The Phoenix Endangered (6 page)

Though her senses were alert—for not all of those creatures that the desert could hold were as harmless as the timid
sheshu
—Shaiara could not help marveling at what she saw. This was only one tiny part of Abi’Abadshar, yet she believed it must be large enough to hold all of the Isvaieni within it. The path upon which she now walked was wide enough that four
shotors
could be led along it side-by-side, saddled and laden, and each would not jostle the next, and the roof above her was so far away that it was lost in darkness. On either side, the walls rose up as straight as the trunk of a young palm tree, and as smooth and unmarred as the surface of a pool of water when no wind blew. The Nalzindar loved decoration and ornament as much as any of the Isvaieni, trading hides and leatherwork at the Gatherings for bright rugs and colorful woven baskets, and this starkness seemed unnatural to Shaiara. If one made a thing, why not make it beautiful?

After a short time they came to the first break in the smooth walls: an archway, much like the one through which they had come—though smaller—but this one was blocked.

Shaiara handed the lantern to Kamar and stepped forward to run her hands over the barrier curiously. It fitted into the archway exactly, as if it had been made for it.

“It is wood,” she said, startled into speech. She ran her hands over its surface again, more carefully, this time marking the places where the pieces had been joined together to make the whole. So few! She tried to imagine
such a tree as this might have come from, and failed. But what was its purpose? Metal bands crossed its surface, and there was a large ring, larger than the largest bracelet, in the center of one side. She closed her hands around the metal ring, and tugged at it gingerly, but nothing happened.

There would be time enough later to solve this mystery. She took back the lantern, and the three walked on. They passed more of the blocked archways, but Shaiara did not bother to test them. Time for that later.

They walked until the lamp began to gutter, then returned. Shaiara had learned what she wished to know, and so, when she returned to the
Iteru
-courtyard, she ordered her people to lead the
shotors
down into the dark made-cave, and there to make their cookfire, and take shelter against the heat of the day. Tomorrow they would begin the task of turning Abi’Abadshar into their home.

I
T WAS UPON
the third day of their residence in Abi’Abadshar that Shaiara realized that the Gods of the Wild Magic had truly taken the Nalzindar into their care. At evening on the first day, everyone but the children went forth to hunt, and after several hours, they returned with a startling bounty. Not only adders and scorpions and mice, but
sheshu
in abundance—all the more puzzling when Natha said that for every
sheshu
he brought to the cookpot, he let one escape, just as the Balance asked of them. But that night, all the Nalzindar ate well; the
shotors
grazing upon the rich forage that grew among the ruins, and the
ikulas
and falcons and every person of the tribe feasting upon the bounty of the day’s hunt.

On the second day, Shaiara and her people went forth as soon as the sun had passed its greatest heat, for they must have light to see by if they were to properly explore their new home. The
ikulas
accompanied them; Shaiara hoped both that the hounds’ keen senses might discern what the Nalzindar could not, and also, that they might flush more game, for keeping so many people fed was a constant
struggle even in the Isvai, and here in the Barahileth, the task would be far more difficult.

Though no Isvaieni was a stranger to the heat of the desert, the furnace heat of the Barahileth in daylight was nearly too much even for the Nalzindar. If not for the fact that they possessed a copious supply of water, Shaiara would have turned back immediately. Even the
shotors
seemed uncomfortable in the heat; the Nalzindar brought them under cover, into the tunnels, during the heat of the day, of course, but now Shaiara was setting them loose to browse. She did not fear to lose them. No
shotor
would willingly travel far from water.

The people avoided the exposed stone road; as all of them knew from the experience of having to cross the
Iteru
-courtyard to reach the surface that it was far too hot to walk upon, and the sand was very little cooler. In the Isvai, Shaiara would have chosen to investigate by night, but in the Isvai, she would have been able to carry a lantern burning the liquid of the oilbark bush or a lamp whose wick was soaked in thrice-purified animal fat. They had not yet found any oilbark bush, and to gather and purify the amount of fat needed was a long and laborious process when they had cast away so many of their possessions. It would be long before they were once more able to light the few lamps they had retained.

Everyone chose a different path through the city, moving off into the distance in groups of two and four. In the Isvai, the Nalzindar hunted alone. In this strange land, it was as well for every Isvaieni to have assistance close at hand. Shaiara walked beside Ciniran, with Kamar a few steps behind them. Shaiara and Ciniran were age-mates, and they had done everything together from the time each had taken her first hesitant steps upon the twilight sands, sharing small triumphs and quiet sorrow in the way of their people. Ciniran had been bold where Shaiara had been quiet, and before their first hunt, when it had become clear that Shaiara was to be Darak’s only child, there had been talk that Ciniran should be named his heir, or her
cousin Hauca. That was the first time Bisochim had come to the tents of the Nalzindar, and said to them:
Wait. The Wild Magic will make all things clear in time.

Only a few years later, Darak had laid his body upon the sand, and Shaiara had neither expected comfort nor received it. Now Ciniran’s mother, Katuil, had chosen to relinquish her life upon the journey here, and Ciniran, too, accepted that with the impassive response that Shaiara expected. Katuil had died as she had wished to, as Darak had died, as all Nalzindar hoped to die: at a place and time of her own choosing.

But life between Sand and Star was demanding, and it did not encourage hope, for to hope was to live in a place that was not of the here and the now, and the children of the Isvai must live in the world upon which they set the soles of their feet, neither in the dreams of the past nor the shadows of the future. Yet the wise hunter searched not only the ground before his boots, but the horizon as far as his gaze could reach, and now that—so it seemed—they were to live, Shaiara’s mind was busy with the future, and not just tomorrow and next season, but such future as the leader of the tribe must think on. If the Nalzindar were to survive, there must be husbands and wives for them; Ciniran was of an age to marry now, and Shaiara already knew that there was no man of the Nalzindar who pleased her, nor was Ciniran a one for women, nor yet to live alone all her days. For one not born to the Nalzindar to come to their ways was a delicate matter, yet in every generation, at the Gathering of the tribes, a handful of men and women made that choice. Some left again, in a moonturn or a season or at the next Gathering. Some became as much Nalzindar as if they had been born within their tents. But now that Bisochim had driven the rest of the Isvaieni down the path to madness with the goad of smooth words, who would there be for any of them?

At least she need not worry for herself. The Nalzindar did not require the leadership of the tribe to pass to a child of her body. Nor did it even need to remain in Darak’s line
if another were more competent: in each generation, leadership of the Nalzindar went to the one best suited to rule, not the one born to it, though often those two things marched together. In any event, the child who would lead the Nalzindar in the next generation was known early, by his or her ways, and taken into the chief’s tent to learn all those things that could only be learned by watching the leader of the Nalzindar lead the people. Shaiara’s heir might not yet have been born, or still lie in swaddling clothes, or just be learning to walk. She did not need to concern herself with the matter of finding and choosing a mate. She did not think one existed for her anywhere between Sand and Star.

And that
, she told herself with a small inward smile,
is so much the least of all your problems that you could number them all until the days grew long and short again and not reach that one!

When the sun had moved two handspans more across the sky, a thing Shaiara had not imagined to be possible—in this whole moonturn of unimaginable events—occurred. Israf and Ardban, who had so far been content to pad along at her side, suddenly raised their narrow heads, quivering all over, and dashed off. A moment later she saw something—a
large
something—scurry over the top of a dune, pursued by the hounds, and a moment after that, she heard the single sharp bark the
ikulas
gave when they had taken down prey. Despite her concern, neither Shaiara nor her companions ran to see what it was. One did not run in desert heat unless life was at stake.

A few moments later they reached the
ikulas’s
side. The animals stood proudly, plumed tails slowly wagging, over the body of a fat young desert goat.

Ciniran knelt beside the carcass, running her hands over its flanks in wonder. She turned her face up to Shaiara, and Shaiara knew that the expression of grave concern on Ciniran’s face matched her own.

The Nalzindar did not keep goats. Goats required water—much water—and good forage. Not so much as a sheep, but far more than a
shotor.
Certainly more than any
of them had seen anywhere here in Abi’Abadshar. Nor could it have simply wandered here—the journey had been nearly enough to kill a
shotor.
A goat could not have survived.

She put her hand on Israf’s collar. “Seek,” she said, gesturing back in the way the goat had come. The two
ikulas
began moving in circles, searching out the trail. Shaiara walked after them, and Ciniran followed, as behind them, Kamar gathered up their unexpected prey.

But the trail ended only in another mystery: one of the empty openings in the ground, with terraces leading down into it. This one was small, and made of black stone, and heat radiated up from it as from the embers of a cookfire. Even though this was obviously where the path ended, the
ikulas
did not wish to go down, and Shaiara saw no reason to make them, for all that was there was smooth stone, and a small hole low in one wall that only a child could crawl through.

Or a goat.

With that thought in her mind, Shaiara redoubled her efforts to explore the caves-made-by-Demons in which the Nalzindar now lived. Goats must come from somewhere, after all. And if she shared this place with others, she wished to know about it.

T
HE GREASE FROM
the flesh of the fat goat, carefully collected, could be used to saturate strips of fabric carefully cut from the edges of the remaining tent. Tightly braided, and forced over the head of a hunting-spear, the grease-soaked cloth made a crude if serviceable torch. Armed with a handful of these, Shaiara and several of the bravest hunters redoubled their explorations. This time they brought with them axes and hammers as well, for she was determined that the barriers of wood that blocked the archways to the sides of the tunnel would block it no longer.

Her people quickly learned the best method of releasing the barriers, especially once they discovered that they
were hinged, like the lid of a wooden box. A few blows with an axe at the edge where the large metal ring was, and nearly all of them could be swung inward. Those that could not be, they left untouched, for Shaiara suspected that beyond those doors lay enough piled sand to bury them all, should those barriers be removed from their stone archways.

They had removed the first of the barriers entirely—before they had known about the hinge-mechanism—and when they had, beyond it all that there was to see was another tunnel, and at its end, sunlight. She had walked down that tunnel to its end, and seen more wooden barriers, drifts of sand and dust upon the floor, and then, at its end, a great round emptiness. She’d shrugged, turning back. It might well be the work of more than one lifetime to learn all of Abi’Abadshar’s secrets.

The deeper they went into the tunnel, the colder it became, until it was as cold as a desert midnight, and Shaiara shivered, wishing for her warm cloak. They had been walking since dawn, and had come so far that now, when she looked back, Shaiara could no longer see the light of the entrance. None of them feared to make the return journey in darkness—should their explorations take as long as that—for the way was straight and smooth, and ears and noses could guide a hunter when eyes could not. And Israf and Ardban would sense far more than even the sharpest-honed senses of the Nalzindar, though, like any sight-hunter, the
ikulas
preferred the light to the dark.

Shaiara shivered once again in the cold, then sniffed at the air suspiciously and frowned, glancing at Kamar. He stepped to the nearest wall and ran his fingers over the stone, running the pads of his fingers together, and there did not need to be words between them for Shaiara to know what he had found. The stone was wet.

Was there another
Iteru
here within the tunnels? Shaiara had once visited a spring deep within a cave, and the air had been wet in just this way. But for the first time since they had begun exploring the tunnels, Israf and Ardban
seemed eager to forge ahead instead of wishing to remain close at the heels of the five Nalzindar, and Abyaz and Zirah, barely out of puppyhood, were now straining at their leashes.

“Go,” Shaiara said quietly, and with a bound, the two
ikulas
leaped ahead into the dark.

A few moments later, Shaiara could hear stuttering high-pitched yips echoing back over the stone. She nodded, and Kamar unleashed the two younger
ikulas.
They bounded eagerly after their elders. Holding her torch high, Shaiara led her band of hunters after them at a swift ground-eating lope.