The Hidden City (54 page)

‘Well?' Sparhawk called when he had covered half the distance.

‘Ogerajin didn't know what he was talking about,' Kalten shouted.

Sparhawk swore.

‘Do you mean there's no opening?' Talen called.

‘Oh, the opening's there all right,' Kalten replied, ‘but it's at least five feet to the left of where your crazy man said it would be.'

‘Please don't do that, Talen,' Bevier said. ‘Either go all the way in or stay outside. It's very disturbing to see the bottom half of you sticking out of solid rock that way.'

‘It's not solid, Bevier.' The boy stuck his hand into the rock and pulled it out again to demonstrate.

‘Well, it
looks
solid. Please Talen, in or out. Don't hover in between.'

‘Can you feel anything at all when you poke your head through?' Mirtai asked.

‘It's a little cooler in there,' Talen replied. ‘It's a sort of cave or tunnel. There's light at the far end.'

‘Can we get the horses through?' Sparhawk asked.

Talen nodded. ‘It's big enough for that – if we go through in single file. I guess Cyrgon wanted to keep down the chances of anybody accidentally discovering the opening.'

‘You'd better let me go first,' Sparhawk said. ‘There might be guards at the other end.'

‘I'll be right behind you,' Kalten said, retrieving his dagger and drawing his sword.

“Tis a most clever illusion,' Xanetia observed, touching the rock face on the left of the gate. ‘Seamless and indistinguishable from reality.'

‘It's been good enough to hide Cyrga for ten thousand years, I guess,' Talen said.

‘Let's go in,' Sparhawk said. I want to have a look at this place.'

There was difficulty with the horses, of course. No matter how reasonably one explains something to a
horse, he will not willingly walk into a stone wall. Bevier solved the problem by wrapping cloth around their heads, and, with Sparhawk in the lead, the party led their mounts into the tunnel.

It was perhaps a hundred feet long, and since the opening at the far end was still in shade, the light from it was not blinding. ‘Hold my horse,' Sparhawk muttered to Kalten. Then, his sword held low, he moved quietly toward the opening. When he reached it, he tensed himself and then stepped through quickly, whirling to fend off an attack from either side.

‘Anything?' Kalten demanded in a hoarse whisper.

‘No. There's nobody here.'

The rest of them cautiously led their horses out of the tunnel.

They had emerged into a tree-shaded swale carpeted with winter-dry grass and dotted with white stone markers. ‘The Glen of Heroes,' Talen murmured.

‘What?' Kalten asked.

‘That's what Ogerajin called it. I guess it sounds nicer than “graveyard”. The Cyrgai seem to treat their own dead a little better than they do the slaves.'

Sparhawk looked across the extensive cemetery. He pointed to the western side where a slight rise marked the edge of the burial ground. ‘Let's go,' he told his friends. I want to see just exactly what we're up against.'

They crossed the cemetery to the bottom of the rise, tied their horses to the trees growing there and carefully crept to the top.

The basin was significantly lower than the floor of the surrounding desert, and there was a fair-sized lake nestled in the center, dark and unreflective in the morning shadows. The lake was surrounded by winter-fallow fields, and a forest of dark trees stretched up the slopes of the basin. There was a sort of rigid tidiness about it all, as if nature itself had been coerced into straight lines
and precise angles. Centuries of brutal labor had been devoted to hammering what might have been a place of beauty into a stern reflection of the mind of Cyrgon himself.

The hidden valley was perhaps five miles across, and on the far side stood the city that had remained concealed for ten eons. The surrounding mountains had provided the building materials, and the city wall and the buildings within were constructed of that same brownish-black volcanic basalt. The exterior walls were high and massive, and a steep, cone-like hill, its sides thickly covered with buildings, rose inside those walls. Surmounting that hill was yet another walled enclosure with black spires rising on one side and, in startling contrast to the rest of the city, white spires on the other.

‘It's not particularly creative,' Bevier observed critically. The architect doesn't seem to have had much imagination.'

‘Imagination is not a trait encouraged amongst the Cyrgai, Sir Knight,' Xanetia told him.

‘We could swing around the sides of the basin and get closer,' Kalten suggested. ‘The trees would hide us. The ground around the lake doesn't offer much concealment.'

‘We've got some time,' Sparhawk said. ‘Let's get away from the mouth of this tunnel. If it's the only way in or out of the valley, there's bound to be traffic going through here. I can see people working in those fields down there – slaves, most likely. There'll be Cyrgai watching them, and there may be patrols as well. Let's see if we can pick up some kind of routine before we blunder into anything.'

Berit and Khalad made a dry camp in another cluster of jumbled boulders two days west of the place where they had seen the strange soldiers. They watered their horses
sparingly, built no fire, and ate cold rations. Khalad spoke very little, but sat instead staring moodily out at the desert.

‘Quit worrying at it, Khalad,' Berit told him.

‘It's right in front of my face, Berit. I know it is, but I just can't put my finger on it.'

‘Do you want to talk it out? Neither one of us is going to get any sleep if you spend the whole night wrestling with it.'

‘I can brood quietly.'

‘No, actually you can't. We've been together too long, my friend. I can hear you thinking.'

Khalad smiled faintly. ‘It has to do with those creatures,' he said.

‘Really? I never would have guessed. That's all you've been thinking about for the past two days. What did you want to know about them – aside from the fact that they're big, ugly, savage, and they've got yellow blood?'

That's the part that's nagging at me – that yellow blood. Aphrael says that it's because they breathe with their livers. They do that because what they're used to breathing isn't air. They can get along here for a little while, but when they start exerting themselves, they start to fall apart. The ones we saw the other day weren't just running around aimlessly out there in the desert. They had a specific destination in mind.'

‘That cave? You think it might be a haven for them?'

‘Now
we're starting to get somewhere,' Khalad said, his face growing intent. The Peloi are probably the best light cavalry in the world, but Klæl's soldiers are almost as big as Trolls, and they seem to be able to ignore wounds that would kill one of us. I don't think they're running from the Peloi.'

‘No. They're trying to run away from the air.'

Khalad snapped his fingers.
‘That's it!'
he exclaimed.
‘That's
why they break off and run back to those caves.
They aren't hiding from the Peloi. They're hiding from the air.'

‘Air is air, Khalad – whether it's out in the open or inside a cave.'

‘I don't think so, Berit. I think Klæl has filled that cave with the kind of air his soldiers are used to breathing. He can't change all the air on the whole world, because it would kill the Cyrgai as well as all the rest of us, and Cyrgon won't let him do that. He
can
fill the cave with that other kind of air, though. It'd be the perfect place. It's closed-in and more or less air-tight. It gives those monsters a place to go when they start to get winded. They can rest up in there and then come back out and fight some more. You'd better pass this on, Berit. Aphrael can let the others know that Klæl's soldiers are hiding out in caves because they can breathe there.'

‘I'll tell her,' Berit said dubiously. ‘I'm not sure what good it's going to do us, but I'll tell her.'

Khalad leaned back on his elbows with a broad grin. ‘You're not thinking, Berit. If something's giving you problems, and it's hiding out in a cave, you don't have to go in after it. All you have to do is collapse the entrance. Once it's trapped inside, you can forget about it. Why don't you pass this on to Aphrael? Suggest that she tell the others to collapse every cave they come across. She won't even have to do it herself.' Then he frowned again.

‘What's wrong now?'

‘That was too easy,' Khalad told him, ‘and it doesn't really help all that much. As big as those beasts are, you could collapse a whole mountain on them, and they could still dig their way out. There's something else that hasn't quite come together yet.' He held up one hand. ‘I'll get it,' he promised. ‘I'll get it if it takes me all night.'

Berit groaned.

* * *

‘I have decided to go with you, Bergsten-Priest,' Atana Maris replied haltingly in heavily accented Elenic. She had come up from behind their column when they were five days south of Cynestra.

Bergsten suppressed an oath. ‘We're an army on the move, Atana Maris,' he tried to explain diplomatically. ‘We wouldn't be able to make suitable arrangements for your comfort or safety when we stop for the night.'

‘Arrangements?' She looked at Neran, the translator, with a puzzled expression.

Neran spoke at some length in Tamul, and the tall girl burst out laughing.

‘What's so funny, Atana?' Bergsten asked suspiciously.

‘That you would worry about
that,
Bergsten-Priest. I am a soldier. I can defend myself against any of your men who admire me too much.'

‘Why have you decided to come along with us, Atana Maris?' Heldin stepped in.

‘I had a thought after you left Cynestra, Heldin-Knight,' she replied. ‘It has been in my mind to go find Itagne-Ambassador for much weeks now. You are going to the place where he will be, so I will go with you.'

‘We could carry a message to him for you, Atana. You don't really have to go along.'

She shook her head. ‘No, Heldin-Knight. It is a personal matter between Itagne-Ambassador and me. He was friendly to me when he was in Cynestra. Then he had to go away, but he said to me that he would write letters to me. He did not do that. Now I must go find him to make sure that he is well.' Her eyes went hard. ‘If he
is
well, I must know if he does not want to be friendly to me any more.' She sighed. ‘I hope much that his feelings have not changed. I would not want to have to kill him.'

* * *

‘I want no part of this,' Gahennas said abruptly, standing up and giving the rest of them a reproving look. ‘I was willing to join with you if it meant tweaking Cieronna's nose, but I'm not going to involve myself in treason.'

‘Who said anything about treason, Gahennas?' Chacole asked her. ‘There won't be any
real
danger to our husband. We're just going to make it
appear
that there's a plot against him – and we're going to plant enough evidence to lay the plot at Cieronna's door. If something
were
to happen to Sarabian, the Crown Prince would be elevated to the imperial throne, and Cieronna would be regent. We'll expose her plot before anything really happens, and she'll be totally discredited – probably imprisoned – and we won't have to kow-tow to her any more.'

‘I don't care what you say, Chacole,' the jug-eared Tegan Empress declared flatly. ‘You're putting something in motion that's treasonous, and I won't be a party to it. I'm going to keep an eye on you, Chacole. Dismiss your spies and drop this wild scheme at once, because if you don't –' Gahennas left it hanging ominously in the air as she turned on her heel and stalked away.

‘That was very clumsy, Chacole,' Elysoun drawled, carefully selecting a piece of fruit from the silver platter on the table. ‘She might have gone along if you hadn't gone into such detail. She didn't
have
to know that you were actually going to send out your assassins. You weren't really sure of her yet, and you went too fast.'

‘I'm running out of time, Elysoun.' Chacole's tone was desperate.

‘I don't see the need for all this urgency,' Elysoun replied, ‘and how much time did you save today? That Tegan hag's going to be watching your every move now. You blundered, Chacole. Now you're going to have to kill her.'

‘Kill?'
Chacole's face went white.

‘Unless you don't mind losing your head. One word from Gahennas can send you to the block. You aren't really cut out for men's politics, dear. You talk too much.' Elysoun rose lazily to her feet. ‘We can discuss this later,' she said. ‘I have an enthusiastic young guardsman waiting for me, and I wouldn't want him to cool off.' She sauntered away.