"Then come this side with them for God's sake!"
The Khemite pushed and kicked his way through. He emerged with the leather pouches and they turned to the courtyard. They were just in time to see the chained Ibisians being shoved ahead of the mounted troops. The press of the crowd in the room behind pushed the two into the courtyard like corks from a bottle. The wet stones were suddenly crowded with running, shrieking whores. The Ibisian prisoners backed off as though they'd stepped in a nest of ants. The horses of their captors reared and plunged. The archway to the courtyard was a chaos of neighing animals and shouting men.
Bar-Woten rode out of the stable with his pistol in one hand. "Mount up!" he shouted to Kiril. "Get the other horse!" he told Barthel. Kiril took his offered hand, slipped on the stirrup, and nearly fell on his back, but found himself lifted bodily with great strain on his arm into the saddle, where the hard leather curve put excruciating pressure on his groin. To make it worse, Bar-Woten kicked the horse forward.
The courtyard had a small gate in the rear, barely tall enough for a riderless horse. The Ibisian headed for that, and Barthel followed. Kiril swung down only too gladly to open the latch. Then, remounting and hanging over the side, he plunged with the Ibisian through the gate into an alleyway crowded with gawking Lucifans. "Aside!" Bar-Woten shouted. "Aside, damn you!"
Behind them the troops found themselves mired in stumbling, groaning prisoners and screaming women. The Grand Pimp, splendid in his flowing red and gold robes, came out briefly to see what the confusion was, gawped and ran back to his inner office.
The alley opened onto another street paralleling the main boulevard. They turned on it and rode as fast as they could, scattering pedestrians and sidestepping carts. Kiril looked back and saw a pair of Mediwevans leap from a sidestreet and ride hard after. "They're all behind us!" he cried out. Bar-Woten shook his head angrily and turned onto another street, then around to the gate thoroughfare. "I hope that confuses them," he called back to Kiril.
Kiril looked behind. He couldn't see anyone but Barthel. The gate ahead looked calm. The custom house had two guards standing idly in front, smoking long-handled pipes and talking. They saw the riders galloping toward them and ran inside to grab weapons, but the two horses were out the gate before they could return. More soldiers mounted and followed, almost colliding with their colleagues, who had tracked the chase back to the gate after the detour.
A dirt road ran around the outside of the huts clustered below the walls. They followed it, still riding at bone-jarring speed, and rounded the first major curve of the wall. Barthel called from behind. "They're following!"
In five minutes, they were on the north side of Ubidharm. Their luck was holding—a broad, well-paved road led away from the city, skirted the aqueduct, and rose into the northern mountains of the Uhuru Massif. The riders behind gave up in a few kilometers. The Mediwevans couldn't get out of the city gates—front or rear—before the chase was futile.
Bar-Woten slowed his pace after diverting them onto a dirty byroad. They dismounted next to a tumbling snow stream and walked the horses until they were calm and less heated. They watered them sparingly. Bar-Woten then let Kiril ride as he ran beside for a few kilometers.
Their prospects on the road ahead—with depleted supplies and sparse countryside—were not cheering. Barthel counted the rounds of ammunition in the pistols and the two boxes they had purchased in Mediweva. They had a little over sixty rounds and seven arrows to fit a fold-up bow that had been part of Bar-Woten's kit. "We're going to be limited," Kiril said when the count was finished.
"We won't be able to fight it out if that's a thing to worry about," Bar-Woten agreed. "But I'm a fair shot with a pistol. Yourself?"
"An amateur," Kiril said. "You were stupid to take me along. What good can I do you?"
"You'll prove your importance in time," Bar-Woten said. They mounted again.
"I'll just have to grow up a little, hm?" He said it angrily, flushing at the thought that this man would think him immature. Bar-Woten didn't answer.
The road turned from a defile into a ledge, following the circumference of a wedge-shaped peak whose cap was lost in cloud. They saw that the main road, now fifty or sixty meters below, came to an abrupt end. "Our luck is holding so far," Bar-Woten said. "Let's hope we don't run out of road this way."
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Eight
The Ibisian fell asleep very late, shivering and half-hallucinating fires and warmth. The three huddled together; their blankets kept them from freezing as night temperatures dropped below zero, but didn't keep them comfortable. Bar-Woten slipped in and out of a dream about his father and a trip to the Obelisk in Ibis. As he remembered it, they had passed the lakes whose birds gave Ibis its name, vast seas and clouds of white feathers, and taken the long road through the plantations of Thosala to the spire. In the dream people crowded around the circumference of the spire and stared up. The walls of the Obelisk were covered with writing, his father told him, but as they grew closer and pushed through the crowd—which was filled with mounted Mediwevans looking for children to harass—he saw the wall go blank. "It's a sign," a tall woman near him said. "When the walls go blank it means there are no more reasons for people to exist, because there's nothing left to read."
"The books," Bar-Woten said aloud.
Kiril peered sleepily from his own mummy of blankets.
"No," the woman in the dream said. "They're blank, too. No more reason to read, no more people to read."
The crowds slowly vanished, first legs and arms and then torsos. The heads were the last to go. One head, his father, it seemed (though they were all hairless and hard to recognize), told him the words of the Obelisks still existed in their memories, and they would not be eradicated until they forgot. "No!" he said. "I'm a little boy, I don't know enough to be saved, that can't be the way it is!"
"Then why are you disappearing?" the head said. "Look, all of you is gone now."
Kiril watched the squirming Ibisian and wondered what bloody nightmares he was experiencing. No doubt they were about battles and debauchery. Then he drifted off into his own fitful dreams.
Their trackers never appeared again. For six days they journeyed across the cold passes, and on the morning of the seventh day—which Barthel said was symbolic for Kristians and Momadans—they looked over the side of the road into a broad green valley. Several kilometers below, the rift extended into bluish haze, ending at the shores of the largest body of water they had ever seen. It reached to the horizon, and between distant peaks ahead, they could see its gray-blue line.
From the altitude the valley was a patchwork of farmland and unworked or dormant fields. On the shoreline a city rose. It looked as large as Madreghb.
The land reminded Bar-Woten of Ibis. Near sea level the ground was rich and fertile, and the slopes of the foothills were covered with terraced paddies and forests of camphor-wood and pine. He told them of his days in Ibis—stories Barthel had never heard before—and the memories made him feel warm and mellow. Twenty years of battle, misery, and bloodshed hadn't obscured the joy he had known as a child.
The weather was too warm and pleasant for any of them to feel gloomy. Coming through one last scattered patch of cloud into the valley proper, they chatted cheerfully.
Kiril forgot his distress in Ubidharm. He was somewhat ashamed of his prudery. He talked freely about his training as a scrittori. The balloons and their use along the walls of the Obelisk fascinated Bar-Woten, who asked many questions.
The road had fallen into disrepair in the mountains and was now a token trail with ruts where carts ran. Their horses were sweating and tired, so they stopped in the shade of feathery yellow-green trees near the trail for a brief rest. The wind whistling through the upper branches made Kiril drowsy, but Bar-Woten stayed alert. Barthel suggested a short nap, and Kiril agreed, but the Ibisian stood by the horses looking across the valley. He wanted to avoid more surprises.
After an h
our's rest they continued along the farm sideroads until the city was little more than a kilometer away. Barthel examined the valley walls behind them. There was still that connection to make—why were some valleys unlivable to the Faithful? Because the darkness was too deep in them? Why did this valley fill with light and warmth? Others certainly didn't, no matter what season.
They made a small camp as night fell. Kiril greeted a few carriages that rolled past them on the improved roads. They were curious vehicles, orange as a darkling zenith, with glossy lacquer over wood, carved and embellished with inlaid shellwork and covered with a tapestry-like top fringed with tied leather ornaments. The beasts pulling them were not horses, but bluish and horselike with a touch of wild moose. Bar-Woten said he had never seen animals like them. The carriages rattled past, friendly and unconcerned.
The next morning they entered the city and discovered it was named Mur-es-Werd. It was truly a city, not a walled hideaway like Ubidharm. Its commerce extended up and down the coast of the sea for thousands of kilometers. This was the heart and the blood of Mundus Lucifa, then, not the little patch of mountain communities. Kiril had never heard of Mur-es-Werd, nor of the ocean beyond, and his ignorance distressed him. Obviously his life in Mediweva had been extremely insular.
"It's the way with all Obelisk countries," Bar-Woten assured him. "When truth sits in your midst, why search elsewhere?"
"For sheer curiosity," Kiril muttered. "At least what you learn is interesting and tells you more about the Second-born."
"The Second-born don't always want to know more about themselves," Barthel said.
Mur-es-Werd began as a series of vineyards and orchards. Varieties of fruit grew here that they had never seen before. The fields gave way to scattered whitewashed villas and a central stupa topping a gathering place. These in turn gave way to suburban slums with narrow cobbled streets winding every which way like worms trailing through wood. The atmosphere was not one of cleanliness, as in Ubidharm, but of vibrant, rapid life. At times the sanitation was deplorable, but no worse on the whole than in some Mediwevan cities.
Small rocky hills rose in the center of the city, cordoned by the crumbling walls of what must have once been an impressive bastion. A few towers, square and imposing, remained in fair condition. Around these were walled compounds adorned with Lucifan mandalas in stony green and red.
Kiril found his dialect almost useless, since what little he knew was not comparable to the northern patois. They had little trouble, however—tourists were not unknown and not unwelcome either. The shoreline was something of a resort.
By noon they had decided the neighborhoods along the beaches were more suited to them. Curious children crowded around, trying to sell trinkets and stale crullers.
Bar-Woten stopped at a sea wall overlooking the resort beaches. He shaded his eye and looked across the bay, allowing himself a moment of awe. "The ships!" he said. "Look at the ships!"
Barthel followed the Bey's eye and felt his throat catch. They were huge, as graceful as seabirds. He had never seen any larger. He looked at Bar-Woten and knew what the next leg of their journey would be. "I don't even like water, not to swim in," Barthel said quietly. Kiril smiled, then sobered as he caught the Khemite's meaning.
"Over that?" he asked Bar-Woten, pointing at the unimaginable blue-green. The Ibisian nodded.
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Nine
Their Mediwevan coins were welcome, but they were fast running out, and as yet they had no way to replace their money. There was also the matter of the sea voyage, which Bar-Woten was talking up more each day. His companions tried to ignore him, but there was no other way to go but across the water. North lay that way, and their way was north.
Their first step was to purchase a number of small, old dictionaries from a bookstore in Mur-es-Werd. Bar-Woten found the decrepit shop fascinating. Kiril was less than charmed. There were dozens of books lying around that he was certain had never come from Obelisk texts—histories of Mundus Lucifa, books of maps, and biographies. It was plainly an unorthodox place.
At night, roomless, they slept on the beach. One always sat guard on a small rock above their adopted spit of sand. The waves sounded like fighting animals up and down the coast. Some were as big as two-story buildings, pouring up between offshore channels of rock and howling across the turbulent sand. At night, when the waves glowed like graceful ghosts, Barthel hid his eyes from the sight and concentrated on the light-scattered city.
Their fourth morning in Mur-es-Werd, Bar-Woten woke to the smell of smoke and saw Kiril fixing a breakfast of fish. A long pole strung with line was stuck in the sand beside him. "I bought it an hour ago," Kiril explained. "More practical than books, no?"
Bar-Woten had been learning the dialect rapidly, much faster than Barthel, and could speak to the Lucifans well enough to be understood. As he ate Kiril's breakfast he wondered out loud why the country was called Mundus Lucifa. Kiril held up his finger to show a pause while he chewed. "Simple enough," he said. "Lightning comes out of the mountains. Some of the storms are frightful." But he'd never actually seen one, other than the rainburst they'd passed through before crossing the chasm.
They made inquiries that day in the shipyards about the need for seamen. The response was discouraging—blank stares and shaking heads. There was a glut on the market. Ten men for every berth. Still, foreign ships coming in frequently had room for new men—usually because a few had been lost at sea.
"The foreign ships won't be as picky about taking on strangers," Bar-Woten said. "We might have a chance with them."
They did odd jobs around the ports, walking from one cluster of docks and yards to another. Kiril had his first taste of heavy physical labor and didn't like it. He resented the Ibisian's stoic indifference to the work.
They lived this way for three weeks. No foreign ships put into port, and no domestic ships put out. The season was difficult for trading. Soon big storms would lash the ocean into strips of wave-wracked lace. Spouts and hurricanes would begin within sight of land and continue unbroken for hundreds of kilometers. No, this was definitely the wrong time of year to think about putting out to sea.
There was one exception, but it was an ominous one. A large Lucifan freighter traveling on methane steam and sails put into Mur-es-Werd in poor condition. It had been at sea for two years but hadn't been damaged by storms. It had been shelled by a ship the likes of which they'd never seen, which raced across the water on huge feet. The strange ship had no sails, gave off no steam, and yet had easily averaged ninety to a hundred kilometers an hour. Some speculated it wasn't a boat but a crustacean from the Pale Seas farther north than anyone had traveled. The trio heard of it in pubs and restaurants. Soon it was a common story much enlarged upon.
The story changed the atmosphere around the ports radically. But Bar-Woten maintained something else was up—a simple tale of strange doings at sea couldn't account for the way Mur-es-Werd was behaving. Kiril sensed it too. "Everyone's jumpy," he said. The Ibisian nodded.
The next day brought a warm, dry wind from the southwest. The skies were the color of bloody milk. Though the wind on the ground was mild, high above it tortured and twisted the clouds into thin, smooth ribbons and shot them with desert dirt. Mur-es-Werd was covered by a pink pall, and everyone walked warily as in a dangerous dream.
By evening it was clear and the winds died down. But the city was restless that night. The bars stayed open later than was normally allowed by law. Gangs of drunken men were herded home angrily in the early morning by women wielding cane brooms. The women wore dark dresses with strips of white tied around their arms. From a distance doves seemed to flutter around the men, driving them along the street with angry swishes.
Bar-Woten sat on the sand with his legs curled beneath him, watching and listening to the foamy waves. He thought they could tell him something. But they glowed and tossed and fussed incoherently, less powerfully than usual. Suddenly, they slowed to an oily trickle, ru
shing along the shore with a drawing bead of light. His neck hair prickled, and he sat up on his knees wanting to run. It was near dawn—soon the sky would turn green at the zenith as it always had.
But ten minutes passed and the dark remained. Two fire doves twinkled pink and orange just above the northern horizon. A third, bluish in color, hovered above the western mountains.
They winked out.
Thousands in the city were awake, watching the sky with him. A low moan rose from the city, the sound of distant screams and wailing. Barthel and Kiril awoke abruptly and asked what was happening. Bar-Woten couldn't answer. How could anyone describe something they had never seen before?
The blackness of the sky turned muddy. Not a single fire dove was to be seen. Like the opening of two palms clasped together, the muddiness drew aside, and a vortex of dim purple, barely visible, spread across the sky, leaving another sort of darkness at its center.
This wasn't the warmly immediate, empty black that had always meant night for Hegira. It was a velvety dark strewn with glowing ribbons, and between and around and in these, twinkled points of light so fine no shape could be discerned. Clouds of light filled the sky. For the first time in memory of anyone living, starshine visibly brightened the land.
The city was silent under the frosty gaze of the stars. Barthel made a growling sound deep in his throat, and tears streamed down his cheeks. "Holy Allah," he said. "Blessed Allah."
Kiril's hand tightened around his belt. He felt like rolling in the sand and screaming.