The Steel of Raithskar Read online

  I sat up a little and looked around, glad to have a new puzzle to distract me. In the distance I could see things growing in the marsh. Farther ahead, thicker now as we approached it, was the line of blue that had drawn me through the desert. I knew now that it was the Great Wall, at the foot of which lay Markasset’s home city of Raithskar.

  The city has to get its water from somewhere, I decided. This bog is the end of the line for whatever source feeds the city.

  It had to be a river which flowed down from the mountains, through or beside the city, and picked up more and more salt as it ran south into the desert. Here the intense heat caused such rapid evaporation that the water simply disappeared. Some of it might soak into the ground, but I’d bet money that the hot, dry air sucked up most of it.

  At the final edge, the brine concentration was so great that nothing could live in it except some stubborn algae and bacteria. Farther upriver, less hardy plants could live with water that was merely brackish. But this bog contained a saturated salt solution, into which no more salt could dissolve. It was thick, stagnant water covered by a mush of salt crystals which formed a thin, shiny crust.

  Keeshah was right; it would not be a good place to walk over.

  By noon, the marshy area was dotted with clumps of reeds and an occasional sickly-looking tree. Keeshah slowed, stopped.

  *Too hot. Rest.*

  I was willing. Riding a sha’um is less work than being one, but it was no picnic.

  I ate a bit of food from the pouch and leaned up against Keeshah’s heaving side.

  “I don’t wonder you’re pooped,” I told him, and he turned his head to look at me. I poured a little of the precious water into my hand and offered it. He lapped it up carefully, the big raspy tongue flipping it under itself and into his mouth. Then, deliberately, he licked across the palm of my hand, lightly enough that he didn’t quite scrape off hide.

  For a while we sat in companionable silence, staring at the Great Wall. I glanced at Keeshah, and smiled. He looked for all the world like a sphinx in informal dress. I leaned up against his shoulder and scratched under his chin absently as I surveyed the wall.

  It looked like a range of mountains stretching to the horizon on the east and west. There didn’t seem to be any high peaks or deep valleys, though; the top edge was a little uneven but, all things considered, remarkably smooth. I’d never heard of any such long, high wall as that, anywhere on Earth. China’s Great Wall might be as long or longer, but it was certainly not so incredibly high.

  Keeshah’s eyes were closing, and finally he shoved me aside so he could stretch out. I lay down against his back and fell asleep in the shadow of his body.

  I woke to a nearly inaudible whining noise and a very definite nudge. As I started to complain, Keeshah’s urgent thought reached me.

  *Silence. Danger. Hide.*

  I woke up fast.

  We crept quietly away from the road and lay flat behind a shallow rise. It was dotted with scraggly bushes that wouldn’t have hidden a jackrabbit in the daytime—but it was the best cover available.

  It was already night—the sun must have set some time ago. In the east there was a white glow that was the moon shining beyond the thin overcast. It spread an eerie silver radiance over the bleak landscape.

  Soon I could hear what had alerted Keeshah. Carrying over the flatland came the sounds of a group of men moving toward us. The low murmurs of men’s voices. The muffled pacing of many feet. An occasional sharper voice calling commands. An organized group of men, coming at a fast march from the north.

  It was several minutes before I could see their shadowy figures moving along the caravan trail in the veiled moonlight. Their voices became clear before their bodies resolved from the shadowy silver of the night.

  “Might as well be chasing a wild thaka!” grumbled a deep voice. “I say the stone’s somewhere in the city.”

  “Aw, you been singing that fleabitten tune for hours, Devok. It don’t matter what you think. Orders is orders. Anyway, Klareth’s group is still searching the city.”

  A third voice added, “Yeah, Devok, and if the fleabitten thing did get shipped out with the caravan, we’d best catch it now. If they get to Chizan or Dyskornis with it, we’ll never get it back.”

  I could see them clearly now: a dozen men, each leading a pack-vlek.

  “What we ought to have done is arrest the fleabitten old man and persuade him to tell us all about it.”

  “Arrest a City Supervisor with no evidence? You’re crazy, Devok. Shut up and march. We want to make it to Yafnaar before sundown tomorrow.”

  They marched in silence for a while, drawing nearer. Then I heard a new voice.

  “What I can’t figure is why anybody’d try to steal the Ra’ira. It’d ruin its value to cut it up, and if you leave it like it is, anybody in Gandalara would know what it was and whose it was.”

  “Not if it was kept hid for a while.” That sounded like the first voice which had replied to Devok.

  “How’s that? What good would that do?”

  An exaggerated sigh. “One of these days, Mord, you ought to go to a Recorder and pick up a little education. That’s how we got the fleabitten jewel.”

  “Awww. That thing has been in Raithskar for hundreds of hundreds of years.”

  Another voice. “Not that long. Several tens or hundreds, maybe. But he’s right, I’ve heard the story myself. Tell him, Ganneth.”

  “Serkajon himself stole it from Kä,” Ganneth supplied. “Brought it to Raithskar and set up the Council.”

  “Didn’t know that!” said a voice down the line.

  “Dummy!” came another voice, disgusted. “Whatcha think Commemoration Day is all about?”

  The words brought a flash of memory. Parades and celebration, the statue of a man riding a sha’um carried through the city, and his image miniaturized and multiplied in banners displayed everywhere. In one large building, encased in glass so that it might be viewed and appreciated by the public during that annual celebration, a pale blue stone about the size of a glass doorknob. Its surface was unfaceted, but the blue color darkened as one looked deeply into it, and hinted at an imperceptible crystalline structure.

  The Ra’ira.

  “Him?” another voice bantered. “Give him free faen and he’d drink to his mother-in-law!”

  Laughter, then Devok’s voice again, challenging. “So what? Kä’s been long deserted; nobody even knows where it is, anymore. And that was a long time ago. Way I hear it, we never even got a complaint from Kä when Serkajon ran off with it. But you can bet we’ll raise a holler if some other city has heisted it from us! Raithskar ain’t deserted by a long ways.

  “Naw, no other city’d have the nerve to swipe the Ra’ira; I still say it’s inside Raithskar!”

  “Not again!”

  “Knock it off, will you Devok?”

  “Yeah, ain’t it bad enough we gotta march—”

  The straggly column was abreast of us. I hadn’t noticed that there was a slight breeze … until it changed direction. The vleks caught Keeshah’s scent, and all hell broke loose.

  I’ve never heard any sound that can compare with the harsh bawling of a frightened vlek. The pack animals screamed and stamped, straining against their leads and doing their best to trample anybody who got in their way.

  Two or three of the vleks seemed to be carrying live cargo of some sort. A horrendous, terrified clacking rose from the woven-reed cages and drove the vleks into an even higher frenzy.

  Beside me, Keeshah was tense as coiled wire. I tried to see what was in his mind, but it was seething and unreadable. Anger and contempt for the vleks mingled with predatory desire, frustration and a flash of … guilt? If a sha’um could swear, the silver night around us would have been tinged with blue.

  *It’s all right,* I tried to reassure him. *How could you have known the wind would shift?* No response. He moved his hind legs, getting ready to lunge into the melee. Eagerly.

  *No, Kee shah!* I ordered sharply. *They don’t know we’re here. Keep still; they may yet pass us by.*

  He didn’t move. But he didn’t relax.

  For that matter, neither did I. My hand was on the hilt of my sword.

  They were beginning to make sense of the chaos. I could hear Gandalaran voices above the vleks braying.

  “Settle down, you fleabitten …”

  “Hey! Ganneth tripped! Get him out from under …”

  The wind shifted again, and the frenzied animals calmed almost instantly. There was a moment of stunned silence, broken by the now familiar voice of Devok.

  “Didn’t I tell you we shoulda never left—”

  “WILL YOU SHUT UP!” roared a voice I hadn’t heard before. “Now, anybody know what set ’em off?”

  “I dunno,” someone answered. I knew they must be peering into the shadows on either side of the trail—I pressed my face into the hard ground, willing myself to disappear.

  “There’s nothin’ out there,” someone said disgustedly.

  “Almost anything will spook these fleabitten animals. We should just be glad it’s over and nobody’s hurt.”

  “Whaddya mean, nobody. My foot …”

  “Didn’t hurt you none …”

  “AWRIGHT!”

  When a muttering quiet had set in: “Your jabbering probably set ’em on edge. It sure as Gandalara was makin’ me nervous.

  “Let’s get moving again. And this time do less talkin’ and faster walkin’. We’ve wasted enough time, and you’ll need your breath before dawn. Let’s go.”

  They moved away in silence. Only when the sound of their feet on the hard-worn trail had faded completely did I dare to breathe again. I let what I judged to be another twenty minutes go by before I remounted a restless Keeshah and we were on our way.

  From what I’d heard, it sounded as though the cops were out in force tonight. I didn’t know what instinct had driven Keeshah to conceal us from them—a natural wariness of the unidentified, probably—but I was glad he had done so. In my travels, I have learned that even a respectable university professor is wise to steer clear of the police if he doesn’t know what all the laws are.

  6

  Raithskar was itself a jewel.

  It sprawled uphill, following the slope that had risen gradually from the salt bogs. Now the slope steepened swiftly to merge at last into the majesty of the Great Wall, some miles beyond the city.

  We had stopped several yards distant from the huge main gate, over Keeshah’s anxious protests. I needed time to get reacquainted with this city.

  Through the gates I could see a portion of the wide boulevard which led into the city, and I could hear the marketplace that filled the boulevard. Voices haggling over prices. The squealing of children forced to tag along on a shopping trip. The clinking of coins.

  I could smell it, too—the tang of blood from the butcheries, sweet fruits, sharp spices, perfumes I could not quite identify.

  Raithskar seemed familiar to me in many ways. The smells, the sounds, the look of the place made me feel I had been here before—yet I did not recognize it in the sense of knowing it. And it called up Earthly memories. The clustered roofs climbing the slope in a riot of color made me think of San Francisco before skyscrapers spoiled the natural line that was so beautiful when viewed from the bay. Some of the roofs had small interlaced tiles like the one which had formed Yafnaar’s watering trough. They were dark brown in color, but otherwise much like the Spanish-style roofing that had been a feature of Santa Barbara.

  Raithskar gleamed and glittered in the early morning light. In different ways, it made both Ricardo and Markasset homesick.

  I found my gaze drawn to the Great Wall, four or five miles away. It stretched clear to the sky and disappeared in the clouds. How tall was it, I wondered? A mile? Two miles? Maybe three? There was no way to know for sure, but I’d have said at least two.

  And directly behind Raithskar was a sight I had never expected to see. From out of the mists at the top of the great escarpment, water cascaded down the almost sheer face of the cliff. At its base was a rainbow-crowned lake which foamed continuously as the tons of water thundered into it. The lake narrowed to a river, which rushed down the slope and through the city.

  This had to be the source that wound up miles later as a treacherous salt bog. The Skarkel Falls—the name surfaced from my memory.

  The base of the falls was shrouded in mist—the water, falling from such a height, virtually pulverized the lake, sending up an endless spray of water vapor.

  I could see then why Raithskar glittered so in the sunlight. Even this far from the falls, there was moisture in the air, cooling off the fearsome heat of the desert. Invisible droplets coated the roofs of the city, causing them to shine as though they were polished.

  After the hot, dry journey, the coolness of the city called out to me.

  * * *

  Keeshah and I had traveled through the night. From his back I had watched the dimly-lit countryside change around us. The vegetation in the swamp had grown denser, the mucky ground gradually solidifying to support short grasses and bushes. I saw trees more frequently, and they seemed taller and healthier—although I had seen larger manzanita bushes in California. Just as the land began to look all overgrown, with fields of grass and shadowy clumps of growth that might almost have been wooded areas, the moon set.

  The blackness was complete; it was as though I had been suddenly blinded. The cloud layer had diffused and distributed what little moonlight remained, so that I hadn’t noticed the gradual dimming.

  Frightened in the abrupt blackness, I ordered Keeshah to stop. He did, but he protested.

  *Soon there,’ he said.

  *Can you see through this darkness?*

  *No. Follow road smell.* He was panting heavily; he had been running for hours without a break.

  *We’ll wait till dawn,* I told him.

  I slid off his back, and when I moved away from him he was completely invisible. But we were still together. He was a large warm presence in my mind, and I was no longer frightened of the dark.

  *Rest, Keeshah.*

  He agreed—not with reluctance, but with some puzzlement. I heard him moving around in the bushes, settling to the ground. I lay on my back in the tart-smelling grass and looked up into the darkness.

  As though the sky had been waiting for me, the clouds broke apart and I was looking at the stars.

  But not my stars.

  I had spent enough romantic moonlit nights gazing into the sky to know that for sure. There wasn’t a single constellation up there that I recognized. And there was one bright configuration that I knew I had never seen. Then the clouds swept together and left me again in darkness.

  I’d had enough of questions today. So the stars were different—I listed that among things to think about and sort out later. It was another datum, only that.

  I was emotionally drained, tired past the point of sleeping, afraid that if I slept, I would dream of unfinished puzzles, mazes with no end and no beginning, paths that led only into other paths. So I listened to the night.

  Riding with my head on Keeshah’s body, the soft sound of his paws striking the ground had blocked out all other aural input. I had noticed the landscape changing visually; now I became aware of the different sound of it.

  The desert had been so quiet. The cry of a bird had been an intrusion out there. Now I could hear the flutter of wings all around me, and the soft rustling of small animals moving through the grass and bushes. Skittering sounds made me think of squirrels and their nervous, rush-and-stop zigzags.

  What did these night creatures look like? Would I ever see them clearly in the daytime? I could well understand that even here, where the desert was fading, the cooler night was more inviting than the day. And I wondered then whether the vast savage desert, so desolate in the heat of day, had its own sort of night life.

  As I lay there listening in a sort of sleep-daze, it occurred to me that I believ ed dawn was imminent because on Earth it would be so. I’d had no evidence so far that I was still on Earth. It might be hours before dawn.

  I was too relaxed to move right then. But eventually I summoned the energy to sit up, to tell Keeshah it was time to get started. I looked for and found him nestled into some scratchy-looking bushes …

  Looked? Bushes?

  It was gray and dim, but the dawn had already begun. A few minutes later, the red glow of the rising sun spread through the thin clouds in the east, flushing the sky. I stood up and stretched, and watched while Keeshah yawned and stre-e-e-etched. I ate a little food, and we shared what was left of the water. Then I mounted and we were on our way again.

  The land began to change quickly, the open area giving way to cultivated fields. There were waist-high, grass-like plants that had to be some kind of grain. Evenly spaced humps of vines or low bushes—what they produced I could only guess.

  Smaller tracks crossed the caravan road, and as the morning brightened we passed Gandalarans on the road. Some carried wood-handled, bronze-headed tools toward the fields. Others were leading laden vleks in to the market.

  I sat up on Keeshah’s back and moved forward to ride just behind his shoulders, asking him to slow to a walk. The people who passed us greeted me politely and edged carefully past Keeshah with looks of mingled fear and curiosity on their faces. Those who led vleks simply stood still until we had passed, holding tightly to the looped halters so that the beasts would not stamp around and spill their cargo.

  And so we had come to Raithskar at last, and I had paused a moment to absorb my first impressions of the place which was to be my home now.

  I yielded to Keeshah’s impatience and urged him on; he ran eagerly toward the gate, then stopped.

  *Well?* I asked him. *I thought you were in a hurry?*

  He twisted his neck to look back at me.

  *City,* he explained. *Get off.*