Sebastian Darke: Prince of Explorers

by Philip Caveney

  'Oh, none taken,' said Max. 'As you said, common. Not like us buffalope.'

  'Indeed. Eventually Nasram grew old and died in his bed, wrapped in satin sheets. His son became king and carried on his father's work, and that man's son after him, and still the work went on, until finally, when a man called Sesam was king, the city was finally finished. The Metyars asked that Nasram's promise be honoured; but Sesam merely sent them back to the gold mines, still in chains, and told them that they would now be digging gold for his glory. The Metyars were still slaves, with nothing but a handful of rice a day for their troubles.

  'One day an old Metyar woman begged for an audience with King Sesam and, surprisingly, he granted it. He must have been in a good mood that day! This woman was called Thalis and was considered an oracle – somebody who could speak with the gods and predict future events. Thalis stood defiantly before Sesam in this very room and warned him that he must honour the agreement that Nasram had made all those years before. If he did not, she told him, there would be a terrible price to pay.

  'Sesam laughed at her audacity. "What price?" he asked her.

  '"This city will no longer be a place for the living," she told him. "It will be a place of death, where the dead will walk the streets every night and no living man will be safe."

  'Sesam laughed again and told his soldiers to take the old woman away and execute her for daring to speak to him in such an impudent manner; but when the guards went to take hold of Thalis, there was a brilliant flash of light and a great cloud of smoke; and when the smoke had cleared, Thalis was nowhere to be seen.'

  'That reminds me of that hag, Leonora,' growled Cornelius. 'She pulled a stunt like that on me once.'

  'Thalis was never seen again,' continued Aaron. 'Some said that the gods had carried her up to their paradise to live her life anew. Others said that she was a changeling and had transformed herself into a tiny bird and flown away. Whatever the case, Sesam should have paid heed to the warning he was given, but he chose to ignore it. And then the bad things began to happen.'

  'It couldn't get much worse,' said Max. 'Could it?'

  'Sadly, yes. One day a rumour came to Sesam. Guards at the huge cemetery where the slaves were buried said they had seen dead people walking at night: they were pale and thin and moved with amazing speed. At first Sesam dismissed this as ridiculous – but then he heard that some of the guards had abandoned their posts and were now walking around in the cemetery with the others.

  'Then the sickness spread to the big pens where all the Metyars were kept chained together. Some of them were dying for no apparent reason, but when night came, they rose up again and bit whoever they were chained to; when their guards went in to try and separate them, they were bitten too, and those men fell ill – nobody who was bitten lasted more than a few hours.

  'King Sesam was beginning to realize that something was terribly wrong. He sent a large force to take care of the matter, but these soldiers did not return and were seen wandering around the outskirts of the city, pale and thin; when anybody approached them, they attacked like wild animals, clawing and biting.

  'The people of Nasrama understood that this was some kind of terrible contagion – a contagion that spread like wildfire through the city. As more and more people were attacked and transformed, so the unaffected took to barricading themselves in their fine homes. But they couldn't stay there for ever: in the end they were driven out by the need to find food. And any who stayed out after dark never came home.'

  Max rolled his eyes. 'Oh, this is a cheerful little story,' he moaned. 'Haven't you got anything a bit more jolly? An outbreak of plague, perhaps? A nice cosy massacre?'

  Aaron shrugged his thin shoulders. 'I only tell you what I have learned,' he said, 'and the story is very nearly told. Soon only the king, his family and his closest friends were left alive in the deserted palace. When the contagion first began to spread, Sesam had ordered that every door and window should be fortified. But soon, even the huge stores of food in the palace began to run out. One morning Sesam's bodyguards deserted him. They made a desperate attempt to flee the city; but that night they were back beneath the windows, hideously transformed and crying out to be let back in, their long white fingers clawing at the metal doors . . .'

  'Oh, lovely,' said Max. 'Do you think we could leave it there? You're giving me the colly-wobbles!'

  'Let him finish,' snapped Cornelius. 'And stop being so rude!'

  Aaron waved a hand dismissively, but went on, 'Finally Sesam, his wife and his children drank poison, right here in this room, rather then venture out to meet their fate on the streets of his once-proud city. The dead now owned Nasrama. Soon the only things left alive here were the animals that occasionally wandered in from the jungle. Oddly, the Night Runners seemed to have no interest in them. They only pursued human prey.'

  'What an amazing story,' said Cornelius. 'May I ask how you came to know all this?'

  Aaron nodded. 'When I first came here as a young man, I found a journal. It was written by an old scribe called Lazarus, a servant of King Sesam, who lived through it all and was the last of the Chagwallans to die. At the end of the journal he penned a final note before taking poison himself. That too happened here, in this very room.'

  'W-what did it say?' asked Max fearfully.

  'It said simply this: The city of Nasrama is cursed for ever. O wretched mankind, I warn thee. Stay away if you value your life, for this city now belongs to the dead.'

  'He had a way with words,' said Max. 'I bet he was a riot at parties.'

  Aaron frowned. 'Before he died, Lazarus did two last things – things that certainly saved my life and the lives of many of those who came here with me. He went down to the entrance and drew back all the bolts. Then, in an upstairs window, he hung the Lantern of Krelt.'

  'What's that?' asked Max.

  'It is a magical thing indeed – a lantern that burns eternally. It uses no fuel, but contains a crystal that absorbs the light of day and discharges it when darkness falls. After all these years, it still burns every night in the same window . . . and, of course, it is the thing that drew you to us.'

  'Amazing. I should very much like to see this lantern for myself,' said Cornelius.

  'And you shall,' Aaron assured him. 'Of course, it took me many years to learn how to translate the language of the Chagwallans, but finally I was able to set the story down in our own tongue. When you are ready to leave, I shall give you the version I have written. That will provide the proof you need; and hopefully a warning to all strangers to stay away from here.'

  Cornelius nodded. 'I thank you,' he said. 'I'm sure that Thaddeus Peel will accept that as proof of the city's existence.' He thought for a moment. 'So . . . you said you came here as a young man?'

  Aaron smiled. 'Oh yes. That's another story. Would you care to hear it?'

  'Absolutely,' said Sebastian.

  'Definitely,' added Cornelius.

  Max opened his mouth and his two friends glared at him. 'Please, do go on,' he said.

  And Aaron continued with his story.

  CHAPTER 22

  AARON'S STORY

  'On the southern shores of the known world there is a port called Veltan—'

  'I've heard of it!' said Sebastian excitedly. He looked at Cornelius. 'I believe that's where Jenna was headed with that cargo of cloth. She could be there right now.'

  Aaron nodded. 'Yes, Veltan trades with Ramalat and has done so for centuries. Veltan was my home when I was a child. My family was poor but I managed to make a decent life for myself and I suppose you could say I was a success in my chosen career. But like many young men, I yearned for adventure and the riches that might come with it. When I was in my twenty-third summer, I heard of an expedition setting off in search of a lost city in the jungle . . .'

  'That sounds familiar,' observed Cornelius with a wry smile.

  'Indeed. Your Thaddeus Peel is not the only one interested in old stories, my friend. At any rate, a large team of pe
ople was needed, and desperate to get away from what I saw as a humdrum existence in Veltan, I managed to convince the expedition leader, Bartholomew Tate, to take me on as a mule handler.' Aaron laughed his wheezy laugh. 'Not a very prestigious job, but one that would allow me to seek the adventure I craved. So the expedition set out – not a mighty force like Nasram's; just a hardy group of men and women determined to make something of their lives. We followed the course of the river Sleed, the mouth of which empties into the harbour of Veltan.'

  Aaron closed his eyes for a moment as though picturing the scene. 'It was hard going. Like Nasram before us, we had to hack our way through the thickest vegetation. Some of us succumbed to jungle fever and others died from serpent bites and attacks by wild animals; but we kept going and eventually, after many trials and tribulations, one morning we cut through a screen of vegetation and found Nasrama waiting for us. It seemed completely deserted, but we quickly discovered that it was piled high with priceless treasures.' Aaron paused as if remembering his first sight of the city. He waved an arm around him. 'What you see here is but a fraction of what was on offer to us. We quickly realized that it would not be the work of days to remove it all but would take considerably longer.'

  A pained expression came across his emaciated features. 'Then darkness fell, and the Night Runners came for us. It was terrifying: they swarmed out of every shadow and we could do nothing but run for our lives. Some among us, including Bartholomew Tate, were taken and we did not see them again – at least not in their usual form. I myself suffered a terrible accident. In my haste to escape from my pursuers, I fell down a steep drop onto some jagged stones.' He indicated his withered legs. 'Snapped these poor things like two twigs in a score of places but, thank the gods, my friends picked me up and carried me onwards.

  'Then we saw our salvation – the light of the Lantern of Krelt – and found the door unbolted. The Night Runners had never ventured inside because there was nothing left alive in there; of course, every room in this palace has windows to allow in the light of day – a bad place for a Night Runner to seek refuge, but perfect for us. Sesam's bars and bolts had not saved him in the end, but of course, this place became our sanctuary – hence the name.'

  'Excuse me asking,' said Max, 'but why didn't you just get out of the city and head back the way you came?'

  Aaron grinned. 'I was in no position to head anywhere, Mr Buffalope. My legs were broken, and even if my friends had been prepared to carry me all the way back to Veltan, it was unlikely that I would have survived such a long and arduous journey. Besides, nobody was ready to go back just yet. You must understand that we had suffered many hardships on the journey here. Some of our party had perished in that terrible jungle. To return now, empty-handed, would have meant resuming the lives we had known back in Veltan. Of course, without proper medicine, the legs never set properly. Even now, I can only drag myself along with the aid of crutches. It is the price I pay in exchange for great riches.'

  'Riches?' Sebastian raised his eyebrows.

  'Oh yes.' Aaron looked around. 'In those days the palace was not as it is now, stripped of all items of value. Every room was a treasure trove. We vowed that we were going to have that treasure for ourselves, however long it took!'

  Aaron shook his head and smiled ruefully. 'But what good were riches to us when we could not spend them? There was so much treasure around us, we could only have carried a tiny part of it away. And yet we would not leave it here for others to discover. What a conundrum!'

  'I can see it might be a problem,' agreed Cornelius. 'We had a similar one ourselves, not so long ago. We found some treasure and could only carry away a small part of it.'

  'Which we promptly lost,' added Max.

  'Even now we find ourselves dreaming up ways to return and claim the rest of it,' said Sebastian. 'This very expedition was undertaken to finance another trip.'

  Aaron nodded sympathetically. 'We would not consider taking only a small part away,' he said. 'We felt we had earned the right to enjoy all of it. We decided to send a party back to Veltan, to bring back an army to help us. But we never saw those people again. We wasted months waiting for them to return. Either the Night Runners got them or they succumbed to wild animals or sickness – who can say?' He sighed. 'We discussed the idea of trying again, but in the end we dismissed it. I made it my self-appointed task to devise a way to get us, and our treasure, out of the city and back to Veltan.'

  'That's easier said than done,' observed Sebastian.

  'I knew it was not going to be accomplished easily – indeed, it has taken me many years. Meanwhile I, and the men and women of my party, made a life for ourselves here in Sanctuary. A hard enough life, for sure, but we could hunt for food during the day and stay safe in here at night; we survived well enough. Some of my companions married and in time, of course, there were children, and when those children grew, they married and in turn had more children and—'

  'How long have your lot been living here, then?' asked Max, incredulously.

  'Long enough for a young, optimistic fellow to turn into the shrivelled creature you see before you,' said Aaron, with more than a trace of sadness in his voice. 'I don't keep exact figures but—'

  'A blooming lifetime,' finished Max.

  'May I ask a question?' said Sebastian.

  'Of course.'

  'I've been wondering ever since we got here. Where are the other adults?'

  Aaron sighed. 'Gone,' he said.

  'Gone?' muttered Max. 'Gone where?'

  'I think he means dead,' murmured Sebastian.

  'Oh, right. What, all of 'em?'

  'Yes, I'm afraid so,' said Aaron. 'Until recently, we still had a few left. But an outbreak of fever a few moons back killed two of them. The children seem to have hardier constitutions – they don't get sick like the adults did, and . . . well, grownups seem to be more prone to the yarps.'

  'The what?' cried Sebastian.

  'Oh, it's a term we use to describe what happens to people when they spend too long cooped up in one place. They tend to go a little . . .' He made a drilling motion at the side of his head with his index finger.

  'Crazy?' suggested Cornelius.

  'Yes. It manifests itself in many different ways. They run off into the jungle and we never see them again. Or they fight each other to the death. Or they throw themselves into the river and the water dragons get them. The last three adults in our party went out hunting one morning, around two moons ago. They all seemed rather . . . edgy. They never returned – at least, not in their original forms. We don't know how exactly, but the Night Runners got them. So that left just me and the children. We managed somehow – Phelan and the older children are proficient hunters, but many are too young to do very much at all. I was despairing of them ever escaping from this place and then . . .'

  'And then what?' asked Max suspiciously.

  'And then my prayers were answered. You arrived to help me complete my task.'

  There was a puzzled silence at this.

  'I'm sorry,' said Sebastian. 'I don't quite follow . . .'

  'I am now too old and frail to make the journey back to Veltan. I shall stay on here and live out my remaining days with my things around me. And if it all becomes too much, I can simply do what Sesam and Lazarus did before me . . . As for the children – well, I thought Phelan here would have to command the expedition to Veltan, but – no disrespect to him – he is not old enough to have such a responsibility thrust upon him.' The old man gazed at Cornelius. 'But you, now – you may be short on stature, but you have about you the bearing of a military man. I think you could handle the job.' He looked at Sebastian. 'And you, though still young, are certainly older than Phelan.'