Rogues

THE CARAVAN TO NOWHERE

Phyllis Eisenstein

The dark-eyed man wore long, sun-faded robes and a thick, dirty-white wrapping about his head like most of the other men gathered in the tavern that night, but Alaric realized quickly that he was not one of them. They were all talkers, drinkers, men who laughed easily, who pulled willing women onto their knees and lifted their tankards with any excuse, bellowing at each other and the landlord across the trestle tables. They were men who spent carelessly, and Alaric’s songs had already gained him some benefit from their drunken generosity.

But the dark-eyed man sat quietly in his corner, nursing a single goblet of wine and watching the crowd. The hand that raised the goblet was roughened with work, the forearms, bared by flaring, turned-back sleeves, tanned and sinewy. A hardworking man, Alaric thought, stopping at the only tavern in a town on the fringe of the Western Desert with purpose in his eyes.

This evening, Alaric sang bawdy songs to the raucous room, his clear, carrying voice rising above the din in rhymes to make the drinkers laugh and choruses to make them join in the music. His lute was barely audible, and often he scarcely bothered to pluck the strings, but none of his listeners seemed to care. Young though he was, his trove of songs was well tested in scores of taverns just like this one, and he knew their effect. But the dark-eyed man never laughed or joined the choruses, and Alaric understood he was waiting for something.

Meandering through the room, still singing while nodding his thanks for the coppers dropped into the open deerskin pouch at his belt, he came at last to the dark-eyed man’s small table. And there, on the wood whose finish was scarred by the spillage of countless goblets of wine, lay a silver coin. The dark-eyed man lowered his gaze to it as Alaric approached and then looked up into the young minstrel’s face.

“You are a traveler,” said the man, and his deep voice easily pierced the clamor of the room—a leader’s voice.

Alaric inclined his head and pitched his own voice high for clarity. “Say minstrel and mean traveler. We minstrels spend our lives seeking the stuff of new songs.”

“You sing well,” said the dark-eyed man. “You could find a place in some rich house. A king’s house, even, I think.”

Alaric looked at the silver coin. He kept a few like it inside his shirt, but not many, not enough to tempt a thief. He had been a thief himself often enough, in the long ago, and he could always be one again, using the power he had been born with—the power to move from one place to another in the blink of an eye. Still, he preferred earning silver with his songs. He stretched his right hand out toward the coin without touching it, two fingers brushing the table lightly beside it. “I’ve had my share of rich houses. Even kings’ houses. But the horizon draws me.” He raised his eyes. “I would see what lies beyond it.”

The dark-eyed man smiled with one side of his mouth. “I was young once, like you, and I wondered what lay beyond the horizon. Now I am older and I have been there, and still I make the journey from time to time. But you knew that, didn’t you? You know who I am.”

Alaric pulled his hand back and strummed his lute. “The landlord told me something of the man who takes a caravan across the great desert every year. Your name, he said, is Piros.”

The man narrowed his dark eyes. “And did he tell you that Piros is seeking adventurers for the trek?”

Alaric shook his head. “He said that you’re seeking men to work your camels. And that it is a hard crossing, where fate sometimes decrees death. Though I guessed that much without the telling.” He lifted a shoulder in a small shrug. “Sadly, I know nothing at all about camels.”

Piros pushed the coin closer to Alaric’s side of the table. “I have listened to you this evening, and watched you. The nights are long and dull on the great desert, even to men weary with a full day of riding. And there is much silent time for them to fill with squabbles over nothing. Songs could make that time pass more easily.” He straightened in his chair then. “Take my coin as one of many acquired in this place, and likely we will never meet again. Or take it as first payment for your songs on our journey, if that pleases you better. And the camel lore will come along the way, I promise.”

Alaric picked up the coin then and turned it over between his fingers. “You have spoken to the landlord, too, I imagine.”

The dark-eyed man nodded. “You have been here eight days, and he would have you stay. Not that such a place needs a minstrel to draw custom, but he sees you at least half as an entertainment for himself. And you make friends easily, Alaric minstrel. Of course that would be necessary, in your trade, as it is in mine. But my brother thinks you would do well on the journey, and I have always trusted his judgment.”

“Your brother?”

Piros tapped his goblet with one finger. “Has the resemblance faded so much with the years?”

Alaric glanced over his shoulder at the landlord. He saw it now, though the caravan leader was older and more weathered.

“Well, minstrel,” said the dark-eyed man, “by tomorrow, every man in this room will have spent his last copper and asked for a place in the caravan. Will you join the ones I choose?”

Alaric flipped the coin into the air. “They say there’s a lost city in the great desert. They say there’s a hidden treasure trove, too.”

Piros smiled that half smile again. “You’ve been listening to drunken fancies.”

“And they say that on the other side of the great desert is a land of wonders.”

“Ah, that depends on what one has seen before.”

Alaric tucked the coin into his pouch. “I have seen wonders before now, Piros, and I would see more.” He offered his hand to seal the bargain. “I will come with you.”

The dark-eyed man ignored the hand. “There is one more thing, minstrel.”

Alaric pulled his hand back and spread it over the strings of his lute. “Yes?”

“I have a son. He is somewhat of your age, a bit younger perhaps, and he has made this journey with me before. But do not think that he speaks for me. You are in my employ, not his. Do I make myself clear?”

Alaric looked down at his lute and plucked a single string. “Will the other men understand the same?”

“Every one of them.”

Alaric nodded. “Then it shall be as you wish, Master Piros.”

“Piros,” the man said. “Only Piros. Be in the courtyard and ready to leave at daybreak.”

Alaric sang for the rest of the evening, while he wondered what kind of son required such a warning.

In the gray of dawn twilight, the tavern’s courtyard already bustled with men binding casks and rope-wound bundles to the backs of more camels than Alaric could easily count. The camels were kneeling, enduring their growing burdens with an occasional hoarse bellow, like a poorly greased axle laboring beneath a heavy cart. Alaric recognized most of the men from the previous night and wondered how they could work so vigorously with the headaches they must have from their drinking. Several of them grinned at him as he walked past in search of their master.

Piros was at the western extremity of the courtyard, closest to the start of the journey, and beside him stood a youth in robes brighter and newer than his own, with a headwrap of dark-dyed green and a face that marked him likely to be Piros’s son. He had his father’s stance, too, his straight back and squared shoulders. But where Piros gestured now and then with peremptory economy or called a word or a name, the youth stood silent, arms crossed over his chest, seeming to pay little attention to the activity around him.

Alaric caught the caravan master’s eye. “Good morrow.”

“Indeed,” said the man. “It’s a good day to go west.” He looked Alaric up and down, his eyes lingering at the plaited straw hat that Alaric had made with his own hands and then sweeping down the dark tunic and trews to the sturdy boots, no longer new but still serviceable. “Is this how you think to cross the great desert?”

The minstrel carried the rest of his meager belongings in a knapsack, with the lute slung over it. He had traveled a long time so lightly, both by foot and in his own special way. “It is what I have,” he said.

Piros turned his attention back to the camels. “This is my son Rudd,” he said, though he made no gesture toward the youth. “He will find you desert robes for the journey.”

Alaric glanced at the young man, who showed no reaction, as if he had not heard his father’s words.

“Rudd,” said his father, and then more sharply, “Rudd!”

The youth blinked several times and frowned. “Father?”

Again, Piros did not look at him. “Go ask your uncle for traveling robes for the minstrel.”

Rudd peered at Alaric, seeming to notice him for the first time. His mouth turned down sullenly. “Can’t he ask for himself?”

“Go,” said Piros. “Make yourself useful.”

The young man’s lips tightened for a moment, and then the sullen expression faded away, and his eyes seemed to lose their focus. “I could be useful,” he said in a listless tone, “if you’d allow it.”

“Do as I say.”

Shoulders less square and back less straight than before, Rudd turned toward the tavern. But with almost his first step, he swayed like a drunken man, and Alaric caught his arm to keep him from falling. The youth looked Alaric straight in the face then, and he shook off the assistance and kept going.

“I’ll follow,” Alaric said to Piros.

“As you will. For now.” The caravan leader gestured sharply to a nearby cluster of men, though Alaric could see from the cant of his head that he was still watching his son.

At the tavern’s entrance, Rudd opened the door only wide enough to slip through, closing it hard behind him. By the time Alaric reached it and stepped inside, the youth had vanished into the dim interior, and the only movement visible was a pair of dogs at the far end of the room, squabbling over some crusts of bread and rinds of cheese that were the only remnants of the previous night’s activities. Alaric called out for both Rudd and the landlord, but there was no answer, and long moments passed before they finally emerged from a rear chamber, Rudd bearing a bundle of cloth on his shoulder, his uncle following close behind to keep the trailing edges of fabric from dragging on the wine-sticky floor. As the youth stopped to cuff aside one of the dogs and snatch up the crust it had been gnawing, the bundle slid away from him, and the landlord caught it deftly, leaving his nephew to give his whole attention to tearing at the stale bread like a starveling cur.

The cloth was a three-part garment—ankle-length robe, loose pantaloons, and headwrap, all the color of pale sand. Alaric stripped off his own clothes, donned the desert gear, and packed his discards in his knapsack. The landlord helped him with the long, scarflike headwrap, which tucked intricately into itself, leaving a tail to loop about his neck and hang down his back. That, said the landlord, would be his mask when the sand blew.

Alaric shouldered the knapsack, the lute strapped tight against it, and gestured at the youth, who had done with his crust and was sitting on a table, methodically kicking at the dogs, which were nosing at his legs in spite of the kicks.

“They know,” said the landlord, nodding toward his nephew. His voice was very low. “Dogs always know. And they always forgive.”

Alaric looked at the landlord’s face and saw sadness there. “What do you mean?”

“Can’t you see it?”

Alaric frowned. “I see … a number of things. But perhaps not what you speak of.”

“Ah,” said the landlord. “Piros has not told you.”

Alaric looked back at Rudd. “He said not to obey his son.”

The landlord was silent for a long moment, and then he said, “Yes, that’s good advice.” He hitched a leg up on the table beside him and nodded toward his nephew. “Once he thought I was his brother who died at birth.”

The door to the tavern swung open, and Piros stood there, a dark shape with the brightening sun behind him. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” said the minstrel.

“Rudd,” called the landlord.

The youth made no reply. His back was to the others.

“Rudd!” said his father, and when there was still no answer, he strode to his son’s side and took him by the elbow. “Time to begin the journey.”

Rudd blinked a few times then, as if waking from some reverie, and dropped to his feet, swaying a little. His father did not release his arm as they walked through the door. Without looking back, Piros gestured for Alaric to follow.

The landlord shook his head. “He still hopes for a grandchild.”

“Is there a woman?” asked Alaric. They walked side by side across the room.

“What woman would want that?” said the landlord.

Alaric shrugged. He held his straw hat in one hand; it had not fit in the knapsack. Now he gave it to the landlord. “Take this as my thanks for the garments.”

The man turned it over, one way and then the other, and finally set it on his head at a jaunty angle.

Outside, the men of the caravan had already mounted their camels except for one, who held the leads of two kneeling animals. At Piros’s gesture, he helped Alaric to the long, narrow seat atop the smaller of the pair. It was an odd perch though not uncomfortable, well padded and with a thick hoop at the front for holding on and another behind, a handhold for a second rider. With large panniers behind his legs, a bulky sack lashed in the other seat, and a waterskin at his knee, Alaric felt secure enough as the camel lurched erect, though the ground seemed oddly far away.

The man watched Alaric for a moment before handing up the reins and mounting his own steed. “I am Hanio,” he said. “Piros has given you into my care. Call out to me if you have any difficulty.”

“My thanks,” said Alaric. “I hope to avoid difficulty.”

“She is a placid creature. Just hold tight, and she will follow the others.”

At that moment, the line of camels began to move forward, and the placid creature needed no urging to move into place with its fellows. Hanio followed.

The camel’s gait was different from that of a horse, but not at all unpleasant, and Alaric soon found himself adjusting to it. Under Hanio’s tutelage, he learned to guide the animal, and he also learned that calling it by name—Folero—would cause it to swivel its head about on the long neck and look at him with all evidence of curiosity. Sometimes it would even nibble at his knee with its great soft lips. He would treat it like a horse then, with a pat on the neck and praise.

Piros occasionally led at the front of the caravan. But more often he ranged all along it, speaking to riders, checking the security of their lashings, now and then pulling an animal to the side to readjust its burden. Alaric could almost always see him, atop an especially tall camel. Rudd was rarely nearby; he occupied a place far forward, his bobbing head marked by the deep green headwrap.

The heat of the day increased steadily though it was not so great, Alaric knew, as it would be later in the year, and not so great for a man riding as it would be if he were walking on the sun-baked desert floor. The horizon was a line in the far distance, the great flat plain upon which they moved showing few landmarks once the tavern fell behind them, just an occasional cairn of stones to indicate the trail. For most of the day, clumps of coarse grass and low bushes were the only visible vegetation; now and then a camel would turn aside to nibble at the grass, but its rider would quickly bring it back to the column. Folero seemed to disdain such sampling and walked steadily onward. By day’s end, the novelty of riding a new kind of steed had begun to wear thin, and Alaric was glad enough to dismount and hand his camel over to Hanio for care.

He could have crossed the desert far more swiftly in his own special way, flitting from horizon to horizon in one heartbeat after another, following a path laid out by the limits of his vision, but ordinary travel enabled him to question his companions about their destination and so arrive as not quite a stranger to the land. And for that purpose, that evening by the largest fire of several, after the camels had been unloaded and tethered to stakes driven into the ground, and after he and the riders had supped well of the provisions that Piros had packed for them and he had entertained the group with a dozen bawdy songs, he struck up conversations with various of the men, asking with a youth’s curiosity of the people and cities that lay beyond the desert. He was a trifle surprised at their answers, which were limited to the pleasures of a single town, a handful of inns, and a small population of women willing to slake their appetites and take their silver. To a man, they confessed they had not ventured beyond but were instead eager to unload the goods they had brought along, pack up whatever their employer had traded for them, and come back home with their pay.

“Is the place so dull that no one cares to see it?” Alaric said to Piros.

“These are careful men,” the caravan master replied, “for all that they did not seem so at my brother’s establishment. The customs on the far side of the desert are different, the very language is odd, and the men prefer the familiar.”

“And yourself?” said Alaric.

“I am a trifle more daring. One does not become a successful merchant without being so.” He did not look at the minstrel as he spoke but kept his eyes on his son, as he had since the fires were first kindled. The youth sat with a cluster of men who were speaking together with some animation, occasionally laughing, though young Rudd never did. Rather, he stared into the flames, as if he saw something there so fascinating that he could not tear his attention away. Alaric saw nothing there but burning camel dung.

Alaric nodded toward the youth, though he was not certain Piros noticed the gesture. “I suppose you would want your son to learn of that other place.”

Piros did not answer for a long moment, and then he murmured, “I think he knows enough of it already.” He stood up. “Time to pitch the tents. Hanio will find you a place.”

At Piros’s signal, the men swiftly unpacked an array of low tents and set them up, flooring them with patterned carpets and settling themselves, six men to a tent, with sacks of trade goods for their pillows. Alaric wrapped himself in his own thin blanket and lay down near Hanio. The night cooled swiftly, but the warmth of six bodies made the tent comfortable enough.

Morning twilight came soon, and after a meal of bread not quite stale and cheese hard but tasty enough, the camels were loaded once more, the riders mounted, and the caravan moved on. Again, Hanio rode behind Alaric, until the minstrel dropped back purposely to ride beside him.

Hanio barely glanced in his direction. He wore the trailing edge of his sun-bleached headwrap draped loosely about his throat, and above it his nose was sharp, hawklike, his face weather-worn. He seemed of an age with Piros.

“Have you worked with Piros for long?” Alaric asked him.

The man’s gaze did not waver from the line of camels ahead. “Some years.”

“Then you must know a great deal about his business.”

Hanio made no reply to that.

“I’ve been wondering,” said Alaric, “what are we trading to the far side of the desert that is worth this yearly journey?”

“Various goods,” said Hanio, and as if he knew that Alaric was about to ask for greater detail, he added, “Fine woolens and leathers, metalwork, lace, dried herbs. And we will stop for salt halfway across—the purest salt in the world. They pay especially well for that.”

“Pure salt would be valued back there, too.” Alaric tilted his head to indicate the land from which they had come.

“We will stop at the mines again on the way back.”

“The mines?”

Hanio nodded.

“I did not know that salt came from mines.”

“You are young, minstrel. There may be many things you don’t know.”

“And I look forward to learning them in my travels,” said Alaric. “But tell me, good Hanio, if the mines are halfway across the desert, why don’t the folk of the west send caravans to fetch their own salt?”

Hanio curled his lip. It was not a smile. He shook his head. “They fear the desert too much.”

Alaric straightened his back and sat tall on Folero. He looked all around, and aside from the plodding camels, he saw nothing but a flat landscape to the horizon. If there were animals in this part of the desert, they had fled or were hiding underground. If there were men, they had not attempted to approach within human vision. At Hanio’s knee was a heavy sword in a tooled scabbard, and most of the other riders also had weapons, short swords and long, bows, slings, and lances twice the length of a man’s arm. The caravan seemed ready for whatever fate might deliver.

“What do they fear?” he asked.

“At night, sometimes, one can hear the desert moaning,” Hanio replied. “Evil spirits, they say, coming out of the lost city to steal men’s souls. You will hear them when we reach the dunes.” He gestured vaguely ahead.

“Ah,” said Alaric. “The lost city. I’ve heard a tale or two of that. Have you been there?”

Hanio snorted. “It would hardly be lost if men could visit it.”

“Then it’s nothing more than travelers’ fancies?”

“Well,” said Hanio. He turned his head at last and looked at Alaric hard. “Sometimes one sees it from afar, and there are towers and domes and walls, all white as ash. But if one tries to approach, it retreats steadily and eventually vanishes altogether. It is a phantom city, a fitting residence for evil spirits.” He paused for a pair of heartbeats. “Men have died chasing after it. I have no desire to die.”

“Nor I,” murmured the minstrel, but he could not help wondering if it could be caught by his own special brand of travel. What he said, though, was, “How much farther to the salt mines?”

“Are you restless already, minstrel?” said Hanio.

Alaric shook his head. “I just like to know what to expect.”

Hanio laughed softly. “So do we all. Ask again in eighteen days, and there will be an answer.” He looked away again. “You do well on Folero. Perhaps there is no need for me to watch the two of you so closely.”

“As you will, good Hanio.”

The man nodded and urged his mount up the line, to where Alaric could see Piros riding beside Rudd. He did not return until the caravan stopped for the night at a grove of trees that had appeared as a smudge on the horizon and grown steadily as the sun descended behind it. There was a pond at the heart of the grove, its banks tamped hard by many feet, and the riders filled waterskins and teakettles before they allowed their camels to encircle it and drink. The shade of the trees was pleasant, and as fires were kindled and supper prepared, Alaric sang of the northern wastes, of the snow and ice, as strange to the caravaneers as the desert would have been to the nomads who rode their deer among the glaciers. And the men around him marveled that such icebound places could actually exist.

That night, in the desert tent, he dreamed of the North, and when he woke deep in the darkness, he almost wanted to return there, to see the only people who cared whether he lived or died. He could have done so in an instant. But he knew that the caravaneers were unlikely to think well of someone who could show a witch’s power and vanish as surely as that phantom city vanished, and so he turned over and went back to sleep instead. Another time, he told himself, as he had so often before.

The next day, a faint undulation became visible at the horizon, and word sped down the line of riders that they would reach the dunes in no more than two days. The caravan began bending southward and arrived at another grove of trees, this time surrounding a well, late in the day. The men spent considerable time raising water, one bucket after another, for the evening meal and the camels. None but the camels drank the water before it was boiled; the men even filled their waterskins with the heated water. Alaric did not attempt to taste the raw liquid after Hanio told him it would affect his bowels adversely. The trees of the grove offered dates, which several of the men climbed after, and Alaric was glad to eat the handful that was his allotted share, as a change from cheese and the remnants of stale bread.

In the morning, the men brought out flour and, with boiled water, shaped flat loaves to set on rocks heating in their fires. The results were not what Alaric was accustomed to, but they were delicious nonetheless, and he felt well fortified for the day. The dunes were clear to see in the distance, great rolling hills of sand, and the caravan bent ever southward to skirt the worst of them. Even so, by day’s end they had left the flat desert behind and were moving on less secure footing. That night there was no grove of trees, no pond or well, though there was still plenty of bread from the morning’s baking and plenty of water in every man’s bag. The camels seemed unperturbed by the lack of available drink and fodder, and several caravaneers assured him that the animals’ humps were storage for both.

“Remarkable creatures,” he murmured, trying to think how that information would fit into the array of songs that he knew would come out of this journey. Lying down that night, on a bed made softer by the sand, he lulled himself to sleep trying various rhymes for “hump.”

In deep darkness, he woke to the sound of moaning—a chorus of moaning at a dozen pitches, as of a crowd of men laboring to move some gigantic stone far beyond their combined strength, or the same crowd lamenting the deaths of countless loved ones. None of the other men in his tent seemed to have been awakened by it, or at least they did not move in response.

Alaric stripped off his blanket and crawled out of the tent. A brisk wind had sprung up, and moonlight showed the sand eddying here and there. After a few moments, he thought the moaning seemed to rise and fall with the wind. The fires had all been banked for the night, and two men were sitting by the largest of them, keeping watch as someone did every night. One man lifted a hand toward Alaric. The minstrel skirted a pair of tents to join them.

“How does anyone sleep through that noise?” he said.

The men grinned, and one of them said, “It’s just the desert.” And then he looked past Alaric and stood up.

Alaric turned and saw a figure beside one of the tents he had passed. The headwrap was gone, and the dark hair revealed stuck out in wild spikes, but as the person approached, Alaric recognized Rudd.

“Will you sit here with us?” said the man who had stood. He held a hand out to Rudd. “We’ll pour you some tea.” His companion was already reaching for the kettle that rested on the embers.

Rudd stopped a few strides away. “They’re calling us. We must go.”

“We’ll go at first light.”

“We must go now,” said Rudd. “Load the camels.”

The man crossed the small space between them and laid his arm across Rudd’s shoulders. “The others need their rest. There’s a long journey ahead yet.”

Rudd shook his head. “Not long.”

“Still, we should all arrive refreshed.” He stretched his other hand out toward the fire, and his companion pressed a cup of tea into it. “Here,” he said, offering it to Rudd. “A few sips against the chill, and then lie down and try to sleep a little more. You’d be a poor visitor if you dozed off astride your camel and broke your head in a fall.”

“The sand is soft,” Rudd murmured. He took the cup and gulped once, twice. Then he pointed to Alaric. “You can hear the music in their call. Come with me and play your lute for them.”

“Tomorrow,” whispered the man who stood beside him.

Rudd spilled the remainder of his tea into the fire and tossed the cup into the darkness before letting himself be turned and walked back toward his tent.

Alaric looked at the man with the kettle. He was pouring another cup, and he offered it to Alaric, who accepted the warm metal gratefully.

“Was he sleepwalking?” the minstrel asked.

“Some might call it that.” The man filled a cup for himself and set the kettle down.

“He’s done this before?”

The man nodded. “It’s one of the reasons there’s a watch. Piros would have our hides if anything happened to the boy.” He drank a little of his tea.

“What if he had walked the other way, away from the fire?”

“He never does that. The fire draws him like a moth.”

“But still …”

“As I said, there’s a watch.”

Alaric stayed by the fire for a time, and eventually the other man returned. Then, yawning, the minstrel went back to his own tent.

Morning seemed to come very quickly.

The sun was high, the day’s journey near half-done, when Piros, who had ranged up and down the line of camels as usual, fell in beside Alaric.

“I see Folero continues to treat you well,” he said.

“We seem to suit each other.” Alaric leaned far forward to pat the animal’s neck. “Piros,” he said, “I woke last night and heard the desert singing.”

Piros looked at him sidelong. “I suppose a minstrel might call it that.”

“Your son heard it, too.”

“Ah,” said Piros. “It was one of those nights.”

“Who did he think was calling?”

Piros shook his head. “The boy sometimes has wild fancies. I advise you not to credit them.” He rose a little in his seat, as if looking at something ahead. “Sing of the North again tonight, minstrel. It makes a welcome change.” He kicked his mount then and swerved out of the line to trot forward. Parts of a camel’s burden had cascaded to the sand, and the whole caravan halted while it was lashed in place once more.

Later in the day, Alaric got his first glimpse of the phantom city.

At least it looked something like a city, far off on the southern horizon, blurred with distance, its towers and walls wavering shapes in the desert sunlight, with silver water all around them. As he stared, his mouth open in wonder, he could hear the men behind him laughing. The laughter stopped abruptly as a camel broke away from the line and began galloping toward them, its rider—his green headwrap unmistakable—urging it with sharp blows from a rod. He passed Alaric, shouting, “Come with me,” and then swerved southward, out into the desert. Four other riders burst from the caravan to follow him, and the pursuit moved considerably before they caught up and formed a tight cluster about him, preventing him from going farther. Alaric could make out Rudd’s wild arm movements; he appeared to be striking at the other men with the rod. The thin sounds of their voices reached Alaric, but he could not make out any words.

Piros moved out of the line, though he did not make any attempt to join the group surrounding his son. Alaric pulled up beside him as the caravan marched onward, leaving them behind.

“He told me to come with him,” said the minstrel.

“You can see what good that would have done you,” said Piros, barely glancing at him. He waved a hand toward the caravan. “Go along with the rest.”

“A minstrel is always looking for new stories to sing,” said Alaric. “I think there’s one here.”

“Not a good one,” Piros muttered.

Alaric pointed toward the southern horizon. “The city alone is worth a song.” But as he watched the riders turn back toward the caravan, the distant image wavered and smeared and flattened until it was nothing but a sheet of silver water. “Is even the water real?” he wondered.

“Not even that,” said Piros.

“It must be attractive to men less well supplied than we are.”

Piros shook his head very slightly. “No matter how far you follow, no matter how swiftly, it will always be beyond your reach. When I was young and traveled the desert with my own father, I learned that.” He leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. “There was a time when my son knew it as well.”

The riders returned, one of the pursuers gripping the reins of Rudd’s mount. As Rudd passed his father, he scowled, and said, “It’s your fault they wouldn’t wait.”

Piros made no reply. He only pointed toward the retreating caravan and turned his mount to bring up the rear as the group hurried to rejoin it. Folero did not require any command from Alaric to match pace with the other camels, and the minstrel found himself clinging to the hoops before and behind him to retain his seat.

That night, after supper was done and some of the men of the caravan had gathered to listen to Alaric sing, Rudd pushed his way to the front of the group and sat almost at the minstrel’s feet. He did not join in the raucous choruses, but he nodded his head slightly in time to the music and occasionally smiled, though Alaric was not quite sure it was at the songs. As the night deepened and the listeners gradually drifted away, he stayed until Alaric finally set the lute aside, and only then did he allow a pair of his father’s men to escort him to his tent. Afterward, Alaric settled by one of the smaller fires, where Piros was discussing their route with the men who had been in the fore of the caravan. He waited until the conversation ebbed to nothing and the other men sought their tents. The night watch was at a larger fire some distance away, and so he and Piros found themselves alone.

“It must be a hard thing for you,” said Alaric, “to have such a son.”

Piros watched the low flames for a few heartbeats. “Most of the men know how to deal with him. Otherwise, I would have lost him long since.”

Alaric picked up a ladle that had been used to stir porridge for the evening meal, and, reversing it, he poked at the fire. The embers flared into dancing life for a moment, the warmth pleasant against the night’s chill. “Has he always been like this?”

Again, Piros was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Not always. I thought he would take my place someday. He was a good rider. He learned to race early and bested most of the men in this caravan. But that was before.”

“Before …?”

The caravan master sighed. “I suppose I’m a little surprised that none of the others has told you. That they’ve all kept their oath.”

Alaric waited.

“I’d ask for your oath, too, but I can’t believe you’d give it or intend it. Not after hearing your songs. Do people recognize themselves when you sing?”

Alaric smiled a little. “I’d be a fool to put too much truth in my songs. I care a great deal for my skin.”

Piros selected some fragments of dried camel dung from a pile not far from his hip and fed them to the fire. In a moment, it flared up. “I thought that might be the case.”

Alaric leaned an elbow on his knee. “People can recognize themselves in any story, whether it’s about them or not. I’ll give you my oath that no one else will recognize you. Or your son. And whatever song I sing of this journey will be far away, where no one will even know your name.”

Piros shrugged. “I don’t know why it matters to me. But it does.” He looked at Alaric sidelong. “And yet, there is a part of me, a vain, greedy part, that wants to hear what you’ll make of our story. That wants the immortality you offer. At my age, I think that’s the only sort of immortality I’ll ever have.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the tent where his son slept. “Not grandchildren, that’s certain.”

Alaric reached for the kettle that rested amid the flames. There was a bit of liquid in the bottom, and he poured himself half a cup of the strong desert tea. “I make no guarantee of immortality.”

Piros took the kettle from him and filled his own cup. “Don’t be modest, minstrel. You already have songs that are older than the two of us together.”

“Tell me your tale, then. Or tell me the version you want me to hear.”

“Not … the truth?”

“No one ever tells the truth about himself. We tell what we want others to judge, for good or ill. And when I have heard your tale, perhaps I will make something more of it.” He blew on his tea to cool it before taking a sip. “Perhaps I will sing of our visit to the sky-touching towers of the lost city. Does it have a name?”

Piros swallowed a mouthful of his own tea. “I’ve heard it called Haven,” he murmured.

“A fine, romantic name,” observed Alaric.

“And what do you think we would find there?”

Alaric smiled just a little. “Our hearts’ desires, of course. Isn’t that what we’re all seeking?”

Piros rolled his cup between his hands. “Perhaps that’s why it always retreats beyond our reach.” Again, he glanced toward his son’s tent. “He blames me for that. He blames me for most things.”

“I’ve heard that isn’t uncommon among sons,” Alaric said.

Piros looked down into his cup for a moment, as if he could read something in its contents. “If I had never taken him to the caves … perhaps our tale would be very different.”

“The caves?”

Piros nodded slowly. “Some would say it was fated to happen, because of the kind of boy he was. Headstrong. Of limited obedience. If his mother were alive, she would despise me for not beating it out of him. She believed very much in beatings.”

“So you were the soft one.”

“For all the good it did, yes.” He took another small sip of his tea. “He was twelve summers old when she died. Afterward, I kept him by my side. Except for the trip to the caves. That waited until he was sixteen.” He shook his head. “I should have let it go longer. But he wanted to know. He was curious in those days.” He finished his tea, set the cup down by his thigh, and leaned forward with elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced. For a moment, he pressed his chin to his fingers, and then he straightened his back once more and sighed. “I warned him. But in the end he did as he pleased. You’ve seen the result.”

“The caves are … dangerous?”

“Deadly dangerous,” said Piros. “The vapors that rise within them are poisonous. But something highly coveted by the people who live on the far side of the desert grows there. And so there is profit to be made in conveying it to them. My father did it, and his father, and before him there was the merchant who passed the trade to my family.”

“But if the caves are poisonous,” said Alaric, “how is this substance obtained?”

“The people who live nearby know the secret of harvesting it without dying.”

“Then it’s a plant of some kind.”

Piros shrugged. “It might be a moss, or it might be a mineral incrustation. No one quite seems to know. It’s not easy to study something that exists in a poisonous mist.”

“So … Rudd was poisoned.”

Piros shook his head. “That would be a much simpler fate.” He took a deep breath and seemed to squint at something far beyond the fire, though there was nothing to see but the dark and starry sky. “I knew I would have to tell you when I asked you to join us, but now it seems more difficult than I expected. Still …” He looked at Alaric sidelong. “When we reach the salt mines, there will be another journey of two days, for just a few of us. Myself. Hanio. And Rudd, because he will refuse to stay behind.

“Our destination will be the caves, and we will return with a considerable quantity of a certain powder, which will be in my charge, although Rudd will be given small amounts from time to time. Under its influence, and knowing we have renewed our supply of it, he may urge you to try it. As you value your life, do not.” He sighed heavily. “He will praise it. He will tell you it will make you feel like a king. One would think he would not, that he would wish to keep as much of it as he could for himself, but under its influence, men tend not to consider the future. For the sake of your own future, do not accept it. Believe me when I tell you this. You will think you are gaining the world, but you will be losing yourself.”

“I have no desire to do that,” said Alaric.

Piros sighed again. “What man would not want to feel like a king?”

Alaric allowed himself a ghost of a smile. “I’ve observed a few kings. It’s not as enviable a life as one might think.”

Piros glanced at him. “On the far side of the desert, they pay well for it. They call it the Powder of Desire.”

“An interesting name.”

“It’s a fine grind, blue-gray in color, and not unlike thyme, but with an even sharper scent and a more pungent taste. It goes well with fowl.”

“You’ve tried it?”

Piros looked back to the fire. “I was young and foolish, and there was a wager. I have not wagered since. Rudd has shown me what I might have become.”

Alaric nodded slowly. “I take your warning. But I do wonder … why not withhold it from him? Surely its power fades with time.”

The caravan master’s interlaced fingers tightened until the cords stood out on the backs of his hands. “On the far side of the desert … I saw a man accustomed to it die for its lack. It was a long, slow, painful death.” He closed his eyes and bent his head. “Shall I lose even the shadow of my son?”

Alaric glanced toward the tent where Rudd slept. There was a man at the entrance, rolled in a blanket, his head pillowed on a camel saddle. Alaric knew there was another at the rear. “It’s a sad tale,” he said at last. “But it needs more shaping before it can be a song.” He avoided saying that it needed an end.

“Well,” said Piros, “we have a long journey yet. Plenty of time for shaping.” With one hand against the sandy ground, he pushed himself to his feet.

The next day, just past midmorning, the phantom city became visible again. And this time, Alaric was riding only a short distance behind Rudd, and he could see that Hanio held the reins of the young man’s mount, and two other men rode close beside him. As before, the city wavered and shifted at the horizon, its many towers now relatively distinct, now merging into a broad blur. Toward evening, the whole mass seemed to rise into the air, and empty sky was visible beneath it. Clouds, Alaric thought, though that was a difficult surmise to accept while the rest of the sky was a featureless blue save for the brilliant smear of the sun.

The next dozen days passed with little to mark them apart. Each morning, fresh bread was baked and shared out before the men mounted their camels and the long line of burdened animals began to move westward. Each day, the caravan moved westward, sometimes crossing hard-packed desert pavement, sometimes skirting more dunes and wading through sand ankle deep on a man, and the distant spectral city almost always accompanied them, far to the south. Each evening, they stopped at a well whose water was potable only after boiling, and there might be scattered scrub grass around the well, though the camels ensured that it did not survive their presence. And when the tents were pitched, the fires kindled, and the remnants of the morning bread consumed along with dried fruit, almost equally dry cheese, and sometimes a few portions of preserved meat that required soaking in hot water to keep it from being nearly as tough as leather, Alaric swung the lute into his arms and played and sang until only the night watch remained. And every night, Rudd sat almost at Alaric’s feet and listened and smiled and nodded a little and said nothing.

Then, on one day that promised to be like so many others, a dark smudge appeared on the horizon and grew, with the caravan’s approach, to be a broad grove of trees surrounding a shimmering sheet of water that was no illusion. To one side of the water, nestled among the trees, was a village of a dozen huts, and scattered around it were men, women, and children tending vegetable gardens and even a small flock of goats. Alaric could scarcely believe his eyes. In the middle of the desert, where nothing but a few lonely wells reminded a traveler that men sometimes passed this way, here were settled human beings with homes neatly made and, in the open space framed by those homes, finely crafted chairs and tables set atop gorgeously loomed carpets—furniture and floor coverings worthy of a royal house.

The camels, Folero included, were picketed at one side of the water, their leads looped through ring-tipped metal spikes driven deep into the trunks of the trees, to keep them away from the gardens. The men of the caravan pitched their tents and set their fires nearby, Alaric thought for much the same reason. Piros handed his own mount off to Hanio and strode to the heart of the carpets, and as he reached that place, a man in white robes, with a gold chain about his neck and a diadem at his brow, came out of one of the houses to meet him, and other villagers, less opulently arrayed, left off their gardening to draw close to the man who was obviously their prince.

Alaric saw bowing and broad gestures exchanged between the visitor and the prince, and after some moments of conversation, Piros waved to him to draw near. Alaric approached and bowed deeply to the man in white robes.

“This is our minstrel,” said Piros. “He will entertain us tonight.”

The prince smiled. “And if he pleases me, there will be a reward for him.” He glanced at Piros. “But what of the nights you are gone? Will he stay here? And perhaps even after?”

“That shall be as he wishes,” said Piros.

“If he is as skilled as you say, I will hope he does.”

They all bowed then, and Alaric followed Piros’s lead in backing away until they reached the edge of the carpets, where the caravan master turned and raised an arm toward the men who waited nearest among the camels. At that signal, they began unloading sacks from a score of animals.

Alaric trailed Piros to the largest fire, where the men tending it poured tea for both of them. Piros drank his while he watched the camels being stripped of their burdens, the men shouldering the sacks, carrying them to the carpets, and piling them high. The prince was still there, and now he held chalk and slate and was evidently tallying the delivery.

Finally, unable to keep silent any longer, Alaric said, “You weren’t suggesting that I might want to stay here when the caravan moves on, were you?”

Piros did not look at him. “As I said, that will be your choice. It’s a soft life here, except when the sandstorms blow. Still, the people have managed to recover from every storm. The food is good. We’ll be eating fresh goat meat during our stay, and taking dried with us for the rest of the journey. And most of those sacks are filled with grain, for fresh bread; they’ll have more than enough for the year. A minstrel could do worse than sing for such a prince.”

“I think not,” said Alaric.

Piros smiled thinly. “He’ll offer you gold. I’m sure of it.”

Alaric shook his head. “I’ve had gold. It attracts thieves. I prefer to travel. Or are you tired of me, good Piros, that you would unload me like those sacks of grain?”

Piros looked at him then. “He may offer you the Powder to keep you. As the lord of the caves it comes from, he has quite a large personal supply of it.”

“Has he? Then perhaps I won’t eat his food after all. Is the Powder how he’s grown rich?”

“Among other ways,” said Piros. “There are the furnishings, which command high prices on both sides of the desert. And there is the salt.” He gestured toward the north. “The mines are some distance yonder, though no one here will say exactly where or how far. They gathered it in last year’s grain sacks, and it waits for us at a storage area half a day’s journey from here. A party of my men will fetch it tomorrow, while I am elsewhere. If you care for hard work, you can go with them.”

“And you,” said Alaric, “will be … elsewhere.”

Piros shifted his gaze to the prince, who was nodding as the last of the grain sacks was set at his feet. Piros echoed the nod, and Alaric could not tell whether it was directed at him or just in satisfaction at the stage of his transactions with the prince. “Perhaps you’ll want to come with me,” the caravan master said. “We’ll return in four or five days.”

“With the Powder.” It was not a question.

Piros crossed his arms over his chest. “A man comes to know his fellows in the desert.”

Alaric smiled. “As do traveling companions anywhere.” He was thinking of the Arctic wastes, deserts of another kind, but deserts nonetheless, and the people he had known there.

“You have courage, minstrel,” said Piros.

Alaric shook his head. “Less than you think, good Piros. But I have considerable curiosity, and that sometimes masquerades as courage.”

Piros glanced toward the camels, the fires. “As I told you, my son will be coming along. He’ll need watching. He likes your songs. They may keep him from running after the city.”

“Why not leave him behind? Your men seem good at the watching.”

“I have the Powder that he requires, at least enough until we reach the source,” said Piros. “There is only one of them I can trust with it, and he’ll be coming with us.” He looked hard at Alaric. “I think I have your measure, minstrel. There will be no special reward for the journey, but I doubt that you care.”

“A good song is reward enough for me.”

Piros nodded again. “Hanio and I know how to find the place. It isn’t easy to read the signs in the desert. Especially for a novice. Wander off and you could be lost forever.”

“I’m a careful traveler, and I’ve rarely been lost,” said Alaric. He was reluctant to say “never,” though it was true enough. The map he carried in his mind, of every place he had ever been or seen, had always served his special power well. “And I’m good at following other people.”

“Very well,” said Piros. “In the morning, when the salt party goes north, we’ll go south.”

“Toward the phantom city.”

“Yes. That, too, should please my son.”

That night, the village hosted them well, with fresh meat and vegetables for the whole caravan and praise for Alaric’s music. The prince did not offer him any gold, but Alaric did not expect it after a single night of entertainment. In the morning, a large group of men and camels was told off for the salt; one of the villagers would be their guide, though Piros told Alaric he had no doubt that his men could find the usual storage place by themselves. Piros, Hanio, and Rudd started south on their own mounts, with Alaric, Folero, and four riderless camels heavy-laden with food and water following behind. In the evening, they camped in a place as desolate as any Alaric had seen on the journey. It had no source of water, but of course they had brought their own, and they brewed tea and shared out some of that morning’s bread for their supper. Afterward, the minstrel sang a newly crafted song about the moaning dunes, with a repeated chorus that made two of his companions nod in time to it although not Rudd, who only sat by the fire and looked southward into the darkness, as if there were something there to see.

The next day they rode onward and camped and ate, and Alaric sang again. The day after, a slight rise in the landscape became visible ahead—not dunes, but a line of modest hillocks stretching southwestward. Half a day’s journey brought the travelers to them and to a tight cluster of seven huts, well made but smaller than the ones in the prince’s settlement, at their feet. There was water, too, but Piros cautioned that it was not drinkable, even after boiling, and at close range Alaric could see that it had a disagreeable yellowish color; even the camels disdained it.

Half a dozen men came out of the huts to greet them. They were gaunt men, the bones clearly visible in their faces, their eyes sunken and rimmed with dark, their hands and forearms skeletal where they showed at the ends of their sleeves, their desert robes hanging loose on their bodies as if the men had once been more substantial. Their leader, the tallest of the group, bowed low to Piros and escorted him into one of the huts while the others began to unload the pack camels. Alaric lent a hand, shouldering goatskin bags that had been filled at the village pond and slung over the camels in pairs linked by thick rope.

The gaunt men delivered water to six huts; the rest of the supplies went into the one that stood closest to a communal fire pit. Shortly after everything had been distributed, Piros and the tall man emerged from their meeting.

“There’s more harvesting to be done,” Piros told his companions, “and so we’ll be here a full day tomorrow while they finish.”

Hanio nodded. He had brought a live young goat from the village, carried at his knee in a mesh bag, and now he slaughtered it with a single quick stroke of his knife, skinned it neatly, cleaned out its innards, and spitted the carcass to roast over the fire while the gaunt men put the organ meats to stew in a large pot, wasting nothing.

During the cooking, a pair of the gaunt men took small, empty sacks from the supply hut, climbed the rise beyond their tiny village, and descended behind it till they were no longer visible. They were gone for some time, and when they returned, their sacks were slung over their shoulders, full of something heavy and shapeless, and another pair went out along the same path, again with empty sacks, again returning later with sacks filled. The gaunt men continued this, pair by pair, turn and turn about, while Hanio secured the full sacks on the camels and Piros brought other full sacks from several of the huts and did the same.

At one point, Rudd, who had been sitting cross-legged by the fire pit, watching their dinner roast, stood and climbed the rise himself, and Hanio left off his camel loading and went after him. After a few moments, Alaric followed, two dozen paces behind, and from the top he could see the phantom city on the southern horizon and Rudd descending the southern slope toward it, Hanio at his elbow. Hanio was saying something that Alaric could not make out, but his tone seemed soft and persuasive, and finally he caught Rudd’s arm and stopped him and looked to be urging him to turn back. Piros joined Alaric on the rise, but he made no attempt to go after his son. Hanio turned the youth around at last, and Piros gave a small nod before returning to the fire.

Alaric sang that night, of a long and perilous search for treasure. It was an old song he had learned far away, but it seemed appropriate. He carved his own serving of goat meat from the carcass, and it was delicious; at Piros’s small signal, he did not taste the organ meats, which smelled strongly of what might or might not have been thyme, and neither Piros nor Hanio ate any either. Whether Rudd did or not, Alaric did not see. After the meal, Piros set up a tent for his group, and they all crawled in to share warmth against the cool of the desert night. Alaric woke once, when one of the others—not Rudd, who slept nearest him—went out, presumably to answer nature’s call, but he had no need for it himself and so went back to sleep.

In the morning, they baked a little bread on fire-pit-heated stones and broke their fast with that and cold goat meat. Afterward, Hanio suggested that Alaric might want to see what he could of the gathering of the Powder, to satisfy some of the curiosity that had brought him to the desert.

“Is it allowed?” said Alaric.

“Yes, but there’s little to see,” said Piros.

Rudd, who had been bent over his food, looked up at that. “I’d like to see it.”

“You’ve seen it before,” said his father. “It is no different now.”

“I want to see it,” Rudd said loudly. He stood up and tossed his half-eaten meal aside, then he turned and began climbing the rise.

Piros looked to Hanio. “Go along with him, and don’t let him take too much of the fresh.”

“I may need a bit of help,” said Hanio.

Rudd looked over his shoulder at his father. “Don’t you want to come along, Father? To keep me under your eye?”

Piros glanced at Alaric but said nothing.

“I’ll go,” said the minstrel. He caught up with Rudd. “You can explain the harvesting to me.”

“Father understands it better,” Rudd said, and there was a sullen tone in his voice, and a sullen look on his face. “But he’s afraid of it. Aren’t you, Father?”

Piros looked at him with slitted eyes. “As you should be,” he said. “Look what it’s done to the harvesters.” To Alaric, he said, “They die before their time even though they don’t inhale the poison. So many years of exposure takes its toll.”

“Perhaps I don’t want to see it,” said Alaric, and he took a step back down the slope.

“Stand well away from the opening,” said Piros. “You’ll be safe there. The smell that emanates from it is enough to warn men from approaching too close.”

“Afraid of a smell,” said Rudd.

“What kind of smell?” said Alaric.

“You won’t mistake it for perfume,” said Piros. “Or for thyme.”

Alaric hesitated for another moment. Still, Hanio was going along, and he seemed healthy enough. Curiosity finally won out over doubt, and Alaric nodded to Rudd and Hanio, and the three of them climbed to the top of the rise. There, they followed the crests of the line of hillocks westward for a hundred paces, two hundred. To their right, the phantom city wavered on the southern horizon, and Rudd glanced at it often, though he did not attempt to run toward it, Alaric thought, because Hanio had a tight hold on his arm. A sheet of water—or something that looked like water—stretched outward from the city, and it looked real enough except that its margins shifted constantly, like liquid in a basin carried through a jostling tavern crowd.

“Tell me about the harvesting,” Alaric said.

Rudd made no reply, and finally Hanio said, “They hold their breath. There’s no more to it than that. No one would want to breathe that stench anyway.”

“They gather it while holding their breath?” said Alaric.

“There is no other way,” replied Hanio. “Through long practice, they become very good at holding their breath. Those who are less good at it are never selected for the work. Or they die.”

“This does not sound like a very attractive sort of work,” said the minstrel. “An early death or perhaps an even earlier one. What kind of man would choose it?”

“There is no choosing,” said Hanio. “The prince commands, and they obey. Of course, the harvesters use as much of the Powder as they like, so there are compensations.”

Alaric smelled his destination before he saw it, and it was as repellent as Piros had promised, a strong scent of rot, like offal left too long in the sun. He paused for a moment, letting Hanio and Rudd draw farther ahead and begin to scramble down the southern slope. He watched them turn and disappear under an overhanging shelf of rock. After a long moment, he took two more steps in that direction and then stopped again, uncertainty warring once more with his curiosity. A feeling of unease was building in him, and no matter how many times he told himself that if Hanio felt it was safe enough, he should, he still hesitated.

Then, one of the gaunt men was leaping up the slope toward him, and he heard Hanio shouting something, though he could not make out the words. He stepped sideways, and the gaunt man brushed past him, sprinting back the way they had come.

Hanio leaned out from under the rocky overhang and shouted again, waving urgently for Alaric to join him. The minstrel looked down the south-facing slope. What was happening, he wondered, that Hanio and the second gaunt man could not deal with? How did they think he could help?

The sounds of running made him turn. Piros and all five of the remaining gaunt men were rushing across the ridge of hillocks.

“What has the stupid boy done?” shouted Piros. But he pounded past Alaric without waiting for an answer.

The last two gaunt men clutched at Alaric’s arms and dragged him along with them, and he stumbled, half losing his footing as the three of them plunged down the slope.

Under the overhang, at the back of the shallow space created by that shelf of rock, the slope of the hillside was nearly vertical, forming a wall a little more than the height of a man, and set into that wall was a massive wooden door. Rudd lay almost at the foot of that door, and Hanio knelt beside him, cradling him like a child.

“What’s happened?” said Piros, bending over his son.

And suddenly, all in a few quick heartbeats, one of the gaunt men flung the wooden door open, revealing the darkness of a cave beyond, and as the odor of rot rushed out, ten times more powerful than before, and as Alaric stopped his own breath against it, three of the gaunt men laid hands on Piros, lifted him high, and heaved him through the doorway while the others swept the minstrel off his feet with strength he could not counter and threw him in as well. What breath Alaric had was knocked away as he fell hard on Piros. And then the wooden door slammed shut and daylight vanished.

In the pitch-blackness, Alaric clutched the caravan master’s body against his own, and in one more heartbeat they were both in the North, and the stench of rot was blowing away on the crisp, clean Northern wind.

Alaric let go of Piros and rolled to his knees, coughing and taking great gasping breaths. The air was cold, and he shivered at the contrast to the heat of the desert, though for the North, at this time of year, the day was mild. He was almost afraid to look at Piros. He hadn’t given any real thought—any real will—to the use of his power; there hadn’t been time. Had he taken Piros’s entire body with him, or would there just be a piece of him, like part of a butchered carcass?

A soft moan drew his eyes. Piros propped himself up on his elbows and coughed. He was whole, and not only that, but he and Alaric were lying on a broad pallet of rock. Alaric realized that his power had taken not just Piros but also a goodly chunk of the cave floor. And on that floor lay an age-discolored human skeleton, ribs cracked, limb bones scattered—Alaric thought he and Piros must have struck it when they fell—and among those bones were incrustations of something that might have been tiny crystals or might have been mold, blue-gray in color. There were smears of that blue-gray on one of Alaric’s sleeves, and as he climbed to his feet he dusted them off against the other sleeve, careful not to let any of it touch his skin, careful not to inhale any of it. He guessed at what it must be.

Piros was sitting up and looking around with wide-eyed wariness at the hardy Northern grass that spread outward from the rock pallet beneath him, at the bushes and stunted trees scattered across the rolling landscape, and the distant, white-capped mountains beyond. He frowned up at Alaric. “Is this the land of the dead?”

Alaric shook his head. “No, we’ve evaded that. This is just the North.”

The caravan master rolled to his knees and crawled to the edge of the rock slab, laying his hands on the chill Northern soil and digging his fingers into it for just a moment. Then he pushed himself to his feet. “How did we come here?” he whispered. He looked at Alaric again. “You did this.”

Alaric said nothing.

Piros turned entirely about. “This is far,” he murmured, and he clutched his desert robes close against the chill. Then he bowed deeply to Alaric. “What would you have of me, my lord?”

Alaric caught his breath sharply. That was not a reaction he had expected. Fear of his witch’s power, yes, and its likely cousin hate. But reverence? “I want nothing, good Piros, except your friendship.”

“I owe you my life,” said Piros. “That is not a debt easily repaid.”

Alaric shook his head. “I saved myself. It was just as easy to take you along.”

“You could have left me to die.”

“I am not that kind of man,” said Alaric.

Piros’s eyes narrowed. “Are you a man? Or are you some sort of magical spirit?”

“A man.”

“And yet …”

“It’s an ability I was born with. I try not to use it where others can observe. It frightens them.” He looked hard at Piros. “But you are not frightened.”

“I have seen many things in my life,” said Piros, “and I have never found fear to be useful. Can you take me back? Not to the cave, but outside.”

“I can take you back to the gaunt men’s camp or to the village by the pond or to your brother’s inn.”

“To the hill above the cave?”

“Yes, that, too.”

“I must know who commanded this. And I must see to my son and Hanio if they aren’t dead already.”

“The harvesters outnumber us,” said Alaric.

“They do,” said Piros, “but we have the advantage of surprise this time.” He shook his head. “This is not their doing alone. Their prince would never allow them to kill me unless someone else was ready to take over the trade, and with a more advantageous offer. The question is … who?”

“You suspect …?”

Piros’s mouth made a tight, grim line. “Someone who came with us to the source of the Powder, to make sure the deed was done. And to kill you, as well, to leave no credible witness.”

“Two possibilities,” murmured Alaric.

“Indeed,” said Piros. “Take me back, minstrel. I need the truth.”

“A little distance from the cave,” said Alaric. “Just out of sight.”

Piros nodded.

“Very well,” said the minstrel. “Come into the circle of my arms.”

They embraced each other, and a heartbeat later they were in the desert once more, on the north slope of the ridge they had followed to the cave. The ridge stood above their heads, but they both dropped to the ground anyway, and Piros crawled to the top, his head and body low. He peered over the rise and then signaled Alaric to join him.

The overhang that marked the cave was only a dozen long, slantwise strides away, and three of the gaunt men were visible around it.

“Do you have a knife?” whispered Piros.

Alaric shook his head. He did, but it was in his knapsack back at the gaunt men’s camp.

“Take this one.” Piros pulled a long blade from his sleeve and held it out, hilt first.

“I don’t kill people,” whispered the minstrel.

“All I want is the threat. Ghosts with knives. Do you think they’ll stand against that?”

Alaric took the knife. Piros pulled two others from his sleeves. Alaric wondered how many more he carried.

“Follow me,” said the caravan master, and he sprang to his feet, leaped over the rise, and sprinted down the other side, shouting, “Murderers! Murderers!”

Alaric gripped the knife tightly and ran after him.

The three gaunt men looked up and began to scream—sharp, high-pitched screams, like wounded dogs. They clutched one another like terrified children, and then the other three came out from the overhang and began to scream, too.

By then, Piros had reached them. “Down!” he shouted. “Down like the curs you are, with your faces to the ground! Pour dust and stones on your heads and beg me not to give you the justice you deserve!” He waved his knives, and Alaric stopped a few paces behind him and began to wave his own blade in a manner he hoped was menacing enough.

The gaunt men crouched low, scrabbling at the ground with clawed and shaking fingers and dashing what they scraped up over their heads, screaming all the while.

“Silence!” roared the caravan master.

The screaming fell abruptly to whimpers punctuated by choking coughs.

“Who gave the order?” demanded Piros, and he kicked the nearest bowed head once, twice. When there was no response, he slashed at the man’s shoulder with the tip of one knife, ripping both the cloth and the skin beneath, and blood began to stain the man’s robe. “Answer!” Piros shouted.

The wounded man clutched at his shoulder and groaned.

“Your man,” said one of the others. “It was your man.”

“Hanio,” said another. “He said if we did it, we could go back to the village. Back to our families!”

“He said they would welcome us,” said yet another. “Someone else would have to harvest the Powder!”

Piros strode past the crouching cluster of men, and they made no attempt to stop him; they only followed him with their eyes. Alaric gave them a wider berth, wondering how long their terror would keep them from guessing that he and Piros were not spirits.

Hanio was waiting under the overhang, his back against the door that sealed the cave. He, too, had a pair of knives, long, wicked blades. “So there’s another way out,” he said. “And the poison is a lie.”

Piros shook his head. “You killed us.”

“I think not,” said Hanio, and he kicked a stone toward Piros. It struck the caravan master’s soft boot where it showed beneath the hem of his robe. “You’re still flesh and blood.”

Piros frowned. “Where is my son?”

“Gone,” said Hanio. He gestured southward with the tip of one knife. “Where he always wanted to go.”

Piros did not take his eyes from the man. “Did he know what you were planning?”

“Of course he did. You think he liked the prison you made of his life?”

Alaric could see Piros’s grip on his knives tighten, the knuckles white with the strain. “I would have given it all to you someday,” he said. “Not to him.”

“Someday, twenty years from now,” said Hanio. “And till then I would have to endure his madness. I’ve had enough. I’ve long since had enough.”

Piros eased to one side of the rock shelter, till the wall was at his shoulder. “So this is where we are.”

“Two against one,” said Hanio.

“Seven against two,” said Piros. “You set the odds yourself.”

Hanio shook his head. “They think you’re dead. They’ve run away.”

Piros did not look back toward the cowering gaunt men, but Alaric could not help glancing that way. They were indeed gone. “We seem to be alone,” he said.

Piros nodded. “Tell me if they come back. Otherwise, this is between Hanio and me.” He took a single step toward Hanio. “Which of the others is for you?”

“All of them,” said Hanio, “when I return without you.” He raised one of his knives to waist height and kept the other at his hip.

Piros sprang, knocking Hanio’s knives aside with his own, and then both men were hard against the wooden door for a moment before they dropped to the ground in a tangle of desert robes, Hanio on top. Alaric realized he was holding his breath, ready to flee in his own way but uncertain enough to stay another moment, and another.

Then Piros pushed Hanio aside and staggered to his feet. The blade in his left hand was bloody to the hilt, and there was a spreading stain of the same color at Hanio’s belly. Piros wiped the bloody knife on the hem of Hanio’s robe and slipped both of his blades back into his sleeves. Silently, Alaric passed him the knife he had loaned out, and that, too, went into one of his sleeves. “We’ll let the villagers bury him,” said Piros. “Or perhaps they’ll just leave him out in the heat to dry. Now for my son.” He started back up the rise.

Alaric followed. “What will you do to him?” he said.

At the top, Piros turned and looked southward, and Alaric stood beside him and did the same. The phantom city was there, as so often before, and between it and them, barely visible against the pale desert floor, was a tiny figure topped by a dark headwrap.

“I wonder how much fresh Powder they gave him,” said Piros. “It’s stronger fresh. He probably sees alabaster towers and gardens of flowers in full bloom where we see shapes that could as easily be clouds. And perhaps even boats on the water.” He took a deep, heavy breath. “That’s what I saw. And it frightened me enough that I never tried the Powder again.”

“We can fetch him back,” said Alaric.

“We can,” said Piros. “But I had no need of Hanio to tell me that the boy knew. Else they would have tossed him into the cave along with us. Hanio was ever a careful man. A good subordinate who never left anything to chance. If he killed you to leave no witness, he would not have spared Rudd.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” said Alaric. “Hanio could have been lying to gain an advantage in the fight. He might have trusted the Powder to befuddle the boy’s mind.” He squinted against the sun, gauging the distance. It would be an easy enough journey with his special power, and if he seized the boy quickly enough, while he was too surprised to struggle, the return would be easy, too. “Piros,” he said, “he’s your son.”

Piros laughed softly, ruefully. “He’s the Powder’s son. And I, too, have had enough of managing his prison.” He took another deep breath and then turned away from the south, the city, his son. “Let him have his heart’s desire.” He started down the north slope, toward the gaunt men’s cluster of huts.

Alaric trotted after him. “Piros …”

The caravan master kept walking. “Isn’t this a good enough end to your song, minstrel?”

“A perfect end for a song,” said Alaric. “But not for a man’s life. Will you let him die out there because the Powder is twisting his mind?”

“If you go after him,” said Piros, “he will become your charge. Is that what you want?”

Alaric swallowed hard. “Piros … I can’t let him die.”

Piros shook his head. “I didn’t take you for a fool, minstrel, but it seems you are.”

A heartbeat later, Alaric was walking south a few paces behind Piros’s son. “Rudd!” he shouted.

The youth barely glanced over his shoulder. He seemed unsurprised to see Alaric.

“Come back,” said the minstrel. “There’s nothing out there. There’s no city.”

“You listened to my father too much,” said Rudd. “He knew there was a city, but it frightened him, and so he denied it.”

“It’s an illusion,” said Alaric. “A trick of the desert. I’ve seen it nearly every day, and it always disappears eventually.”

“It won’t disappear for me.” He sped up his pace, as if to catch it before it vanished.

Alaric stopped and let the space between himself and Rudd increase. The city was there, ahead, tantalizingly indistinct, but still there. Piros had said it was an illusion, and Alaric had accepted that, but what if it was something else? What if there was a city—some sort of city—out there? What if Rudd was the one who was right? He gauged its distance and leaped toward it in his own special way, a leap the equivalent of a man walking half a day across the desert. When he looked back, he could no longer see Rudd, but ahead, the city remained as far off as before. Another leap. Two. Three. At the tenth, the city was gone, though the sheet of water that had surrounded it still spread enticingly across the desert in the distance. A few more leaps showed the water continuing to recede.

Illusions, all illusions. Now he knew for certain, and he felt disappointed as well as a trifle embarrassed that he had let himself think otherwise even for a short time. He returned to the spot he had left, now a few score paces behind Rudd, and he ran to catch up with the boy.

“Still here?” said Rudd.

“I’ll walk with you,” Alaric said, “and when the city disappears, we’ll go back.”

“Go back to what?” said Rudd. “Hanio runs the caravan now; he won’t want me there.” He glanced at Alaric. “Yes, I know my father is dead, and so are you. You’re an illusion, but here you are. Why should I believe in you and not the city?”

Alaric did not try to answer that. Instead, he said, “I’m here to take you back to the land of the living. To your uncle’s inn, if you wish.”

Rudd fumbled at a fold in his robe and brought out a leather pouch such as might hold coins. But when he dipped his fingers into it, they came out with a pinch of gray powder that he licked away. “I am in the land of the living,” he said. “And the city will welcome me.”

“Rudd …”

The boy held the pouch out toward Alaric. “Can the dead enjoy the Powder?”

Alaric shook his head.

“That’s a shame,” said Rudd. “There’s plenty of Powder in the city.” He closed the pouch and tucked it away.

“There’s plenty of Powder in the caravan,” said Alaric. “Come back to it with me.” He caught at Rudd’s arm just above the elbow.

Rudd stopped abruptly and stared at the hand gripping his arm. “No illusion at all,” he murmured. He jerked his arm free and pushed the minstrel away. Then he took a few steps back, pulled a knife from his sleeve, and thrust it toward Alaric.

Alaric skipped sideways, fighting his instinct to vanish.

“So you can die twice,” said Rudd, and he lunged forward.

An instant later, Alaric found himself in the North. At his feet was the pallet of stone with its scattered human bones. He took a deep breath and leaped back to a spot a dozen paces behind the boy. “Rudd!” he shouted. “The city doesn’t want you. It sent me to keep you away!”

The boy twisted around. “Liar!” he shouted, and he waved the knife. “It’s always wanted me!” Then he turned back to the south and resumed his march.

“Rudd!”

The boy did not respond this time.

“Rudd,” Alaric said more softly. And he watched for a long time while the boy’s figure dwindled in the distance and the phantom city beckoned beyond him, unreachable. When he had become no more than a dot in the broad desert landscape, Alaric returned to the gaunt men’s cluster of huts.

Piros was there alone with the camels, inspecting the lashings of the many bags of Powder. He looked up as Alaric approached. “He wouldn’t come?”

Alaric shook his head.

“I didn’t think he would.” He patted the neck of the camel beside him. “We’ll leave now. We’ve been gone long enough.”

Alaric looked to his left and right. “The harvesters?”

“Run off,” said Piros. “Perhaps back to their prince, with some story about our magic, if they dare. He’ll lay it off to the Powder, I’d guess. Or perhaps they’re just out in the desert, waiting for us to go. No matter. We don’t need them anymore. We have enough of the Powder for this trip. And I’d wager they’ll have forgotten it all by this time next year.”

“And you and I?”

“Back to the village to resume our journey. Pack up a bit of that goat meat for tomorrow.”

Alaric tore some scraps from the bones and wrapped them in a sack that had formerly held bread. He tucked the sack into some netting on Folero’s side. By the time he finished, Piros was atop his own camel.

“How many of the others know, do you think?” Alaric said as Folero knelt to let him mount.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Piros. “They’ll follow the one who comes back.” His lip curled, but there was no humor in the expression. “Do you think this is the first time someone tried to kill me?”

Alaric frowned.

“It’s a rich trade,” said Piros. “And the men are paid well at the end. But sometimes someone wants to be paid even better. Before today, Hanio was the one who took my side. I thought … Well, no matter what I thought. Folero is waiting for you.”

Alaric mounted, and the camel lurched to its feet with the odd combination of awkwardness and grace that Alaric had become accustomed to. “You’re leaving your son out there,” he said. “Perhaps the two of us could persuade him together.”

“I have no son,” said Piros. He tugged at his camel’s lead, and the animal began to amble northward. The others, linked to it by a line of ropes, began to move in its wake. He looked back at Alaric and gestured for him to follow. “But that might be mended, given time.”

As he rode at the rear of the miniature caravan, Alaric could not help thinking that Piros was not speaking of taking a new young wife.

All the next day, as they moved northward, every time the minstrel looked back, he saw the phantom city on the horizon, beckoning, but he stayed with Piros and tried not to think of the boy who had answered its call but would never reach it. The song was already shaping itself in his mind, a poignant tale, fit for long winter nights by a blazing fire far, far away from the desert. Someday, he might be able to sing it without wondering what else he could have done to change its ending.