Alaric nodded toward the youth, though he was not certain Piros noticed the gesture. “I suppose you would want your son to learn of that other place.”
Piros did not answer for a long moment, and then he murmured, “I think he knows enough of it already.” He stood up. “Time to pitch the tents. Hanio will find you a place.”
At Piros’s signal, the men swiftly unpacked an array of low tents and set them up, flooring them with patterned carpets and settling themselves, six men to a tent, with sacks of trade goods for their pillows. Alaric wrapped himself in his own thin blanket and lay down near Hanio. The night cooled swiftly, but the warmth of six bodies made the tent comfortable enough.
Morning twilight came soon, and after a meal of bread not quite stale and cheese hard but tasty enough, the camels were loaded once more, the riders mounted, and the caravan moved on. Again, Hanio rode behind Alaric, until the minstrel dropped back purposely to ride beside him.
Hanio barely glanced in his direction. He wore the trailing edge of his sun-bleached headwrap draped loosely about his throat, and above it his nose was sharp, hawklike, his face weather-worn. He seemed of an age with Piros.
“Have you worked with Piros for long?” Alaric asked him.
The man’s gaze did not waver from the line of camels ahead. “Some years.”
“Then you must know a great deal about his business.”
Hanio made no reply to that.
“I’ve been wondering,” said Alaric, “what are we trading to the far side of the desert that is worth this yearly journey?”
“Various goods,” said Hanio, and as if he knew that Alaric was about to ask for greater detail, he added, “Fine woolens and leathers, metalwork, lace, dried herbs. And we will stop for salt halfway across—the purest salt in the world. They pay especially well for that.”
“Pure salt would be valued back there, too.” Alaric tilted his head to indicate the land from which they had come.
“We will stop at the mines again on the way back.”
“The mines?”
Hanio nodded.
“I did not know that salt came from mines.”
“You are young, minstrel. There may be many things you don’t know.”
“And I look forward to learning them in my travels,” said Alaric. “But tell me, good Hanio, if the mines are halfway across the desert, why don’t the folk of the west send caravans to fetch their own salt?”
Hanio curled his lip. It was not a smile. He shook his head. “They fear the desert too much.”
Alaric straightened his back and sat tall on Folero. He looked all around, and aside from the plodding camels, he saw nothing but a flat landscape to the horizon. If there were animals in this part of the desert, they had fled or were hiding underground. If there were men, they had not attempted to approach within human vision. At Hanio’s knee was a heavy sword in a tooled scabbard, and most of the other riders also had weapons, short swords and long, bows, slings, and lances twice the length of a man’s arm. The caravan seemed ready for whatever fate might deliver.
“What do they fear?” he asked.
“At night, sometimes, one can hear the desert moaning,” Hanio replied. “Evil spirits, they say, coming out of the lost city to steal men’s souls. You will hear them when we reach the dunes.” He gestured vaguely ahead.
“Ah,” said Alaric. “The lost city. I’ve heard a tale or two of that. Have you been there?”
Hanio snorted. “It would hardly be lost if men could visit it.”
“Then it’s nothing more than travelers’ fancies?”
“Well,” said Hanio. He turned his head at last and looked at Alaric hard. “Sometimes one sees it from afar, and there are towers and domes and walls, all white as ash. But if one tries to approach, it retreats steadily and eventually vanishes altogether. It is a phantom city, a fitting residence for evil spirits.” He paused for a pair of heartbeats. “Men have died chasing after it. I have no desire to die.”
“Nor I,” murmured the minstrel, but he could not help wondering if it could be caught by his own special brand of travel. What he said, though, was, “How much farther to the salt mines?”
“Are you restless already, minstrel?” said Hanio.
Alaric shook his head. “I just like to know what to expect.”
Hanio laughed softly. “So do we all. Ask again in eighteen days, and there will be an answer.” He looked away again. “You do well on Folero. Perhaps there is no need for me to watch the two of you so closely.”
“As you will, good Hanio.”
The man nodded and urged his mount up the line, to where Alaric could see Piros riding beside Rudd. He did not return until the caravan stopped for the night at a grove of trees that had appeared as a smudge on the horizon and grown steadily as the sun descended behind it. There was a pond at the heart of the grove, its banks tamped hard by many feet, and the riders filled waterskins and teakettles before they allowed their camels to encircle it and drink. The shade of the trees was pleasant, and as fires were kindled and supper prepared, Alaric sang of the northern wastes, of the snow and ice, as strange to the caravaneers as the desert would have been to the nomads who rode their deer among the glaciers. And the men around him marveled that such icebound places could actually exist.
That night, in the desert tent, he dreamed of the North, and when he woke deep in the darkness, he almost wanted to return there, to see the only people who cared whether he lived or died. He could have done so in an instant. But he knew that the caravaneers were unlikely to think well of someone who could show a witch’s power and vanish as surely as that phantom city vanished, and so he turned over and went back to sleep instead. Another time, he told himself, as he had so often before.
The next day, a faint undulation became visible at the horizon, and word sped down the line of riders that they would reach the dunes in no more than two days. The caravan began bending southward and arrived at another grove of trees, this time surrounding a well, late in the day. The men spent considerable time raising water, one bucket after another, for the evening meal and the camels. None but the camels drank the water before it was boiled; the men even filled their waterskins with the heated water. Alaric did not attempt to taste the raw liquid after Hanio told him it would affect his bowels adversely. The trees of the grove offered dates, which several of the men climbed after, and Alaric was glad to eat the handful that was his allotted share, as a change from cheese and the remnants of stale bread.
In the morning, the men brought out flour and, with boiled water, shaped flat loaves to set on rocks heating in their fires. The results were not what Alaric was accustomed to, but they were delicious nonetheless, and he felt well fortified for the day. The dunes were clear to see in the distance, great rolling hills of sand, and the caravan bent ever southward to skirt the worst of them. Even so, by day’s end they had left the flat desert behind and were moving on less secure footing. That night there was no grove of trees, no pond or well, though there was still plenty of bread from the morning’s baking and plenty of water in every man’s bag. The camels seemed unperturbed by the lack of available drink and fodder, and several caravaneers assured him that the animals’ humps were storage for both.
“Remarkable creatures,” he murmured, trying to think how that information would fit into the array of songs that he knew would come out of this journey. Lying down that night, on a bed made softer by the sand, he lulled himself to sleep trying various rhymes for “hump.”