“Aye, it’s me! Where are you?”
There wasn’t a familiar landmark within sight, other than the sun. “I’m standing beneath the Reservoir Gate with a dozen naked templars!” Avra called. “What do you want me to say? I am where I am, and I imagine you’re the same!”
A moment later he spied Hagkun cresting a low dune, dusting his shoulders with both hands. Clouds of silt rained down. Like all products of the unusual union of humans and dwarves, Hagkun was hairless, and his skin had a rich coppery sheen to it. Sun at his back, the mul cast a long shadow against the near face of the dune. “I’m right here,” he said. “As are you.”
“But where’s everyone else?” Avra asked. “The caravan … where’d they all go?”
Hagkun shifted his massive shoulders. “Who can say?”
Another voice boomed across the sands from behind them. “Survived, did you? Luck, then, or you’ve paid someone off.”
Avra spun around, his agafari-wood sword still clutched in his fist after all this time. But it was only Burek, and behind him Curran, both looking as if they had just dug out from sandy graves.
“I credit luck,” Avra said. “Certainly no cleverness on my part was involved.”
Shen’ti and Maron joined them next, but that was all they could find. There were no weapons or other gear scattered around, convincing them that they had left the caravan behind, and not that the ferocious wind had carried everyone else away.
All were warriors, either mercenaries or slaves, trained in the pits and entrusted with the security of the House Faylon caravan. Even without the six of them, more than a dozen other guards remained with the merchants—supposing the others hadn’t died, or become lost themselves. If the raiders had also survived the storm, Avra didn’t hold out much hope for his employers.
“Where are we?” Burek asked. He was a short man, with a long, thick black beard tied in three knots and a head as round and hairless as an erdlu egg.
Blank faces all around. Finally, Curran pointed at the sun. “Sun’s there,” he said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “So Nibenay is there.” He pointed in yet another direction. “Raam should be about there.”
“And the caravan?”
“No idea.” Curran turned his hawklike face to the south. “There, maybe? Or that direction, anyway. If we went north during the storm.”
“I’m sure I didn’t move in a straight line,” Hagkun said. “I went wherever the wind shoved me.”
“As did I,” Avra admitted.
“Then we have only the vaguest of ideas,” Curran said.
“Exactly,” Avra said. “But we can’t stay here. We’ll need water soon, and shelter for the night. Even under a blanket of sand last night, I nearly froze.”
“Toward Nibenay, I say,” Maron offered. “We’ve a better chance finding a target that size than any of those others.”
Shen’ti pointed toward the rocky hills—covered with sand now, but still recognizable for what they were. “I say we climb those and have a look. We may be able to see the caravan from that height, or some other landmark from which we can set a course.”
After a few minutes of discussion, the others agreed. They took stock of their belongings. Two of them had lost their weapons, except for small daggers. Only Shen’ti carried water, in a bladder slung over his back. Five were wounded, none seriously. They were strong men, fighters. Survivors. They would be fine.
They drank from Shen’ti’s store and then hiked toward the Athasian sun.
At the crest of the hill, the others scanned the horizon for signs of the caravan. But Avra stared past a huge, tall dune where a city shimmered in the near distance.
A city where, by all rights, none should exist.
Sand was unevenly mounded to one side of the city, like a blanket shoved over to reveal some of what it had covered. Short towers and spires jutted up from the ground, but most of the city was low buildings, spreading back into the desert. “Ral’s light,” Burek muttered. “What is that?”
“It’s a city,” Avra said.
“I can see it’s a city! But what city lies there?”
“That’s on no map. It’s something ancient,” Hagkun offered. “Covered by dunes all these years. Probably exposed by the storm.”
“You’re right,” Shen’ti said. “Let’s take a closer look. Perhaps we can find shelter for the night, even water.”
“If there’s water in there,” Burek said, “it’ll be so old and filthy I wouldn’t touch it, no matter how thirsty I was.”
“I’m with Burek,” Maron said. “But I wouldn’t mind taking a look, just the same. I wouldn’t drink its water, but I’d help myself to its gold.”
“You think there’s gold in there?” Shen’ti asked.
“We won’t find out standing here.”
Burek grabbed Avra’s upper arm. “I don’t know about this …”
Burek had always been a cautious sort, for a warrior. “It’ll be fine,” Avra said. “There are six of us, and we’re armed. Even if there are beasts hiding in those ruins, we’ll be safe.”
Burek released him and glanced into the olive sky, deepening as the sun lowered toward the horizon. “On Athas, who is ever truly safe?”
Avra saw his point, and he kept his sword in his hand as they scrambled down the hill and trudged across a stretch of open desert toward the city. In the late afternoon sun, it was dull, rather than gleaming, as Nibenay would have. It was as if all the color and shine had been worn off by the ages and by its burial.
As they grew nearer, the first thing Avra noticed was that nothing grew on the dirt-choked city streets. The city had been buried so long that every plant had died, even the wiry tufts of grass and the spindly ocotillo wands that seemed capable of surviving in the most sun-blasted wastelands. The lack of plants gave the scene a strangely artificial feel, as if the city had never been intended for habitation.
But signs of habitation made themselves clear, soon enough.
The men were quiet as they passed what would have been an exterior wall, crumbled under the desert’s weight, and started across a wide avenue just inside that first wall. Buildings rose before them, two or three stories tall. The air was still, carrying no particular fragrance save the dry smell of bare earth.
He had never seen a city so utterly silent. Streets intersected this wide avenue and ran into the city’s depths, but nothing moved on them.
“I don’t like it,” Burek said. “What if it’s haunted? Or cursed?”
“And what if there are vaults full of gold and precious jewels just down one of these streets?” Maron countered. “We won’t know until we look.”
“If we leave now we might yet find an oasis before nightfall,” Burek said. “My throat is parched.”
“I’m saving the rest of the water for when we really need it,” Shen’ti said.
“That’s what I mean. We need to find another source, before we’re all fighting over what little you have.”
“One hour,” Hagkun suggested. “I say we take one hour, we explore. Then we look for an oasis.”
“What say you, Burek?” Avra asked. “Fair enough?”
Burek rubbed his hairless crown with his palm, still coated in grit from the storm. “I still don’t like it,” he said. “But I’ll go along with it.”
“Good,” Maron said. “Now, should we split up so we can cover more ground?”
“No!” Avra and Shen’ti said, almost as one.
“We stay together,” Avra added. “It looks quiet, but we don’t know what might dwell within these old buildings.”
“I’d hate to meet anything that’s lived under this sand for centuries,” Curran said.
“I don’t think there’s anything here,” Maron said. “I haven’t heard a sound, nor seen the slightest movement.”