The Phoenix Endangered (9 page)

Shaiara and Ciniran made their way carefully along the length of the great corridor. Their way was not unencumbered, for though it was as broad and as high as the one above, uncounted years had filled it with dung and debris and crumbled stone. With the weaving of many more baskets and the labor of moonturns, the passage could be cleared—just as the passage above was being cleared of wet sand and poisonous stone-fruit—but the material must be put somewhere, and they could not simply dump it on the sand outside. To do so would be to attract unwanted attention—and any attention at all would be unwanted. Though some of the rooms in the passage above were empty, and might be filled, Shaiara hesitated before ordering any action that would so disrupt the Balance of this place. For the moment, the Nalzindar were but guests. Bad enough that their necessity required them to hunt the
fenec
, the desert cat, and the wild
pakh
—not even for skins (for the
pakh
was a useless creature whose flesh was inedible even by the starving and whose skin could not be tanned), but because the Nalzindar now needed their prey to feed their own hunger. It was true that game was abundant here, but it was also true that the weight measured out by the Eternal Light into each pan of the Great Balance must tally exactly. When new predators arrived in a hunting ground, old predators must go, lest the prey be hunted to destruction. And the Nalzindar were predators.

They reached the end of the corridor, and the shallow terraces that marked the next Descent. Ciniran paused to light the second lamp, and Shaiara blew out the first, tucking it into her pouch to let it cool before refilling it. She and Ciniran continued on, following the marks left upon the walls—first those that many Nalzindar had left in the course of going forth for a day’s hunting and harvesting, but as they went on, the marks became fewer.

T
HE
T
HIRD
D
ESCENT
held little sign of life, though there was evidence here that the beasts that made Abi’Abadshar their home had occasionally ventured down here, most so long ago that their bones—all that remained—crumbled away to dust at the touch. For the first time, Shaiara’s touch discerned ornament upon the walls, though the illumination she and Ciniran carried was not enough to show her the whole of the design. She held the lamp close to the walls, hoping to see.

Wide bands of something that might almost be carved letters—were it not for the fact that it held no shapes that Shaiara recognized—alternated with what might be more pictures like those upon the cups. But the carvings were too vast, and her lamp was too dim. There was not enough light.

Perhaps—if they discovered a way to make proper torches, and if the smoke did not suffocate them—Shaiara would be able to return, and see more clearly what stories these walls told. At last they reached the terraces that led to the Fourth Descent, the limit—so far—of the Nalzindar’s explorations.

“Narkil did not wish to continue so far,” Ciniran said quietly. “I went on alone.”

Silently, Shaiara blessed Narkil’s hesitation, little though she cared for the fact that it had led to Ciniran’s continuing to explore by herself. “Not twice,” was all she said, and Ciniran nodded. Shaiara made fresh marks against the carved stone, indicating clearly that two young female Nalzindar had come this way early in the day. Then she lifted the lamp high, and they continued.

S
HE HAD TAKEN
care to wear her heaviest cloak when they set out, for experience had taught her that the deeper one went into Abi’Abadshar, the colder it became, but they descended now into a bone-deep chill such as Shaiara had never experienced, and Ciniran, who had warned her of it, was just as uncomfortable.

“There is another Descent below this one,” Ciniran said, and Shaiara understood the unvoiced question:
is it possible that they grow colder and colder until water could become ice?
Both of them knew that such a thing was possible, for at certain times of the year, ice could be harvested even in the deep desert, by leaving water out in a shallow metal pan overnight. It was a game played by the children of the Isvaieni at the Gatherings of the tribes, for the desertfolk had no need of ice.

And it was a question Shaiara could not answer.

The walls of the shallow terrace-passage leading to the Fourth Descent were carved as well, and Shaiara felt frustration at not being able to
see
what her hands discerned so clearly. In the distance, she could see the faint smears of Ciniran’s marks upon the wall, angling down and away as the passage descended. While it was true that it would be hard to lose one’s way upon the terraces—no passages led off from them, and one must go either up or down—Ciniran had marked the wall, with a true hunter’s prudence, against the possibility that she might lose her lamp and have nothing but the small glow-marks of the stone-fruit paint to guide her. Such marks as those, simple arrows indicating that a passage had been explored—no more—were not erased when the explorer retraced his or her steps, but left to stand.

To finally reach the bottom of the terraces was a relief, for the careful counting of steps in the darkness was a great strain. Here in the Fourth Descent there was no sign of life at all, nor any sign that any creature between the city’s desertion and the Nalzindar’s arrival had ever ventured so deep. When Shaiara stooped down and ran her hand over the stone beneath her feet, it was as smooth and clean as if it were a fresh-scrubbed skinning-stone. Even the eternal dust—fine as the finest flour—which worked its way into every corner of the passages above had not made its way to this depth.

The barriers here were of a different kind than those Shaiara had seen above. There, all were the same. Here,
each one was different. All were of the same shape, but each was elaborately decorated, no two alike: some inlaid with ivory or bone or metal, others carved. Here, too, the metal upon the barriers was different—not rings, but crescent shapes like a hunter’s bow, or round balls, or only a flat disk. Holding her lamp up close by one of the barriers, Shaiara could see that it had once been painted, for flecks of color still clung to the deep furrows in the design.

Nearly every door opened at her touch, and though she could see, by Ciniran’s marks upon them, which chambers had already been visited, Shaiara wished to see what lay within them for herself.

The first chamber was filled with dust. Ciniran’s quiet warning stopped Shaiara before she entered, but even the opening of the barrier was enough to fill the air with a cloud that made both of them sneeze violently. With determination, Shaiara pushed the barrier through the debris upon the floor until it would go no further.

“I think—once—there was much paper here,” Ciniran said quietly. “Long ago.”

Shaiara nodded. Perhaps something remained—but if it did, would it be marked in any fashion she could read? She thought of the strange carvings upon the walls, and glanced at Ciniran. Her age-mate shrugged slightly. “I put my scarf over my face and went inside. The chamber is large, and its sides are filled with places where one might lay a body. Or even sleep. Now: dust.” Her expression was plain for Shaiara to read:
how could there be so much paper in the world
? “And there are more chambers beyond.”

Shaiara nodded. They left the barrier open, and continued.

The next barrier opened into a chamber so small that Shaiara’s lamp lit every part of it. The walls were entirely covered in wood, and she could see that once they had been as elaborately inlaid as the barrier to the chamber itself, but now the walls were dried and cracked with age, and pieces of the inlay had fallen to the floor. She could not imagine what the purpose of this space had been.

The next barrier could not be shifted at all, and the next several chambers further along the passage, upon being opened, contained much the same as had the first—contents rotted away to dust by the passage of uncounted years. Though there might be some information to be gained by searching them thoroughly, their contents were not that which had disturbed Ciniran so greatly.

The barrier to that chamber slid inward easily, for in this chamber little had rotted away. Ciniran took the lamp from Shaiara’s hand and stepped forward into the darkness. Shaiara had counted fifteen paces, watching the small flame strike gleams from gold everywhere around her, when Ciniran stopped and lowered the lamp. There was a surface before her, a cube of green stone as tall as a kneeling
shotor
, and it was not opaque, but translucent, for even the tiny flame of the lamp made the stone glow.

Shaiara reached into her pouch and withdrew the second lamp. In this room, she wanted all possible light. When she had filled it again and lit it, she set it beside the first.

Ciniran had selected samples of the items here to bring back to their camp, but knowing Shaiara would come to see for herself, had not brought one of every item that was here. Now Shaiara lifted a long heavy chain from the top of the green stone cube—each link was fashioned in the seeming of an adder, its tail held within its mouth, and each adder’s eyes glinted with tiny gems. Beside it lay a dagger—cunningly wrought, but the blade was of soft useless gold. What manner of people were these, to have made weapons that could not be used?

There were more cups, both the tall footed sort, and the more familiar ones such as Shaiara might use herself—though hers were clay or wood, and not gold, silver, or glass. There was another bowl of gold, so large that Shaiara could not encircle it with both arms, and it was filled with what seemed, at first glance, to be fresh fruit—both the figs and sand-plums familiar to any desert-dweller, and the strange new fruits the Nalzindar had only found here in Abi’Abadshar. Yet when Shaiara touched them, all were stone.

There were tall footed cylinders of both gold and white silver, whose purpose Shaiara could not guess at, for though there was a small opening in the top, they would hold no more than a drop or two of liquid.

And this was only that which stood upon the top of the cube. Along one wall there were chests—some of metal, some of wood—piled four and five and even six high. Some of the highest had fallen down and broken open, and this was the source of the disks Ciniran had brought back. There were gold ones, and others of white silver, and still others in metals of other colors—green and blue and red—and many that the years had simply turned black. Not all were round: Shaiara held her lamp over one glittering spill of metal and counted more shapes than she had fingers and toes.

The chamber was not small, nor was the green cube the only cube within it. Shaiara saw things she recognized—a metal coffee-service; a broken
shamat
-set—and things she could not imagine the use of—something like a hunter’s bow, if a hunter’s bow had been made of gold and then savagely twisted. There were low tables of metal and of bone which had survived the passage of time, some of wood which had collapsed beneath their burdens, still others which had survived. And every surface, and the floor between them, was covered with
objects.
Here, in this single chamber, there were more
things
than were possessed by all the Isvaieni together, and after a while, Shaiara found herself doing nothing more than standing beside the nearest cube—one of clear yellow stone—resting her forearm upon it and gazing down at the objects that it held in confused exhaustion.

Behind her, Ciniran refilled the other lamp with deft motions. “I do not know what to think,” she said.

Shaiara drew a deep breath. “
I
think,” she said, “that should we need cups for drinking or bowls for washing, it would be well to remember this place, and return. But if we do not, there is nothing here that is of the least use.”

Four

Magic’s Cost and Magic’s price

W
HEN THEY STOPPED
to make camp that evening, Tiercel could see that Harrier was no closer to being settled in his mind about having received the Books of the Wild Magic, though he was apparently much closer to fighting with Kareta.