CHAPTER 53
“Let’s go out there and stomp those Akdren flat!” Lujo’s whoop rose above the cheers. “Nothing can stop us now!”
Everyone stopped, and Butu looked at him in horror. “No,” he said firmly. “He will keep the promise.”
The vortex of sand collapsed around Tirud, making spiral patterns on the stone as it settled around him. He drew his Akdren blade, and it became a replica of Pisor.
“You’re right, Butu.” He nodded past the twin swords at the kingmaker. “First, I’ll collect Retus and get all of you to safety.”
Tirud flickered out of the room. Mere seconds later, he returned with Retus.
He doesn’t look like he’s been in a fight, Butu thought. He opened his mouth to give voice to his curiosity, but Tirud pressed Pisor’s hilt into his hand and winked. There was never an attack. Tirud only said that to trick Blay into revealing his intentions to us. Butu closed his mouth. Or to trick me into making him king.
Tirud glanced at the ceiling. “The top should be fine. I can’t feel any caves or tunnels that go all the way up.”
“Top?” Retus said, swaying a little.
Tirud walked over to one of the walls and touched it. The stone groaned as it bent and twisted itself into a staircase leading up. He shared a grin with Butu.
“Make sure there’s enough air in there,” Lujo warned.
Tirud nodded.
They watched in amazement as the stairs multiplied, slowly climbing up through limestone and then through sand until they could just make out a distant light that had to be the shanjin. A great wind blew from the city beyond the Urgarun Wail, buffeting them with sand and salt for a second before Tirud blocked some of it.
Tirud walked up the first few steps, staring at the great tunnel before him.
“Shanubu,” he breathed, then laughed. He turned back and held his hand out to Jani, who stepped forward and started jogging up the steps. Retus and Blay followed, then Phedam and Lujo. Butu was the last to grasp the new king’s hand, and Tirud lifted him up as if he was a doll.
“I’m not sure if I can ever thank you for restoring what was lost to me as a child,” Tirud said. “I never really knew what magic was.”
Butu clasped him on the shoulder. “Get us out of here without breaking the promise, and I’ll find a way for you to pay me.”
They chuckled and ran up a dozen steps before Tirud closed the tunnel opening behind them. Everyone slowed, huffing and puffing, a few hundred steps up, and the exit looked no closer. Tirud laughed at them and raced to the entrance before coming back down, barely sweating.
“He’s as bubbly as a child,” Lujo grinned. “He didn’t look very winded at all.”
“Yeah, well, this is a lot of steps,” Retus said, bending over.
“We’re safe now,” Blay said. “We can walk it.” And he suited action to words, but this time, “Fought the Kanjea in their orchards green,” came from his lips.
With a grin the squad fell in line. Tirud kept step with them.
“Saw the sweetest fruit that I’d ever seen.”
Time passed easily, then, despite the climb. They reached the top sweaty and thirsty, the sun noticeably above the horizon. Tirud picked at the ground with his sword, staring from the cloudless sky to the ground, far below. He disappeared in a puff of sand suddenly. Butu assumed he was scouting.
“Is this the top?” Retus asked, slumping on a rock.
“No,” Lujo said, squinting over his shoulder at the peak, more than a thousand feet above them. “That’s the top.”
“He didn’t say what top,” Phedam noted.
“I don’t think I could lift my foot up even one more step,” Retus moaned.
Tirud reappeared. “I found a way up.”
“Tirud,” Blay said. “You don’t think we’ll be safe here? We can post a watch, if there’s a way up.”
Tirud shook his head. “You can’t see from here, corp,” he said. “Come on, it’s not that far.”
With barely a mumble of dissent, everyone rose to their feet and followed him a short distance to a sheer cliff. Phedam muttered something about how he wouldn’t have to climb mountains if he sowed wheat, and Lujo snorted.
As they approached, a huge slab of basalt slid out of the rock face like a giant step.
“You still don’t have to climb it,” Butu told Phedam, and Lujo outright laughed.
“Shanubu,” Phedam answered, shoving Butu.
“Get on,” Tirud said, and they did. Jani’s eyes were wide at all this magic being used, and when with a groan the ledge rose up the side of the cliff, snapping and cracking, everyone except Butu and Tirud fell to their knees to hold on. The sight of the ground dwindling away beneath them rapidly was disconcerting.
As their platform rose and twisted around the great spire of the mountain, the entrance to Urgaruna came into view, and the massed army before it. The Kadrak had spared no troops, Butu noted. Four cavalry companies and eight sordenu, each at least three times the size of an Ahjea one. From up here, he couldn’t tell where the Ahjea’s Tem company was.
Zhek is down there, Butu thought. Tak and Chewlip and them. I hope they’re all right. I hope we don’t hurt them. Well, maybe a one-on-one with Zhek would be all right. He pressed his lips together.
A banner blazing out behind a group of horsemen made Butu look more closely there, but he couldn’t make out features on the marble-sized soldiers below.
But that’s probably Aesh al’Kadrak and Paka. I hope we don’t hurt you either, shumi.
“It must be a thousand feet, at least,” Retus marveled, interrupting Butu’s thoughts. He looked around. Everyone had regained their feet again, standing gingerly on the trembling surface.
“That’s small for a mountain,” Lujo proclaimed. “Where I’m from, we have mountains where snow falls all the time. The drifts alone must be a mile deep. Travellers speak of a Turun village guarded by golems made of solid ice...”
“Here we are,” Tirud interrupted, and their platform came flush with the top of the rock, whining to a halt and then leaving them in awed silence.
They looked out, expecting a flat table of rock looking out over the shanjin wasteland. Instead, they found a playground race track with basalt obstacles. At the center of the playground stood a tiny basalt replica of Urgaruna’s crystal palace. The wind was strong and wild enough to encourage them to pile onto the top of Urgaruna just to get away from the edge.
“Corp, can I talk to you for a moment?” Tirud said.
Blay nodded, and joined the king. After a moment’s hesitation, Jani said, “Come on, let’s see if we can find some water up here.”
They wandered through the buildings and hanging bars and other relics of childhood. Retus broke the silence.
“It’s barely eroded,” he said, touching the black surface of one of the obstacles.
“We’re high above the sand,” Jani noted. “Even the big sandstorms can’t throw much sand all the way up here, and it almost never rains this deep in the shanjin.”
Butu looked around this hidden playground. “It’s like Sentinel’s Finger.”
“Or Iaje’s Island,” Retus said suddenly.
“What?” Butu asked.
Retus shrugged. “Amber mentioned it one of those times I was stuck with her. There’s an island in the Riphil, home to crocodiles and alligators, with a rocky ridge on it. Only kids can get there because they have to walk across the backs of the animals.”
“I guess everyone has a place like this,” Lujo said.
“Everyone does,” Tirud said, and they turned to see him and Blay approaching. “There’s a spire off the coast in Kanjea territory. Children need a refuge, I guess.” He cleared his throat. “I’m going to, ah, take care of things. I’ll return as soon as I can.”
“Good luck,” Butu said, and everyone echoed him.
Tirud smiled at them, then leapt off the edge of the cliff.