Lorel’s dark face turned a dull red. “How was I supposed to know that? You never said.” She took the rock-heavy wheelbarrow from Griffith. “How many more rocks do we need?” she asked in mock resignation.
“A few thousand.” Griffith laughed at her horrified expression. “Twenty skull-sized stones will do for today. It’ll take years before we build the seawall as sturdy as we need it. As it is, every Alignment we lose a chunk.”
“Ain’t it never occurred to nobody to use oxen and carts?”
Emil grinned and shrugged. “The city uses oxen, but we use sailors who want a bit of cash during shore leave. Oh, look at this, Viper.”
“What is it?” He backed away to a safe distance. A few minutes ago, she’d handed him a prickly pear, and, expecting a rock, he’d taken it. His hand still stung. Prickly pears for lunch didn’t sound appealing at the moment.
She tossed a pale, fist-sized stone at him.
He caught it gingerly. It was a cloudy blue-white with mossy green spots on the broken side. A handsome stone, he had to admit. “What is this?”
“Moss agate. It makes nice costume jewelry, belt buckles, things like that. Memorize it, put it in your pack, and look for more. What else have you found this morning?”
“Six chunks of turquoise. Seven amethysts. A dozen slabs of malachite. Three dozen pieces of petrified wood. Five skull sized rocks.” The last were in the wheelbarrow, not his pack, praise the Thunderer.
“Don’t ride the boy, Mama.” Griffith shook a finger at her and laughed. He took a quick pull from his flask. “Look there, children.” He pointed north. “Do you see it?”
“There’s a city there.” Hoping to see it more clearly, Viper jumped up on a sandstone boulder. “I thought it was a pile of rocks, or maybe just my imagination.”
“You get close enough, you’ll really think you’re imagining things,” Griffith said. “That’s Erlan, an Ancient’s city. A big, beautiful city in the middle of the desert. Absolutely empty, but for scorpions and rats. Eerie, eerie place, it is.”
“Erlan,” Viper whispered. It sounded like the ideal place to go exploring.
“I wanna see it.” Lorel turned the wheelbarrow toward the city. Sand crunched beneath the wheel.
“Nobody goes there.” Griffith scampered around to stand in front of the barrow. “The ones that did never came out again. Else they came out crazy. You should hear the stories the crazy ones tell. Bones and gloom. Spooky lights in deep, dark tunnels. Lights carried by the ghosts of them that lived there once. Muddy pools in the bowels of the planet, filled with monsters.”
“Sing to the Weaver.” Lorel wheeled the barrow around Griffith, aiming again toward the old city. “I wanna see them.”
“I forbid it.” Emil marched over to Lorel and glared up at her. “That old idiot is telling you the romantic mush. The truth of that place is that it’s so old and broken down that people fall through the floor and die from a broken leg. Or a broken neck. Pure stupidity. There is nothing brave or heroic about dying foolishly. Stay away from that place.”
Lorel sucked in an angry breath.
Viper waved his arms frantically, shaking his head and mouthing: ‘no, no.’
She released her breath in one long, mock-resigned sigh. “I hear you.”
He dropped his arms and exhaled. Praise the Thunderer, she’d paid attention for a change.
“Good.” Emil looked suspiciously at both of them. She shrugged her pack higher on her shoulders. “It’s getting hot. Let’s get back to work.”
Viper flicked Lorel a quick smile, and stealthily studied the route to Erlan.
That afternoon, after a lunch of boiled rice, fried fish, and fresh prickly pears in the cool underground workshop, Griffith settled at his workbench, working on a silver ring.
Emil called them together for a gemstone lesson. “This one came from much deeper in the desert.” She showed them a large, wine-red garnet. “Some people say that the garnet is good luck if it is colored like a conch or the lotus, or like the sun. They also call it a harbinger of death, if it is colored like a crow, or the bloodstained beak of a vulture holding a glob of flesh.”
Viper shivered at the image, enjoying the drama of the words.
“Are they worth much?” Lorel looked up from polishing her long sword. Since when did his turybird worry about money?
Emil shrugged. “A fair piece.”
“So let’s go find some more.” Lorel gave her sword a final swipe before she sheathed it.
“It’s too far.” Emil raised one eyebrow. “I don’t understand why you need two swords, girl.”
Lorel simply shrugged, so Viper answered for her. “Somebody as big as she is can handle two swords in one fight. The smaller sword acts as shield and as grace knife.”
Emil looked at him oddly.
Something small skittered across the floor. An insect?
Griffith abandoned his silver and leapt to his feet. “How did that get down here?” He stomped on the creature, flattening it.
Viper stepped closer to the mashed little body. “What was it?”
“A scorpion.” Griffith stalked back to his worktable. “They rarely get this far underground.”
Lorel ignored the interruption. “Why is it too far?” She stretched and leaned against the wall.
“Because I’m too old and fat to trot ten miles into the desert, and just as many back again.” Emil patted her rounded belly.
“We could go.” Viper strolled back to Emil’s table, picked up the garnet and, rolled it from hand to hand. “I bet the best stones are out that far, where not too many people have looked.”
Emil watched the gem sparkle in his hands. “You can’t take the heat. You droop like a beeswax candle long before midday. You’re also likely to get snatched by slavers.”
“I’ll go at night, while it’s cooler.” Viper glanced slyly at Lorel. “The walking pine tree can come along to protect me. And to carry the pack.”
Lorel gave him a dirty look.
Emil glanced at her and laughed. “So be it. Do you want to go tonight? There should be enough moonlight for the job. You’d best take a nap if you plan to be up all night, though. And come back before midnight. Tomorrow we’ll all be bailing out Alignment tides.”
“We’ll be here.” What did Alignment tides have to do with bailing? No time to ask; he had to get Lorel out of the room before she exploded. He grabbed her wrist and towed her toward the cubbyhole that passed as their bedroom.
“You sure fell off the Shuttle,” Lorel hissed. “You couldda asked me, first.”
“Keep quiet,” Viper whispered. “Have you forgotten about Erlan?”
“Erlan?”
˜™
Erlan.
Beautiful, frail, enduring. A city too proud for the Emperor, and peopled only by ghosts.
Erlan. Even the name fit it, smooth and flowing, soft and subtle.
Erlan. Lit by four bright moons, it was unbelievably beautiful.
And very, very dead.
Viper walked the sand-clogged streets in silent awe. Tall spires rose above him, dwarfing the massive buildings that lined the streets. The buildings – how plain a term. Mansions, palaces, temples. He had no word for them.
Viper mourned his ignorance and reveled in the bliss of secret knowledge.
All of the city was carved out of pale blue stone, its color true even in the moonlight. From a distance the walls looked straight and smooth, but mottled.
Up close, however, he could see that they had been carved, shaped into beautiful, busy sculptures and bas-relief. Heroes and goddesses, animals, plants, and geometric designs all competed for space, yet the walls did not seem crowded. They seemed alive.
“I keep waiting for one of them things to walk up and talk to us,” Lorel whispered.
Viper jumped, and laughed at himself. “That’s just what I was thinking.”
Frail, lacy bridges crossed the wide streets, linking tower to tower. Up that high there was no
evidence of decay, but at street level the stone told a different tale. The carvings were ridged and rutted in horizontal stripes as high as Lorel’s waist, as if years of flooding had washed through the dead, dry streets.
“It’s too Loom-warping quiet here.” Lorel flicked a finger at the buildings. “And it all looks alike.”
Viper looked at her askance, but sighed in resignation. His gyrfalcon got bored at the strangest times. “You turybird.” He glanced up and grinned. “Why don’t we go up there?”
Lorel looked at the lacy bridge and laughed aloud. “Are you planning to climb?”
“No, bahtdor bait.” Though climbing would be fun. But he suspected Emil was right and he’d get himself killed if he wasn’t careful. “There must be a stairwell near here. Help me find a window low enough for me to climb through.”
“That’s easy.” Lorel grabbed him under his armpits, swung him in a circle, and tossed him up to a window sill. “Stop screaming, kid. You gonna scare off all the ghosts.”
“You walking horror. Don’t do that! Besides, there’s no ghost in this world that would dare get near you.”
“Ah, Coward crap. I wanted to meet one.” Lorel walked across the street and measured the distance she needed to jump. “Check and see if there’s anything I should worry about falling on in there.”
He leaned into the building and promptly leaned back out again. “You have just one problem. There’s no floor.”
She aborted her running jump and landed in the sand. “If you’re kidding, I’m gonna fix you, and good.” She stretched and climbed up the wall.
Viper sniffed and brushed dust off the window sill – onto her head.
“Twerp.” She reached out to punch, him, and looked over the window’s edge as she did so. Her fist hit stone instead of his shoulder.
The floor was missing. Or rather, it was thirty feet down and covered with debris. “I’m glad you stopped me.”
“There’s a ledge off to the side here. It looks solid to that doorway. I can make it, but you might be too… wide.”
“Miswoven brat. Get your butt over there and wait for me.”
Viper snickered and slid down to the narrow ledge. He walked briskly, but very, very carefully.
Casual, keep it casual. Make her think you’ve got all the balance and confidence in the world. I said I can do it, so I can. At least, I’d better. The floor doesn’t look too soft.
With a silent, grateful chant to the Thunderer, Viper stepped out on the balcony. “Your turn.”
Lorel was already edging along the shelf, her back pressed against the wall. She sighed as she slid onto the balcony. “Now, where’s your staircase?”
Viper pointed. “Right where I said it would be.”
“Bragger. So let’s go up.”
The city was even more beautiful when viewed from the top of the tower. Breathtaking and peaceful, it filled the landscape with sensual power. He wanted to sit and study its lines, the way they created a sensation of grace and sanctity. Each arch glowed against the dark sky, illuminated by moonlight into a pathway to paradise.
Lorel fidgeted. “I’ll race you across the bridge.”
“Turybird. Don’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“Never mind.” Viper studied the arches all around them. For all their lacy appearance, the stones looked sturdy enough. He glared at Lorel mockingly. “You’re It,” he whispered, and dashed across the nearest bridge.
“Hey, no fair.” Lorel scrambled in pursuit.
From one tower to the next, they scurried like rock lizards. He stayed ahead by carefully choosing which span to take – and by guessing which bridge Lorel would not. Screaming with laughter, they raced through the sky. They traveled deeper and deeper into the center of the city.
He pulled a sneaky switchback.
She was sprinting under too much momentum to make the turn, so she ran the long way around.
He hooted like a moon-struck coyote. He hadn’t had so much fun since his little brother stole the Cantor’s favorite drumstick and all the children in the village tried to steal it back.
He dashed off on a side route.
Darkness swirled around him as if all the moons had hidden behind a cloud. Mist hovered on the bridge in front of him.
His foot slipped. His heart skipped a beat.
He skidded on smooth, curved stone and scrabbled to catch a handhold. A foothold. To grab anything. His fingers slid across stone so smooth it felt like glass.
His heart pounded inside his throat, gagging him. He couldn’t find the breath to squeak, much less yell for help.
The mist shrank into a dry puddle.
His feet left the bridge. His fingers clawed at the glassy surface. His mind went blank, stuttered into life again.
He slid over the edge.
Falling.
Sandblast it. Dying would ruin all of his plans.
He snatched at a carving. One hand caught it, held firm. His shoulder felt wrenched out of its socket. He ignored the pain and swung his other arm up. His hand seized the carving. A lightning-blasted snake’s head.
At least he wasn’t falling anymore. He swung his feet, searching for toeholds. His sandals met only empty space. How far from the stone could he be?
He risked a glance down and gulped air so cold it froze in his chest.
The snake head was the lowest ornament on the bridge. He was dangling four feet below the top. Fifty feet above the ground. If he didn’t think of something quick, he was so lightning struck.
His wrenched shoulder twinged. It wouldn’t hold him long. Or pull him up any higher.
Breathless, he whispered, “Lorel?”
“Where are you, kid?” she yelled back. “I can’t see you.”
“Help!”
“Oh, Weaver puke on this place. I’m coming.” Her voice became distant, then seemed nearer again. “Talk to me, kid. I gotta hear you to find you.”
“Can’t talk,” he whispered. “Out of breath. Hurry. I’m slipping.”
A shadow blocked the moonlight.
“Hold on.” A large dark hand grasped his wrist. “I’ve got you.” Her whole torso was bent over the edge of the bridge, her entire weight suspended on her other hand.
“You must be hanging on by your toes.”
“Don’t push your luck, kid.” Lorel swallowed hard. “I got you now. Reach up with your other hand and grab something higher.”
“I can’t.”
“Do it.”
He unkinked his hand and stretched to reach a horse’s hoof. It was all of three inches higher than the snake.
“Good. Can you support your weight there for a minute?” Before he had time to worry, she released his right hand and grabbed his left wrist.
How could she leave him dangling fifty feet in the air? Had she no pity?
“Again.” She squeezed his wrist.
He reached – and she switched hands.
“Don’t.” His shoulder felt ready to pop out of its socket.
“Move!” Lorel barked.
He flung out his hand. Grabbed the horse’s knee.
“Better.” She pulled his right hand up to that level. “Hold on. I gotta scoot back.” She wiggled back so that just her chest hung over the edge.
Viper glanced up at her and felt his eyes go wide. He looked away, left, right. Anywhere but down. Or at Lorel.
Who’d have guessed she was shaped like that? Lorel, of all people. He had to stop thinking of her as a boy.
He concentrated on staring at his hands. The movement of her breasts was too thoroughly disconcerting.
Lorel caught her breath and leaned forward to survey the situation. After a moment, she reached down and took a firm grip on his wrist with both hands.
“If you pull your knees up tight and stand on the snake–”
Viper obeyed before she finished the sentence. He could only fit one sandaled foot on the snake’s head, but that was enough. He straightened his knee.
She pulled him up to lie safely on the bridge.
“I think I’m tired of playing tag.” He pressed his nose against the stone pavement. If she hadn’t been watching, he might have kissed it. His shoulder throbbed so much it hurt to sit upright.
She snorted and glanced sideways at him. “Staircase over there, to your left. Let’s see if there’s anything interesting at ground level.”
That was the best idea she’d had in lunars. They followed the stairs down blindly, each reacting to the closeness of the Deathsinger’s melody.
Much too close. He roused himself and looked around. The moonlight had vanished again.
“Hey, pine tree. I think we went too far. We’ve gone underground.”
“It’s dark enough to be.” She looked around with increasing interest. “This is kinda neat.”
“I’d wager these are the tunnels Griffith was talking about.” Viper tapped on the wall. “The carvings here seem simpler than the ones above.”
“Yeah?” Lorel peered down the staircase. “Yeah. Listen, kid. Let’s go back and get some torches. I want to see what I’m exploring.”
“I’m not fond of dark holes, myself.” His first glimpse of an abuelo snake’s den came to mind. He’d never forget the day his older brother died down there. But right now a tunnel sounded safer than the bridges overhead.
He led the way back to the ground level. “We won’t be able to come back tonight, it’s thundering late. And Emil will want to see some rocks. We’d better do some collecting on the way back. Keep your eyes open for anything that glitters.”
Lorel shrugged. “So we come back tomorrow night.” She looked up at the bridges and grinned. “I’ll catch me a ghost yet.”
Only if Emil was pleased with their haul. It seemed like she’d mentioned a chore that needed doing tomorrow. He’d ask about it in the morning.
Chapter 15.
But the next morning, his whole world changed. Again. And so far the change had lasted for four miserable days.
Sorcery's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 2) Page 16
