The Nature of a Curse (Volume 2 of the Year of the Red Door)

by William Timothy Murray

  They walked on, two upright figures on a vast frying pan under a full sun that beat hammers upon the desert, causing the air, which did not move a whisper, to throb from all sides. The Dragonkind woman kept a good pace and said nothing else while Ullin followed several yards behind. Once, when he looked to his left, he saw in the distance the rim of a beautiful blue lake, bounded with tall trees. He started to say something and saw that she was gazing at it, too, but she kept to her course. He chided himself, realizing that it was a desert illusion. But such was the potency of the mirage, and so clear were the lovely trees, that it provoked a powerful temptation in Ullin. It was as if it called to him, "Come! Bathe in my cool, clean waters, and dry in my comforting shade!"

  The desire to go to it did not rapidly fade. His disappointment that it could not be real nearly brought tears to his sand-stung eyes in spite of his chagrin. A few moments later, glancing again in that direction, he saw nothing but an endless expanse of shapeless dust, unbroken from horizon to horizon.

  It was hopeless, he knew. In such a place as this, with no water to last their journey, they could not possibly make the distance they set out to cover. Hopeless, perhaps, but not pointless. Ullin thought the best thing was to assume you were already dead. True, fear and the desire to survive make one fierce and strong in strange ways. But in futile situations fear and desire are not enough. Like before a hopeless battle. What becomes important is not death, but how you meet it. He had seen bravery in the face of death. Once, from a distance, he had witnessed a comrade, so wounded that he could not lift his sword or parry, smash his body into a line of enemy swords in an effort to buy his brethren time to regroup. On another occasion, he watched a Dragonkind soldier race through a hail of arrows to retrieve his wounded fellow, lifting him up and jogging away, miraculously avoiding the missiles directed at them. And he had witnessed cowardice, too. Those who broke and ran. And those who did not even try to do their duty. But we, he mused, we two specks of life inching through the vast desert will try to do our duty. Right now, trying was everything, even if there was no hope of success. And that was the point. It was something that need not even be spoken, Ullin mused, and something that the unlikely pair had in common.

  The effort of walking regained his attention, and he focused on his guide's shadow, his head down and his mind fairly numb from the heat. Thus he watched her moving shadow grow longer by imperceptible increments and could tell without looking up when she glanced around to take her bearings. As the sun slowly receded, and her shadow lengthened, he held his same distance from it, and slowly drew farther behind.

  Their march was slow, painfully slow, trudge after trudge, step after sole-burning step. There was no sound but their breathing, their footfalls, and the occasional slosh of the water bag. Time seemed meaningless. For long spells, Ullin forgot where he was, so absorbed by his thoughts, mesmerized by the glinting sand that moved past the woman's shadow. Suddenly, her shadow was straddled by two others. Startled, he looked up to see two tall columns of stone just ahead and on either side of her. They were octagonal in shape, about twenty feet thick, each side carved in sandblasted figures and glyphs, rising upwards of sixty feet and capped by domes of gold. Beyond those lay the ruins of a once-great city.

  A beautiful place it must have been in its heyday, Ullin thought, judging by the elegant curves of the cut stone, the graceful lines of the remaining walls, some still several stories high with arched windows. Much sand had blown in over the eons since its abandonment, piled into smooth dunes against walls and columns. As the two continued along what once had been a wide boulevard, Ullin wondered how much must be buried beneath their feet. They turned and went southward between protruding rubble and came to a wide round disc of sand, nearly a mile in diameter. Surrounding it to the south and east were towers and palisades of ancient palaces, now cracked and crumbled, mute signs of a once-glorious splendor.

  "Surely, this was once a great city," Ullin observed as they turned westward following the curving edge of the disc.

  The Dragonkind woman waved her hand toward the disc of sand.

  "It is said that this was once a blue lake of cool water, made by the people who built this city, and that it flowed from here to feed rich fields and vineyards all around. But the source of the water was cut off long before the First Age. So the city withered and died as did all the lands around it."

  Ullin nodded and followed on, remembering the stories of how, before the Fall, before the Elifaen lost their wings, certain of them attacked these lands and smote it with dryness to spite the Dragon People for the destruction of the forests and wild fields. From those events, nearly forgotten in the Northlands, flowed all of the sorry and glorious histories since. As they went, passing strange and beautiful carvings, and going between rows of columns, he saw that they walked along a paved avenue that curved around the lake of sand toward a large, high-walled ruin.

  "I suppose the Dragon People were the first to build cities," he said. Looking at the carved letterings on a half-buried block, he added, "And the first to have writing."

  "Perhaps. But, as you can see, much has been lost."

  It was a struggle to speak. The sun had by now passed into late afternoon and blazed unabated. Ullin's mouth and throat were beyond parched. Already lean from the preceding weeks of travel, heat, and minimal rations, Ullin's legs throbbed dully at the edge of his awareness. Yet the wonder of the place pushed away such concerns, for the moment at least, and his thoughts were filled with the legends and tales that, since childhood, had fired his imagination, and the stories, read over and over from the old books and scrolls in his grandfather's library, that spurred his early longing for travel and adventure. He now realized that the things he had seen and experienced since leaving Tallinvale were more wondrous, and more awful, than he had ever imagined they could be.

  "This way."

  She led the way along many turns through rubble and ruin to a narrow stair rising steep and without a banister against a tall wall. This took them to an arched passageway, cut into the stone, and then they descended again into what must have been some sort of courtyard. She led him on through other passageways, going up and down and turning, often along narrow corridors and alleys, through relieving shade and brilliant, sunlit places. Yet, as desolate and quiet as the place was, signs of the old vibrant city were everywhere. Hardly a wall was unadorned by carvings or tilework. There were mosaic-like stones carefully cut and laid in striking patterns, lintels decorated with quartz of many colors, and stone balconies that still defied gravity and gracefully curved out here and there above them. Ullin ran his hand along one wall within a narrow alley, wiping away a thick layer of dust, revealing the gleam of a smooth surface, lush green and rich red tiles intricately laid, each piece no bigger than his fingertip.

  They climbed again, and came to a roofless room, surrounded by high walls. It was long and narrow with a line of small holes at the top of the wall on the western side. Due to the height of the walls, it apparently received little direct sunlight except when the sun was high overhead. Now it was dark and cool below a clean blue sky above. Here they stopped.

  "We can shelter here for the rest of the day and continue on at nightfall," the woman said.

  Ullin moved to the east side and, looking out through a narrow window, put down his pack and unwrapped the coverings from his head and face. Several stories high, he could see the entire lake bed, its nearest edge very close by. Beyond the ruins that lined the far side, more ruins stretched, fanning out in patterns like spokes. It was plain that it had been a carefully planned city. And his training as surveyor and engineer suggested that the water must have once flowed out from the lake to be distributed all around along the network of avenues and lanes.

  "You have been here before?" Ullin asked.

  "Yes. Years ago."

  "What happened to the water, and to the people who lived here?"

  The woman came and stood next to Ullin to look.

  "You know of t
he Great Stone, do you not?"

  "Yes, of course," nodded Ullin.

  "Kalzar made many suffer because of it. This was once a rich and fertile region with many fields fed by clean waters that sprang from here and were carried by dikes and canals to the cropland and vineyards and orchards. The city rivaled the glory of Kalzar's own city. Also, these people were renowned for their skill at building and working stone. Those two things were its undoing. Kalzar took many from here to be his slaves and to do the work of cutting the Great Stone from the mountain. But Kalzar, needing food to feed his armies and his slaves, also made the people give over so much of their grain that the people here starved. When the shipments of grain suddenly stopped, Kalzar sent men to find out why. They found only the bodies of Kalzar's slain overseers and soldiers. And a dry, abandoned city. It was as if it happened overnight. No one knew where the people went. Kalzar desperately tried to locate and restore the source of the waters, but his wise men could not delve its secret or restore the flow. Kalzar was enraged, and suspected the Faerekind had something to do with it. He ordered the name of the city stricken from all records, chiseled out of every stone marker, and all scrolls pertaining to it were burned. It was made a crime to speak its name, and all former inhabitants, who still survived as slaves, had their tongues cut out. That was when Kalzar at last gave up the moving of the Great Stone, and marched his armies north to attack the places of the Faerekind."

  "Where did the people go? Those who revolted and made the waters vanish?"

  "No one knows. But there are many tales told. Some say they killed themselves, somewhere out in the desert, so that Kalzar could not use them to increase his power. Others say they became spirits, and abide here still. There are even tales that say the people who lived here all journeyed north and disappeared in to the green lands beyond the mountains."

  They looked for a moment longer across the lonely vista, then she turned and slumped down to sit against the wall. Ullin did the same and passed the water flask to her. She took a sip and let it dry into her mouth, closing her eyes with the relief of it for several moments before taking another sip to swallow. While she did this, Ullin brushed away with his hand the inches of sand beside him, revealing the smooth tile floor below. She handed the flask back to him and he took his turn, being as careful as she, feeling, as she had, the life-returning power of the water. When he finished, he put away the flask and turned to ask her about this place but saw that her eyes were still closed and her head tilted to one side, asleep. He studied her for a long moment, noting how different from others of her kind she was, at least different from the males of her people that he had encountered. Her hair was thick and black, her eyelashes long and lovely, her skin smooth and without blemish or scaliness, dark brown, almost walnut. Her form was full and pleasingly curved; though thin, she was voluptuously endowed, and, though she had the air of a high-born, the muscles of her legs and arms were distinctive and well-defined, and her shoulders looked strong. The men of her kind, most of whom he had only met in battle, were thin and spindly, but with intense, wiry strength, and with coarse skin, often pocked and scaly, their hair wispy thin, and their noses ill-defined. Almost like skeletons, they were. But if she was typical of the women of her people, he thought, the rumors of their beauty fell somewhat short of the mark. Suddenly he felt self-conscious, his face red with embarrassment as he looked away.

  Outside, Sir Sun descended toward the edge of the desert. As Ullin looked across the room to the west wall, a shaft of light appeared through one of the small round holes just opposite of where they sat. The yellow beam shot across the room, over his head, and out through the window. The light grew brighter as the sun fully lined up with the opening, and Ullin was intrigued by it, wondering at its purpose. Overcoming his aches and fatigue, he got up and looked through the window.

  Now the remains of the city cast long shadows away from him, reaching across the lake of sand. Directly opposite, among the now-shadowed ruins on the far shore, one structure stood out, bathed in an orange glow. He continued to watch, fascinated by the tranquility of the city, until the sun sank out of sight and the eastern view was lit only by the fading sky.

  As he was turning away, a movement caught his eye, and he instinctively flinched to the corner of the window so that he could peer out. What he saw was just below and several ruins over. He thought he saw it again, just a small movement of brown against brown, but after watching for a long time he began to think it only a trick of the deepening shadows. His guide still slept, and he looked around the room with concern. It was not a place to be caught in, and now he chided himself for standing so boldly before such a prominent window. Any number of trackers could be following them, renegades or even Dragonkind soldiers. He looked at his guide again and wondered if he could trust her. She had nothing to gain from killing him, and she already had ample opportunity. But how can any spy, or any spy's courier, be trusted? Perhaps she was betrayed, and a party was sent to intercept her and to capture the documents that they carried. If captured, her fate would be far worse than his own, he knew. Suddenly, it occurred to him that he himself knew precious little of his own masters, or who might be party to this mission. For all he knew, his own people could be tracking them.

  This, his third such mission in as many years, had gone badly from the beginning. He had started out from Vanara with five other men. After only a day's journey beyond their lines, one of the men was killed by a scorpion. The next day, a rockslide maimed two others and so Ullin sent them all back, continuing alone. He certainly regretted the death and injuries of his companions, but he was relieved to be on his own. He preferred it that way. He could travel faster and with greater stealth, and he had only himself to look after. He was forever worried about those entrusted to his command, and though he had always distinguished himself in battle, he sometimes fretted that his caution with his subordinates might be mistaken for cowardice by his superiors. It was a silly concern, as any who had served with him would readily say. But he knew that the reputation of his House was now on his shoulders, and he would not have it impugned nor improved at the cost of unnecessary blood.

  This was a fairly recent change in him and a radical turn. Once, not long ago, he cared only to take revenge on the Dragonkind who slew his father and his uncle. Now, after too much gore, he was as determined to do his duty as ever, but none of the rest. Not again.

  • • •

  Night fell quickly as he continued to worry about the movement he had seen. And he found himself at the side door of the room, watching. The dead city was as silent as Lady Moon above who was already lending her silver light to the thankless desert. It was then that he noted that he did not have any feeling of danger that normally came to him in times of peril, the body sense that stood his arm hairs on end and gave him peculiar sensations on the back of his neck. He passed his hand around his neck. No, unless the ability had failed, there was no sense of alarm.

  Calmed, he decided to have a look around. Leaving the waterskin beside the still-sleeping Dragonkind, he picked up his own small flask and left the room. He only intended to look close at hand, checking those elegant ruins that were nearby. But an hour later found him far from where he had started, carefully following a small furry creature that was a wonder to see among the stones and cast down blocks, a creature certainly not native to the desert. And, amazingly, it did not seem to mind being followed. It was the same creature whose shape he had glimpsed earlier, causing him such alarm at the window. After a little longer, Ullin realized that the rabbit was aware of his presence. It actually seemed to wait for him to catch up to it, stopping to groom its ears until Ullin was within five or six feet of it before hopping off again, checking with its about-turned ears to be sure Ullin was following. Ullin fell into an almost dream-like state of disbelief; if the creature itself was not enough of a wonder, then its behavior was certainly marvelous, for Ullin was convinced it was, indeed, leading him along, deeper and deeper into the still city. He knew that
he should not have left his guide for so long, for it was possible that she would depart without him. But something made him trust that she would wait. And so, as he turned down a moonlit passage and crawled under a tumble of blocks, keeping a fair and polite distance between himself and the rabbit, his mind kept going back to her. He wondered, for the hundredth time, who she was and why she was chosen for this mission. He admired her mysterious beauty which so penetrated him that he raised his guard against the attraction. But there was something else about her that he found intensely attractive. Her manner, perhaps, or her bearing.

  As he squeezed between two massive columns that held up a teetering wall, his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the realization that he had lost sight of the rabbit. Looking carefully into the tiny alcove formed by the ruins, a sweet aroma touched his nostrils, one as out of place as the woodland rabbit. Just as he began to try to identify the smell, the little creature reappeared just a few yards away from a shadow in the wall. It hopped out into the moonlight, munching on a leafy stem. Ullin stared in disbelief as the creature finished the snack and set about washing its face with both paws, sometimes pulling down one of its ears to give it a scrub. It seemed careless of Ullin during these moments, but then it stopped, stood up tall on its hind legs, and then turned around to hop back into the shadow, shaking its head and bouncing off all fours in a delightful sideways manner before disappearing. Ullin followed, finding an opening in the shadow just big enough to slide through on his belly. The opening was several yards deep and as he reached out to pull himself through the other side, he touched something cool and moist.

  • • •

  Dawn was but a few hours away when he returned to the room where he had left the Dragonkind woman. Before he could greet her, she sprang to her feet angrily.

  "Where have you been?"

  "I was—"

  "We should have left hours ago! While the night was still long and cool. Soon the sun will be up and merciless! I thought you might have taken your own way and left without me."