On the western side of the building, the blown sand formed a ramp. They scrambled up it to the lowest point in the ruined wall and found themselves looking down into a sand-filled courtyard. On the far side, a flight of badly eroded steps led up the side of a broken tower. They were looking at a smaller — and more decrepit — version of the fortress on the plateau. But it was a shelter from the wind. As they landed on the soft sand inside the walls, they experienced immense relief to be in a haven of stillness.
They were so tired that for the next half hour they sat in the shade, backs against the wall, luxuriating in the pleasure of no longer having to move their limbs. The wind seemed to be howling with frustration as it tried to reach them. As he sat there, his eyes closed, Niall felt his heartbeat slow down to normal, and waves of relaxation carried him into a realm of freedom from all anxiety.
Ulf touched his arm, and he realised he must have fallen asleep. He looked up at the sky to check the position of the sun, and was surprised to see only dark clouds. The wind had risen to a shriek, and although they were still sheltered from it, the sand on the far side of the courtyard was being blown into clouds. The sky became darker; then, suddenly, they were in complete blackness, surrounded by flying grains of sand. The wind was now so powerful that Niall was afraid it would tear down the wall that gave them shelter.
From their panniers they unpacked the covers of spider silk and wrapped themselves inside them. The wind now seemed to be blowing from all directions at once, as if determined to reach them, and sand blew over the broken wall behind them like water surging over a harbour breakwater. Niall thought of Hamna and Corvig, and hoped they had reached the shelter before the storm began. It seemed to him providential that they had discovered this ruined fort at exactly the right time. If necessary, they could remain here all night.
Gradually, the wind died down. The sky cleared, and the returning light was like day breaking. Then, quite abruptly, the wind died away altogether, and sunlight beat down on them. The sun was still high above them — it must have been about two hours into the afternoon. They were both covered in sand up to their necks. On the opposite side of the courtyard, it had piled up against the wall in a ramp. Niall rose unsteadily to his feet, his legs painfully stiff, and stretched. He tried to peer over the wall behind him but it was a few inches too high. With his feet sinking into the soft sand, he walked across the courtyard and scrambled up the sand to the top of the wall.
What he saw made him gasp. A broken city lay below him. Its ruined buildings were all at least twenty feet lower than the wall he was standing on, and they had now been uncovered by the gale. Facing him was a building with tall columns — not square columns like those in the fortress on the plateau, but slim cylindrical columns, some of them still supporting fragments of lintels and walls. And in the midst of the empty space in the centre of these columns, there was an object that glittered dazzlingly in the sunlight. Niall shouted: “Father, come and look.”
A moment later, Ulf joined him. “Ah yes, I should have known,” he said. “This is the city that was ruled by Kazak’s father Beyrak.”
“You mean they lived above ground?”
“Until the spiders drove them out.”
“And was this place built by Beyrak?”
“No. It’s been here for as long as anyone can remember. They say it was built by some ancient people called the Latina.”
“And what do you think that is?” Niall pointed to the glittering object.
Ulf shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s made of metal.”
It took them ten minutes to find a way down to the sand below, scrambling over the uneven walls. From outside, they could see that the fortress was a square building of carved blocks, the walls partly covered by cement. There were tall, narrow windows, and the door that faced the city was also tall and narrow, with strange unknown symbols carved into the wall above; this door was completely blocked with fallen masonry and sand. Leading from this doorway towards the ruined city was a double row of columns, most of them merely stumps, while broken fragments of column lay on the road. The tops of some were carved with imitation leaves and vines.
Most of the houses were little more than broken walls, although a few had the remains of upper storeys; they were built of a mixture of baked mud and brick. The rooms seemed very tiny, some no more than a few feet square.
While Ulf explored the ruined houses, Niall wandered in the building with the columns, which lay at the end of the causeway. Underfoot were slabs of stone set in some kind of cement. Between the columns were a number of immense rectangular boxes, carved out of stone. When Niall concentrated, and then allowed himself to relax, he received a strong impression that these boxes were somehow associated with the dead.
The causeway ended with a flight of steps, each one twelve feet wide, leading up to the remains of a gateway. Of the temple to which this gateway had once afforded admittance, there was nothing but a great circle of columns, each one standing on a six-foot cube of granite and most surmounted by lintels. Niall was astonished to see that the pavement underfoot was made of small squares of coloured stone, forming pictures of birds and animals. And in the centre of this mosaic pavement stood the glittering object that had so intrigued him. As he approached it, he was amazed to realise that he could see his own reflection in the curved metal surface. But it was frighteningly distorted, and changed as he came closer. The thing looked a little like a huge beetle supported on metal legs, with glass eyes around the front of its head. But it was obvious to Niall that these straight legs, braced apart at an angle, would be useless for walking.
Niall tried to grasp something of its purpose by relaxing his mind and attempting to absorb impressions; but such faint impressions as he received were so confusing that they meant nothing; it was like trying to read the unknown symbols above the door of the fort. Whoever had made this glittering monster, with its mirror-like surface, was quite unlike the men he knew. Yet there was something man-like about this structure; only a human being could have made it. But for what purpose? Could this metal insect have been made to carry men across the desert on its segmented legs?
In the curved side, just below and behind the “eyes”, there was a structure that was unmistakably a door. Niall knew this from an instinct derived from racial memory, without ever having seen a real door. He touched it; the metal was hot from the sun, yet not so hot as he might have expected. On one side of this door there was a curved metal handle. Niall grasped it, pushed it, pulled it, twisted it, even banged it with the heel of his hand. This, he knew instinctively, was the key to entering this bizarre insect. But the door behind did not even vibrate. Then, as he grabbed the handle impatiently, something yielded to his fingers, and he staggered as the door slid open. He jumped back in alarm; the door had behaved exactly as if an invisible man had pulled it open. But there was no sign of anyone inside. Cautiously, Niall peered through the doorway, then climbed in. It was only then that he realised that the “eyes” of this insect were made of some transparent substance, like white sand when it was fused by a hot fire, and that they admitted the daylight.
He was in a small “room” in which there was space for very little but the leather-covered seats. Everything else in this room struck him as magical yet totally confusing. There was nothing in his experience with which he could compare the control panel, with its gauges and dials, or the steering columns in front of one of the seats. All that he knew was that this metal insect had been created with a precision and delicacy that staggered his imagination. Having no concepts that would enable him to interpret his impressions Niall found himself overwhelmed by a feeling of awe which convinced him that this incomprehensible device had been created for purposes of religious worship.
He sat down cautiously on the sunwarmed seat, and delicately prodded the control panel with his finger. Nothing yielded; it defied his curiosity like a blank wall. But underneath the panel there was an open compartment containing a number of objects, which he examined one by one. When he pressed the handle of an oilcan, the oil squirted out into his face and made him jump; he tasted it with his tongue, found it unpleasant, and wiped his face with his hand. Wrenches, screwdrivers and box spanners all failed to yield up their secrets. He had never felt so completely bewildered and baffled. One short, cylindrical piece of metal, about half an inch in diameter and a foot long, intrigued him because of its weight; it was heavier than solid granite. He decided instantly that, no matter what happened, this was now his own property; neither father nor brother — not even King Kazak himself — could persuade him to part with it. He smacked it into the palm of his other hand and reflected with satisfaction that it would kill an ant at one blow, and stun the most heavily-armoured beetle. With this in his hand, he would not be afraid even of a crater insect.