Alaric smiled a little. “I’d be a fool to put too much truth in my songs. I care a great deal for my skin.”
Piros selected some fragments of dried camel dung from a pile not far from his hip and fed them to the fire. In a moment, it flared up. “I thought that might be the case.”
Alaric leaned an elbow on his knee. “People can recognize themselves in any story, whether it’s about them or not. I’ll give you my oath that no one else will recognize you. Or your son. And whatever song I sing of this journey will be far away, where no one will even know your name.”
Piros shrugged. “I don’t know why it matters to me. But it does.” He looked at Alaric sidelong. “And yet, there is a part of me, a vain, greedy part, that wants to hear what you’ll make of our story. That wants the immortality you offer. At my age, I think that’s the only sort of immortality I’ll ever have.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the tent where his son slept. “Not grandchildren, that’s certain.”
Alaric reached for the kettle that rested amid the flames. There was a bit of liquid in the bottom, and he poured himself half a cup of the strong desert tea. “I make no guarantee of immortality.”
Piros took the kettle from him and filled his own cup. “Don’t be modest, minstrel. You already have songs that are older than the two of us together.”
“Tell me your tale, then. Or tell me the version you want me to hear.”
“Not … the truth?”
“No one ever tells the truth about himself. We tell what we want others to judge, for good or ill. And when I have heard your tale, perhaps I will make something more of it.” He blew on his tea to cool it before taking a sip. “Perhaps I will sing of our visit to the sky-touching towers of the lost city. Does it have a name?”
Piros swallowed a mouthful of his own tea. “I’ve heard it called Haven,” he murmured.
“A fine, romantic name,” observed Alaric.
“And what do you think we would find there?”
Alaric smiled just a little. “Our hearts’ desires, of course. Isn’t that what we’re all seeking?”
Piros rolled his cup between his hands. “Perhaps that’s why it always retreats beyond our reach.” Again, he glanced toward his son’s tent. “He blames me for that. He blames me for most things.”
“I’ve heard that isn’t uncommon among sons,” Alaric said.
Piros looked down into his cup for a moment, as if he could read something in its contents. “If I had never taken him to the caves … perhaps our tale would be very different.”
“The caves?”
Piros nodded slowly. “Some would say it was fated to happen, because of the kind of boy he was. Headstrong. Of limited obedience. If his mother were alive, she would despise me for not beating it out of him. She believed very much in beatings.”
“So you were the soft one.”
“For all the good it did, yes.” He took another small sip of his tea. “He was twelve summers old when she died. Afterward, I kept him by my side. Except for the trip to the caves. That waited until he was sixteen.” He shook his head. “I should have let it go longer. But he wanted to know. He was curious in those days.” He finished his tea, set the cup down by his thigh, and leaned forward with elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced. For a moment, he pressed his chin to his fingers, and then he straightened his back once more and sighed. “I warned him. But in the end he did as he pleased. You’ve seen the result.”
“The caves are … dangerous?”
“Deadly dangerous,” said Piros. “The vapors that rise within them are poisonous. But something highly coveted by the people who live on the far side of the desert grows there. And so there is profit to be made in conveying it to them. My father did it, and his father, and before him there was the merchant who passed the trade to my family.”
“But if the caves are poisonous,” said Alaric, “how is this substance obtained?”
“The people who live nearby know the secret of harvesting it without dying.”
“Then it’s a plant of some kind.”
Piros shrugged. “It might be a moss, or it might be a mineral incrustation. No one quite seems to know. It’s not easy to study something that exists in a poisonous mist.”
“So … Rudd was poisoned.”
Piros shook his head. “That would be a much simpler fate.” He took a deep breath and seemed to squint at something far beyond the fire though there was nothing to see but the dark and starry sky. “I knew I would have to tell you when I asked you to join us, but now it seems more difficult than I expected. Still …” He looked at Alaric sidelong. “When we reach the salt mines, there will be another journey of two days, for just a few of us. Myself. Hanio. And Rudd, because he will refuse to stay behind.
“Our destination will be the caves, and we will return with a considerable quantity of a certain powder, which will be in my charge although Rudd will be given small amounts from time to time. Under its influence, and knowing we have renewed our supply of it, he may urge you to try it. As you value your life, do not.” He sighed heavily. “He will praise it. He will tell you it will make you feel like a king. One would think he would not, that he would wish to keep as much of it as he could for himself, but under its influence, men tend not to consider the future. For the sake of your own future, do not accept it. Believe me when I tell you this. You will think you are gaining the world, but you will be losing yourself.”
“I have no desire to do that,” said Alaric.
Piros sighed again. “What man would not want to feel like a king?”
Alaric allowed himself a ghost of a smile. “I’ve observed a few kings. It’s not as enviable a life as one might think.”
Piros glanced at him. “On the far side of the desert, they pay well for it. They call it the Powder of Desire.”
“An interesting name.”
“It’s a fine grind, blue-gray in color, and not unlike thyme, but with an even sharper scent and a more pungent taste. It goes well with fowl.”
“You’ve tried it?”
Piros looked back to the fire. “I was young and foolish, and there was a wager. I have not wagered since. Rudd has shown me what I might have become.”
Alaric nodded slowly. “I take your warning. But I do wonder … why not withhold it from him? Surely its power fades with time.”
The caravan master’s interlaced fingers tightened until the cords stood out on the backs of his hands. “On the far side of the desert … I saw a man accustomed to it die for its lack. It was a long, slow, painful death. “He closed his eyes and bent his head. “Shall I lose even the shadow of my son?”
Alaric glanced toward the tent where Rudd slept. There was a man at the entrance, rolled in a blanket, his head pillowed on a camel saddle. Alaric knew there was another at the rear. “It’s a sad tale,” he said at last. “But it needs more shaping before it can be a song.” He avoided saying that it needed an end.
“Well,” said Piros, “we have a long journey yet. Plenty of time for shaping.” With one hand against the sandy ground, he pushed himself to his feet.
The next day, just past midmorning, the phantom city became visible again. And this time, Alaric was riding only a short distance behind Rudd, and he could see that Hanio held the reins of the young man’s mount, and two other men rode close beside him. As before, the city wavered and shifted at the horizon, its many towers now relatively distinct, now merging into a broad blur. Toward evening, the whole mass seemed to rise into the air, and empty sky was visible beneath it. Clouds, Alaric thought, though that was a difficult surmise to accept while the rest of the sky was a featureless blue save for the brilliant smear of the sun.
The next dozen days passed with little to mark them apart. Each morning, fresh bread was baked and shared out before the men mounted their camels and the long line of burdened animals began to move westward. Each day, the caravan moved westward, sometimes crossing hard-packed desert pavement, sometimes skirting more dunes and wading thr
ough sand ankle deep on a man, and the distant spectral city almost always accompanied them, far to the south. Each evening, they stopped at a well whose water was potable only after boiling, and there might be scattered scrub grass around the well, though the camels ensured that it did not survive their presence. And when the tents were pitched, the fires kindled, and the remnants of the morning bread consumed along with dried fruit, almost equally dry cheese, and sometimes a few portions of preserved meat that required soaking in hot water to keep it from being nearly as tough as leather, Alaric swung the lute into his arms and played and sang until only the night watch remained. And every night, Rudd sat almost at Alaric’s feet and listened and smiled and nodded a little and said nothing.
Then, on one day that promised to be like so many others, a dark smudge appeared on the horizon and grew, with the caravan’s approach, to be a broad grove of trees surrounding a shimmering sheet of water that was no illusion. To one side of the water, nestled among the trees, was a village of a dozen huts, and scattered around it were men, women, and children tending vegetable gardens and even a small flock of goats. Alaric could scarcely believe his eyes. In the middle of the desert, where nothing but a few lonely wells reminded a traveler that men sometimes passed this way, here were settled human beings with homes neatly made and, in the open space framed by those homes, finely crafted chairs and tables set atop gorgeously loomed carpets—furniture and floor coverings worthy of a royal house.
The camels, Folero included, were picketed at one side of the water, their leads looped though ring-tipped metal spikes driven deep into the trunks of the trees, to keep them away from the gardens. The men of the caravan pitched their tents and set their fires nearby, Alaric thought for much the same reason. Piros handed his own mount off to Hanio and strode to the heart of the carpets, and as he reached that place, a man in white robes, with a gold chain about his neck and a diadem at his brow, came out of one of the houses to meet him, and other villagers, less opulently arrayed, left off their gardening to draw close to the man who was obviously their prince.
Alaric saw bowing and broad gestures exchanged between the visitor and the prince, and after some moments of conversation, Piros waved to him to draw near. Alaric approached and bowed deeply to the man in white robes.
“This is our minstrel,” said Piros. “He will entertain us tonight.”
The prince smiled. “And if he pleases me, there will be a reward for him.” He glanced at Piros. “But what of the nights you are gone? Will he stay here? And perhaps even after?”
“That shall be as he wishes,” said Piros.
“If he is as skilled as you say, I will hope he does.”
They all bowed then, and Alaric followed Piros’s lead in backing away until they reached the edge of the carpets, where the caravan master turned and raised an arm toward the men who waited nearest among the camels. At that signal, they began unloading sacks from a score of animals.
Alaric trailed Piros to the largest fire, where the men tending it poured tea for both of them. Piros drank his while he watched the camels being stripped of their burdens, the men shouldering the sacks, carrying them to the carpets, and piling them high. The prince was still there, and now he held chalk and slate and was evidently tallying the delivery.
Finally, unable to keep silent any longer, Alaric said, “You weren’t suggesting that I might want to stay here when the caravan moves on, were you?”
Piros did not look at him. “As I said, that will be your choice. It’s a soft life here, except when the sandstorms blow. Still, the people have managed to recover from every storm. The food is good. We’ll be eating fresh goat meat during our stay, and taking dried with us for the rest of the journey. And most of those sacks are filled with grain, for fresh bread; they’ll have more than enough for the year. A minstrel could do worse than sing for such a prince.”
“I think not,” said Alaric.
Piros smiled thinly. “He’ll offer you gold. I’m sure of it.”
Alaric shook his head. “I’ve had gold. It attracts thieves. I prefer to travel. Or are you tired of me, good Piros, that you would unload me like those sacks of grain?”
Piros looked at him then. “He may offer you the Powder to keep you. As the lord of the caves it comes from, he has quite a large personal supply of it.”
“Has he? Then perhaps I won’t eat his food after all. Is the Powder how he’s grown rich?”
“Among other ways,” said Piros. “There are the furnishings, which command high prices on both sides of the desert. And there is the salt.” He gestured toward the north. “The mines are some distance yonder, though no one here will say exactly where or how far. They gathered it in last year’s grain sacks, and it waits for us at a storage area half a day’s journey from here. A party of my men will fetch it tomorrow, while I am elsewhere. If you care for hard work, you can go with them.”
“And you,” said Alaric, “will be … elsewhere.”
Piros shifted his gaze to the prince, who was nodding as the last of the grain sacks was set at his feet. Piros echoed the nod, and Alaric could not tell whether it was directed at him or just in satisfaction at the stage of his transactions with the prince. “Perhaps you’ll want to come with me,” the caravan master said. “We’ll return in four or five days.”
“With the Powder.” It was not a question.
Piros crossed his arms over his chest. “A man comes to know his fellows in the desert.”
Alaric smiled. “As do traveling companions anywhere.” He was thinking of the Arctic wastes, deserts of another kind, but deserts nonetheless, and the people he had known there.
“You have courage, minstrel,” said Piros.
Alaric shook his head. “Less than you think, good Piros. But I have considerable curiosity, and that sometimes masquerades as courage.”
Piros glanced toward the camels, the fires. “As I told you, my son will be coming along. He’ll need watching. He likes your songs. They may keep him from running after the city.”
“Why not leave him behind? Your men seem good at the watching.”
“I have the Powder that he requires, at least enough until we reach the source,” said Piros. “There is only one of them I can trust with it, and he’ll be coming with us.” He looked hard at Alaric. “I think I have your measure, minstrel. There will be no special reward for the journey, but I doubt that you care.”
“A good song is reward enough for me.”
Piros nodded again. “Hanio and I know how to find the place. It isn’t easy to read the signs in the desert. Especially for a novice. Wander off and you could be lost forever.”
“I’m a careful traveler, and I’ve rarely been lost,” said Alaric. He was reluctant to say “never,” though it was true enough. The map he carried in his mind, of every place he had ever been or seen, had always served his special power well. “And I’m good at following other people.”
“Very well,” said Piros. “In the morning, when the salt party goes north, we’ll go south.”
“Toward the phantom city.”
“Yes. That, too, should please my son.”
That night, the village hosted them well, with fresh meat and vegetables for the whole caravan and praise for Alaric’s music. The prince did not offer him any gold, but Alaric did not expect it after a single night of entertainment. In the morning, a large group of men and camels was told off for the salt; one of the villagers would be their guide, though Piros told Alaric he had no doubt that his men could find the usual storage place by themselves. Piros, Hanio, and Rudd started south on their own mounts, with Alaric, Folero, and four riderless camels heavy-laden with food and water following behind. In the evening, they camped in a place as desolate as any Alaric had seen on the journey. It had no source of water, but of course they had brought their own, and they brewed tea and shared out some of that morning’s bread for their supper. Afterward, the minstrel sang a newly crafted song about the moaning dunes, with a repeated chorus tha
t made two of his companions nod in time to it although not Rudd, who only sat by the fire and looked southward into the darkness, as if there were something there to see.
The next day they rode onward and camped and ate, and Alaric sang again. The day after, a slight rise in the landscape became visible ahead—not dunes, but a line of modest hillocks stretching southwestward. Half a day’s journey brought the travelers to them and to a tight cluster of seven huts, well made but smaller than the ones in the prince’s settlement, at their feet. There was water, too, but Piros cautioned that it was not drinkable, even after boiling, and at close range Alaric could see that it had a disagreeable yellowish color; even the camels disdained it.
Half a dozen men came out of the huts to greet them. They were gaunt men, the bones clearly visible in their faces, their eyes sunken and rimmed with dark, their hands and forearms skeletal where they showed at the ends of their sleeves, their desert robes hanging loose on their bodies as if the men had once been more substantial. Their leader, the tallest of the group, bowed low to Piros and escorted him into one of the huts while the others began to unload the pack camels. Alaric lent a hand, shouldering goatskin bags that had been filled at the village pond and slung over the camels in pairs linked by thick rope.
The gaunt men delivered water to six huts; the rest of the supplies went into the one which stood closest to a communal fire pit. Shortly after everything had been distributed, Piros and the tall man emerged from their meeting.
“There’s more harvesting to be done,” Piros told his companions, “and so we’ll be here a full day tomorrow while they finish.”
Hanio nodded. He had brought a live young goat from the village, carried at his knee in a mesh bag, and now he slaughtered it with a single quick stroke of his knife, skinned it neatly, cleaned out its innards, and spitted the carcass to roast over the fire while the gaunt men put the organ meats to stew in a large pot, wasting nothing.
During the cooking, a pair of the gaunt men took small, empty sacks from the supply hut, climbed the rise beyond their tiny village, and descended behind it till they were no longer visible. They were gone for some time, and when they returned, their sacks were slung over their shoulders, full of something heavy and shapeless, and another pair went out along the same path, again with empty sacks, again returning later with sacks filled. The gaunt men continued this, pair by pair, turn and turn about, while Hanio secured the full sacks on the camels and Piros brought other full sacks from several of the huts and did the same.
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