Their progress felt agonizingly slow. The grass and brush here were a bit higher, impeding their progress. To Mari it felt like the noise they made as they moved through the vegetation must be echoing loudly enough for the Imperials to easily hear, but the crackling of the watch fires must be hiding the sounds Mari’s and Alain’s motion made, and the flickering shadows would make the movements of the grass harder to see.
Mari’s back itched, anticipating the impact of a crossbow bolt or, ultimate irony, a Mechanic-made rifle bullet.
Alain stumbled and she almost fell, barely catching herself, managing not to drop and pull the Mage down with her. He stood a long moment, his breathing louder and more strained that it had been before, then carefully moved ahead again. She concentrated on anticipating and matching his movements, her head resting against his back while she tried to will some of her strength into him.
There finally came a moment when Alain stopped, wavering where he stood. “We are through the alarms,” he gasped. “We must get through the gap in the wall.”
“I’ll help hold you up. Keep moving.” Mari did her best to support Alain now, as the two of them staggered the rest of the way to the wall. Once there, at the foot of the break in the wall that they had aimed for, Alain leaned against the broken stone.
“I will hold my spell while you climb over me. It will help hide you in part until you get inside. Then I will follow.”
She hated to do that, but recognized the wisdom of Alain’s instructions. Mari unwrapped her arms from about him, her joints and muscles stiff with the effort she had been expending, then took a deep breath and scrambled up his back and into the gap in the wall. Once screened from being seen from the outside, Mari turned. For a moment, she could see only the gap and the reflected flames of the fires beyond, then Alain popped into view most of the way inside the breach in the wall.
Grabbing his arm, Mari helped pull him inside, listening fearfully for any sounds which would show that the Imperials had spotted Alain. But no shouts or trumpet calls resounded, and after crawling over broken stone fragments and rubble they reached the inner side of the wall and dropped down to the forbidden streets of Marandur.
“There are no sentries inside the walls,” Alain gasped in a low voice. “We can be sure of that much.”
Mari stared at the jagged ruins poking their battered faces into the night sky. If ever a place seemed right for haunting by the restless spirits of the dead, it was Marandur. “What could have created this wreckage?” Mari panted, worn out from mental strain and physical effort. “This much damage? It can’t all be due to Mechanic weaponry, though after so much time and neglect it’s hard to tell.”
Alain slumped down to a seated position, his back against a solid portion of the wall. “There were trolls employed. They are awful creatures. And dragons. The destructive power of Imperial ballistae and catapults cannot be ignored, either.”
“I’m not happy to be here now, but I’m sure glad I wasn’t here then.” Mari sat next to him, putting one arm around Alain again, staring into the dark ruins. A little light from the Imperial watchtowers came through the break in the wall, but it only served to illuminate enough of the old wreckage to emphasize their spookiness. “Alain.”
“Yes, Mari?”
“I want you to be honest with me. Do Mages know anything about ghosts?”
“Ghosts?” She couldn’t see his expression in the dark. “Mages are taught that this world is a dream, Mari. When we die, my elders said, we go on to another dream. Ghosts are but the memory of those who have gone on.”
“So…are you saying they do exist? Or they don’t?”
Alain sat quiet for a minute. His breathing was steadying, but he still sounded worn out. “You know Mages can change the illusion if they believe they can. As far as I know, even memories can appear to live if one believes hard enough.”
She shivered, even though the wall behind them blocked the breeze from the north. “Are they dangerous?”
“Not unless you believe they are.”
“Blast it, Mage!” Mari hissed. “I want you to reassure me! This isn’t something I can fix with a hammer or a slide rule!”
“Oh.” It was somewhat comforting to be able to hear the regret in Alain’s voice. His outward emotions were displaying more clearly the longer he was with her. “I did not understand,” Alain explained. “The dead cannot harm us, Mari, unless we give them the power to do so. Then they act out their worst impulses through us, guiding us to do things which hurt ourselves and others. This is not Mage teachings. It is the lesson of the history I have read.”
Somehow that wasn’t as calming as she had hoped for. “I for one have no intention of letting the dead force me to do things that hurt us. We can’t move through this debris at night. It would be too dangerous. We’ll have to wait until daylight.”
He nodded, the gesture betraying how tired Alain was. “Resting would be wise in any case, I think. We will need our strength.”
Mari rested her head on Alain’s shoulder and tried to sleep, but the slightest sound would jerk her awake. She knew the ruins had to be home to many wild creatures, from mice up to feral dogs, but that didn’t make it any easier on her nerves when she heard a pebble roll somewhere or the soft pattering of tiny feet. When she finally fell asleep for a while, she did so with one arm around Alain and one hand on the grip of her pistol.
Chapter Fifteen
Dawn came eventually. Mari stood up, blinking and feeling rotten. A bed. I used to sleep in beds all of the time. Someday, when all this is over, I’m going to wake up every morning in my comfortable bed and give thanks. I’ll never take a bed for granted again.
The sound of a rock fall came from somewhere inside the city, rattling her nerves. “Alain? How are you?”
He looked into the city, rubbing his face. “I have slept better.”
“Me, too. Excuse me while I find a convenient ruin to do my business behind, then we can eat.”
When she got back, Alain was standing braced against the wall. The huge stone blocks making up the fortification would have seemed invincible if not for the ragged breach in them that loomed just beyond Alain. “We need to find good shelter tonight,” Alain said. “Somewhere we feel secure enough to rest.”
“Good shelter?” She ran her gaze across the vast landscape of ruin that stretched ahead of them. “I hope the remainder of the city is in better shape than this. Otherwise we’ll be camping out in the open so we don’t have to worry as much about a wall falling on us.”
They ate and drank, Mari thinking that the food tasted dusty, as if the ruins were already working their decay on it. “All right. Let’s go. Can you handle the distraction of me going first?”
Alain looked as ragged as Mari felt, but he managed one of his tiny smiles. “I will be grateful to be able to see something nice amid all of this wreckage.”
“Just keep your eyes on your feet occasionally. I don’t want you walking into a hole while you’re staring at my rear end.”
The banter heartened Mari a little and they started off, trying at first to stick to one of the main roads of the city, but finding that so choked with rubble that it was easier just to follow whatever path offered the least resistance. “The destruction seems horrible at the walls, but I can see buildings that are more intact farther inside the city,” Mari remarked. “Why do you suppose that is?”
“I would guess the rebels first tried to defend the walls and the buildings closest to the walls, and held out long enough to cause the devastation of the areas they were in. Once the walls and the defenses behind them crumbled, subsequent fighting was less intense though still awful.” Alain shook his head, then hastily reached out to grab the remnants of a brick wall as the debris under his feet shifted.
Mari looked down, seeing shards of white bone mixed in with the broken masonry. “How many bodies lie unburied here? Ugh.” Then she saw something else. “Alain. There’s a path.”
He looked in the direction
“Those prints cannot be too old,” Alain said.
“No. Certainly not a century and half old.” Mari looked up at the partial buildings around them. Empty windows stared back like the eyeless sockets of skulls. “I guess everybody didn’t get out of Marandur before the emperor sealed it off. Maybe some of the inhabitants survived. Maybe rebels who managed to hide out until the legions left. Over one hundred and fifty years trapped in a dead city…I don’t think I want to meet these people, Alain.”
“I agree. Now we know why the Imperial sentries focus so much of their attention inward. Where should we go from here?”
Mari stood, pivoting slowly as she studied what could be seen. “Too bad nobody sells maps of Marandur any more, but that’s banned, too. The Mechanics Guild Hall should be near the center of the city. In the oldest cities, that’s where all the halls are located, and Marandur wasn’t too much younger than Landfall. Can you see any sign of an aqueduct?”
“Aqueduct?”
“Something that looks like a thin bridge. Aqueducts carry water to cities.”
Alain shook his head. “The Ospren River cuts through Marandur. Would the city have needed an aqueduct?”
Mari squeezed her eyes shut and slapped herself lightly. “No. I should’ve figured that out. That means the Mechanics Guild Hall should be somewhere on the banks of the river.”
“How will we know it?”
She looked around, then found what she sought and pointed. “See that strand of wire hanging there? Electrical wires to send power through the city would’ve come out of the Hall. We need a big building with lots of wires visible. Once we get close enough I’ll be able to know it’s the Mechanics Guild Hall by the design features. All Guild Halls have standardized hallways and things like that.”
Alain nodded. “Why?”
“Why? Why what?”
“Why are these things standardized, as you called it?”
“Because…” Mari wondered how to describe it to a Mage. “It’s easier to build things if they follow certain rules every time.”
“It gives you comfort?”
“No. Well, okay, I guess it does. But that’s not the reason. It’s more efficient.”
Alain nodded slowly, then shook his head. “Efficient?”
Mari tried not to slap herself again, this time out of frustration. “It means doing things the best way you can. Like when we needed to go through that Mage alarm thing and you had to maintain the hiding spell. It would have been more efficient to concentrate on one thing at a time, but of course you couldn’t do that.”
“Oh. Why do Mechanics have so many words for things?” Alain asked. “Mage Guild acolytes are told that Mechanics believe giving names to everything grants them power over things.”
Mari grinned. “Are you serious?” Then she thought about it. “Maybe there’s truth to that. In order to do science or technology you need a lot of special words. In a way it does give us power over things. Change of subject. Do you want to look for the Mage Guild Hall, too?”
“No.” Alain didn’t seem to think the issue even needed to be discussed.
“There’s nothing there you need? Or want?”
“No. There would not be.”
“All right, then.” No sense following that dead end. Times like this reminded Mari of just how different Alain’s training and experience had been. “Let’s get away from this trail before anyone who uses it comes along, and see if we can find our way to the river.”
As the sun rose higher and began heating the rubble, their surroundings became almost uncomfortably warm, especially since little wind found its way into the ruined city. At one point they startled a little herd of small deer, about the size of dogs, which stampeded nimbly off through the piles of debris. Occasionally Mari spotted a wild cat watching them from some high vantage point. Birds nested everywhere among the broken buildings, their discarded feathers and messes covering the debris in some places. About noon they saw roughly a dozen dogs running across a wide street some distance away. Mari and Alain veered off in the other direction to avoid meeting the pack. By then the route had cleared considerably, with buildings relatively undamaged by battle but worn and disintegrating from decades of abandonment.
Tough grass had sprouted in many places, and wiry bushes could be seen anywhere enough dirt had gathered, including on the upper stories of buildings blown open to the weather a century and a half earlier. Sometimes they would find a tree shoving its way up through the buckled pavement. Every once in a while, a slow rumble in the distance announced the collapse of something somewhere in the city. Everywhere they found traces of the former inhabitants, or of the soldiers and rebels who had died in the act of mutually destroying the city. Mari tried to avoid walking on the splinters of bone, but sometimes the patches lay too thickly to avoid and then she just tried to close her mind to it. One time she slipped, almost turning her ankle, as an old, heavily corroded Imperial helmet rolled underfoot, exposing the crumbling skull still resting within it.
They took a break at noon, sitting in the shade of a partial wall. Mari glanced at Alain. “Is this affecting you in any way? I can’t tell.”
Alain shrugged. “There is a lot of dust. It is hard to keep crawling over all of this wreckage. I am not enjoying myself, if that is what you are asking.”
“I don’t mean just that.” She gazed down the street as a small flock of birds swooped by. “It’s really strange in a way. It’s so quiet, and there’s animals and birds and plants. Almost idyllic. Except it’s a huge graveyard.”
He nodded. “I was thinking how people create this illusion of a world. How many people labored to create the illusion of a city here—these buildings.” Alain waved his hand at the ruins. “Then other people worked to create another illusion, that of death and destruction. Their illusion has triumphed. That is the illusion the Emperor Palan sought to maintain, and it has endured thus far. Someday the last remnants of the last building will fall to dust, the grass and the trees will grow everywhere, and then that illusion too will be gone, and it will be as if no man or woman ever laid hand to this spot.”
“Why, Alain,” Mari said, startled, “that’s almost poetic.”
“Do you mean that? I was never taught to use words artfully,” Alain responded.
“You must be a natural, then,” Mari remarked.
“Should I say thank you?”
“Yes, that would be appropriate.”
“Thank you.” Alain looked around, shaking his head. “I have seen no sign of humans since we saw that path, though, and that worries me.”
“Me, too. I’d hate to think they might be spying on us and setting up an ambush.” Mari checked her water bottle, then took a small swig. “Hey, we’re rationing water again. Remember that? If I never again go back to the desert near Ringhmon it’ll still be too soon.”
“At least we survived the experience.”
“Yeah. Do you think the water here is safe? There’s got to be wells and cisterns still intact enough to hold something, and it has been a long time since things I don’t want to think about were dumped or fell into them.”
Alain shook his head. “I would not trust it. You see there are still many places where grass or trees do not grow. Old poisons must still abide here. The river should be safe, though. It flows from clean lands to the east and then through the city, constantly renewing itself.”
“Yeah.” She pulled herself up, studying the route ahead. “I think we need to bear right a little for the shortest route to the river.”
“I would advise staying on this side street. The way you are looking is too exposed.”
She sighed. “I’m tired, but I see your point. All right. Let’s see how far we can make before sunset. I’m not walking around this place in the dark. Even if I wasn’t worried about unseen humans and other predators, this wreckage is treacherous. We’d probably end up walking into a big hole that used to be a basement or something.”
But they almost immediately encountered a maze of destruction so jumbled that it slowed progress to a crawl. Climbing to a precarious perch on a high mound of rubble, Mari could see the same devastation running off to both sides for long distances. Making her way back down a sliding slope of broken brick, she told Alain. “This is at least as bad as the stuff near the walls.”
“It is probably what is left of the inner defensive line of the rebels,” Alain suggested.
“What were they doing all the way from the walls to here?” Mari groused. “I thought that wreckage marked heavy fighting.”
They still hadn’t caught sight of the river by the time the setting sun was touching the top of the ruins to the west, though at least they had gotten clear of the area of total destruction. Alain pointed out a nearly intact storefront and led the way inside. Mari pulled out her hand light and searched the dim interior. “The front room doesn’t look bad, and there’s some kind of counter or divider still intact here. We can get behind that and be invisible from the street.”
Whatever the store had once sold must have been looted long before, the remnants having since crumbled into piles of decay. They cleared a small area of the floor behind the counter in the angle where two miraculously intact walls met, Mari feeling relief at the lack of human remains here. She and Alain ate cold rations, drank sparingly, and then huddled together against the chill that night brought on, not wanting to risk the light and smoke a fire would create. Mari closed her eyes, feeling worn out and achy. “I’m hope I’m not too tired to sleep. Hey, Alain? Guess what we’re doing.”
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