The Hidden City

‘That one who’s trailing along behind the others has a broken-off javelin sticking out of him,’ Khalad replied. ‘I’d say that means that they’ve come up against Tikume’s Peloi. They’ve already been to the border, and now they’re coming back.’

‘Back to where?’ Berit was baffled. ‘Where can they go? They can’t breathe here.’

Khalad cautiously poked his head above the rim of the gully and squinted out across the rocky desert. ‘They seem to be going toward that cluster of hills about a mile to the west.’ He paused. ‘Just how curious are we feeling today, Berit?’

‘What have you got in mind?’

‘This gully comes down out of those hills, and if we follow it and keep our heads down, they won’t see us. Why don’t we drift off toward the west? I’ve got a strong feeling that we might find out something important if we tag along behind those fellows.’

Berit shrugged. ‘Why not?’

‘That’s really not a very logical answer, Berit. I can think of a half-dozen reasons why not.’ Khalad squinted at the panting soldiers lurching across the desert. ‘Let’s do it anyway, though. For some reason, I think we should.’

They slid back down into the gully and led their horses along the dry watercourse toward the west.

They moved quietly along the bottom of the wash for about a quarter of an hour. ‘Are they still out there?’ Berit whispered.

‘I’ll look.’ Khalad carefully climbed back up the steep bank to the rim of the gully and eased his head up far enough to look. Then he slid back down again. ‘They’re still staggering toward the hills,’ he reported. ‘This gully starts getting shallower on up ahead. Let’s leave the horses here.’

They crept along, crouched over to stay out of sight, and as the gully started to run uphill, they found that they were forced to crawl on their hands and knees.

Khalad raised up slightly to look again. ‘They seem to be swinging around behind that other hill,’ he said quietly. ‘Let’s slip up to the top of this ridge and see what’s back there.’

The two of them crawled out of the now-shallow wash and slanted their way up to the ridge-line to a point from which they could see what lay behind the hill Khalad had pointed out.

It was a kind of shallow basin nestled down among the three hills that heaved up out of the surrounding desert. The basin was empty. ‘Where did they go?’ Berit whispered.

‘That basin was the place they were making for,’ Khalad insisted with a puzzled frown. ‘Wait. Here comes that one with the javelin in his belly.’

They watched the wounded soldier stumble into the basin, half-falling and rising again to drag himself along. He raised his masked face and bellowed something.

Khalad and Berit waited tensely.

Then two other soldiers emerged from a narrow opening in the side of one of the hills, descended to the floor of the basin, and half-dragged their injured comrade back up the hill and on into the mouth of the cave.

‘That answers that,’ Khalad said. “They ran across miles of open desert to get to that cave.’

‘Why? What good will it do them?’

‘I haven’t got a clue, Berit, but I still think it’s important.’ Khalad stood up. ‘Let’s go back to where we left the horses. We can still cover a few more miles before the sun goes down.’

Ekrasios crouched at the edge of the forest waiting for the torches inside the walls of Norenja to burn down and for the sounds of human activity to subside. The events at Panem-Dea had confirmed the assessment of these rebels Lord Vanion had given him at Sarna. Given the slightest opportunity, these poorly-trained soldiers would flee, and that suited Ekrasios very well. He was still somewhat reluctant to unleash the curse of Edaemus, and people who ran away did not have to be destroyed.

Adras returned, ghosting back to the edge of the jungle through the night mist. ‘All is in readiness, Ekrasios,’ he reported quietly. ‘The gates will crumble at the merest touch.’

‘Let us then proceed,’ Ekrasios replied, standing up and relaxing the rigid control that dimmed his inner light. ‘Let us pray that all within yon walls may flee.’

‘And if they do not?’

‘Then they must surely die. Our promise to Anakha binds us. We will empty yon ruin – in one fashion or the other.’

‘It’s not so bad here,’ Kalten said as they dismounted. ‘The bones are older, for one thing,’ Necessity had compelled them to camp in the hideous boneyard the previous night, and they were all eager to reach the end of the horror.

Sparhawk grunted, looking across the intervening stretch of desert at the fractured basalt cliff that seemed to mark the eastern edge of the Forbidden Mountains. The sun had just come up above the eastern horizon, and its brilliant light reflected back from the pair of quartz-laced peaks rearing up out of the rusty black mountains just to the west.

‘Why are we stopping here?’ Mirtai asked. That cliff’s still a quarter of a mile away.’

‘I think we’re supposed to line up on those two peaks,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Talen, can you remember Ogerajin’s exact words?’

‘Let’s see.’ The boy frowned in concentration. Then he nodded shortly. ‘I’ve got it now,’ he said.

‘How do you do that?’ Bevier asked him curiously.

Talen shrugged. ‘There’s a trick to it. You don’t think about the words. You just concentrate on where you were when you heard them.’ He lifted his face slightly, closed his eyes, and began to recite. ‘Beyond the Plain of Bones wilt thou come to the Gates of Illusion behind which lies concealed the Hidden City of Cyrga. The eye of mortal man cannot perceive those gates. Stark they stand as a fractured wall at the verge of the Forbidden Mountains to bar thy way. Bend thine eye, however, upon Cyrgon’s two white pillars and direct thy steps toward the emptiness which doth lie between them. Trust not the evidence which thine eye doth present unto thee, for the solid-seeming wall is as mist and will not bar thy way.’

‘That didn’t even sound like your own voice,’ Bevier said.

‘That’s part of the trick,’ Talen explained. ‘That was Ogerajin’s voice – sort of.’

‘All right then,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Let’s see if he really knew what he was talking about.’ He squinted at the two brilliant points of reflected light. ‘There are the pillars,’ He took a few steps to the right and shook his head. ‘From here they merge into one light.’ Then he walked to the left. ‘It does the same thing here.’ Then he went back to his original location. ‘This is the spot,’ he said with a certain amount of excitement. ‘Those two peaks are very close together. If you move a few feet either way, you can’t even see that gap between them. Unless you’re really looking for it, you could miss it altogether.’