The plaited line in the airway trembled; the pieces of glass tinkled musically. And again.
Awhero went to the door and called deeper into the warren, “Bird is here, Kamakama.”
A youthful form erupted into the room and launched itself up the narrow stairs, soft-footed, only a slight scratching betraying the climb to the pigeon cote above. The Mahahmbi used pigeons to train their hunting birds; the malghaste used them to carry messages. Within moments the boy was down again, passing the message capsule to Awhero and standing with cocked head while she took it apart.
“They go south,” she said. “Everyone. They want us out of city. They say danger here, they want us on our way to Galul. Well, I can’t go with this child sick, and nobody can go in direction Shah goes, before or behind, that’s for certain. Best will be to wait until he and all his men march off toward marae, then we’ll go another way. We can be gone by time he gets back.”
The youth scratched his nose. “You want me to make rounds?”
“Better had,” Awhero acknowledged. “Tell everyone to come here or send someone, so we can plan.” Now what? She knew Genevieve had reached the refuge. She knew Aufors had been spotted by malghaste watchmen. He had been close in. Probably coming here, looking for her. Foolish man! If she could find him, he could accompany malghaste when they sneaked away. If she couldn’t find him, likely he’d be taken by Shah’s men and they’d end up killing him after all!
The malghaste would have to go far east or west to keep out of Shah’s path. No point in their going by their usual desert routes, not with all Mahahm-qum watching them in moods of murder and mayhem. Some of those killed by airship’s cannon had been old men, men about to receive His Effulgency’s gift. Getting dead so close to immortality, why, that was shocking, no doubt. So said fathers and brothers, heatedly.
Well. If they asked her, she would recommend going by sea, as Aufors appeared to be going. Down the western shore, which route was, no doubt, also being chosen by some of those at the marae. They wouldn’t empty the small refuges. Some would stay nearby to keep an eye on the Mahahmbi. Perhaps to lead the Mahahmbi into mountainous country.
Awhero sucked her cheeks with pleasure, savoring thoughts of Mahahmbi among mountains. Then, as baby cried in real pain, she forgot pleasure. Pray heaven it was only colic.
TWENTY-FIVE
The Empty City
THE MOUNTAIN RANGE THAT HAD BEEN PARTIALLY INUNdated to make the islands of the Stone Trail continued down the west coast of Mahahm, splitting just south of the desert into two ranges, one continuing south along the shore while the other veered eastward across the continent in the virtually impenetrable barrier of chasms and cliffs that protected the highlands of Galul. It was near a stony buttress slightly north of this split that Aufors found a mooring. He tugged the boat up behind the rocks where it could not be seen from the sea.
Getting this far had been simple enough, but now he had a fit of the niggling which-ways. Northeast to the city, or east along the foot of the mountains, looking for wherever Genevieve might have gone. The mountains enclosed a big territory, very steep, very dangerous, and if Genevieve had had some destination in mind, she had kept it to herself. If he went to the city, he would at least have a starting point from which he might trace her. Dislike it or not, he could only choose the city.
He put on the desert cloak he had brought, along with a tattered festoon of stained rags he had plundered from the machinist’s store. Dirt on the face plus the few days’ beard he had accumulated since fleeing Mahahm made the malghaste impersonation quite believable. He had purposefully arrived in midevening in order to make his trek in the dark. Though he carried a light, the stars would give him enough to travel by. A moment’s reference to the locator gave him the heading he would need.
The wind had fallen to a whisper that moved only the smallest grains of sand. He covered a goodly distance in increasing darkness before becoming aware of others abroad in the night: a shadow against the stars at the top of a dune; a slither of falling sand to his right; a line of footprints along a sandy cleft, made very recently and heading southwest, toward the coast. At first these presences were widely separated, but as he penetrated farther, he saw more frequent signs, and he heard voices, too: a pack animal being berated in murmured curses; vehement whispers telling a child to hush its crying; a muttered conversation between two men as to the landmarks of a trail that led southward among the mountains. Though he noted the landmarks in memory, he learned nothing as to who was going where, or why, except that there were a good many of them.
Since he did not known who the travelers were, or what had prompted their journey, he avoided them by going warily and stopping in this shadow or in that cleft while they passed him by, their numbers steadily diminishing. The sky had paled when he stumbled upon the first group of bodies strewn upon a cupped patch of blood lichen.
Warily, he backed off, scouted the area, then returned to the hollow with the tiny torch from his pack. He found six bodies, dried to sere leather, with their clothing torn to rags. Carrion creatures had been at them to the extent that it was hard to tell their sex. The first he uncovered was, he thought, a young woman because she had a dead baby bundled close to her. Though he would have preferred simply to walk on, the mystery of their presence here on the sands made him go on to each body in turn, all of them some days dead. Longer than that, there’d have been little left but bones. He saw no stains of blood, but necklaces of red lichen wound the mutilated throats and fronds emerged between leathern lips. The lichen had grown into them, or through them, which made him believe the site of the slaughter was no accident.
He thought they were all women. All women, at least one with a child. Almost as an echo, the Prince’s words came back to him: “We always take new mothers along, for luck.” And Genevieve’s conversation with the Shah’s wives. All young mothers. Going to Galul.
Was that a descriptive phrase that really meant something like “going to heaven?” Was it a religious ritual? Or just more of the Mahahmbi bloody-mindedness like cutting people into chunks to make a point?
Aufors hunkered down and considered. He had read of ancient societies that had revered certain trees or plants, societies that had made sacrifices when they cut a tree or used a plant. Did the Mahahmbi make some use of the bonebushes in the area? The Thorn trees? The blood lichen? Was this why it was called blood lichen? Was this ritual part of the quite impenetrable Mahahmbi religion? Or, since the Mahahmbi were known to be polygamous, had some one of them simply decided to rid himself of all wives at once?
Cursing under his breath, he used his dagger to cut a score of lichen fronds, fat ones, wrapping them in a square of the film that held his rations and storing the small bundle in his pack. If he ever got back to the airship, he’d use the analyzer to find what if anything made them valuable to the Mahahmbi. If, indeed, this bloody ritual had anything to do with plant life.
Continuing his line of march, he came upon other groups of bodies in the dawn hours. More broken bodies, more swaddled infants. Once might be an aberration, but twice said this was indeed calculated, habitual. When the sun rose, he went on, sticking to the bases of the dunes, winding a sinuous trail farther eastward. He heard the screaming voices of the prayer-callers and risked climbing the nearest dune, where he saw first the lashing black banners of Mahahm-qum and then the walls of the city. He lay just below the crest with only his eyes above it, staring with amazement at the troop emerging from the southern gates!
Four men on horses. That would be … he focused the glasses more carefully. That would be Ybon Saelan, the minister to the Shah, the one who had escorted them around the town and bought them the daggers. He was flanked by the Prince and the Marshal! The fourth man, just behind, had to be the Shah himself, for the horse was caparisoned into virtual immobility. Behind the horses came a few dozen dark-clad men with fancy helmets, and behind them a motley assembly, shambling along in wavering ranks, twenty abreast, carrying a variety of weap
ons. Aufors lay quiet and counted a couple of hundred ranks, four or five thousand men. That would be almost the entire male population of the city, excluding very old men and boys.
At the rear of the procession came a line of baggage harpta, and he watched while this array made a wide, purposeful track around the base of the nearest dune to continue southward. The travelers he had seen during the night had moved singly and surreptitiously, but this bunch obviously didn’t care who knew they were coming.
As the procession disappeared, a glitter of weapons brought his eye to a long, low building half buried in the dunes outside the gate. Though the Shah had taken virtually every man in the city with him, he had left a company of armed men to guard this unprepossessing building. He scanned it intently, intrigued by its odd shape, realizing finally that it was edged and topped by massive wooden shutters to hold back the sand that flowed above it and at either side.
Darkness would decrease his risk in entering the city, so he composed himself in the shade of the nearest convenient Thorn tree, one of several that stood outside a small patch of lichen. While removing food from the pack, he came across the packet of cut lichen. Seeing that it was already partly dried, he laid it in the sun to desiccate while he ate his bread and dried meat and drank a long, slow ration of water. Finally he rolled in his robes and fell asleep immediately, as any soldier long in the trade learned to do.
When he woke, he was in the shade of the dune and the sun was just above the western horizon. The scraps of lichen he had cut earlier were thoroughly dry, and they crumbled to powder as he rewrapped them before stowing them in his pack. Then, as he pulled on his boots he noticed that the patch of lichen was now growing around the tree he had shaded under. Did he remember it wrongly? Or had the lichen moved nearer him while he slept?
Thoughtfully, he removed his dagger from its sheath, set the point against the vein at the base of his thumb, and nicked it. He held his hand above the lichen, dripping blood and counting slowly, one, two, three …
By the count of twelve the lichen came alive like a suddenly wakened tangle of tiny snakes, twisting and thrashing as they reached upward for the falling drops, the proximate disturbance gradually rippling outward to the far edges of the patch, the whole shrieking shrilly, like the high-frequency buzz of a swarm of tiny insects.
Considerably alarmed, Aufors moved away from the growth. The edge nearest him stretched as though to follow him, the frond tips questing like tiny snouts. Did it smell him? It sensed him somehow, that much was sure. With a slight shudder, Aufors wondered what would have happened to him if he had lain closer to the patch while he slept? Did it take spilled blood to get it going? Or could it dig through flesh all by itself?
And why, if making it grow was what the Mahahmbi were after, did they feed it only on women’s blood—if he’d been correct about the bodies—when it had reacted very strongly to his own? He put on his gloves before cutting a good handful of the questing strands, wrapping them well and putting them into his breast pocket in order not to confuse them with the other sample in his pack.
When dusk fell he emerged onto the flat territory south of the city, plodding toward it in an unhurried and unbothered manner. The malghaste gate was to the left of the city gates, and he headed directly for it. When the prayer call screamed over the wall he stopped and bowed his head respectfully as he had seen the malghaste do. Malghaste could not sully the Mahahmbi religion by following it or adopting any of its rites, but neither could they show disrespect toward it. The quiet stance and the bowed head were sufficient to let them go unnoticed and unpunished.
When the call stopped, he slipped through the gate, seeing no one at all. No Mahahmbi. No malghaste. The. house the Havenites had occupied was at the south wall, so he needed to traverse the entire length of the city. The cellars there might provide a connection to whatever warren or system of tunnels the malghaste occupied, and if they had all departed, the cellars would at least serve as a temporary base of operations.
He walked slowly, head bowed, along the swerving alleyways. All the alleyways were alike, hard-packed earth; all the walls along them were alike, mud-brick, windowless, high and thick, with deeply inset doors made of heavy timbers. Aside from the occasional symbols painted on the brick, the small variation among hinges or lanterns, the sporadic use of tiles to outline entries or mark corners, one place looked like every other place.
When he judged himself to be halfway through the city, he heard the first footsteps. More than one person, and approaching. He stepped into an angled cul-de-sac, stopping just out of sight of the street to let them pass, which they did not do. Instead the two walkers stopped at the mouth of the narrow way, stepping just inside it to lean against the wall.
“So, he kills the ones out at the refuge,” said one, in an angry whisper. “Then what happens to the ritual?”
The other said, “He’s not thinking about the ritual.”
“He’d damn well better. Without the ritual, Mahahm is going to starve to death in short order. When our people get hungry, they get mean, and when they get mean, the Shah’s the first one they think of, Effulgence or no Effulgence.”
“Keep shut,” said the other. “Someone will hear you! Talking of it to anyone is forbidden, and people who do talk lose any chance of further elevation.”
“You think there’ll be any further elevations for either of us without the ritual? Without the Shah’s blessing, the stuff won’t work. I mean, we’ve seen what it does without the blessing! Old Gazar. He tried it without the blessing, and we know how he ended. A statue of himself, that’s how!”
“I’m telling you, you offend the Shah and there’ll be no blessing!”
“But it’s such a damn silly idea! Taking thousands of men out into the desert to kill a few holed-up escapees. The refuge is malghaste. You can’t get at escapees without hurting malghaste. And we hurt malghaste, what’ll they do? They’ll do what they did last time.”
“That was most three hundred years ago.”
“We haven’t forgotten! What makes you think they have?”
The two fell silent, moving off down the street and leaving Aufors very puzzled behind them.
A little later he came to a place he recognized: a seven-sided polygon with alleyways radiating from the corners, a tiled doorway set into a blue-painted wall with a prayer tower spearing the sky at one corner. He and the Prince and the Marshal had come this way on their tour of the marketplace. The Prince had remarked that the blue wall signified a house of worship. Aufors closed his eyes and visualized how he had first seen it—from across the plaza. He went there, and from the next corner he saw the city wall, and from the one after that, the gate. If there were guards at the gate, he could not see them.
He could see the house door, to the right of the gate, its splintered slabs lying across the entrance. Though debris littered the area, the entrance wasn’t blocked. He stepped cautiously around the wreckage and went several paces inside and around a corner before using his light. The hallway was empty, the kitchen courtyard was full of broken mud-brick, blown out of the com-room along with tangles of wire and twisted chunks of metal. The kitchen was empty; everything had been taken. The hallway through to the large courtyard was empty, as was the courtyard itself. The well seal had been broken, and it seeped water onto the soil. The growing plants were gone, pots and all. Angrily, he hoped someone had tried to eat the greenery, for though colorful and sweet-scented, it was poisonous.
Upstairs, the rooms were bare of furniture, though a clutter of clothing and papers remained. Only Genevieve’s things were untouched. It was likely the Mahahmbi religion forbade them looking at or touching women’s things. He laid his hand on the gown she had worn the day he left. Soft as her skin was soft. He held it to his nose, taking in her musky-sweet aroma, ashamed to find himself shaking. He hadn’t come for this. Or he had, but not in this way. He wanted the woman herself, not merely her scent, her gown, her memory! He shook furious tears from his eyes and went
back down stairs, to the pantry behind the kitchen, where the downward route must be.
Even knowing it was there, he had to search for it: a door that didn’t look like a door with steps going down into more darkness. He turned the torch up and lit his way down one flight to a series of comfortably furnished and neatly kept rooms. The malghaste might wear rags in public, but they did not seem to do so in private. A rack along the wall was hung with perfectly respectable garments; the rag garlands were thrown separately over a hook at the far end.
A tap set into a tiled section of wall above a floor drain explained where they got water. A tiny metal stove had a kettle atop it. Everything was neat, but no one was there, no one at all, and the tunnel led mysteriously into the dark.
After three hours, he had seen endless hallways, many of them with rooms along the sides, some of them leading up into blind courtyards exposed to the sky, some of them leading up into occupied houses, where he could hear voices behind hidden doors. Women, mostly.
“We go Galul. Oh, happy, happy, we go Galul.”
“You be good girl. You be good. Master not like bad girl.”
“Oh, baby, baby, nice baby. Drink and get fat, baby.”
When alone, the women evidently talked baby-talk Mahahmbi, for he could understand it perfectly well. Which meant they probably talked nonsense syllables when men could hear them. He was tired and hungry, so he decided to explore only a little farther and then, if he found nothing, go back to his house, the Prince’s house, whosever it had been. He was getting nowhere down here, and his lack of success indicated that the people he had seen during the previous night had been the malghaste, leaving town.
It was after he turned back that he heard a voice, singing. Cautiously, he slipped toward the sound, stopping outside an ordinary door.
Singer From the Sea Page 43
