Hadley look up at me in alarm. “Sean,” he says, “the producers want that chickenshit ending.”
“I’m the producer now,” I tell him, and flash him my Klingon look.
He wabbles and waffles, but in the end caves in.
What choice does he have? I’m the man who saved his picture. I’m the boy who made money from tragedy, happiness from misery, diamonds from tequila.
Desperation Reef is going to be a hit. I know this because Loni’s getting killed gave it the sort of publicity that the studio would have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for. All the people who have seen the tabloid headlines or who watch the entertainment news will want to be part of the story—part of my story.
They will pay money to be closer to me. And I will let them. I will accept their love, and their love will make me happy, and in return I will give them everything I have. I will give them brilliant things.
I will give them diamonds.
Phyllis Eisenstein
Phyllis Eisenstein’s short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Amazing, and elsewhere. She’s probably best known for her series of fantasy stories about the adventures of Alaric the Minstrel, born with the strange ability to teleport, which were later melded into two novels, Born to Exile and In the Red Lord’s Reach. Her other books include the two novels in the Book of Elementals series, Sorcerer’s Son and The Crystal Palace, as well as stand-alone novels Shadow Earth and In the Hands of Glory. Some of her short fiction, including stories written with husband Alex Eisenstein, has been collected in Nightlives: Nine Stories of the Dark Fantastic. Holding a degree in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, for twenty years she was a member of the faculty of Columbia College, where she taught creative writing, also editing two volumes of Spec-Lit, a softcover anthology showcasing SF by her students. She now works as a copy editor in a major ad agency, and still lives, with her husband, in her birthplace, Chicago.
Here, in the first new Alaric story in decades, the minstrel sets off in a caravan headed deep into the trackless desert, where evil spirits howl in the night and mirages are commonplace—but, as it turns out, not all dangers are illusionary, by any means.
THE CARAVAN TO NOWHERE
Phyllis Eisenstein
The dark-eyed man wore long, sun-faded robes and a thick, dirty-white wrapping about his head like most of the other men gathered in the tavern that night, but Alaric realized quickly that he was not one of them. They were all talkers, drinkers, men who laughed easily, who pulled willing women onto their knees and lifted their tankards with any excuse, bellowing at each other and the landlord across the trestle tables. They were men who spent carelessly, and Alaric’s songs had already gained him some benefit from their drunken generosity.
But the dark-eyed man sat quietly in his corner, nursing a single goblet of wine and watching the crowd. The hand that raised the goblet was roughened with work, the forearms, bared by flaring, turned-back sleeves, tanned and sinewy. A hardworking man, Alaric thought, stopping at the only tavern in a town on the fringe of the Western Desert with purpose in his eyes.
This evening, Alaric sang bawdy songs to the raucous room, his clear, carrying voice rising above the din in rhymes to make the drinkers laugh and choruses to make them join in the music. His lute was barely audible, and often he scarcely bothered to pluck the strings, but none of his listeners seemed to care. Young though he was, his trove of songs was well tested in scores of taverns just like this one, and he knew their effect. But the dark-eyed man never laughed or joined the choruses, and Alaric understood he was waiting for something.
Meandering through the room, still singing while nodding his thanks for the coppers dropped into the open deerskin pouch at his belt, he came at last to the dark-eyed man’s small table. And there, on the wood whose finish was scarred by the spillage of countless goblets of wine, lay a silver coin. The dark-eyed man lowered his gaze to it as Alaric approached and then looked up into the young minstrel’s face.
“You are a traveler,” said the man, and his deep voice easily pierced the clamor of the room—a leader’s voice.
Alaric inclined his head and pitched his own voice high for clarity. “Say minstrel and mean traveler. We minstrels spend our lives seeking the stuff of new songs.”
“You sing well,” said the dark-eyed man. “You could find a place in some rich house. A king’s house, even, I think.”
Alaric looked at the silver coin. He kept a few like it inside his shirt, but not many, not enough to tempt a thief. He had been a thief himself often enough, in the long ago, and he could always be one again, using the power he had been born with—the power to move from one place to another in the blink of an eye. Still, he preferred earning silver with his songs. He stretched his right hand out toward the coin without touching it, two fingers brushing the table lightly beside it. “I’ve had my share of rich houses. Even kings’ houses. But the horizon draws me.” He raised his eyes. “I would see what lies beyond it.”
The dark-eyed man smiled with one side of his mouth. “I was young once, like you, and I wondered what lay beyond the horizon. Now I am older and I have been there, and still I make the journey from time to time. But you knew that, didn’t you? You know who I am.”
Alaric pulled his hand back and strummed his lute. “The landlord told me something of the man who takes a caravan across the great desert every year. Your name, he said, is Piros.”
The man narrowed his dark eyes. “And did he tell you that Piros is seeking adventurers for the trek?”
Alaric shook his head. “He said that you’re seeking men to work your camels. And that it is a hard crossing, where fate sometimes decrees death. Though I guessed that much without the telling.” He lifted a shoulder in a small shrug. “Sadly, I know nothing at all about camels.”
Piros pushed the coin closer to Alaric’s side of the table. “I have listened to you this evening, and watched you. The nights are long and dull on the great desert, even to men weary with a full day of riding. And there is much silent time for them to fill with squabbles over nothing. Songs could make that time pass more easily.” He straightened in his chair then. “Take my coin as one of many acquired in this place, and likely we will never meet again. Or take it as first payment for your songs on our journey, if that pleases you better. And the camel lore will come along the way, I promise.”
Alaric picked up the coin then and turned it over between his fingers. “You have spoken to the landlord, too, I imagine.”
The dark-eyed man nodded. “You have been here eight days, and he would have you stay. Not that such a place needs a minstrel to draw custom, but he sees you at least half as an entertainment for himself. And you make friends easily, Alaric minstrel. Of course that would be necessary, in your trade, as it is in mine. But my brother thinks you would do well on the journey, and I have always trusted his judgment.”
“Your brother?”
Piros tapped his goblet with one finger. “Has the resemblance faded so much with the years?”
Alaric glanced over his shoulder at the landlord. He saw it now, though the caravan leader was older and more weathered.
“Well, minstrel,” said the dark-eyed man, “by tomorrow, every man in this room will have spent his last copper and asked for a place in the caravan. Will you join the ones I choose?”
Alaric flipped the coin into the air. “They say there’s a lost city in the great desert. They say there’s a hidden treasure trove, too.”
Piros smiled that half smile again. “You’ve been listening to drunken fancies.”
“And they say that on the other side of the great desert is a land of wonders.”
“Ah, that depends on what one has seen before.”
Alaric tucked the coin into his pouch. “I have seen wonders before now, Piros, and I would see more.” He offered his hand to seal the bargain. “I will come with you.”
The dark-eyed man ignored the hand. �
�There is one more thing, minstrel.”
Alaric pulled his hand back and spread it over the strings of his lute. “Yes?”
“I have a son. He is somewhat of your age, a bit younger perhaps, and he has made this journey with me before. But do not think that he speaks for me. You are in my employ, not his. Do I make myself clear?”
Alaric looked down at his lute and plucked a single string. “Will the other men understand the same?”
“Every one of them.”
Alaric nodded. “Then it shall be as you wish, Master Piros.”
“Piros,” the man said. “Only Piros. Be in the courtyard and ready to leave at daybreak.”
Alaric sang for the rest of the evening, while he wondered what kind of son required such a warning.
In the gray of dawn twilight, the tavern’s courtyard already bustled with men binding casks and rope-wound bundles to the backs of more camels than Alaric could easily count. The camels were kneeling, enduring their growing burdens with an occasional hoarse bellow, like a poorly greased axle laboring beneath a heavy cart. Alaric recognized most of the men from the previous night and wondered how they could work so vigorously with the headaches they must have from their drinking. Several of them grinned at him as he walked past in search of their master.
Piros was at the western extremity of the courtyard, closest to the start of the journey, and beside him stood a youth in robes brighter and newer than his own, with a headwrap of dark-dyed green and a face that marked him likely to be Piros’s son. He had his father’s stance, too, his straight back and squared shoulders. But where Piros gestured now and then with peremptory economy or called a word or a name, the youth stood silent, arms crossed over his chest, seeming to pay little attention to the activity around him.
Alaric caught the caravan master’s eye. “Good morrow.”
“Indeed,” said the man. “It’s a good day to go west.” He looked Alaric up and down, his eyes lingering at the plaited straw hat that Alaric had made with his own hands and then sweeping down the dark tunic and trews to the sturdy boots, no longer new but still serviceable. “Is this how you think to cross the great desert?”
The minstrel carried the rest of his meager belongings in a knapsack, with the lute slung over it. He had traveled a long time so lightly, both by foot and in his own special way. “It is what I have,” he said.
Piros turned his attention back to the camels. “This is my son Rudd,” he said, though he made no gesture toward the youth. “He will find you desert robes for the journey.”
Alaric glanced at the young man, who showed no reaction, as if he had not heard his father’s words.
“Rudd,” said his father, and then more sharply, “Rudd!”
The youth blinked several times and frowned. “Father?”
Again, Piros did not look at him. “Go ask your uncle for traveling robes for the minstrel.”
Rudd peered at Alaric, seeming to notice him for the first time. His mouth turned down sullenly. “Can’t he ask for himself?”
“Go,” said Piros. “Make yourself useful.”
The young man’s lips tightened for a moment, and then the sullen expression faded away, and his eyes seemed to lose their focus. “I could be useful,” he said in a listless tone, “if you’d allow it.”
“Do as I say.”
Shoulders less square and back less straight than before, Rudd turned toward the tavern. But with almost his first step, he swayed like a drunken man, and Alaric caught his arm to keep him from falling. The youth looked Alaric straight in the face then, and he shook off the assistance and kept going.
“I’ll follow,” Alaric said to Piros.
“As you will. For now.” The caravan leader gestured sharply to a nearby cluster of men, though Alaric could see from the cant of his head that he was still watching his son.
At the tavern’s entrance, Rudd opened the door only wide enough to slip through, closing it hard behind him. By the time Alaric reached it and stepped inside, the youth had vanished into the dim interior, and the only movement visible was a pair of dogs at the far end of the room, squabbling over some crusts of bread and rinds of cheese that were the only remnants of the previous night’s activities. Alaric called out for both Rudd and the landlord, but there was no answer, and long moments passed before they finally emerged from a rear chamber, Rudd bearing a bundle of cloth on his shoulder, his uncle following close behind to keep the trailing edges of fabric from dragging on the wine-sticky floor. As the youth stopped to cuff aside one of the dogs and snatch up the crust it had been gnawing, the bundle slid away from him, and the landlord caught it deftly, leaving his nephew to give his whole attention to tearing at the stale bread like a starveling cur.
The cloth was a three-part garment—ankle-length robe, loose pantaloons, and headwrap, all the color of pale sand. Alaric stripped off his own clothes, donned the desert gear, and packed his discards in his knapsack. The landlord helped him with the long, scarflike headwrap, which tucked intricately into itself, leaving a tail to loop about his neck and hang down his back. That, said the landlord, would be his mask when the sand blew.
Alaric shouldered the knapsack, the lute strapped tight against it, and gestured at the youth, who had done with his crust and was sitting on a table, methodically kicking at the dogs, which were nosing at his legs in spite of the kicks.
“They know,” said the landlord, nodding toward his nephew. His voice was very low. “Dogs always know. And they always forgive.”
Alaric looked at the landlord’s face and saw sadness there. “What do you mean?”
“Can’t you see it?”
Alaric frowned. “I see … a number of things. But perhaps not what you speak of.”
“Ah,” said the landlord. “Piros has not told you.”
Alaric looked back at Rudd. “He said not to obey his son.”
The landlord was silent for a long moment, and then he said, “Yes, that’s good advice.” He hitched a leg up on the table beside him and nodded toward his nephew. “Once he thought I was his brother who died at birth.”
The door to the tavern swung open, and Piros stood there, a dark shape with the brightening sun behind him. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” said the minstrel.
“Rudd,” called the landlord.
The youth made no reply. His back was to the others.
“Rudd!” said his father, and when there was still no answer, he strode to his son’s side and took him by the elbow. “Time to begin the journey.”
Rudd blinked a few times then, as if waking from some reverie, and dropped to his feet, swaying a little. His father did not release his arm as they walked through the door. Without looking back, Piros gestured for Alaric to follow.
The landlord shook his head. “He still hopes for a grandchild.”
“Is there a woman?” asked Alaric. They walked side by side across the room.
“What woman would want that?” said the landlord.
Alaric shrugged. He held his straw hat in one hand; it had not fit in the knapsack. Now he gave it to the landlord. “Take this as my thanks for the garments.”
The man turned it over, one way and then the other, and finally set it on his head at a jaunty angle.
Outside, the men of the caravan had already mounted their camels except for one, who held the leads of two kneeling animals. At Piros’s gesture, he helped Alaric to the long, narrow seat atop the smaller of the pair. It was an odd perch though not uncomfortable, well padded and with a thick hoop at the front for holding on and another behind, a handhold for a second rider. With large panniers behind his legs, a bulky sack lashed in the other seat, and a waterskin at his knee, Alaric felt secure enough as the camel lurched erect though the ground seemed oddly far away.
The man watched Alaric for a moment before handing up the reins and mounting his own steed. “I am Hanio,” he said. “Piros has given you into my care. Call out to me if you have any difficulty.”
“My
thanks,” said Alaric. “I hope to avoid difficulty.”
“She is a placid creature. Just hold tight, and she will follow the others.”
At that moment, the line of camels began to move forward, and the placid creature needed no urging to move into place with its fellows. Hanio followed.
The camel’s gait was different from that of a horse, but not at all unpleasant, and Alaric soon found himself adjusting to it. Under Hanio’s tutelage, he learned to guide the animal, and he also learned that calling it by name—Folero—would cause it to swivel its head about on the long neck and look at him with all evidence of curiosity. Sometimes it would even nibble at his knee with its great soft lips. He would treat it like a horse then, with a pat on the neck and praise.
Piros occasionally led at the front of the caravan. But more often he ranged all along it, speaking to riders, checking the security of their lashings, now and then pulling an animal to the side to readjust its burden. Alaric could almost always see him, atop an especially tall camel. Rudd was rarely nearby; he occupied a place far forward, his bobbing head marked by the deep green headwrap.
The heat of the day increased steadily though it was not so great, Alaric knew, as it would be later in the year, and not so great for a man riding as it would be if he were walking on the sun-baked desert floor. The horizon was a line in the far distance, the great flat plain upon which they moved showing few landmarks once the tavern fell behind them, just an occasional cairn of stones to indicate the trail. For most of the day, clumps of coarse grass and low bushes were the only visible vegetation; now and then a camel would turn aside to nibble at the grass, but its rider would quickly bring it back to the column. Folero seemed to disdain such sampling and walked steadily onward. By day’s end, the novelty of riding a new kind of steed had begun to wear thin, and Alaric was glad enough to dismount and hand his camel over to Hanio for care.
He could have crossed the desert far more swiftly in his own special way, flitting from horizon to horizon in one heartbeat after another, following a path laid out by the limits of his vision, but ordinary travel enabled him to question his companions about their destination and so arrive as not quite a stranger to the land. And for that purpose, that evening by the largest fire of several, after the camels had been unloaded and tethered to stakes driven into the ground, and after he and the riders had supped well of the provisions that Piros had packed for them and he had entertained the group with a dozen bawdy songs, he struck up conversations with various of the men, asking with a youth’s curiosity of the people and cities that lay beyond the desert. He was a trifle surprised at their answers, which were limited to the pleasures of a single town, a handful of inns, and a small population of women willing to slake their appetites and take their silver. To a man, they confessed they had not ventured beyond but were instead eager to unload the goods they had brought along, pack up whatever their employer had traded for them, and come back home with their pay.
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