The Long Caravan

And in the desert there stood the walls of a ruined city, and it was Pyr Thouthi, of many stories and myths. But the walls were silent, and the great stones of the dwellings and shops and barracks within were broken and strewn about. There was nothing left, and no stories would ever again be made about Pyr Thouthi, City of Sand and Dream.

The caravan moved on. My camel was weary, and I even more so. We had been walking for a day and a half, at least. Our leader and commander would not tell us from what we were fleeing--for that's surely what it must have been. And though I never saw him, when we beheld the silent walls and broken works at Pyr, I heard an anguished cry from the front of the column.

"Were we to have stopped?" I asked no one but my camel. I was badly startled when he answered: "The caravan never stops, my Lord."

His words shook my tired mind to abstraction. My brow furrowed as I tried to concentrate. "But we cannot have been walking thus forever," I ventured, sounding petulant in my own ears. He did not answer me that time.

I thought of the wonderful sweet bread the people of G'tull sold us, how we ate until we almost burst. I recalled the joy of waking in the sunrise next to the exotic Sihi woman in the thin grasses outside Dargith.

"If I woke with the woman, then I must have slept," I murmured--whether to myself or the camel I was unsure. "And if I slept, we MUST have stopped." The logic was sound, but my exhausted mind still fretted it.

The camel spit--away from me, for a change--and lifted its majestic head. "It must have been a dream you had while in your saddle," he stated, sounding like a tired parent. "You have been beside me every day walking, or astride me on the nights your feet stumble, sleeping in your saddle or just leaning against my hump like a dead thing."

"May I ride in the saddle now?" I asked, thoroughly worn out from the excitement of the past several days.

"Don't ask ME, my Lord. The Captain will tell you when it is time to mount."

Then we passed from loose sand onto the hard, desolate cracks of the stretches of Loll, and the camel grew silent and somehow morose. Was he dreaming of the passes of the Blue Mountains, where the Nine Waters begin? Or the oasis beside the Turbian road, where the Shalam palms grew in such thick groves that one had to hack his way in to celebrate in the cool sweet waters?

"D'gho is the place I miss," I said, but he did not respond. His silence unnerved me, although I did not know why, for he rarely spoke anyway.

The night became utterly dark around us, and the caravan slowed. There were no stars above us, so the gods could not see to guide us. We heard distant voices raised in joyous song, followed by sinister, wicked chants, much closer. All in the caravan were silent: we were among the Hyongee. Their voices called, lulled, pleaded, threatened. But to follow them meant certain death, falling into the unseen pits they dug with spades made from the bones of their prey. To follow them meant death, yes... but to talk back with them meant madness.

Perversely, I had a building urge to shout, to be heard. I could not explain, but I felt I had to speak, to break the silence. My eyes felt wide and hot with the oppressive silence, and my throat was bulging with a building sound I would scarce be able to hold back another minute. Before some damning exclamation of greeting could be forced from me, however, a different voice rose in the black night. The traveler behind me in the great caravan began to weep and plead.

"Please!" the voice shouted, scaring beasts and men alike. "Tell me my name! I must know the name you have birthed for me! You must tell--"

The Hyongee fell silent, and so did the traveler's voice. There was no more sound in the dark for the remainder of the night. Even the soft shuffle of the camels' feet seemed muted and damped. We walked in this silence of fear until the sun was fully in the sky.

Now the pits of the Hyongee were visible, though barely. But there was no sign of the man who had traveled behind me for so long. There had been no sounds from behind me in the night, nothing seen nor felt; but he was gone. And I knew, as certainly as Ptwaitha hoarded the fillow ore long ago atop her altar in the volcano, the Hyongee currently had my neighbor in one of these hellish pits--whether to eat or torture or ignore until death, no one knew.

The light of day brought safety in that we could see, but the vista before us was bleak. Stone and sand and giant, ancient, broken spires--the beginnings of the road to Ashtulan. That road went nowhere, however, since many lifetimes ago, and neither gods nor camels would walk with a man down that wasted avenue; and we turned east.

The day waxed, waned, disappeared in gauzy oranges and purples, indigo and black. The stars stood guard that night, and there was joy in the caravan when we heard of the victory at Morghán.

"Who was fighting, and what for? And what did they win?" I wondered aloud. The camel snorted (derisively, it seemed) and spit at my feet.

Days blended together. The Captain let us ride, told us to walk, according to his whim. We ate the meager bean-like rations at will, but the fare was so tough and unappealing that many in the great parade had grown gaunt, like the Rhummin in the Shining Southlands. My camel grew weary of my mutterings and took to trying to land his great wide hooves on top of my feet before I had barely uttered three words; and a silent tension grew between us.

We reached the edge of the grasses one day as it rained refreshingly on us. The wet camels stank, but the tears of the gods washed us clean of our fear and doubts and secret muttered curses. The borderland town of Gurr saw true rejoicing that day, as we skipped and ran in circles in the fresh rain like children.

But when the dancing stopped, I thought about the man who no longer walked behind me in the caravan, and I grew somber. I thought of the women who had gone mad, the previous leader of the caravan who had set himself afire one night and cackled like a happy little baby as he burned to death. I wondered if I would ever see the tiered and terraced gardens of D'gho again.

"The gods never have favored an unclean man."

I looked at him with skeptical incomprehension, but the camel did not repeat himself. Then a cry came waving back the long file, and those of us who could mounted our camels. I thought I heard mine murmur something beneath me, but I almost instantly fell into dreams as he rolled smoothly forward with our line.

Yet as I faded into the dream, it seemed, too, that I was waking, and this new truth had no camels, nor deserts, nor death and forgetfulness. The cool breeze came across the waters of the River Leel, and the small sail of the small boat in which I found myself spared me from any real heat of the benevolent yellow sun. The man at the tiller was silent, his eyes long and lonely; but he was neither sullen nor morose. When I spoke to him, he was pleasant with me, but I could tell his heart dwelt not in our talk but in the far away place he was trying to look, somewhere the boat had been, somewhere his love had been--perhaps high in the Irite Mountains where the waters of the Leel are young, or maybe at her mouth in the swampy regions of Dwehll.

I turned away from the steersman and looked ahead, feeling the hopeful wind on my face. We passed the villages of Mond and F'nool and Mond-Eil, each tapestried in brilliant blues and vivid reds and hopeful greens... each a diligent contestant with the others as the epitome of seduction to passing Rivermen.

I saw Ruhl-Mond heave into view, and I felt the wings of excitement in my belly. Just then, the captain came on deck, a dark man of stern temper. He looked at Ruhl-Mond, and then he looked at me.

"You'll have no business there, traveler," he said. "Not today; not ever."

"Whyever not?!" I exclaimed, standing indignantly. But my foot tangled in the loose ropes, and I lost balance, tumbling over the side of the small boat.

As I tried futilely to swim--of which I have never been able--I heard the man's startling words, muffled and muted by the lapping water, echo down into the depths with me: "Because the gods never have favored an unclean man!"

As I sank down into the dark water, I was, at the same time, standing up from the ground. The earth where I had fallen was parched and powdery, dragging on one's feet; the air smelled of alkali.

I felt the caravan slow and shift, as a huge creature might ponderously shift position as it sleeps. I saw it then for the first time, though something deep inside me knew I had seen it many first times before. I stared against the gasping sun, squinted across the heat into the desert. And in the desert there stood the walls of a ruined city, and it was Pyr Thouthi, of many stories and myths.