Song of Time

9

The orcish war party, along with their odd guests, moved across the erg slowly for the rest of the day, and for three more days, Yob and his men seemingly oblivious to the heat. When Cheyne demanded they stop to rest in the shadow of a huge rock, hewn, so said Og, into the likeness of Rotapan, they grumbled until Og sang Yob's song again. The humans slept and ate, Yob demanded the song yet again, with Og wearily obliging, but also causing some of the rock to peel away from Rotapan's majestic brow and come crashing down on one of them. Og made a new verse of it and the others applauded obliviously. By the time the song was over, they had forgotten who had been killed.

Soon after, they were moving again. Cheyne was beginning to develop some respect for the ore leader, despite himself. Yob halted the group on several occasions, sniffing the air, pointing to a stretch of sand, and then promptly directing them around it.

"What's he doing?" Cheyne asked Og after the second time of having to add two or three miles to their path.

"Sandmire. Dry quicksand. He can tell somehow.

Smells it, I think. For some reason, the Neffians know how, too," replied Og. "The sandmire seems all right at first, because there is a thin crust of regular sand on top of it. But one step into it, and you are lost. Legend has it there are people, full caravans, still falling to the bottom of sandmires."

Cheyne nodded, remembering Javin's words about the sandstorms, and tried to fix the territory in his memory, but found it impossible without landmarks.

That afternoon passed, like the others before, in heat and dulling sameness, until the sun lowered before them and Cheyne noted, almost surprised, that the erg had changed into scrubland. Serrano, Claria had called it. A few low, gray-leafed trees, their trunks twisted and wind-battered, bordered long, flat stretches of patchy sawgrass and thistle. The grass had turned a dormant yellow and whistled dryly as they passed, but the thistle bloomed gloriously, thousands of spiky purple heads stiff and proud against the constant wind.

To Cheyne, this country looked even more hostile than the desert; where there was long clean space on the erg, the serrano was littered with sandspurs and briars, thorns and razor-edged cacti. It smeiled of sagebrush and juniper and the peculiar sharpness of candlestaff, those upside-down-looking giant trees that managed to live in the most severe of climates, their barren branches reaching skyward tike long straight roots, a single bunch of red, waxy leaves at each terminal. Their interiors were hollow, and travelers had used them for centuries as emergency shelter and shade. You could smell a candlestaff grove before you ever saw it-like burning pitch mingled with attar of roses, their fragrance filled the breeze. Sure enough, a mile or so later, a great forest of them sprouted up from the rocky floor like gnarled, blackened hands, their fingers burning at the ends.

High above the pungent trees, several packs of horned canistas hunted the ridges. Their eyes glowed red even in the day, and their eerie, laughing wails rode the wind over the dry valley. Twice they came upon the canistas' recent kills-the carcasses looked to have been lions, but it was hard to tell, with nothing left but bones and flies. Yob's second-in-command had wasted no time in gathering the trophies. The heat seemed to be more oppressive, too, but that could have been because they'd had so little rest, thought Cheyne.

"Who do you think they were?" whispered Claria as they trudged along in the ore war party. Og had recovered somewhat, both from his blisters and from Womba's heartfelt advances, especially since Yob had tied her hands behind her back.

"What? Who?" he said, his mind still on the bones.

"Them. The heads on his belt. Who were they?" She shuddered, pointing to the big ore walking in front of Og.

"You don't recognize them?" asked Cheyne.

"Should I?"

"They were two of the 'phantoms' we fought in the alley. Look behind their ears. See the tattoos? Same as the one that didn't get away."

Claria squinted hard, trying to catch a glimpse of the double crescent marks they had seen on the other assassin. When the big ore missed his footing going up a dry gully, he paused to right himself, and she saw them clearly. "Oh. Do you think they were still following us?"

"Probably. My guess is that Yob saw us coming a long time before we saw him. If he had wanted our heads, he could have taken them as well. The spear was just a calling card. Og here is some kind of favorite-with this tribe, anyway."

Claria walked on in silence, her hood pulled low over her eyes against the strong wind, thinking of her chroniclave, still wrapped in its linen covering, hidden in the little cave back at the oasis. She hated leaving it, but had not wanted to risk the ores' rough hands on it.

It would keep well enough in its dry, dark hiding place until she could return for it. She walked on with her head down, careful of her own footing, avoiding the prickles and shifting sand.

In a few more miles, Cheyne smelled salt in the air and looked up to see a gull circling overhead. "Looks like we're not far from the South Sea."

Claria shook her head. 1 don't think so. Yob is taking us steadily west. A long, long time ago, this whole area was underwater. When the land emerged again, the flood left a small inland ocean at the edge of Wyrvil territory. It's called the Silver Sea."

"I remember passing over it once. There was a long bridge."

"You have been on this path before?" said Claria, startled.

"Not precisely, and it was long ago. Coming the other way. We were in a hurry, and it's been a long time, so most of it doesn't look at all familiar." He paused, thinking. "I was with the lost caravan."

"You? I thought no one had survived that attack. The Fascini proclaimed the route closed and told everyone the travelers had all been killed. Lots of strange rumors about that in Sumifa right after the Great Purge."

"The Great Purge?"

"Happened when the last Fascini king thought the juma were getting too powerful. The old king was Maceo's father. He's dead now, but when he thought the juma were about to seize the city, he had them all murdered. Imagine, that old man afraid of a bunch of women living above the oasis in those caves."

"I thought the juma were a fighting order. Maybe he had some reason to fear them," said Cheyne, recalling some of Claria's moves in the altercation in the alley.

"They were-a thousand years ago. And they still could have been; their mastery and knowledge of martial arts have never been equaled. But there were never enough of them to revolt outright-they believed their main purpose in modern times was to prepare the way for the true king of Sumifa. The old king was afraid because of their words. They would draw great crowds to their camps, then talk to them about the old days, when the Neffians-can you imagine? — the slaves were in power. They would talk about how there would be one of them who would come back, from some faraway place, who bore some kind of special mark, and he would free them and restore the country to prosperity. Of course, it would get really awful right before he came: the djinn would be most active, there would be famine, and so forth.

"Well, there were always enough hungry people in the Barca, and enough slaves, to make serious trouble for the Fascini. Enough of them believed what the juma were saying: that it was time for the change to manifest and the new king was on his way. So, in a fit of fury, the old king sent his raiders and henchmen and the mercenaries Riolla provided and wiped out the juma, thinking that all the rumors and rumblings would stop," she explained.

Cheyne laughed. "Did they stop?"

"Well, no. The seeds of revolt were already well planted. But without the juma, there was no one to organize the coup. Perhaps you noticed the strain between the Fascini and the Barcans." She laughed, then abruptly changed the subject. "But you were talking about the lost caravan…"

"Well, I don't remember very much. In fact, I remember nothing before the attack," Cheyne said miserably.

"Should you remember?"

"Yes, I should. If only I could." He walked in silence for several steps, then continued. "Everyone but me did die, and the ores supposedly took the bodies. Javin found me hiding and took me back with him. That's my first memory of the whole ordeal. When the Fascini finally came after their goods, they didn't even find bones. Speaking of which-look up."

He pulled gently on her cloak. The ores had halted and Yob was giving instructions for two of them to hail the sentries in his name.

At Cheyne's warning, Claria dropped her hood back and stopped. Two or three feet in front of them, the flat scrub they had been walking through abruptly dropped away. Some hundred feet below stood a strangely constructed walled settlement. A long, sparkling ribbon of water, the Silver Sea stretched out behind the fortress's central feature: a huge, gleaming white temple. Even from this distance and height, Claria could see that it was undeniably built of bones.

"The Wyrvil temple. My uncle told me about it. He used to travel a lot in his younger days, hunting for artifacts. He got this far once-used to boast that he was the only human ever to see the outside of Rotapan's temple and live to tell the story," she breathed.

"Then you'll improve on his tale. Looks like we're going inside," said Cheyne.

Yob waved at the guards standing at the temple's gate and motioned Og to lead the way down the steep, nearly invisible trail cut into the cliff.

Riolla put down her spyglass in amazement. She clicked her long, red nails nervously on the telescope's casing, trying to decide her next move. Og did have a lot of gumption, she had to admit. Either that, or the ore was bringing them as gifts to help with Rotapan's current renovation. She'd heard he'd started the twenty-fifth story on that hideous, top-heavy stack of bones. Who would have thought there were that many skeletons in all of Almaaz? Except, perhaps, in the closets of the Raptor, she thought, wincing.

Javin stared at Doulos until he remembered to blink. "What did you say, my friend?" He fumbled in his pack for a candle and a firestone, struck a spark with the stone and brought flame to the candle, seeing plainly for the first time the Neffian's painted face.

Doulos nodded vigorously and reaffirmed his words. "I followed you because you are the rightful, true king of Sumifa. I understand that you travel in disguise, for they would kill you otherwise. Look around."

He took the candle and raised it to the walls in the cave, where Javin could faintly make out a series of pictographs etched into the stone, colored in vivid rainbow hues and spanning the entire length. Javin had seen a few of the characters before-on the juma scrolls at the university.

"See, here are the prophecies of the first juma, inlaid with ground pigments of precious stones so that we would not forget."

Doulos began to read the glyphs, his voice swelling with the import of the words. "There will come one from far away, out of the Circle, bearing the precious Book, and he will be the New King of Sumifa. His eyes will be like the dawn sky, he will have fire in his hands. He will destroy the djinn and bring freedom to all of Almaaz…"

Javin waited for him to finish. "You can read? Is it not illegal for Neffians to read?"

"Muje, all of us can read this language. It is our very own. We helped invent it, hundreds of years ago."

"Where do your people come from, Doulos? Why are you the slaves of the Fascini?" said Javin.

"We come from right here, Muje. We are those who are of mixed blood-part Fascini and part common Sumifan. I will tell you the story.

"A long time back, before the desert swallowed the old city, there was an evil prince, a worshiper of Caelus Nin, who turned into the wind and wrought great destruction. He was a sorcerer, and as he fought one of the Circle, another sorcerer, he killed the man and then caused the desert to cover his own city. It was said that nothing could harm him but one of his own. So he tried in this way to destroy his family so that none of them would ever break his power. He killed the first of his own sons when the boy was but a child.

"The boy's nurse found the child out in the desert, where it looked like he had fallen prey to thirst and then to the vultures. But the old nurse knew it was the sorcerer, for she had seen him once, stalking the children, and he had a claw like a hawk's. So to save the other child, she cried aloud to all the city that the younger son, too, had been slain, had fallen into a sandmire. It was the time of the Wandering, before we learned how to read the face of the desert, and many things of that kind happened. But she hid the younger son in these very caves-they were first known as the caves of Neffia, after the name of the little spring below us.

"While the boy grew up, the juma taught him many things: about the magical order of the Circle, some of whom yet lived, about the old city, about his father. Then he did not believe anymore in Nin and hated the god of his evil father. He chose, instead, to worship as the juma did, after the sayings and beliefs of the Circle, because they had believed in peace and tried to save the land from great destruction at the hands of the warring brothers long ago.

"He was a born fighter, but he went forth from here disguised as a meek herdsman, married a Sumifan slave woman, and his family lived in peace, enjoying the freedom of the land outside the city walls for a great many years, herding sheep and living in tents. They sought out the surviving members of the Circle and protected them as best they could, for the djinn had sworn to find and kill all of them.

"They became the Neffians, a large nation, but a peaceful one. Enough time passed that the evil prince, who had lost his human form, was satisfied that none of his line was left to bring him down. All of Sumifa believed it, too. The people had no one left to follow, and no hope.

"Then came the time of the erg raiders, after the great war. Sumifa needed leadership and fortification badly. So the evil sorcerer put another in the place of his sons, one that would do his every bidding, and declared that he was the ruler of Sumifa. This ruler then began to build the great walls and became fearful when the shepherds would not pay their tribute money to Nin to finish them, for the evil prince demanded much kohli from the new king, or he would kill him and replace him. So the new king went out to the desert with his armies and captured the shepherds after much horrible fighting, took all they had, and made them his slaves. He made us cut the blocks, lay the courses, and finish the walls that became our prison with our own money and our own sweat and blood. That king was the forefather of all the Fascini now. I suppose we are enslaved now because we lost our war then.

"My father was born into slavery, and his before him, and the others before him, back a thousand years. Sometimes our masters have been good to us, mostly they have not. When we have run away, we have used this place to hide, and when the juma yet lived, they helped us as best they could, hiding us for a night or two until a caravan would come and take the runaways with it toward the mountains.

"I have been here once before, when I was very young. My brother and I, his name was Rafek, had run. The old king was our master, but he sent armed men for us. Rafek had gone with a caravan two days before, but they had no room for me. I went back rather than make trouble for the juma. Look, there is my mark as a child. And Rafek's." He pointed to two small handprints near the floor.

"And there are the names of all of us who have passed this way. The names of your people, Muje." He swept his hand toward the ceiling of the small alcove.

Javin expected to see the names in the Neffian language carved into the ceiling; instead, he could barely make out some odd shapes. But when Doulos moved

the flame under them, he saw hundreds and hundreds of handprints outlined in red ochre and charcoal, as though the hands had been hastily placed against the rock-no time to carve a name-and the colored earth blown onto them, causing an exact print to remain when the hand was removed, like a wordless signature. The handprints looked like the wings of a thousand birds in flight, one upon the other. They spanned the ceiling of the cave, the long, bunioned fingers of old men and women next to the small prints of children and the entwined hands of lovers.

Javin had dug the fabulous ruins of the known world, had seen with his own eyes in the light of precise measurement the gemstone mosaics of Karjzia, and the gold-embossed, hand-painted funerary portraits in the vaults of Tralinga, and they had not moved him. But here is this dark cave, lit only by a small candle, the hurried marks of the hope of runaway slaves overwhelmed him.

"What happened to all of them, Doulos? Did they find freedom?"

Doulos shook his head. "Some, like Rafek, made it out with caravans, when the traders passed through here to take on water. We have never heard again from them, but I know they lived. They must have. Our people-your people, Muje-are strong warriors still, well able to survive if they got the chance. Perhaps some settled somewhere outside of Almaaz. When they are strong and many, they will come for us.

"But most who ran away were brought back to the city. Their graves lie in the desert, outside the city walls, unmarked. These are now the shape of their names and the way they are still known to us."

Doulos gave him back the candle. Javin sat in silence for a while, mulling another question that had presented itself.

"Doulos, you mentioned the djinn. Will you show me the glyph for that word?" Javin had heard Muni talking to the crew about this term.

"Yes, the djinn-you know, the evil wind." Doulos pointed to a drawing of a pair of circles, one of them broken. "Here it is called the 'dueco,' the double spirit. Not just the divided thing, but that which causes division. It is an old word, a hated word. In the juma writing, it always stands for the evil prince."

Javin listened as Doulos read on, and when the slave had finished, he spoke, his voice quiet and gentle. "Doulos, you have followed me here because of these stories? You have risked your life by leaving your master for the marks on these walls?"

Doulos lifted his head and looked Javin straight in the eye. "Yes, my king. And I will go with you wherever you journey. I will be your protector and your servant. I have believed I would see this day since I was a child."

"Doulos, please understand this. I… I can't be the king. I'm only a digger, and I'm looking for my son, who has left our camp to travel to the Borderlands. He is in terrible danger. He is pursued by one who would take his life. That's where I journey: into danger and uncertainty. Away from Sumifa, to the farthest reaches of Almaaz, not to the throne of the Citadel. I am one man alone. I could not free anyone from the Fascini. I can only hope to find my son before he is killed."

"Muje, I have spoken. My word stands. Upon my name."

Doulos closed his mouth and held up the palm of his right hand in the candlelight, then took a bit of ochre from the cave floor in his left hand and placed his right upon an empty space on the far wall. He blew gently upon the powdery ochre and removed his palm, leaving a sharp outline of every finger on the smooth cave wall. He beckoned to Javin.

"I would ask that you leave your mark to stand with theirs in faith for their freedom, Muje. And to witness my oath."

Javin could hardly refuse the man who had saved his life. He rose and placed his good hand next to the print Doulos had made and let the Neffian mark the image upon the warm cave wall. He stepped back and looked at his own finished print. Javin smiled to himself. The shape of the hand he saw was a perfect copy of Cheyne's.