The Phoenix Endangered (7 page)

They had barely covered more distance than might be compassed in three arrow-flights before strangeness abounded everywhere. The walls were no longer smooth, but covered with a web of root and vine, nor was the floor beneath their feet smooth stone either. It held a thickness of sand—far thicker than what they had found earlier in the tunnel—and not sand alone. Sand so mixed with water that it was as moist as uncooked griddle-bread, and so filled with the wet scent of plants that it was as if Shaiara stood in the middle of Sapthiruk holding a basketweight of figs and desert plums in the folds of her robes. All along the tunnel, where the floor met the walls, there were strange soft growths the color of the palest leather.

When they reached the place where the
ikulas
eagerly awaited them, Shaiara saw that more of the strange pale things covered the wooden barrier. The water in the air had rotted it, as sunlight rotted cloth, for the
ikulas’s
sharp nails had dug away deep curls from the wood where they had attempted to dig beneath the barrier. A click of her tongue summoned the hounds back to sit at her heel, and when Shaiara put her hand to the metal ring—reaching carefully among the growths—it came away in her hand, leaving her fingers covered with sharp black flakes and a thick coating of red. She dropped it, and the ring struck the sand with a dull sound. Cautiously, she pressed at the barrier. It scraped inward a double handspan, then stuck.

But no dangerous cascade of dry sand billowed out through the opening, and the
ikulas
were all but dancing with impatience to see what lay beyond. She passed the torch to Ciniran and set her shoulder to the door. Kamar and Natha joined her, and soon the barrier had been shifted enough that Shaiara could slip through. The four
ikulas
followed her immediately, and dashed off into the gloom.

For it
was
only twilight here beyond the barrier, and not true darkness. She paused to help the others force the barrier the rest of the way inward—kneeling down to dig away the thick mast of spongy sand-and-plant matter that covered the stone so that the barrier could move freely. Kamar doused the torch by rubbing it out against the inside of the barrier, and the five Nalzindar walked cautiously forward.

Only in the wildest tales exchanged around cookfires at the Gatherings of the tribes had she heard of anything remotely like this place, and those were of the “orchards” and “gardens” kept by the dwellers in the
Iteru
-cities. Here—impossibly—there was a whole garden beneath the earth.

They walked among trees the like of which Shaiara had never seen. She caught the familiar scent of figs, the less-familiar—but still-recognizable—scent of
naranjes.
Beneath the trees there were enormous bushes, but in contrast to the tiny gray-green leaves of the desert plants Shaiara was familiar with, the leaves of these were enormous and brightly colored, and between the leaves, their twigs were heavy with clusters of unfamiliar fruit. The very ground itself was covered with plants—a thick lush grass as shockingly green as if someone had spilled an entire vat of dye here. She stooped down and ran her hand over it. The blades were soft as fur.

In the distance, Shaiara could see bars of strong sunlight filtering down from somewhere above, though when she gazed upward, most of her view was blocked by branches and leaves. Through the few gaps between them, she saw the blackness of stone, and gained the sense of great space. As they walked—Kamar a little ahead, Ciniran beside her,
and Natha and Turan following warily behind—she heard the sound of scuffling through the debris on the forest floor, and no matter how unfamiliar her surroundings, Shaiara was a hunter first. She recognized the sounds of small animals—mice,
sheshu
, perhaps others as strange as the trees and the bushes—fleeing from the approach of something large and unknown. Though it was difficult to see clearly here—the sight-lines were so oddly cluttered, unlike the familiar desert, and it was not possible to see clearly for even so much distance as would be covered by two tents of the Nalzindar—the farther they came, the more certain Shaiara became that this space was vast, larger than the largest oasis she had ever visited. Nor was the terrain beneath her feet level. It sloped downward as she walked, so gently that it was a handful of heartbeats before Shaiara realized that she walked along the side of a hill.

Even though her people had only begun to explore Abi’Abadshar, Shaiara doubted they would have discovered this hidden world from above no matter how long they searched through the sand and the ruins. She could now see that much of the ceiling above was intact, and the places where the sunlight filtered down were often tiny. Seen from above, it would be easy to dismiss them.

“There is much to hunt here,” Turan said. He peered up into one of the strange trees. A small black-furred creature peered back, then grabbed a fruit from a branch and flung it at him. Turan caught it and sniffed at it suspiciously, tucking it into his hunting bag as Shaiara watched. She shared his suspicion. In a strange land, who knew what might be safe to eat?

She raised her hand, stilling Turan’s chatter. She had not heard—or seen—the
ikulas
in too long. In the desert they were trained to run down prey and either kill it outright or hold it at bay until the hunter could come—in either event, to stay with what they coursed. She did not think that was prudent here, and so from beneath her robes Shaiara drew forth a small whistle carved of antelope bone. Any hunter who might need to call their hounds to
heel wore one such; the sound it made could be heard by few Isvaieni and by all
ikulas.
And it carried over a great distance.

She put it to her lips and blew—Ciniran winced—and a few moments later, the four
ikulas
came bounding back through the trees. All four were filthy and blood-matted, and the Nalzindar quickly ran their hands over the animals’ bodies, but the blood was not theirs.

It took nearly (so Shaiara judged) as much time to reach the place where the
ikulas
had been as it would have taken the sun to cross two handspans of the sky, for they moved carefully, and would not let the hounds run ahead. But when they reached it, Shaiara was certain at last that the Nalzindar had found not only a refuge, but a true home.

The bodies of six goats lay upon the grass, each one killed with the single efficient killing bite of an
ikulas.
The surrounding area was deserted, but it was plain to all that until the hounds had arrived, a great herd of goats had grazed placidly here, for the ground was thick with tracks and droppings.

Shaiara breathed a prayer of thanks to the Gods of the Wild Magic. Here was more than food. Here was
wealth.
Goat-hair to weave cloth—though her people were not weavers, there were one or two of them, born to other tents, who yet knew the skill. Food for more than a moonturn, more than a season, and every kind of plant and herb they could possibly need. Their only conceivable lack was salt, but the Barahileth was known for its deadly wastes where salt replaced sand, and even that, the Nalzindar could supply to themselves.

“Come,” she said. “It is time to return.”

Three

The World Beneath the World

B
EFORE ANOTHER MOON
had waxed and waned in the sky above, the Nalzindar had taken full possession of their strange new home. No longer did the
shotors
graze among the ruins above, for there was more-than-abundant forage here below. Now day upon day might pass without anyone venturing up to the sands of the surface, for all that anyone might need was here in the world below.

The long tunnel down which Shaiara and her people had ventured in their first days here at Abi’Abadshar was only the merest fingernail’s-breadth of the city’s subterranean realm. As her hunters had tracked the herd of goats, they had been led through a maze of passages that intertwined like the strands of a hunter’s net. Some passages led to other open spaces such as the first one they had found, vast underground chambers that teemed with a shocking concentration of life. These underground gardens were filled with trees and grass and vines and bushes; with animals such as no one in the desert had ever seen, such as the large fat fluffy-tailed tree-climbing mouse and the chattering black-furred manlike creature the size of a young
ikulas
puppy. There were other animals here such as belonged in the
Iteru
-cities: the shaggy red-coated swine, the goats, the bright-plumaged birds larger than the largest and plumpest rock-dove. Doves there were as well, and bright tiny birds such as no Nalzindar had ever imagined could exist.

At first the hunting falcons were confused by this new place, a place that had no sky. But the Nalzindar trained their creatures well, and soon both falcons and
ikulas
were bringing down game in abundance. The Nalzindar tested each new beast cautiously before adding it to their menu,
and the plants and fruits even more cautiously: what a goat or a
shotor
could safely eat might kill a man.

With the slaughter of fat goats, and swine, and fur-mice, and great-doves, there was fat for the lamps and wool to twist into wicks, and between the lamps and the creation of more and better torches—for the Nalzindar used the bounty of their new home to replace much that they had been forced to leave behind, weaving baskets and mats from twigs and vines and grasses, and harvesting wood to carve into bowls and cups in addition to creating new sources of light—the exploration of even those places which the sun did not reach continued. Beyond the refuge of the gardens, they found chambers where dry sand had drifted in through holes they could not find, and other places where great stone cylinders had fallen, and broken, and blocked further exploration. Seeing these, Shaiara was grateful that so much of this underground world seemed to have been carved from one piece of stone, much as an artisan might carve an object from a single bone. In any place they came to that was built from one stone set upon another, those stones had shifted and fallen.

Shaiara had moved the tribe down to live in the first of the garden-places they had discovered. Kamar had suggested, in the first handful of days after they had come to dwell here, that watchers should be set at the bounds of the city to warn them of discovery. Shaiara had held his words against her heart, then taken them to the tribal elders, speaking against them with a combination of fatalism and practicality. Upon the surface, sentries could be seen as well as see. In day, they would be punished by the fierce heat of the sun; in true night, there would be little to see.

But no hunter would go upon the hunt with only one bowstring for his bow, and the Nalzindar were master hunters. Shaiara was unhappy with the thought that there was only one entrance and exit from their underground home, and set her hunters to the task of finding others. Though her hunters found that there were many openings to the light and air on this level, most of them could only be entered
and departed by birds, and the rest would only permit one person to climb out at a time, and that after scaling several feet of wall. If disaster struck, it was possible that all of the tribe could win its way to freedom through the many escape routes of this sort they had discovered in the time they had been living here, but they would have to abandon all of the
shotors
and all their supplies—and to do that would be to condemn themselves to a lingering death instead of courting a quick one. For that reason, each day Shaiara set a few of the hunters to searching out ways to the surface that the whole tribe at once might be able to use, ways that would allow them to take the
shotors
as well. Once such were found—and better more than one—then supplies could be stockpiled at each exit, and the exits carefully hidden again, and Shaiara would simply hope it was never necessary to use them.

But so far, their searches had been inconclusive. Though they had found what seemed as if they must be many upward-leading openings with terraces, all were choked with sand. Even if they could dig them out, there was no place to put the sand, and to shift it at all was to risk burying themselves.

And there was the hard truth that must be grasped in the hand as well: if this refuge were discovered by their enemies, there was simply no place for the Nalzindar to flee. While it was good to seek ways to escape, it was better still to follow the way of the
sheshu
as it evaded
pahk
and
fenec
, and trust that the Wild Magic that had brought them here would spread its cloak over them. Sentries at the mouth of the tunnel, yes, and at any other entrance they might find, for one did not grow to adulthood in the Isvai by having sand for wits. But for the rest, they would play the
sheshu
in its burrow.

And it was a more luxurious burrow than any of the Nalzindar had ever dreamed might exist. Here beneath the ground, the ground was soft and the air was warm, and there was arrow-cast upon arrow-cast of space. The first day’s explorations had led them to the
Iteru
at which the
creatures of this place slaked their thirsts, and there was not even any need to return to the
Iteru
-courtyard that was exposed to the heat and the sun in order to fill their waterskins. Only a few of the people hunted now, always careful, always watching to be sure that their presence did not upset the Balance of this strange and wonderful place, for it would bring sadness to all the Nalzindar were they to destroy the world beneath Abi’Abadshar, even if they did it to ensure their own survival.