“I’m a careful traveler, and I’ve rarely been lost,” said Alaric. He was reluctant to say “never,” though it was true enough. The map he carried in his mind, of every place he had ever been or seen, had always served his special power well. “And I’m good at following other people.”
“Very well,” said Piros. “In the morning, when the salt party goes north, we’ll go south.”
“Toward the phantom city.”
“Yes. That, too, should please my son.”
That night, the village hosted them well, with fresh meat and vegetables for the whole caravan and praise for Alaric’s music. The prince did not offer him any gold, but Alaric did not expect it after a single night of entertainment. In the morning, a large group of men and camels was told off for the salt; one of the villagers would be their guide, though Piros told Alaric he had no doubt that his men could find the usual storage place by themselves. Piros, Hanio, and Rudd started south on their own mounts, with Alaric, Folero, and four riderless camels heavy-laden with food and water following behind. In the evening, they camped in a place as desolate as any Alaric had seen on the journey. It had no source of water, but of course they had brought their own, and they brewed tea and shared out some of that morning’s bread for their supper. Afterward, the minstrel sang a newly crafted song about the moaning dunes, with a repeated chorus that made two of his companions nod in time to it although not Rudd, who only sat by the fire and looked southward into the darkness, as if there were something there to see.
The next day they rode onward and camped and ate, and Alaric sang again. The day after, a slight rise in the landscape became visible ahead—not dunes, but a line of modest hillocks stretching southwestward. Half a day’s journey brought the travelers to them and to a tight cluster of seven huts, well made but smaller than the ones in the prince’s settlement, at their feet. There was water, too, but Piros cautioned that it was not drinkable, even after boiling, and at close range Alaric could see that it had a disagreeable yellowish color; even the camels disdained it.
Half a dozen men came out of the huts to greet them. They were gaunt men, the bones clearly visible in their faces, their eyes sunken and rimmed with dark, their hands and forearms skeletal where they showed at the ends of their sleeves, their desert robes hanging loose on their bodies as if the men had once been more substantial. Their leader, the tallest of the group, bowed low to Piros and escorted him into one of the huts while the others began to unload the pack camels. Alaric lent a hand, shouldering goatskin bags that had been filled at the village pond and slung over the camels in pairs linked by thick rope.
The gaunt men delivered water to six huts; the rest of the supplies went into the one that stood closest to a communal fire pit. Shortly after everything had been distributed, Piros and the tall man emerged from their meeting.
“There’s more harvesting to be done,” Piros told his companions, “and so we’ll be here a full day tomorrow while they finish.”
Hanio nodded. He had brought a live young goat from the village, carried at his knee in a mesh bag, and now he slaughtered it with a single quick stroke of his knife, skinned it neatly, cleaned out its innards, and spitted the carcass to roast over the fire while the gaunt men put the organ meats to stew in a large pot, wasting nothing.
During the cooking, a pair of the gaunt men took small, empty sacks from the supply hut, climbed the rise beyond their tiny village, and descended behind it till they were no longer visible. They were gone for some time, and when they returned, their sacks were slung over their shoulders, full of something heavy and shapeless, and another pair went out along the same path, again with empty sacks, again returning later with sacks filled. The gaunt men continued this, pair by pair, turn and turn about, while Hanio secured the full sacks on the camels and Piros brought other full sacks from several of the huts and did the same.
At one point, Rudd, who had been sitting cross-legged by the fire pit, watching their dinner roast, stood and climbed the rise himself, and Hanio left off his camel loading and went after him. After a few moments, Alaric followed, two dozen paces behind, and from the top he could see the phantom city on the southern horizon and Rudd descending the southern slope toward it, Hanio at his elbow. Hanio was saying something that Alaric could not make out, but his tone seemed soft and persuasive, and finally he caught Rudd’s arm and stopped him and looked to be urging him to turn back. Piros joined Alaric on the rise, but he made no attempt to go after his son. Hanio turned the youth around at last, and Piros gave a small nod before returning to the fire.
Alaric sang that night, of a long and perilous search for treasure. It was an old song he had learned far away, but it seemed appropriate. He carved his own serving of goat meat from the carcass, and it was delicious; at Piros’s small signal, he did not taste the organ meats, which smelled strongly of what might or might not have been thyme, and neither Piros nor Hanio ate any either. Whether Rudd did or not, Alaric did not see. After the meal, Piros set up a tent for his group, and they all crawled in to share warmth against the cool of the desert night. Alaric woke once, when one of the others—not Rudd, who slept nearest him—went out, presumably to answer nature’s call, but he had no need for it himself and so went back to sleep.
In the morning, they baked a little bread on fire-pit-heated stones and broke their fast with that and cold goat meat. Afterward, Hanio suggested that Alaric might want to see what he could of the gathering of the Powder, to satisfy some of the curiosity that had brought him to the desert.
“Is it allowed?” said Alaric.
“Yes, but there’s little to see,” said Piros.
Rudd, who had been bent over his food, looked up at that. “I’d like to see it.”
“You’ve seen it before,” said his father. “It is no different now.”
“I want to see it,” Rudd said loudly. He stood up and tossed his half-eaten meal aside, then he turned and began climbing the rise.
Piros looked to Hanio. “Go along with him, and don’t let him take too much of the fresh.”
“I may need a bit of help,” said Hanio.
Rudd looked over his shoulder at his father. “Don’t you want to come along, Father? To keep me under your eye?”
Piros glanced at Alaric but said nothing.
“I’ll go,” said the minstrel. He caught up with Rudd. “You can explain the harvesting to me.”
“Father understands it better,” Rudd said, and there was a sullen tone in his voice, and a sullen look on his face. “But he’s afraid of it. Aren’t you, Father?”
Piros looked at him with slitted eyes. “As you should be,” he said. “Look what it’s done to the harvesters.” To Alaric, he said, “They die before their time even though they don’t inhale the poison. So many years of exposure takes its toll.”
“Perhaps I don’t want to see it,” said Alaric, and he took a step back down the slope.
“Stand well away from the opening,” said Piros. “You’ll be safe there. The smell that emanates from it is enough to warn men from approaching too close.”
“Afraid of a smell,” said Rudd.
“What kind of smell?” said Alaric.
“You won’t mistake it for perfume,” said Piros. “Or for thyme.”
Alaric hesitated for another moment. Still, Hanio was going along, and he seemed healthy enough. Curiosity finally won out over doubt, and Alaric nodded to Rudd and Hanio, and the three of them climbed to the top of the rise. There, they followed the crests of the line of hillocks westward for a hundred paces, two hundred. To their right, the phantom city wavered on the southern horizon, and Rudd glanced at it often, though he did not attempt to run toward it, Alaric thought, because Hanio had a tight hold on his arm. A sheet of water—or something that looked like water—stretched outward from the city, and it looked real enough except that its margins shifted constantly, like liquid in a basin carried through a jostling tavern crowd.