A stone altar stood there, and I knew it well enough. In the white bowl there was a nickering and a shadow. But I was not afraid.
“So Karrakaz Enorr,” whispered the no-voice in my brain, and I knew which tongue it used, now that I bad heard the dream ghosts speak it. “I am Karrakaz. The Soulless One. You do not think you know why you are here, but you are here because Karrakaz is here, and we are one thing, you and I. I have grown since the volcano. You have fed me well. I will destroy you, but first we shall be one thing. Let me give you Power to rule these Shlevakin. They are only little things and much beneath you. But how dangerous the lit-
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tie poison ants who will eat you alive. You will not find the Jade, so I will give you a little Power, Princess of the Lost, before your Darak turns from your cursed face, and the jackals tear you.”
It seemed good to me. The word Karrakaz had used-“Shlevakin,” the filthy dregs, the mud and excrement of an inferior people-so right to call them that, they were so far beneath me, what I was and what I might have been. But before I could stretch out my hand and say, “Give it to me,” some elemental thing took hold of me, and shook me. I clung to the stone of the tower before I could be shaken down, and screamed furiously, “Let me alone!”
“Kill it,” the no-voice said.
My hands found a huge loose tile, and I grasped it and thrust it out toward what seemed to be tormenting me.
There was a crash, loud as thunder, in my right ear. The tower disintegrated and I fell.
I seemed to fall, but not far. I opened my eyes, and was lying on the red and green stones of the theater steps. A hand got my arm, and pulled me up again almost immediately. It could be no other hand but Barak’s.
His face was pale and angry in the moonlight.
“You woke and followed me,” I said.
“And found you standing here like a block of stone with your eyes wide open. I shook you and you didn’t wake up. If you have these fits, you’re a fool to walk up so high.”
It was Darak, then, who had kept me from the evil in the tower. Yet I could not have been in the tower after all. The wings were gone for sure.
“You’re coming back now,” Darak grumbled. “This place is as safe as the Pit of Death. A tile fell from nowhere just now and nearly brained both of us.”
I could see where it had smashed. He had pushed me clear, and I was bruised to prove it. I felt weak and stupid and afraid. I was glad he dragged me away, across the ruined city, back to the camp.
The fires were still alight, but mostly men were asleep. A few sentries prowled.
Darak set me on the rug bed, and pulled off my boots.
“I imagine you still have your woman’s trouble,” he said to me. I nodded. “So I don’t even get a reward.”
He arranged us for sleep with an endearing selfishness, his head on my shoulder.
But I did not sleep. I lay, stiff and cold, waiting for the
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morning, waiting to be away, yet glad to be awake, for I feared the dreams the city would give me now.
It was near dawn. There is a different scent in the air at dawn; one could tell it blindfold. There came a faint drumming under me. I thought I imagined it, but it grew.
“Darak!” I hissed.
He woke and growled at me. But then the earth moved beneath us.
In another second we were flung apart and together. Weapons in the tent, chairs, the brazier, tilted over, and the poles went too, bringing the hide, down on top of us. Spilled coals licked at the rugs, and caught. In a moment the tent was blazing. It seemed incredibly difficult to get free now that there was no longer any obvious opening. The flames on our heels, we hacked and scrabbled a way out. The ground was still sliding sideways. Stones flew by, and bits of paving lifted and went down.
It settled as abruptly as it had begun.
I stood up. A pillar had fallen across the road, crushing three tents, and putting out a fire or two. The tents, for some reason, were empty.
“We have earthquakes in the hills, too,” Darak said. “This wasn’t so bad.”
Maggur and Kel came running up, and another man who flung water on the burning hide.
I stared back over the city, and felt a pent-up anger and hatred swelling at me, for the moment impotent.
“Darak,” I said, “we must ride now. Quickly.”
He glanced at me, and nodded. “As you say.”
But he made no great hurry about it, and the men, as always, took their cue from him. Even the nervous dallied. After all, they had spent a night here, and were still unharmed; a little more delay could make no difference.
Finally, the caravan moved, and the sun was up, burning a round white hole in the sky. The horses were restless, frightened by the quake, and still uneasy. Men ate as they rode, throwing back bones to lie among the bones of the city.
It took an hour to get through the length of it, and all that time I felt some menace on every side, and it seemed we were going so slowly. Overhead the light turned gradually yellow as a rotten peach. The horses tossed their heads, and drew back their lips silently.
Suddenly the threat was very close. I seized Barak’s arm.
“Ride fast now, or we will die here!”
He did not take his orders from me, but this he took. He
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knew me now. He turned and gave the jackal’s sharp bark which was their signal for danger and speed, then dug in his spurs, and struck my horse across the flank.
The horses needed little encouragement. They bolted, and the others behind bolted too. The wagons ground and roared after us.
And at that moment, the city rose against us. Or against me alone, perhaps.
They called it the “earthquake” afterward, but it was not. The earth drummed and rumbled, it is true, but nothing fell except the last wagons, because the paving heaved up and tilted them. At first there was stillness, and then a wind came screaming across the city toward us from both sides, and the wind never blew two ways at once that I had seen before. Stones whirled up from inside the city, pebbles and little chips, and then big blocks and gigantic tiles, and all of them were caught up in that wind, and hurled at us. The tops of the pillars seemed to fly off and fling themselves too, and huge pieces of roofs. The horses screamed and reared and plunged, the wagons leaped and went over. Metal chests of weapons crashed on the road, and knives and daggers fell out in a silvery rain. I bowed my head against my horse’s neck. Behind me, Kel squealed as a missile struck straight through into his brain and killed him. The yellow light ran past us like water, and I thought I should be dead in an instant, but I did not understand death, only the pain, and so I thought of it with terror. Flying stuff nicked my face and hands with stinging chisels.
But we were on the outskirts of that place of bones, Keeool, the Evil One. Suddenly the ghastly hail dropped back. I heard the prolonged rattle of it as it settled. Our horses stopped still on their own, sweating. I turned and looked.
Behind us, the way was littered with bits of smashed stone. Two wagons were down, dead horses stretched out in front, and dead men and spilled knives scattered about them, like broken flowers on their graves.
Darak wiped the blood from his face.
“Gleer, Ellak, get your men and come back with me. Bring your horses.”
“No,” I said, “no, Darak.”
He ignored me.
And the city ignored him. This, then, had been for me. Or perhaps it was over.
He and the scared looking men cut the dead horses free, got one of the wagons up, and bundled new horses into the
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shafts. New men got onto the box. The other wagon was completely wrecked, and so the stuff in it was unloaded into other wagons, and onto spare ponies and horses. Nothing was left at last, except the dead. I could see Kel, lying only a few yards behind, among the last columns. I did not dare go back to him. Maggur left me, and went to Kel, and picked him up. He carried him down to the wagon, and there he was burned with all the rest.