The Feline Wizard (18 page)

Jabar shrugged. “Because it is in their way, most likely. Why do ants bring up any earth? To remove it from their galleries.”

“Then why would they so earnestly pursue any who take it?” Anthony asked.

“Because it is theirs,” Jabar answered. “They would as likely chase flecks of mica or pebbles of quartz that were taken from their hills.”

“Why, then, do they not wage war against your castles?”

Jabar started to answer, but a voice out of the darkness called,” 'Ware! Make way!” and he caught their arms to hurry them aside. Balkis saw a huge shadow swaying toward them, looming higher and higher with every step. It came into the pool of torchlight and she saw it was an elephant with huge panniers strapped to its sides. The mahout rode its neck and steered it with prods of his ankus. Balkis noticed that the mahouts didn't use the hook of the goad, just the point. The huge beast shuffled past and halted by the anthill. The workers stopped their digging and sifting and stepped aside. The mahout gave the elephant a command, and it curled its trunk around the gold-filled basket, lifted it up, and dumped it into a pannier. Then the mahout tapped the side of its head and spoke again, and the huge creature swayed away into the night. The workers took their basket and went on to the next hill.

“Is the elephant taking the gold back to the castle so soon, or will he wait till both his panniers are filled?” Balkis asked.

“He will not go back to the castle.” Jabar's teeth flashed in a smile. “When both his panniers are filled, his mahout will direct him to join the caravan, and they shall leave the valley well before sunrise.”

“So soon as that?” Balkis asked in surprise. “So much gold in one night?”

“The panniers will only be half full,” Jabar said, “for the metal is heavy, and there will be only half a dozen animals in the caravan—but yes, the ants do bring up that much of a night.” He turned to lead them away into the darkness, explaining, “The caravan will journey a day's march to an oasis, where others will join it every evening. When there are twenty, they will depart for their homes.”

Anthony asked, “So the ants do not attack your castles because there is never any gold there?”

“Never,” Jabar confirmed. “The last camel leaves the valley at sunrise, and by the time the ants come up for the day, the scent of gold is too distant for them to follow.”

“How clever!” Balkis said.

They had climbed high enough up the road toward the valley's rim that they left the anthills behind. The roadside torches now illuminated people hoeing rows of plants.

“So you grow your own produce?” Balkis asked.

Before their guide could answer, a voice from the darkness called, “Clear track!” Jabar pulled them back from the roadway. A string of camels came by with four elephants behind them. Each was piled high with bales of goods securely tied.

Balkis stared as they passed. “These do not carry gold, nor do they travel northward.”

“Indeed not,” Jabar agreed. “That is a caravan returning to the valley. Those bales hold salt meat and live poultry, vegetables and flour, cloth, and other goods that we need.”

“Your kings send them?” Balkis asked.

“Why not? The caravan must come back for more gold anyway—why not let it bring supplies?”

“Do you never have fresh food?”

“Every castle has a garden within its walls,” Jabar replied.

“But what of the fields these people cultivate?”

Jabar led them back onto the road as the last elephant swayed by. “By night, we all take turns in the fields, plowing and sowing—but the ants do the reaping.”

“What a waste of labor!” Anthony cried with a farmer's indignation.

“Not at all, young man,” Jabar told him. “There is little enough game in this valley, after all—as soon as an animal wanders in, the ants bring it down. No, they must have food to eat, or they will not live to dig us more gold—and they are quite content with grain and vegetables. We harvest some for ourselves, of course—but not by day.”

Anthony shuddered. “I should think not!”

A mile farther on, Jabar led them out onto the plateau again. Balkis looked back over a long canyon sprinkled with warm
yellow lights. “It looks like a garden of enchantment,” she said, “but it holds so much danger!”

“It did for our ancestors, surely,” Jabar said, “but with our castles and our knowledge of the ants' ways, it is safe enough now. Indeed, we scarcely ever lose a worker, and any large city has far more deaths due to footpads and accidents.”

Balkis turned back to him with an uncertain smile. “You seem to like it well enough”

Jabar nodded vigorously. “There is a camaraderie, a closeness and sharing, that I have found nowhere else. It may be born of the constant awareness of the danger that lurks outside our walls, but it is all the stronger for that.” He fairly beamed at her, still nodding. “It is a good life, maiden, and if you tire of the jealousies and backbiting of the wide world, remember us.”

“I shall,” Balkis promised, and Anthony nodded agreement.

The stars told them it was midnight when Balkis and Anthony came to another valley. He frowned, gazing at its rocky depths and single wavering strip of greenery, almost black in the moonlight. “The river must plunge underground,” he said, “then rise again here.”

Balkis nodded. “I would guess it has done so for thousands of years, and has carved out these valleys by its passage.”

“If that is so,” Anthony said, “it must have once been a mighty river indeed, for these valleys are a mile and more in width.”

“Perhaps it still is, when the rains are heavy in the mountains.” Balkis pointed downward at a line of broken branches and brush in the limbs of the trees nearest them. “How else would such wrack have been spread so high?”

“A good thought,” Anthony acknowledged. “We are not likely to hear thunder so early in spring, but if we do, let us climb back up here as quickly as possible.”

“If we hear thunder,” Balkis agreed. “Since we do not, I would rather travel near water while we can.”

Anthony agreed, and they started down into the valley as the moon swung lower in the sky. They found no road, only a deer-track, so it took them two hours to reach the valley floor.

“Strange that so few travelers have come here,” Anthony said, but looked over his shoulder at the skeletal branches of oak and ash with the stars behind them and shivered.

“The night brings fear of spirits,” Balkis agreed, “but only to us human folk. The animals who made this track have no dread of such things.”

In the distance an owl hooted. A few minutes later they heard the death-scream of some small animal.

Anthony shuddered. “Perhaps we might do best to build a campfire against the gloom and walk this valley by day.”

“Do you fear things you cannot see?” Balkis jibed.

“Quite right,” Anthony affirmed. “I fear them far more than the things I can see.”

His honesty disarmed Balkis, and she went onward feeling almost ashamed.

They followed the riverbank under bare branches. Balkis shivered in the chill of the desert night and drew her cloak more firmly around her. She had to admit that the leafless trees and silent flow of dark water were unnerving, and reminded herself that they would not be so by day. In the distance something howled, and something else screamed. She shivered—only from the chill, she told herself.

Then she began to hear a different sound.

It was soft at first, soft and distant, but she knew it at once— the drums of war. They rattled in time to men's steps, and they were coming closer, from in front of her, and coming quickly.

Anthony looked about desperately. “Where can we hide?”

A trumpet blared in the distance. Across the valley another answered it, but with a different rhythm.

“Why do they march at night?” Anthony cried.

“If they meant to catch their enemy unaware, they have failed,” Balkis said.

The sounds ceased to approach; they stayed more or less distant, but shouting broke out, and with it the clash of steel, then the screams of the dying.

“Let us go out of this valley, and quickly!” Balkis turned toward the slope half a mile away. “I dislike the feel of this place.”

“Flowing water seems less important now,” Anthony agreed, and turned with her.

Across the meadow they fled by starlight, their eyes on the ground, watching for holes and rocks. The night wind sped no faster than they, nor the owl who sailed overhead, fleeing the shouting and the clamor.

“Only a hundred yards more,” Anthony panted, and sure enough the ground was already rising toward the hillside before them. Then the ground dipped, and a soldier in leather armor rose up before them, circular shield barring their way, battle-axe already swinging down at them.

Anthony shouted and threw himself against Balkis, knocking her out of the axe's path, but it struck at the base of Anthony's neck and cleaved straight through to his hip. Balkis screamed and threw herself at him, already catching up her gown to stanch the flow of blood before seeing it. Then she saw a spear-point emerge from her chest and stab on into Anthony, who was still intact, and through him and into the axe-wielder, who threw up his hands, mouth widening in a scream that sounded only faintly, echoing as though from a distance.

“Down!” Anthony cried as they both struck the meadow grass—and saw the metal sandals step before them, felt a chill that froze them clear through, and knew that the other foot had trod down through them, then risen. Their owner stepped on past the companions, showing greaved shins, then a kilt of leather straps stiffened with plates of brass, then a brazen back-plate beneath jointed epaulets and a brass helmet with a horsehair crest above all.

“It is a soldier of ancient Macedon,” Anthony exclaimed in wonder.

“It is a ghost!” Balkis cried.

Sure enough, the soldier was smoky gray, and they could see stars through him, no matter how dimly, as he wrenched his spear out of his fallen enemy, who faded into nothingness even as they watched. The victor tucked his spear-butt under his arm and marched on toward the center of the valley, but his boots made no sound, left no print in the grass. The tread of marching men was distant, echoing down the canyons of
time with the shouts and clashing and trumpets and drums of a battle long past.

“This is a haunted valley, and the ghosts can have it!” Anthony declared. “Come!”

His arm helped Balkis to her feet, and together they fled up the hillside. Twice more warriors rose to block their paths, but they ran on, shivering at the chill as the ghostly battle-axes slid through them but not pausing for a second, their fear of the ghosts only lending wings to their feet.

Finally they struggled up the last few feet of slope and collapsed on the level ground above, chilled to the bone, to the marrow, by the piercing of ghostly weapons. They gasped for breath and looked back the way they had come to make sure none of the phantoms had followed them. There were none near, but far away, in the center of the valley, ghost-lights swirled as a ragtag line of barbarians gave way foot by foot to the phalanx of Macedon. They hold their valley dearly, though—undisciplined or not, they were each of them valiant warriors, and two Macedonians died for each of them. But the phalanx clearly prevailed.

The breeze blew them the sound of battle again, and Balkis shivered. “What ghosts are these who fight a battle long past, again and again every night?”

“My ancestors,” Anthony said, voice grim and face hard.

Balkis glanced at him and felt sympathy flow. To lessen the pain, she asked, “Which side?”

“Both.” Anthony seemed shaken as he gazed down at the ghost-battle below. “I had thought the tale to be only someone's dream spoken aloud, nothing but some spinning of an after-dinner rhyme that held better than most—but I see now that it is more.”

The tale clearly disturbed him as much as the ghosts he had just endured. “Tell me,” she urged.

Anthony took a breath. “Long ago, hundreds of years, Alexander the Emperor sent a phalanx into the desert to take submission of each tribe who held a valley or oasis here. All surrendered without fight except the men of one valley—this, it would seem—and the phalanx marched into their land to conquer them. The defenders, though, were truly desert raiders
to whom the valley was only one home of many; they had been hardened by the wasteland and by years and years of raiding caravans. They met the phalanx head-on, then sent outriders to the flanks, and though they lost, there were only a quarter of the Macedonians left alive.”

“What of the raiders?” Balkis asked, her voice hushed.

“They retreated into the mountains, and the Macedonians followed. There they jockeyed for position, neither willing to strike first unless they held the higher ground—and finally settled in place, watching one another across a ravine and occasionally raiding one another…”

“And became neighbors?” Balkis asked, her eyes huge.

“Their grandchildren did,” Anthony said. “The Macedonians would not budge, for they had their orders from Alexander and would not go back to him until the raiders submitted or every last soldier was dead. They married mountain women from their side of the chasm, while the raiders' wives came up to join them. Their children, though, married the children of the mountaineers on their side of the chasm.”