Lin Carter - The City Outside the World

by Lin Carter

  Ryker said nothing. But he gave him look for look, and there was no weakness in his face, no trace of fear.

  The prince knelt and cut his hands free. Then he stood

  up and put the knife into his sleeve, and went to look over the cliff edge, and searched the desert with narrowed eyes.

  As soon as he had rubbed the numbness from his stiff muscles, Ryker came over to where Zarouk stood.

  “What now?” he asked.

  Zarouk shrugged.

  ‘ ‘Now we sit down and wait until my men get here,” he said flatly. “After that, we’ll see.”

  Ryker nodded thoughtfully. Then he found a convenient boulder and sat down. And waited.

  To learn whether he was going to live or die.

  11. The Lost Nation

  After the men had tired of using the whips on him, they left him hanging there in the chains all night without water. He was half unconscious most of the time; the rest of the time he was a little mad, and would have raved if his longue were not black and swollen from thirst.

  With dawn they relented and cut him down, and let the F’yagh who was their other captive tend to his cold wounds and lacerated back. Through a blood-dimmed haze Ryker caught glimpses of this man, a white man, an Earthsider, whom he had never seen before and whose name he knew not.

  Nor cared. What mattered was that the Earthman gave him water. Cool, sweet, blessed water—more wondrous than any wine, more precious than rubies. He drank, and drank, and fell into a doze. And woke to find the man working over him.

  He opened the older wounds and cleaned the pus out of them and soothed them with creamy ointments filled with drugs that numbed the pain and drained the poison and held death at bay. Then he shot Ryker full of antibacterials and fever fighters and fed him hot, delicious broth until he fell asleep again. This time it was a wholesome sleep from which, when he woke, he woke refreshed and strengthened and—sane.

  Zarouk’s men called him the Dok-i-Tar, which was the nearest they could bend their tongues around “doctor.” The People have no word in their language for a savant, a

  scientist, a man who devotes his life to the gathering of knowledge with a selfless fervor that is almost religious. Such a man, Ryker soon learned, was Eli Herzog, an Israeli by nationality, a Martian by exile, a scientist and philosopher by nature.

  He was an old man with a tall brow and a big nose and not much hair. What there was of it was thin and white and silky. His eyes were watery, gentle, wise, filled with humor and wistful dreams, but without illusions.

  They were exactly the eyes of another Jewish savant, a man named Einstein, in the famous portrait by Roether which Ryker had seen once, years ago, in the great museum on Luna.

  Like that other great mind, Herzog loved humanity as he loved knowledge, but he had no delusions about the sanctity of either. He had been exiled to Mars twenty years before, for so-called political “crimes” back on Earth— during “The Troubles” merely to express an opinion that differed from the official line was defined as criminal.

  On Earth, then, Doc Herzog had been a criminal. Here, he was more like a saint. He fell in love with the People and with their ancient ways and traditions. He loved them for their pride and their poverty, their grimly cherished honor, and their refusal to yield one inch before the overwhelming might of Earth and all her millions and her , machines.

  He had devoted all the remainder of his life to the study of their civilization. Science had changed much by this j century. Back in the 1900s, an astrophysicist was an astrophysicist, an archaeologist was an archaeologist, and seldom the twain did meet. Today, things were different, j, and Herzog knew as much about both topics as he knew I about Martian literature and myth, or comparative an-j

  thropology, or nine-dimensional geometric theory, or null-state mathematics—which was plenty. He was a Synthesis!, with a dozen or thirteen doctorates in as many different fields. Since he was a doctor thirteen times over, Ryker decided to call him simply “Doc,” and they left it at that.

  Zarouk had picked him up several months ago down in Chryse, hunting for petroglyphs. Since Dok-i-Tars of his sort have great powers of healing, and Zarouk had a lieutenant who had been badly mauled by a sandcat, his men captured the old F’yagh. Herzog had an M.D. tucked away among those thirteen doctorates, so it was no great feat for him to bring the man back to health. But Zarouk thought it was a marvel, and kept the old Dok-i-Tar around as a sort of good-luck talisman.

  Doc Herzog didn’t care. All of this planet was one vast laboratory to his way of thinking, and it didn’t matter very much which part of it he was in.

  Indeed, as a member of Zarouk’s retinue, he had been introduced to many discoveries he might otherwise never have found.

  “Such as?” grunted Ryker, wincing as the doctor massaged the stiffness from his scarred shoulders.

  “Why, this very city, my boy! Always a myth I have thought it. And here I am, big as life! You don’t know where you are, do you?”

  “Beats me,” said Ryker. “Just one of the Dead Cities, that’s all I know.”

  “Oh, more than that, my boy—much more! The inscriptions have never been defaced, I, even, can read them.” His eyes grew wistful, dreaming, and his dry croak of a voice softened to a reverent, hushed whisper. “Khuu, the Last Encampment. Here is the place the Lost

  Nation fled to, after wars; here was it they rested for a century, more, maybe, before going on to the end of their road.”

  A cold tingle traveled the length of Ryker’s spine. Hardened though he was, he felt his hackles lift. This was a place whispered about in the myths of Mars, and those myths were older than the very mountains of the Earth.

  “Khuu!” he repeated. “Cripes, Doc—I always thought that was just one of their legends, like, you know —like Lost Illinios, and Yhoom, and the Valley Where Life Began, and all the rest of it! D’you mean it’s really true, and we’re really here?”

  “Oh, it’s true enough, and here we are,” Doc said softly. “Here, where the Lost Nation camped awhile, before vanishing from the knowledge of men forever. Now drink this, and shut up for a bit.”

  Ryker downed the fluid, and napped for a while, as his wounds healed and his body mended. But he had plenty to chew on. He had lived and moved among the People long enough to have heard of the Lost Nation, and it troubled him—but why, he could not have said.

  Once, long ago, at the beginnings of history, there had been ten nations sharing this planet between them. Apart, yet together; different, yet the same; and united in their worship of the Timeless Ones, and in their loyalty to the Jammad Tengru, as the holy emperor was called.

  Then one nation had fallen from the ancient ways, turned aside to worship a new god, forgetting the old faith and severing the old alliance. The Jammad Tengru who had ruled all of Mars in that distant age had declared them anathema-—had, in effect, excommunicated them. And nine nations rode to war, to holy war, to jehad, against the rebels.

  Broken by the war, but not defeated, the tenth nation had fled into the north, paused to lick their wounds in the northernmost of the old cities, and then—

  History was silent on their doom. Even the myths hinted little. And to this day, no man could say what had become of the outlaw nation. Even its name and totem were forgotten in the mists of the remote past.

  All memory of this event had been erased from monuments and chronicles. The People themselves had tried to forget that it had ever happened. But mysteries die hard, and live long on the lips of men.

  And this was the story of the Lost Nation.

  And now Ryker thought he knew the secret of the riddle, and the solution of the oldest mystery known to man.

  Zhaggua!

  The word meant “devil.”

  Might it not also mean “devil-worshipper”?

  Far into the north the Lost Nation had fled in the beginning of time. Somewhere in the hoarfrosted desert-lands near the pole it had vanished from the knowledge of men.

  And no
rth was the road Valarda and her accomplices had been taking. Were they living descendants of the Lost Nation? Zarouk, perhaps, did not call them devils for nothing. Why had they come down out of their hidden realm? For the black stone seal he had taken from an

  ancient tomb? And why had they gone back into the north, having thieved it from him?

  Were they … going home?

  Nothing could live in the frigid realms around the pole, Ryker knew. In ancient days, perhaps it had been warm and fertile, as once the polar regions of Earth had been, as scientists had known for centuries from oil deposits found in northern Greenland and the fossilized remains of prehistoric forests unearthed in Canada.

  Once, aeons ago, perhaps the Martian Arctic had been ice and snow, too—frozen water. But no longer was this true. It had not been true for endless ages.

  The ice-fields around the pole are composed of frozen carbon dioxide—“dry ice”—and nothing that lives and breathes could dwell in that bleak, dry, burning hell of incredible cold.

  Unless it lived—underground.

  There were vast caverns beneath the crust of Mars, Ryker knew, and labyrinthine systems of subterranean tunnels, extending for hundreds of miles. There dwelt the giant albino rodents, called orthave, which the People hunt for furs.

  At least, this was true of the Southlands with which Ryker was more familiar. But might it not be true as well, here in the north?

  Who could say?

  Ryker had a grim hunch that before long he would be finding out.

  If they let him live long enough, that is.

  The next day the raiders broke camp and began the long trek north. Houm’s caravan went with them. By now Ryker had put two and two together, coming up with four.

  Houm was an agent of Zarouk, as Goro the Juhagir was. Houm’s trading expedition was a fake. The wains contained food supplies and weapons, nothing more. Houm had lurked here and there in the country north of Yeolarn, awaiting word that the devil worshippers had either been taken or had eluded capture.

  If they escaped, they would be heading north. And Yhakhah was the jumping-off-point for the north. So, when apprised of Valarda’s escape, Houm had ridden hard for the oasis town, to be there ready and waiting. The trap had functioned perfectly.

  And Goro was Zarouk’s spy. Probably he had been in Yeolarn when Valarda danced and the mob tried to stone her. Very likely, Goro had taken no part in that mob, but had merely watched and waited from a place of safety and concealment. And when it became obvious that the three zhaggua and their Earthling dupe had fled the city, he had somehow conveyed word of this both to Zarouk in the south, and Houm in the north. Then he had made rendezvous with the prince his master, and together they had ridden hard for the Lost City, where, according to a prearranged plan, Houm and his fake caravan were loitering.

  Goro was needed, for only he had actually seen the three devil worshippers, and only he could identify them for certain. Once he and Zarouk had seen Valarda dance, the search was over. And that very night, just before dawn, the trap had closed, and the hawks had seized their prey.

  It would have gone beautifully, save for the maverick behavior of Ryker. But in the end, all things even out. And now, even though Valarda and Melandron and Kiki had escaped, it was known where they were headed.

  North.

  Beyond the dust desert of Meroe.

  Across the narrow isthmus that connects the twin continental land masses of Casius and Boreosyrtis.

  And into the shadow haunted, the trackless, the unmapped, the mysterious boreal desert called Umbra.

  Umbra—the Shadowed Land.

  They had named it uncannily well, had the old Earthling astronomers and mapmakers. For that dim arctic realm has been under the shadow of an ancient curse and an age-old mystery since Mars was young and warm and burgeoning with life.

  Into the Umbra the Lost Nation had ridden, long ago.

  Somewhere in the Umbra they had vanished from human ken, in the morning of time.

  And there, in that bleak arctic waste, pockmarked with ancient craters, where the dry dust drifted under a cold, whispering wind, rose the timeless enigma of the Pteraton, the Sphinx of Mars.

  Did it mark the entrance to an underground world?

  12, The Keystone

  They crossed the desert, retracing the flight of Ryker and the others, and ascended to the top of the plateau, their beasts scrambling awkwardly up the steps of the eroded rock strata.

  That night they camped on top of the narrow isthmus that once, perhaps, had linked two small continents, and against whose ancient and crumbling ramparts the long vanished oceans of Mars had once broken in flying foam.

  Ryker wasn’t sure why they had let him live, or why they bothered to bring him along, but he didn’t much care. Revenge filled his heart like cold, heavy lead, and at least when Zarouk caught up with the three devil worshippers, Ryker would be in at the kill.

  He shared wine that night with Zarouk, and fat Houm, and the little priest. Oddly, the desert prince seemed no longer to bear him any ill will. The red, terrible ordeal at the whipping post, perhaps, had satisfied Zarouk’s hunger for revenge against the F’yagh who had spoiled his fun, captured and humiliated him.

  For the moment, anyway, he seemed satisfied. But Ryker wasn’t so sure. Men like Zarouk seldom forget a grudge. There would be a final reckoning later on, he thought. Right now, probably Zarouk kept him alive because he thought he might have a use for him.

  When Xinga, the chief of the caravan guards, whom Ryker now understood to be one of Zarouk’s chieftains, came to fetch him to the tent of the prince for wine, Ryker

  went without a word. He could not be more completely in Zarouk’s power than he was already, so what the hell.

  The wine was cold and sour and strong, and Ryker savored it, listening to the conversation.

  Zarouk asked what he knew of Valarda’s ultimate destination, and Ryker told him—truthfully enough—that he knew nothing at all. Oddly, Zarouk seemed to believe him. So Ryker tried a question of his own, testing this new spirit of acceptance.

  “Was it your men who hunted me out of the New City, and herded me into Yeolarn?” he asked. And he was surprised at the reply.

  Zarouk burst out laughing, a harsh bark of laughter, true enough, but there was genuine humor in it.

  “Poor dupe, it was the boy all the time—didn’t you know?” he grinned.

  Ryker blinked,

  “The boy? What boy?”

  “Valarda’s imp, what’s his name—”

  “Kiki, d’you mean?”

  The desert prince nodded.

  “Didn’t you even guess that? The little devil—why do you think the woman brought him along?”

  Ryker didn’t know, and said as much.

  Dmu Dran spoke now, his voice a thin whisper.

  “The creature is a quaraph,” he said. And the nape-hairs at the back of Ryker’s neck stirred as to a chill wind.

  A quaraph! Ryker shook himself numbly: the naked imp was a telepath—a Sensitive! The telepathic gene was more common among Martians than Earthsiders, he had heard, but still rare enough.

  And now he began to understand how they had played him like a fish on a hook.

  No one had hunted him out of the New City and through

  the winding ways of old Yeolarn. They had merely made him believe that it was so. Or Kiki had, anyway.

  For a person who can read the thoughts passing through your mind finds it easy enough to insert thoughts into that mind. A telepath gifted and skillful enough can even convince your senses that they see or hear or taste or even smell things that are not really there.

  They had played him for a sucker, all right.

  He drank the wine moodily.

  “Why me?” he asked at last.

  The hunched little priest spoke up again.

  “The stone seal you found in the old tomb, F’yagh,” he whispered between thin lips. “We know that it is somehow precious to the accursed zhaggua, alt
hough we do not know how or why. ‘The Keystone,’ the old texts name it. Its magic opens the door that leads to their hidden domain. Long ago it was stolen from them, and they want it back.”

  “How did they know I had the thing?” grunted Ryker.

  The priest stared at him with eyes as cold as a serpent’s.

  “Long ago there was one among the zhaggua who rebelled from their evil ways, and who thieved the Keystone from its secret place. By it he came again into this world of ours, he and his followers. But we of the hualatha, we priests of the Timeless Ones, knew him for what he truly was from his eyes of evil golden flame, and slew him and all who followed him. We buried that one in unhallowed ground, together with all that he had carried with him out of Black Zhiam. My brothers of the hualatha in that long-ago time knew naught of the nature of the Keystone, and buried him with it, you see.”

  “No, I don’t see,” the Earthling said. “But keep talking.”

  “The Door to Zhiam was thus left open, and could not

  be sealed again unless it was done with the Keystone. The zhaggua, the devil worshippers, they knew it was in the outside world, but not where, for although there exists a strange affinity between their quaraphs and the substance whereof the Keystone is wrought, the holy signs cut like sigils upon the doors of that man’s tomb kept them from detecting the place where it was hidden.”

  Ryker nodded slowly: it was all beginning to make sense, at last.

  “Go on,” he said.

  But Zarouk took up the tale.

  Toying absently with his winecup, he said, “The moment you broke into the tomb and thus destroyed the magic of the priests, the Sensitives among the devil-men in Black Zhiam knew of it. In time their emissaries ventured out into the world of men once again, to search for you, and to rob you of the stone. They could come and go freely from Zhiam, as Dmu Dran has said, because the way was left open.”

  “And until the stone was theirs, and they could close the door again,” said fat Houm softly, “they would not be safe from the vengeance of men, no, not even in far Zhiam.”

  “What is this Zhiam?” Ryker inquired.

  The priest, the prince and the merchant exchanged a glance, then shrugged.