Mari looked down, seeing shards of white bone mixed in with the broken masonry. “How many bodies lie unburied here? Ugh.” Then she saw something else. “Alain. There’s a path.”
He looked in the direction she pointed. They approached cautiously, seeing it was a beaten trail through the wreckage. Mari knelt to examine it. “This wasn’t made by animals. Those look like sandal prints. I think. It’s pretty crude cobbler work. And some bare feet. Human.”
“Those prints cannot be too old,” Alain said.
“No. Certainly not a century and half old.” Mari looked up at the partial buildings around them. Empty windows stared back like the eyeless sockets of skulls. “I guess everybody didn’t get out of Marandur before the emperor sealed it off. Maybe some of the inhabitants survived. Maybe rebels who managed to hide out until the legions left. Over one hundred and fifty years trapped in a dead city…I don’t think I want to meet these people, Alain.”
“I agree. Now we know why the Imperial sentries focus so much of their attention inward. Where should we go from here?”
Mari stood, pivoting slowly as she studied what could be seen. “Too bad nobody sells maps of Marandur any more, but that’s banned, too. The Mechanics Guild Hall should be near the center of the city. In the oldest cities, that’s where all the halls are located, and Marandur wasn’t too much younger than Landfall. Can you see any sign of an aqueduct?”
“Aqueduct?”
“Something that looks like a thin bridge. Aqueducts carry water to cities.”
Alain shook his head. “The Ospren River cuts through Marandur. Would the city have needed an aqueduct?”
Mari squeezed her eyes shut and slapped herself lightly. “No. I should’ve figured that out. That means the Mechanics Guild Hall should be somewhere on the banks of the river.”
“How will we know it?”
She looked around, then found what she sought and pointed. “See that strand of wire hanging there? Electrical wires to send power through the city would’ve come out of the Hall. We need a big building with lots of wires visible. Once we get close enough I’ll be able to know it’s the Mechanics Guild Hall by the design features. All Guild Halls have standardized hallways and things like that.”
Alain nodded. “Why?”
“Why? Why what?”
“Why are these things standardized, as you called it?”
“Because…” Mari wondered how to describe it to a Mage. “It’s easier to build things if they follow certain rules every time.”
“It gives you comfort?”
“No. Well, okay, I guess it does. But that’s not the reason. It’s more efficient.”
Alain nodded slowly, then shook his head. “Efficient?”
Mari tried not to slap herself again, this time out of frustration. “It means doing things the best way you can. Like when we needed to go through that Mage alarm thing and you had to maintain the hiding spell. It would have been more efficient to concentrate on one thing at a time, but of course you couldn’t do that.”
“Oh. Why do Mechanics have so many words for things?” Alain asked. “Mage Guild acolytes are told that Mechanics believe giving names to everything grants them power over things.”
Mari grinned. “Are you serious?” Then she thought about it. “Maybe there’s truth to that. In order to do science or technology you need a lot of special words. In a way it does give us power over things. Change of subject. Do you want to look for the Mage Guild Hall, too?”
“No.” Alain didn’t seem to think the issue even needed to be discussed.
“There’s nothing there you need? Or want?”
“No. There would not be.”
“All right, then.” No sense following that dead end. Times like this reminded Mari of just how different Alain’s training and experience had been. “Let’s get away from this trail before anyone who uses it comes along, and see if we can find our way to the river.”
As the sun rose higher and began heating the rubble, their surroundings became almost uncomfortably warm, especially since little wind found its way into the ruined city. At one point they startled a little herd of small deer, about the size of dogs, which stampeded nimbly off through the piles of debris. Occasionally Mari spotted a wild cat watching them from some high vantage point. Birds nested everywhere among the broken buildings, their discarded feathers and messes covering the debris in some places. About noon they saw roughly a dozen dogs running across a wide street some distance away. Mari and Alain veered off in the other direction to avoid meeting the pack. By then the route had cleared considerably, with buildings relatively undamaged by battle but worn and disintegrating from decades of abandonment.
Tough grass had sprouted in many places, and wiry bushes could be seen anywhere enough dirt had gathered, including on the upper stories of buildings blown open to the weather a century and a half earlier. Sometimes they would find a tree shoving its way up through the buckled pavement. Every once in a while, a slow rumble in the distance announced the collapse of something somewhere in the city. Everywhere they found traces of the former inhabitants, or of the soldiers and rebels who had died in the act of mutually destroying the city. Mari tried to avoid walking on the splinters of bone, but sometimes the patches lay too thickly to avoid and then she just tried to close her mind to it. One time she slipped, almost turning her ankle, as an old, heavily corroded Imperial helmet rolled underfoot, exposing the crumbling skull still resting within it.
They took a break at noon, sitting in the shade of a partial wall. Mari glanced at Alain. “Is this affecting you in any way? I can’t tell.”
Alain shrugged. “There is a lot of dust. It is hard to keep crawling over all of this wreckage. I am not enjoying myself, if that is what you are asking.”
“I don’t mean just that.” She gazed down the street as a small flock of birds swooped by. “It’s really strange in a way. It’s so quiet, and there’s animals and birds and plants. Almost idyllic. Except it’s a huge graveyard.”
He nodded. “I was thinking how people create this illusion of a world. How many people labored to create the illusion of a city here—these buildings.” Alain waved his hand at the ruins. “Then other people worked to create another illusion, that of death and destruction. Their illusion has triumphed. That is the illusion the Emperor Palan sought to maintain, and it has endured thus far. Someday the last remnants of the last building will fall to dust, the grass and the trees will grow everywhere, and then that illusion too will be gone, and it will be as if no man or woman ever laid hand to this spot.”
“Why, Alain,” Mari said, startled, “that’s almost poetic.”
“Do you mean that? I was never taught to use words artfully,” Alain responded.
“You must be a natural, then,” Mari remarked.
“Should I say thank you?”
“Yes, that would be appropriate.”
“Thank you.” Alain looked around, shaking his head. “I have seen no sign of humans since we saw that path, though, and that worries me.”
“Me, too. I’d hate to think they might be spying on us and setting up an ambush.” Mari checked her water bottle, then took a small swig. “Hey, we’re rationing water again. Remember that? If I never again go back to the desert near Ringhmon it’ll still be too soon.”
“At least we survived the experience.”
“Yeah. Do you think the water here is safe? There’s got to be wells and cisterns still intact enough to hold something, and it has been a long time since things I don’t want to think about were dumped or fell into them.”