his sword. Shen’ti hadn’t returned. Avra wanted to find him before heading back toward Nibenay.

  He thought he knew where to look.

  Shen’ti’s footprints in the sand confirmed his guess. His fellow soldier was on his way back to Akrankhot. For what purpose, Avra had no idea. He never wanted to see the place again, unless perhaps with a well-guarded caravan.

  But Shen’ti had stuck by him, even when he might have left Avra to his fate and saved himself. He had thought there was something odd about Shen’ti’s behavior all that day. He’d put it down to watching their friends die, to being cut off from their caravan and on their own in a strange and frightening place. If it was something else? Well, no use pondering questions that couldn’t be answered. He would find out when he found out, or he would never know at all. Such was the way of things.

  By the time Avra reached Akrankhot—relief flooding through him when he saw that it had not been submerged, during the night, beneath the desert that had held it close for so long—the sky was lightening at the approach of the sun. With i
t would come the punishing heat of the day. And he would be back at the city, far from the shade and refreshing water of the oasis, and that much farther from home.

  Inside the city, Shen’ti’s tracks were harder to follow than they had been in the desert sands. It hardly mattered. Avra believed he knew where Shen’ti was going. He headed toward the building beneath which they had found the vast trove of steel. He had almost reached it when he saw Shen’ti coming out the door.

  Something was wrong, though. More wrong than it had been. He had spent a lot of time with Shen’ti over the past couple of days, and he had never seen Shen’ti walking as he was, an ungainly half-stumble, half-lurch. And his head, held at a strange angle, bobbed loosely as he walked. “Shen’ti?” Avra said.

  Shen’ti didn’t acknowledge him, just kept walking. When he got closer, Avra saw the reason his head was bobbing—it had been half-severed. Avra could see Shen’ti’s spine through the opening, and blood everywhere, but except for the spine and a narrow strip of flesh there wasn’t much holding it on. Shen’ti’s eyes stared blankly through Avra, and the soldier kept going, past him and toward the open desert.

  Shen’ti was dead. Walking, but dead.

  “Shen’ti? Shen’ti!” Avra cried. He wanted to stop the man, to shake him, to find out what had drawn him back here, and what animated him now.

  But that was when the sand howlers came back.…

  II

  STEEL

  1

  Aric listened to steel.

  Everyone had some psionic ability, some affinity with the Way; some just developed it more than others. Aric believed that his ability was his connection to metals—he had always been able to hear what they had to say, and had been surprised to learn that others couldn’t.

  As a result, he had chosen a difficult occupation for anyone on Athas, harder still for someone like him. Swordsmithing required the constant use of two of the rarest things around, metal and water. But his swords, when they were finished, were beautiful weapons, and fetched premium prices. The one he was finishing now was no different.

  He was near the final stage. The metals had been combined—and this was when the song of the steel was loudest, the different combinations of materials calling out to him, telling him which amounts of what would work together to achieve the effect that he wanted—the blade hammered into shape, scraped and filed, heat-treated and quenched. Now he held it in his lap and worked it over with fine polishing stones, smoothing out any roughness, wiping away the faintest lines or cracks that he could only see by turning it this way and that in the bright Athasian sun.

  This work required patience and concentration. He had to make sure he didn’t polish one spot more than another, which could throw off the balance he had worked so hard to achieve in the earlier stages. He had filed the edges and point to near-razor sharpness, testing them against knotty wood and carru hide and a scrap of fine silk he had managed to acquire, and it sliced through all three. He had tempered it in clay and water and heat until he could bend it almost back on itself and let it go, and it would resume its ideal shape, without curves or kinks.

  So he didn’t want to ruin it now, with these final touches. This particular sword was a special order from a noble family, and they wanted it strong but lightweight, flexible but sturdy enough to stand up to the sorts of chips and nicks any sword took in battle, without breaking. Aric would deliver what they had asked. As he worked it in his hands, listening to the steel telling him which parts had been worked enough and which needed another touch here or there, he thought it was, perhaps, the best blade he had ever made.

  “Falling in love with that thing?”

  Aric looked up to see Ruhm, his goliath friend and assistant, watching him work. “What do you mean?”

  “Looks like you want to kiss it,” Ruhm said. He was thick-necked and slope-shouldered, and he wore an almost perpetual frown. It was for the best. His smile, when he showed it, was an unnatural thing; a ghoulish, yellow-toothed grin that frightened small children and brave men alike. His voice was a low rumble, like the sound of rocks rolling along a river bottom. At almost twelve feet tall, he had to stoop to pass through the doors of Aric’s shop—most doors, for that matter—but his sheer brute strength often came in handy around the shop. Years of working with metals had deepened Aric’s chest, made his shoulders broad and his arms more muscular than those of all but the biggest full-blooded elves he had met. But there were still things he couldn’t lift, or could just barely manage, that didn’t even strain the goliath.

  “It’s a good blade.” Aric rose, put his polishing stone on the workbench, and gripped the blade by its tang. He whipped it through the air a few times, enjoying the keen whistle it made. “And it’ll fetch a good price. Enough to keep us in ale and meat for a a long time.”

  “I like meat.”

  “As do I.” Aric took his seat again, nestling the blade against his apron and reaching for the stone. Almost time to switch to a finer one still. He liked Ruhm, he truly did, and he knew the goliath wasn’t stupid. But there were times the goliath’s mind seemed as weak as his muscles were strong, and though they had known each other for years and worked together most of that time, there were occasions on which he just didn’t know how to talk to his friend.

  “Who’s it for?” Ruhm asked.

  This was one of those moments. Aric knew they had discussed this very topic, more than once. He tried to keep impatience from sounding in his voice. “The House of Thrace,” he said, watching his hands instead of Ruhm. “The Shadow King himself gifted the metals to Tunsall of Thrace, the family patriarch. A reward for service to the court of Nibenay, or some such. Anyway, Tunsall came to us and ordered the sword. It’s a rapier, meant for Tunsall’s granddaughter Rieve.”

  Ruhm barked a loud laugh. “There’s that look again. Guess it’s not the sword you love after all. Ha!”

  Aric swore inwardly. Here he had been thinking Ruhm was having one of his “simple moments,” and instead the goliath was luring him into a verbal trap. “I’m not in love with her! I haven’t really even met her. I’ve only seen her once or twice.”

  “What color hair she got?”

  “It’s orange-red, like the inside of the forge when it’s just starting to cool.” He glanced up at Ruhm’s grinning face, framed by an unruly mop of thick brown hair, and knew he had just tightened the trap around himself. That ghastly smile! “Yes, she’s pretty! Are you happy?”

  “Think she’d wed a half-elf?”

  “I’m a quarter elf,” Aric reminded him. Unconsciously, his left hand reached up and brushed the top of his ear. “My mother was a half-elf, my father was human. So I’m only a quarter.” He was adamant on that point, even though he knew it didn’t matter to most. To humans, he was still too much elf, and to elves he might as well be human. Fitting into neither camp was another difficulty of his trade, because members of both races often refused to give him work or to buy his wares. It was only because he was the best smith in the city—perhaps on Athas, considering the derth of metal and those equipped to work it—that he made a living at all. “Anyway, I have no intention of trying to marry her. Even if I was interested, which I’m not, she’s a noble and I’m about as common as a commoner can get. And she’s betrothed. I know you’re just teasing me, Ruhm, but I wish you’d get a new game.”

  “Sorry, boss.”

  “And don’t call me that!”

  “Touchy today?”

  “Don’t you have something to do, Ruhm? Something useful, I mean?”

  “Could shovel charcoal, I guess.”

  “Perfect. Go shovel charcoal,” Aric said. “And take your time!”

  2

  The last part of the job was attaching the hilt. This one was slender, as befitted a rapier meant for a young lady. It was not ornate, but neither was it plain. The pommel was smooth, swelling at the end to help Rieve keep her grip on it, and threaded, so the blade’s tang fit right through the grip, and the pommel held it all to
gether. The grip was wrapped in durable erdlu skin—the cost of that had been dear indeed, but built into the price Aric had quoted Tunsall of Thrace before taking the job—then wrapped in fine wire for a better grip. The guard was an intricate web made up of three rings that curved around one another, merging together at the rear where they nearly touched the pommel. The design kept the weapon light, as did the fuller, the groove cut from the blade’s center, extending two-thirds of the blade’s length, from the guard down.

  When it was done—really and completely done—Aric admired it for a few minutes, wishing there was a way he could both keep it and deliver it to the House of Thrace and collect his fee. It truly is a beautiful piece, he thought. My finest by afar distance. He might spend the next entire season making nothing more sophisticated than iron hinges for doors, but at least he had crafted this. There wasn’t another smith in the whole Ivory Triangle who could do better.

  He took it in his right hand and felt its weight. Narrow, for the breadth of his hand, but he had measured Rieve’s—and he would never give Ruhm the pleasure of knowing it, but that had made Aric’s heart quicken, no denying it—and he knew it would be just right for her. He swished the blade through the air, tracing the letters of his own name.

  Instantly, he lowered the blade’s point and glanced around to make sure no one had seen that. Ruhm stood in the doorway, but no one else was in sight, and Ruhm already knew he could read and write a little. Literacy was frowned upon, among commoners anyway. More than frowned upon, in fact—it could get a commoner consigned to slavery, if a templar happened to find out. But Aric had done so much work for noble houses that he had managed to pick up those skills along the way.

  “Good with that,” Ruhm said. His preferred weapon was a greatclub, hardly requiring grace or finesse. “Should make one for you sometime, no?”