The Search for Kä (19 page)

The Skarkel River flowed southeast of the city, to interface with the Kapiral in a treacherous, salty bog. To the southwest, the land was less watered, and therefore less fertile. We soon left behind any trace of farmland and traveled through the gray, scrubby brush that somehow survived in the salty sand of the Gandalaran deserts.

Over the hours of travel, we realized we were following shallow, wide stairsteps—flat plateaus that led gradually downward. There was no wind, but our passing stirred up clouds of fine, stinging dust, and we wrapped our scarves tightly around our faces, leaving only our eyes exposed. It was not the first desert crossing the three of us had made together, nor was it the most difficult—but it was uncomfortable. Gandalara is always hot, but the reflective quality of the sand in the desert made it seem suffocatingly, blisteringly hot.

We slipped, without discussion, into the efficient travel pattern of moving for three hours, resting for one, allowing extra rest time for Keeshah when he asked for it. That cut our travel time by nearly a quarter, so that we reached what I judged to be the vicinity of Kä in midafternoon of our second day.

The land formations we followed had become more clearly defined, and we found ourselves approaching a ridge that marked the end of one of the long flat areas. Keeshah carried us up to it—and we looked down on Kä.

Tarani gasped and expressed the same thing I was thinking. “Surely it cannot be this simple,” she said.

I shook my head. “We've found the city,” I said, “but not the sword. When I shared memory with Zanek, I saw a huge room where he displayed the Bronze. It would have taken a big building to house that room, in the ‘official' part of the city. Any suggestions?”

Kä was enormous. We had stumbled on the one specific vantage point that gave us the best view of the city. We dismounted, allowed ourselves and Keeshah a ration of water, then spent some time looking down on the seat of the ancient Kingdom.

“I do not understand,” Tarani said. ‘The city is not ‘hidden' at all—it hardly seems damaged by the passing years. Why has it not been located, and plundered?”

“We don't know that it hasn't,” I said, “but if that happened, I'll bet it occurred just after the breakup of the Kingdom, when people still remembered, specifically, the wealth of the city. As for why nobody knows where it is now,” I said, shrugging, “Who cares? There's nothing but desert beyond it. Even those mountains,” I added, waving to the craggy foothills not far to the west, “are desert-dry. There is nothing here to bring people
past
Kä, to keep its location fresh in the All-Mind. If it had a higher location, and were even faintly visible from the desert route between Raithskar and the Refreshment House at Yafnaar, it might still be popular with history students. But look at it—it's in a hole.”

She did look. ‘Those buildings on the far side of the city—the regular grouping, do you see?”

I followed her pointing arm, and did see what she meant. There was a large center building and, radiating outward, a set of smaller ones. It was reminiscent of the arrangement of Lord City—further encouragement, since the Last King had been the one to lay out the construction of that settlement above Eddarta. The rest of Kä might have been transplanted from Raithskar. There was a large open area near the big building Tarani had noticed, and several smaller openings scattered around it. I presumed they served as Raithskar's did, as centers for specific business districts.

“I think you're right,” I told Tarani. “Shall we go investigate?”

“We shall go into the city,” she said, “and enter the first building which will provide shelter from the heat. You will tell me why it was so important that I come here with you.
Then
we shall seek out the sword.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but simply closed it again.

“The time has come,”
ran the quote, remembered by Ricardo, through my mind,
“to talk of many things.” In other words, she's right; I've run out of procrastination room.

Keeshah took us down the slope below the ridge, which was less steep than it seemed, and through the streets of Kä. I had been correct in identifying the building material as stone, at least for the buildings we had seen from the ridge. Their walls were made of small sections of stone, not quarried smooth, but apparently selected and matched for size and color. Whatever had been used to cement the stones together had been designed for long wear—even after centuries, the rock showed more sand-scarring than the medium material.

There had been many more buildings in the city at one time, however. The land from the base of the ridge to the first stone building was heaped and pitted, and Keeshah found it difficult going until he located a smooth, straight stretch.

“We're on a street,” I said, as the revelation struck me. “All those mounds are buildings that were made of
salt blocks.”

“Like the Refreshment Houses?” Tarani asked. “But those seem as permanent as stone.”

“They are maintained,” I explained, excitedly. “Surface scars can be patched with saturated salt mud, but the crystal structure will break down completely, given time, as these have done. The Fa'aldu can replace blocks when necessary, adding strength and life to the rest of the structure. These had no one to tend them, and eventually they just fell back into sand heaps.”

“You speak of this, as you did of language, as if you have studied the destruction of cities,” she said.

“Uh—” I replied.

She pointed. “There, a stone house. The roof is gone, but it seems large enough that the wall will shade us. We will stop there.”

Remarkably little sand had drifted into the building—thanks, no doubt, to the stifling stillness of the desert air. Keeshah left us at the doorway, preferring the shade of an outer wall to the squeeze represented by the people-sized entries. As he curled up to rest, Tarani and I cleared away a mass of petrified wood pieces that must have been a dining table at one time.

We sat down in the wall's shade and I offered Tarani some food. She shook her head. “I am more hungry for truth,” she said.

“All right,” I said, after considering and rejecting softer ways to start. “I have been lying to you. I am not a ‘Visitor'—not the way you understand it, anyway.”

“But you are not Markasset,” she said.

“No. I had another name, another life, in another
totally different
world, much bigger. My world had a pleth larger than all the land area, and rakor was so common that it was used to build cities larger than all the cities in Gandalara put together. The people of my world spoke many different languages.”

She frowned, concentrating. “I find this—difficult to believe. There is no hint of such a time within the All-Mind.”

“My world has no All-Mind,” I said, and heard her catch her breath. “I learned about the past of my world through reading what other people wrote down, and by visiting cities like this, lost for centuries in the desert. My deserts were different, though, with constant winds that piled the sand so high that our ancient cities were buried under tons of soil.”

She was silent for a long time, then suddenly snapped at me: “Why did you not tell me this at the beginning?”

“I was afraid you would not be able to believe me.”

“You have said that strangely,” she commented. “Not that I
would not
believe, but that I would be
incapable of
belief. You thought the truth would frighten me?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Doesn't it?”

“The strangeness of it disturbs me,” she said, “but it explains many other things which have disturbed me more. For example—your ability to resist mindpower, which thinkers guess has some connection to the All-Mind. It seemed strange to me; I felt that merely having the two identities did not account for your immunity. If you were never a part of the All-Mind, then it is logical that a power associated with it would not affect you.

“I have always known that you
think
differently—with greater detachment,
sometimes
with greater logic,” she said, her voice growing harsher. “I say ‘sometimes' because I see no logic in your hiding this truth. Your deception has only created confusion and distrust. What did you gain by it?”

She saw me hesitate before I answered.

“There is more,” she stated flatly. “Tell me.”

“This part will be harder to believe,” I warned her. She merely waited. “Just before I woke up in Markasset's body,” I said, “I suffered a strange disaster in my own world. I can't begin to tell you what happened or why—but I
have
learned that the person who was with me also came to Gandalara. The person in whose body she appeared was still alive, and—”

“Enough!” Tarani ordered, and scrambled to her feet. I jumped up after her and grabbed her shoulders. She struggled, her eyes not looking at me, her mouth pressed into a tight, defiant line. “Let me go,” she demanded.

I shook her and yelled at her, driven by anger and fear and the need to get this out into the open. “You can't ask for the truth and then reject part of it,” I said. “There is a woman from my world in Gandalara; her mind and thoughts and personality
are alive in you
, Tarani. She had been influencing you in ways you can't really recognize. She might be helping you right now—
she
could be the reason that knowledge of my world doesn't frighten you.”

“No!”
Tarani screamed, and began to struggle furiously, but with no real intent to free herself—which surely saved me some bruises. I held on to her arms throughout the spell of activity, and she suddenly went quiet. She stood in front of me, panting, her fists tightly clenched above the wrists I held.

“How long has your friend been ‘helping' me?” she asked in a low, vicious voice.

“I think—since Recorder school,” I said. “You told me about a period of confusion, when you left the school. I think she came then, and you knew she was here, and part of the reason you have refused to use your Recorder skills is that it would remind you of that time. I think you have been afraid of her, Tarani—but she doesn't deserve your fear or hate. She had no more choice about this than you did.”

“You truly believe there is another person inside of me?” she asked in that same quiet voice.

“I do. I—have spoken to her.”

“And that she has ‘helped' me—to debase myself with Molik, to bond with Yayshah, to—” She faltered. “—to learn to love you? That there is nothing in my life, since school, for which I can take responsibility, whether it be credit or blame? Her voice had risen.

“Is it such a terrible thing to
understand
your past in this way, Tarani?” I asked. “She meant you no harm—”

“She—who?” the girl demanded. “Who is she? Who
was
she, to you, before you both came here?”

“Her name is Antonia,” I said. “We had only just met when the disaster struck.”

“Then how can you speak for her intent?” Tarani demanded.

I was losing patience. Resistance, I had expected—but jealousy? “I can't,” I said. “Why don't you ask
her
what you want to know?”

Tarani became very still.

“Is that possible?” she asked.

“I think the sword can make it possible,” I said, and released her arms. She lowered them and stepped back, seeming to cower against the wall. “Do you remember, in Dyskornis, that I asked you if my being a Visitor disturbed you? You asked if that wasn't the very reason why we were involved in this mess.

“Tarani, when I arrived in Gandalara, Markasset was dead. I didn't even have full control of his memories—until I touched Serkajon's sword. You have touched
this
sword with no effect. But there are two of us, and two of these swords.”

“And you think the one left in Kä will release the one called Antonia?” she asked, the bitterness in her voice shocking me.

“I don't know what it will do,” I admitted. “Your situation is very different. But I
do
know that the two of you can't go on existing entirely separate in the same body. It's impossible to expect that your judgment won't be affected by Antonia—and, now that you know about her, by your suspicion of her interference. The sword may do nothing at all,” I said. “But it seems to be the only possible key.”

“This is the true reason you came in search of the second rakor sword,” she said flatly. “Well, let us
find
the thing!”

She ran out of the building and down the roadway, heading straight for the large square in what we had guessed to be the government section of the city. I followed her with a goodly measure of panic troubling my breathing. We went into the biggest building and searched every room. Suggestion of the rich furnishings still remained in wall paintings, petrified wood carvings, and paper-dry bundles of tapestry, long since fallen from their hangers.

The sword was not there.

“Zefra said the sword was cast aside by the Last King in anger with the Sharith, as he was leaving Kä,” Tarani reminded me. “If so, it would have remained in plain sight. It easily could have been stolen by profiteers.”

“It was too valuable a thing in itself to be destroyed, and no one has heard of it since the last days of the Kingdom,” I said. “It has to be here, still—somewhere.”

Tarani leaned against a wall and crossed her arms. “Because your ‘destiny' demands you be united with your friend?” she asked.

I threw down the crumbling tapestry I had just tried to move and turned to face her. “I want you to listen to what you just said: ‘your' destiny; ‘your' friend. Since when is this only
my
business,
my
need? In Dyskornis, we accepted a
joint
destiny, Tarani—and everything that has happened since has only brought us closer together, made us a more effective team.”