by Simon Hawke
“Is that all?” the manager asked. “Well, nothing could be simpler. You will find the Silent One in the Avenue of Dreams, on the south side of Main Street. Look for an apothecary shop known as the Gentle Path. The owner of the shop is named Kallis. Tell him that I sent you. The Silent One has quarters just above his shop.”
“You have my thanks,” said Sorak, surprised that the information had come so easily.
“Your gratitude may yet be premature,” the manager replied. “The Silent One does not welcome visitors, and in all probability will refuse to see you. Are you quite certain I could not tempt you with an offer of employment? I am certain you would find the terms most generous.”
“Another time, perhaps,” said Sorak.
The manager pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I can easily guess the reason why you seek the Silent One,” he said. “You would not be the first, you know. I think that I may also safely predict that you will receive no assistance from the Silent One. However, if you are determined to pursue your course, and choose to press on regardless, then I fear that there may never be ‘another time’ for you.”
“I am determined to pursue my course,” said Sorak.
“Pity,” said the manager. “You seem much too young to die so mean a death. But if you are determined to pursue oblivion, then so be it. The choice is yours to make. The guards will show you out. I must see to the entertainment of the living. There is little reason to be concerned about the dead.”
Chapter Six
The Avenue of Dreams was a narrow, twisting street, little more than an alleyway that wound its way south from Main Street. Unlike the neatly whitewashed buildings at the center of Salt View, the buildings here were plastered with a light earth-toned coating, and none were taller than two stories. They were well maintained, though they showed their age. The windows all had wooden shutters to protect against the heat, and there were no covered walkways, though most of the buildings had covered entrance portals.
The street was dark here, illuminated only by the moonlight and some oil lamps by the doorways. Here, too, the street was paved with dark red bricks, but it was old paving, and many of the bricks had settled or risen slightly, giving the street an uneven, gently undulating surface.
They were approaching what must once have been the center of the old village, before it grew into the small, desert gaming and entertainment mecca it had now become. Sorak was reminded slightly of the warrens in Tyr, except that here there were no wooden shacks in danger of collapse at any moment, and no refuse littered the streets. The buildings were constructed of old sunbaked adobe brick, with all the corners gently rounded, and there were no beggars crouched against the building walls, holding out their grimy hands in supplication. There were also no prostitutes in this part of the village, which seemed unusual considering the number of them they had seen on Main Street, until Sorak realized that the Avenue of Dreams offered a different kind of temptation altogether.
“What is that strange, sickly-sweet odor?” asked Ryana, sniffing the air.
“Bellaweed,” replied Valsavis with a grimace. Ryana glanced at him with surprise. “But I have seen bellaweed before,” she said. “It is a small, spreading desert vine with coarse, dark-green leaves and large, bell-shaped white blossoms. When dried, they have some healing properties, and yet they smell nothing like this.”
“The blossoms themselves do not,” Valsavis agreed. “But the plant has other uses of which the villichi sisterhood is doubtless well aware. However, you obviously had not been taught that yet.”
“What sort of uses?” she asked, curious. She had thought that, by now, she had learned all of the medicinal properties and other uses of most plants that grew on Athas.
“When dried and finely chopped, the coarse leaves of the bellaweed plant are mixed with the seeds the plant produces, which are pulverized into a powder,” Valsavis explained. “The mixture is then soaked in wine and stored in wooden casks. Pagafa wood is generally used, as it imparts a special flavor to the blend. It is allowed to marry for a period, and when the process is complete, the final product is a fragrant smoking mixture. It is packed in small amounts into clay pipes, and after it has been set alight, the smoke is drawn deeply into the lungs and held there for as long as possible before it is expelled. After a few such puffs, the smoker begins to experience a pleasant sense of euphoria. And after a while, one begins to have visions.”
“So it is a hallucinatory plant?” Sorak asked. “A particularly dangerous one,” replied Valsavis, “because its effects are so deceptive.”
“How so?” asked Ryana as they walked down the twisting street, the heavy scent wafting out of building doorways and windows.
“The euphoria you feel at first is extremely pleasant and soothing,” said Valsavis. “Your vision blurs slightly and everything takes on a sort of softness, as if you were staring at the world through a fine, sheer piece of gauzy fabric. You then experience a pleasant warmth that slowly suffuses the entire body and produces a comfortable lassitude. Most people feel a slight dizziness at first, but this sensation quickly passes. You become very relaxed, and feel detached from your surroundings, and you think that never before have you experienced such a quiet and peaceful feeling of contentment.”
“That does not sound particularly dangerous,” said Sorak.
“It is much more dangerous than you think,” Valsavis said, “precisely because it seems so harmless and so pleasant. If you smoke only one pipeful and stop there, never to touch the noxious stuff again, you will probably escape serious harm, but that is not so easily accomplished. All it really takes is just one pipeful—not even that, merely a deep puff or two is usually sufficient—and a strong craving for more is produced, a craving that is extremely difficult to resist. A second pipeful will only increase the level of pleasure and start to produce the visions. At first, they will be only mild, visual hallucinations. If you I are looking at someone seated across from you, for instance, they might suddenly appear to be floating a few feet above the floor, and their features may appear to change. The effect varies with the individual. You might see your mother or your father, or the person may take on the aspect of a spouse or lover, someone who has always been foremost in your mind. You will see swirling colors in the air, and the dust motes will appear to dance and sparkle brilliantly. And the more you smoke, the more vivid these visions will become. After a third pipeful, unless your will is very strong, you will usually become completely disconnected from your immediate surroundings.”
“How so?” asked Sorak. “You mean, you fall into a trance?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Valsavis. “You will remain awake, but you will enter a dreamscape peopled by the creations of your own mind, which has been greatly stimulated by the pernicious smoke. You will see fantastic things that defy reality. You may find, in this dreamscape, that you are capable of flight, and spend your time soaring like a razorwing through a world of indescribable wonder. Or you may find yourself capable of magic, like no wizard who has ever lived, and you will feel omnipotent in your imaginary surroundings. You will never Want the experience to end and, when it does, you will only want to repeat it again and again. Your ordinary life will suddenly seem dull and flat and lusterless by comparison. And by this time, the drug will have permeated your being, and resisting it will be next to impossible.
“The more you smoke the bellaweed,” Valsavis continued, “the more you become disconnected from the reality of your existence. The visions will become real to you, instead, and life without the bellaweed takes on the aspect of a nightmare, which you are driven to escape at any cost. You will sell all of your possessions, degrade yourself, perform any task at all that will bring you money so that you may buy more bellaweed and find sweet refuge in your visions. However, while bellaweed stimulates the mind to create these fabulous visions, it also dulls the wits. When not under its influence, you will often find all but the simplest tasks too difficult to perform. Your movements will become slug
gish and stupid, and you will lack the wit even to steal in order to support your craving.
“And there are some,” Valsavis went on, “who enter their dreamscapes never to leave again. Those people are, in many ways, the more fortunate ones among the doomed victims of the dreadful drug because they never truly realize what has happened to them. To those who fall under the thrall of bellaweed, ignorance can, indeed, be bliss. The rest become so completely dependent on it that nothing else will seem to matter, and in time, when their fortunes are depleted and they have sold everything they owned, they will sell themselves and live out the remainder of their lives in slavery, inexpensive for their masters to keep because they are easily controlled and require very little in the way of food and lodging. So long as they have bellaweed to smoke, they will meekly go about their work, suffering any indignity, while they gradually waste away.”
“How horrible!” Ryana said, aghast. She glanced around with a new sense of foreboding. The buildings all around them were small emporiums dedicated to the pursuit of this deadly and virulently addictive euphoria. And now they realized why the few people they saw on the streets moved so listlessly.
“If we remain here long enough,” Valsavis said, “the odor of the smoke upon the air will begin to seem more and more pleasant, and it will start to affect us the way the smell of fresh-baked bread affects a starving man. We will start to feel a strong urge to enter one of these emporiums and sample some of this strangely compelling smoke. And if we were foolish enough to succumb to the temptation, we would be greeted warmly, and ushered to a comfortable sitting room where pipes would be provided for us, at a cost so very reasonable that no one would think to object, and that would be the beginning of the end. We would discover that the second pipeful would cost us more, and the third more still, and the price would always escalate. Before long, we would be taken from the luxurious comfort of the sitting room and led to tiny, cramped rooms in the back, lined with crude beds made of wooden slats and I stacked to the ceiling so that six people or more could lie on them as if they were trade goods stored upon shelves in a warehouse. But by this time, we would not object. Eventually, we would say anything, do i anything, sign any piece of paper that would bring us i just one more pipe. And before long, the slave traders would come and purchase us by lots.”
“How do you know all this?” Ryana asked, glancing at the mercenary uneasily. His story sounded all too unpleasantly vivid, as if he had experienced it himself.
“Because, in my youth, I once worked for such a slave trader,” said Valsavis. “And that was enough to destroy in me forever any temptation to draw the odious smoke of bellaweed into my lungs. I would much sooner open my wrists and die bleeding in the street. If there is one thing that experience has taught me over the long years, it is that any attempt to bring peace, joy, or satisfaction into your life through artificial means is a false path. One finds those things through looking at life with clear and sober eyes, meeting its adversities and overcoming them through will, effort, and determination. Only there does true satisfaction lie. The rest is all as illusory as the visions produced by the sweet-smelling smoke of bellaweed. All shadow and no substance.”
“Let us be quit of this dreadful place,” Ryana said. “I do not wish to smell the odor of this deadly smoke any longer. It is already starting to smell pleasant, and now the very thought sickens me.”
They hurried on through the Avenue of Dreams, leaving the sickly smelling smoke behind. Before long, they came to an even older section of the village, where the buildings showed greater signs of age. They passed through a small, square plaza with a well in the center of it, and continued on down the twisting street. Here, the buildings were smaller and packed closer together, many no more than one story tall. Most of these buildings appeared to be residences, but there was the occasional small shop selling various items such as rugs or clothing or fresh meat and produce. A short distance past a small bread bakery, they came to a narrow, two-story building with a wooden sign hanging over the entrance on which was painted, in green letters, the Gentle Path. Below the name was the single word Apothecary.
It was late, but there was a lamp burning in the front window, which had its shutters opened to admit the cool night breeze. They came up to the front door i and found it unlocked. As they opened it, it brushed i a string of cactus rib pieces suspended over the entrance, which made a gentle series of clicking noises, alerting the proprietor that someone had come in.
The shop was small and shaped in a narrow rectangle. Along one wall there was a wooden counter, on which stood various instruments for the weighing, cutting, crushing, and blending of herbs and powders. Behind the counter, there were shelves containing rows of glass bottles and ceramic jars, all labeled neatly and holding various dried herbs and powders. There were more such shelves across the room, from floor to ceiling, and many of these held bottles of various liquids and potions. Strings of herbs hung drying from the ceiling, filling the shop with a wonderful, pungent smell that completely banished the lingering memories of the sickly-sweet odor of bellaweed smoke.
A small man dressed in a simple brown robe came through the beaded curtain at the back, behind the far end of the counter. He came, shuffling as he walked, holding his old, liver-spotted hands clasped in front of him. He was almost completely bald, and he had a long, wispy white beard. His face was lined and wrinkled, and his dark brown eyes, set off by crow’s-feet, had a kindly look about them.
“Welcome and good evening to you, my friends,” he said to them. “I am Kallis, the apothecary. How may I serve you?”
“Your name and the location of your shop was given to us by the manager of the Desert Palace,”
Sorak said, “who asked that we mention him to you.”
“Ah, yes,” the old apothecary said, nodding. “He sends me many clients. He is my son, you know.”
“Your son?” Ryana said with surprise.
The old man grimaced. “I had him late in life, regrettably, and his mother died in birthing him. He chose not to follow in his father’s footsteps, which has always been something of a disappointment to me. But one’s children always choose their own path, whether one approves of it or not. Such is the way of things. But then, you did not come here to hear the ramblings of a garrulous old man. How may I help you? Is there some ailment you seek to cure, or perhaps you wish a liniment for sore and aching muscles? A love potion, perhaps? Or a supply of herbal poultices to take with you on your journey?”
“We came seeking the Silent One, good apothecary,” said Sorak.
“Ahhh,” said the old man. “I see. Yes, I suppose I should have guessed from your appearance. You have the look of adventurers about you. Yes, indeed, I should have known. You seek information concerning the fabled lost treasure of Bodach.”
“We seek the Silent One,” Sorak repeated.
“The Silent One will not see you,” Kallis replied flatly.
“Why?” asked Sorak.
“The Silent One will not see anyone.”
“Who is going to stop us from seeing the Silent One, old man? You?” Valsavis said, fixing the apothecary with a steady gaze.
“There is no need to be threatening,” Kallis replied, saying precisely the words that Sorak had been about to speak. “I am clearly not going to stop you from going anywhere you wish. You are big and strong, while I am small and frail. But if you tried to force your way in, it would not serve you well, and you would find that leaving Salt View would be far more difficult than it was for you to come here.”
Sorak placed a restraining hand on Valsavis’s shoulder. “No one is going to use any force,” he reassured the old apothecary. “We merely ask that you tell the Silent One that we are here, and request an audience. If the Silent One refuses, we shall leave quietly and bother you no more.”
The old man hesitated. “And who shall I say is requesting this audience?”
Sorak reached into his pack and pulled out the inscribed copy of The Wanderer’s Journal
that he had received from Sister Dyona at the villichi convent. “Tell the Silent One that we have been sent by the author of this book,” he said, handing it to the old man.
Kallis looked down at the book and saw its title, then looked up at Sorak. It was difficult to judge anything by his expression. Sorak slipped back and allowed the Guardian to probe his mind. What the Guardian saw there was skepticism and caution. “Very well,” said Kallis. “Please, wait here.” He disappeared behind the beaded curtain. “This all seems pointless,” said Valsavis. “Why not simply go up there and see the old druid? What is to stop us?”
“Good manners,” Sorak said. “And since when has our private matter started to concern you? What is I your interest in all of this? You came to Salt View merely for the entertainment, or at least, so you said.”
“If you are going to search for the lost treasure of Bodach, then I am interested—for all of the obvious reasons,” said Valsavis. “Granted, you have not invited me to come along with you, but you must see that it would be in your best interests to have an experienced and skillful fighter by your side in the city of the undead. And if what they say about the treasure is true, then there is more than enough to split three ways and still leave us all rich beyond our wildest dreams. Aside from which, you owe me, as you yourself admitted. It was I who found you and tended to your wound when the marauders left you for dead, and it was I who helped you rescue Ryana from their clutches. Moreover, there are all my winnings that I was forced to leave behind back at the gaming house.”
“No one forced you, Valsavis. You could easily have kept your winnings, though you would not have won them without me,” Sorak said. “The manager said that he would not try to force you to return them.”
“Perhaps,” Valsavis said, “but after the noble example you two set by returning your winnings, I could hardly fail to do the same, now could I?”
