Kane slowly nodded his head at this, and my smile made him smile. 'All right, Valashu. But I tell you that you will hear things in those damn caverns that will be harder you to hear.'
I thought about this for half the night, and all the next morning as we set out again and worked our way up to the left, over the humps and folds of the pyramid mountain. Its eastern slopes, at this great height, with the air cool and thin, were covered mostly with silver fir and little undergrowth, and so we had little difficulty passing through the open spaces between the tall trees. Our luck held good, for we espied the white ridgeline of a low pass ahead of us and encountered no very steep grades or rockfalls to block our way. And then we came upon the road again. Here it was nothing more than a rubble of old, shattered stones, but it held true for a few more miles, taking us up almost all the way to the lip of the pass. We breathed hard at the cutting air, hurrying up this last leg of the ascent to see if Kane was right. Then we stood on a snowy shelf of ground as we looked down into a bowl of land twelve miles wide that was the ancient and entire kingdom of Senta.
The city of Senta stood near the bowl's midpoint. From this distance I could make out the cuts of the winding streets and the larger buildings, some of them domed and gleaming with veneers of gold. Kane pointed out King Yulmar's palace, on the wooded heights to the west of the city. More gold flashed from the towers and domes there, and I caught a brilliant sparkle, as of encrusted diamonds. Senta, which had extracted tolls and bribes from pilgrims for thousands of years, was famous for its wealth. According to Kane, it enjoyed a natural bounty, as well. Through the forest rising between the king's palace and the sheltering wall of mountains ran deer, foxes and boar, and other game that the king and Senta's nobles hunted. To the north of the city, and sweeping in a wide swath around it to the east and south, the Sentans cultivated some of the richest-looking farmland I had ever seen. The greenness of these acres colored the entire kingdom. And it was all crowned by huge, sharp, white peaks in a vast and gleaming circle, and higher still, by the brilliant blue sky.
Kane pointed past the city perhaps a mile to the south where a rocky prominence rose up, too large to be called a hill and yet not quite high enough to challenge the mountains that framed it.
'There are the Singing Caves,' Kane said. 'They go down through the side of that rock.'
We could see the road to it as a narrow streak of bluish-gray against the greenness of fields. Three other roads led into (or out of) Senta: to the west, the road to Surrapam, which cut through a high pass before curving back north on its winding way through the Crescent Mountains. To our left, built on a line toward the southeast, ran the Sunguru road. And nearly straight ahead, passing around the rocky prominence and then into the city, gleamed the ancient road that we would take into Hesperu.
No road, unfortunately, led from the pass upon which we stood down into the city. We had a hard time picking our way slowly down through the rattling scree, and were grateful to enter the line of trees where the grade eased and the ground smoothed out. Soon we came out of the forest into a wheatfield, to the surprise of the farmer at work there: a stout, red-haired man with pale blue eyes who directed us toward the city. We planned to stay at one of the inns built on the hill at the very foot of the Singing Caves. Though it would no doubt be costly, Kane insisted we should remain close to the Hesperu Road and the pass to the south out of Senta in case we encountered troubles and needed to make a hasty escape.
Soon we found ourselves riding through the streets of Senta's northern district, past shops and steeply gabled houses that were like those of my home. They were built flush with one another of good granite that might have endured here for thousands of years. We found the Hesperu Road near the center of the city, where, in a great square, intersected the Sunguru Road coming in from the east. Along the storefronts, we saw many more people plying their trades and going about their business - though not nearly as many, we were given to understand, as in years past. Most of them, I thought, were Sentans. Red hair and blue eyes predominated among them, and I wondered if some wandering tribe from Surrapam had made its way south through the mountains to settle this kingdom during the Age of the Mother long, long ago. Some showed darker, almost mahogany-colored skins and black rings of hair, and these I took to be Hesperuks, in origin if not allegiance to King Arsu. Some were a blending of kinds and colors, and it amazed me to come across a young man as brown as coffee, with sparking green eyes and a curly red mane falling to his shoulders. The few pilgrims we saw seemed to be Hesperuk or Sung, with their almond eyes and straight black hair. But I bowed my head to a band of Galdans, to three blond Thalunes and to a lone Saryak warrior from Uskudar, whose face seemed carved of jet and who stood as high as the ceilings of most houses. In such company, my friends and I did not attract undue attention.
As we moved into Senta's southern districts, closer to the caverns, we came upon inns and the shops of craftsmen who had long serviced pilgrims: armorers, barbers, seamstresses, saddlers, cobblers and wheelwrights - and many others. We stopped at a tinker's so that Liljana could finally buy her pots and pans, and we visited a miller and a butcher in order lay in stores. It was from the butcher, all sweaty and bloody from cutting up a lamb, that we heard news out of Hesperu and other lands.
'They say there was a rising in Surrapam,' he told us as he weighed out some slabs of salt pork. 'And a new rebellion in Hesperu, in the Haraland - that lies in Hesperu's north, brave pilgrims, just over the mountains. You didn't come here by way of Hesperu, did you? Few now do. Anyway, it's said that King Arsu has marched north with his army out of Khevaju to put down the rebellion. There are those who fear that he will march right into Senta, but he can't even hold onto his conquests and keep his evil empire together. And if he
did
try to force his way through the Khal Arrak, we would stop him in the narrows of the pass.'
To emphasize his point - and his own bravery - he picked up a bloody cleaver and waved it about. And he added, 'Senta will never fall; you can take
that
as a prophecy - and take it back to your homelands, wherever they are.'
Others, however, were not so confident of Senta's ability to withstand King Arsu, and his master, the Red Dragon. After we had finished with the butcher, we came across an old, blind woman begging alms beneath the eves of the adjacent fletcher's shop. She had the straight hair and wheat-colored skin of the Sung, and her eyes might once have been like large almonds before being gouged out. Atara took pity on her, and pressed a gold coin into the woman's trembling hand. And the woman, whose name was Zhenna, murmured to her: 'Bless you, my lady. But you should be careful with whom you speak. Alfar, the butcher, is a good man, but he talks too freely. The Red Dragon's ears are very keen, if you understand me, and they are everywhere.'
'If we were to take your advice,' Liljana said, stepping up close to her, 'we should not speak to
you.
How is it that you are willing to speak to
us?'
'Because I like your smell,' Zhenna said, turning from Atara to smile towards Daj and Estrella. She reached out and fumbled to grasp Liljana's hand. 'And because I, too, was once a pilgrim like you.'
She told us that years ago, when King Angand had come to Sunguru's throne and had made the first moves toward an alliance with Morjin, she had been the wife of the Duke of Nazca. The Duke, in secret, had rallied nobles to oppose the alliance - and, if need be, to oppose King Angand himself. But sometimes there are secrets within secrets. By ill fate, one of the nobles had proved to be of the Order of the Dragon and had betrayed the Duke to King Angand and the Kallimun priests who sat at his court. As an example. King Angand had ordered the Duke crucified and had Zhenna cruelly blinded. She had then fled Sunguru, making the pilgrimage to Senta, and had remained here ever since.
'I've lived off the kindness of the Sentans and strangers such as yourselves,' she told us. 'But everyone looks to the south now, and they hoard their coins. Who has the strength to resist King Arsu? Once, Senta made alliance with Sunguru and Surrapam to keep the Hesperuks at bay, but I'm afraid that time is past.'
'I should think that even King Yulmar's few warriors,' I said to her, 'could wreak harm on King Arsu's army, if they tried to force the pass.'
'Alfar, too,' she said to me, 'speaks always of the Hesperuk army. But why should King Arsu waste his soldiers in an invasion when those who look to the Red Dragon will do his work for him? It's said that Galda fell from within, and so, I fear, it will be here.'
'Why don't you leave here, then?' I asked her.
'Where would I go?' Zhenna said to me. 'At least here, for ten days at the New Year, King Yulmar opens the caverns to such as I. The songs! Not even the larks make such music! As you will hear - you will hear!'
Atara gave her another coin and said to her, 'We should go on. Perhaps it would be best if you weren't seen talking with us.'
Zhenna straightened her shoulders and held her head up high. She said, 'What more can they take from me? I've only one wish, and that is to go into the caverns one more time. Somewhere, in the lower caverns, I think, where the opals grow, they sing of a land without tyrants, without evil or war. A land that the Red Dragon cannot touch.'
I shook my head against the throbbing there, and told her: 'I think there is no place on earth like that.'
'No, young man,' she said, grasping my hand, 'there
must
be. Someday I will go there. It will be my last pilgrimage.'
She smiled at me and squeezed my hand. I thought to take her with us and pay her admittance to the caverns, but she said that King Yulmar's stewards, who guarded them, would not allow that. She shooed me toward my horse, and said, 'Go, and listen well, brave knight. The land that I told of - it is called Ansunna.'
Past a district where the air reeked of tannin, roasting meats and perfume wafting from the open windows of the brothels, we came out into farmland, and smelled instead freshly turned earth and the dung used to fertilize the fields. It did not take us very long to wind our way up the wooded hill at the base of Mount Miru, as the Sentans called the huge rock that contained the caverns. Two inns stood upon the top of the hill: The Inn of the Caves and the larger, rambling Inn of the Clouds, painted white. Kane liked the size and look of this inn, and so we rented rooms there. We gave our horses into the keeping of the stableboys. The innkeeper insisted that we should have a hot bath and a change of clothes before going into the caverns. And so it was late in the afternoon when we walked along a flagstoned path at the top of the hill with the shadowed, granite face of Mount Miru above us. We were the last pilgrims that day to seek admittance at the entrance to the caverns, a house-sized scoop in the rock of the face of Mount Miru. The Sentans called it the First Cavern, but it did not seem natural: most of its surface gleamed with an obsidian-like glaze. I wondered if men had once melted out in this hollow from solid rock with, the aid of a firestone.
At a long, gilded table set on a carpet in the recesses of the cavern sat a lean, dark-haired man decked out in gilded armor. Two other men similarly dressed but with spears in their hands and short swords on their ruby-studded belts stood leaning against It. These I took to be stewards of the Caves. As we drew up in front of the table, the seated man said, 'My name is Sylar, good pilgrims, and I am Lord of the Caves. We ask only three things of you: a small donation to help pay for the upkeep of the Caves and that you take from them all the wonder that you are
about
to see and hear.'
I studied Sylar's sharp eyes and nose, and the tiny round scars pocking his dark, sallow skin. Long ringlets of black hair, scented with sandalwood oil, hung down over the plate armor encasing his chest. He had a kindly, helpful manner about him, but his smile, somewhat forced, hinted at deep resentments and suspicions.
'And what is the third thing?' I asked him.
He directed my attention to a rock the size of a wagon rising up from the cavern's floor behind us. I saw that this rock, too, did not seem a natural part of the mountain, for it was of basalt, as black as night and all greasy looking. A face, hideous as a demon's, had been carved into the rock's smooth surface. Two blue stones resembling lapis had been set below the demon's bulging brows as eyes. The demon's mouth turned up in a tormented smile, and a large black hole at its center opened like a throat drilled deep into the rock.
'The third thing we ask,' Sylar said to us, 'is that you
not
take any stone or crystal from the caverns. There is a demon of desire inside all of us. but if you give in to its lusts, you will not gain new treasure but only lose that which is even more precious.'
He explained that each pilgrim, upon exiting the cavern, would be required to put his hand inside the demon's mouth. He would then be asked if he had removed anything from the caverns. If the pilgrim told the truth, all would be well. If the pilgrim lied however, he would forfeit his hand. It seemed that the ancients had connected a mechanism to the demon's eyes, which were truth stones. Upon being activated, the mechanism would bring down a massive, razor-sharp blade upon the wrist of any palterer or prevaricator.
'But that is horrible!' Atara cried out. 'To lose a hand so! How long has it been, then, since a pilgrim perjured himself?'
'Never in my lifetime,' Sylar told her. He seemed almost disappointed that he had never had the opportunity to see the demon do its work. 'But two hundred years ago, it is said that a prince of Karabuk boasted that no gelstei could look through his mind into his heart. What is left of his hand adorns that wall.'
He pointed toward the back of the hollow where two more stewards stood guarding iron doors that led into the caverns. On the wail to the left and right of the doors, seemingly cemented into the rock, gleamed the yellow-white bones of many human hands. Kane, I thought, should have warned us against such a bizarre and gruesome display, but he had retreated inside one of his depth less silences.