“Well,” said Piros, “we have a long journey yet. Plenty of time for shaping.” With one hand against the sandy ground, he pushed himself to his feet.
The next day, just past midmorning, the phantom city became visible again. And this time, Alaric was riding only a short distance behind Rudd, and he could see that Hanio held the reins of the young man’s mount, and two other men rode close beside him. As before, the city wavered and shifted at the horizon, its many towers now relatively distinct, now merging into a broad blur. Toward evening, the whole mass seemed to rise into the air, and empty sky was visible beneath it. Clouds, Alaric thought, though that was a difficult surmise to accept while the rest of the sky was a featureless blue save for the brilliant smear of the sun.
The next dozen days passed with little to mark them apart. Each morning, fresh bread was baked and shared out before the men mounted their camels and the long line of burdened animals began to move westward. Each day, the caravan moved westward, sometimes crossing hard-packed desert pavement, sometimes skirting more dunes and wading through sand ankle deep on a man, and the distant spectral city almost always accompanied them, far to the south. Each evening, they stopped at a well whose water was potable only after boiling, and there might be scattered scrub grass around the well, though the camels ensured that it did not survive their presence. And when the tents were pitched, the fires kindled, and the remnants of the morning bread consumed along with dried fruit, almost equally dry cheese, and sometimes a few portions of preserved meat that required soaking in hot water to keep it from being nearly as tough as leather, Alaric swung the lute into his arms and played and sang until only the night watch remained. And every night, Rudd sat almost at Alaric’s feet and listened and smiled and nodded a little and said nothing.
Then, on one day that promised to be like so many others, a dark smudge appeared on the horizon and grew, with the caravan’s approach, to be a broad grove of trees surrounding a shimmering sheet of water that was no illusion. To one side of the water, nestled among the trees, was a village of a dozen huts, and scattered around it were men, women, and children tending vegetable gardens and even a small flock of goats. Alaric could scarcely believe his eyes. In the middle of the desert, where nothing but a few lonely wells reminded a traveler that men sometimes passed this way, here were settled human beings with homes neatly made and, in the open space framed by those homes, finely crafted chairs and tables set atop gorgeously loomed carpets—furniture and floor coverings worthy of a royal house.
The camels, Folero included, were picketed at one side of the water, their leads looped through ring-tipped metal spikes driven deep into the trunks of the trees, to keep them away from the gardens. The men of the caravan pitched their tents and set their fires nearby, Alaric thought for much the same reason. Piros handed his own mount off to Hanio and strode to the heart of the carpets, and as he reached that place, a man in white robes, with a gold chain about his neck and a diadem at his brow, came out of one of the houses to meet him, and other villagers, less opulently arrayed, left off their gardening to draw close to the man who was obviously their prince.
Alaric saw bowing and broad gestures exchanged between the visitor and the prince, and after some moments of conversation, Piros waved to him to draw near. Alaric approached and bowed deeply to the man in white robes.
“This is our minstrel,” said Piros. “He will entertain us tonight.”
The prince smiled. “And if he pleases me, there will be a reward for him.” He glanced at Piros. “But what of the nights you are gone? Will he stay here? And perhaps even after?”
“That shall be as he wishes,” said Piros.
“If he is as skilled as you say, I will hope he does.”
They all bowed then, and Alaric followed Piros’s lead in backing away until they reached the edge of the carpets, where the caravan master turned and raised an arm toward the men who waited nearest among the camels. At that signal, they began unloading sacks from a score of animals.
Alaric trailed Piros to the largest fire, where the men tending it poured tea for both of them. Piros drank his while he watched the camels being stripped of their burdens, the men shouldering the sacks, carrying them to the carpets, and piling them high. The prince was still there, and now he held chalk and slate and was evidently tallying the delivery.
Finally, unable to keep silent any longer, Alaric said, “You weren’t suggesting that I might want to stay here when the caravan moves on, were you?”
Piros did not look at him. “As I said, that will be your choice. It’s a soft life here, except when the sandstorms blow. Still, the people have managed to recover from every storm. The food is good. We’ll be eating fresh goat meat during our stay, and taking dried with us for the rest of the journey. And most of those sacks are filled with grain, for fresh bread; they’ll have more than enough for the year. A minstrel could do worse than sing for such a prince.”
“I think not,” said Alaric.
Piros smiled thinly. “He’ll offer you gold. I’m sure of it.”
Alaric shook his head. “I’ve had gold. It attracts thieves. I prefer to travel. Or are you tired of me, good Piros, that you would unload me like those sacks of grain?”
Piros looked at him then. “He may offer you the Powder to keep you. As the lord of the caves it comes from, he has quite a large personal supply of it.”
“Has he? Then perhaps I won’t eat his food after all. Is the Powder how he’s grown rich?”
“Among other ways,” said Piros. “There are the furnishings, which command high prices on both sides of the desert. And there is the salt.” He gestured toward the north. “The mines are some distance yonder, though no one here will say exactly where or how far. They gathered it in last year’s grain sacks, and it waits for us at a storage area half a day’s journey from here. A party of my men will fetch it tomorrow, while I am elsewhere. If you care for hard work, you can go with them.”
“And you,” said Alaric, “will be … elsewhere.”
Piros shifted his gaze to the prince, who was nodding as the last of the grain sacks was set at his feet. Piros echoed the nod, and Alaric could not tell whether it was directed at him or just in satisfaction at the stage of his transactions with the prince. “Perhaps you’ll want to come with me,” the caravan master said. “We’ll return in four or five days.”
“With the Powder.” It was not a question.
Piros crossed his arms over his chest. “A man comes to know his fellows in the desert.”
Alaric smiled. “As do traveling companions anywhere.” He was thinking of the Arctic wastes, deserts of another kind, but deserts nonetheless, and the people he had known there.
“You have courage, minstrel,” said Piros.
Alaric shook his head. “Less than you think, good Piros. But I have considerable curiosity, and that sometimes masquerades as courage.”
Piros glanced toward the camels, the fires. “As I told you, my son will be coming along. He’ll need watching. He likes your songs. They may keep him from running after the city.”
“Why not leave him behind? Your men seem good at the watching.”
“I have the Powder that he requires, at least enough until we reach the source,” said Piros. “There is only one of them I can trust with it, and he’ll be coming with us.” He looked hard at Alaric. “I think I have your measure, minstrel. There will be no special reward for the journey, but I doubt that you care.”
“A good song is reward enough for me.”
Piros nodded again. “Hanio and I know how to find the place. It isn’t easy to read the signs in the desert. Especially for a novice. Wander off and you could be lost forever.”