Lin Carter - The City Outside the World (11 page)

He had devoted all the remainder of his life to the study of their civilization. Science had changed much by this j century. Back in the 1900s, an astrophysicist was an astrophysicist, an archaeologist was an archaeologist, and seldom the twain did meet. Today, things were different, j, and Herzog knew as much about both topics as he knew I about Martian literature and myth, or comparative an- j

thropology, or nine-dimensional geometric theory, or null-state mathematics—which was plenty. He was a Synthesis!, with a dozen or thirteen doctorates in as many different fields. Since he was a doctor thirteen times over, Ryker decided to call him simply "Doc," and they left it at that.

Zarouk had picked him up several months ago down in Chryse, hunting for petroglyphs. Since Dok-i-Tars of his sort have great powers of healing, and Zarouk had a lieutenant who had been badly mauled by a sandcat, his men captured the old
F'yagh.
Herzog had an M.D. tucked away among those thirteen doctorates, so it was no great feat for him to bring the man back to health. But Zarouk thought it was a marvel, and kept the old Dok-i-Tar around as a sort of good-luck talisman.

Doc Herzog didn't care. All of this planet was one vast laboratory to his way of thinking, and it didn't matter very much which part of it he was in.

Indeed, as a member of Zarouk's retinue, he had been introduced to many discoveries he might otherwise never have found.

"Such as?" grunted Ryker, wincing as the doctor massaged the stiffness from his scarred shoulders.

"Why, this very city, my boy! Always a myth I have thought it. And here I am, big as life! You don't know where you are, do you?"

"Beats me," said Ryker. "Just one of the Dead Cities, that's all I know."

"Oh, more than that, my boy—much more! The inscriptions have never been defaced, I, even, can read them." His eyes grew wistful, dreaming, and his dry croak of a voice softened to a reverent, hushed whisper. "Khuu, the Last Encampment. Here is the place the Lost

Nation fled to, after wars; here was it they rested for a century, more, maybe, before going on to the end of their road."

A cold tingle traveled the length of Ryker's spine. Hardened though he was, he felt his hackles lift. This was a place whispered about in the myths of Mars, and those myths were older than the very mountains of the Earth.

"Khuu!" he repeated. "Cripes, Doc—I always thought that was just one of their legends, like, you know —like Lost Illinios, and Yhoom, and the Valley Where Life Began, and all the rest of it! D'you mean it's really true, and we're really here?"

"Oh, it's true enough, and here we are," Doc said softly. "Here, where the Lost Nation camped awhile, before vanishing from the knowledge of men forever. Now drink this, and shut up for a bit."

Ryker downed the fluid, and napped for a while, as his wounds healed and his body mended. But he had plenty to chew on. He had lived and moved among the People long enough to have heard of the Lost Nation, and it troubled him—but why, he could not have said.

Once, long ago, at the beginnings of history, there had been ten nations sharing this planet between them. Apart, yet together; different, yet the same; and united in their worship of the Timeless Ones, and in their loyalty to the Jammad Tengru, as the holy emperor was called.

Then one nation had fallen from the ancient ways, turned aside to worship a new god, forgetting the old faith and severing the old alliance. The Jammad Tengru who had ruled all of Mars in that distant age had declared them anathema-—had, in effect, excommunicated them. And nine nations rode to war, to holy war, to
jehad,
against the rebels.

Broken by the war, but not defeated, the tenth nation had fled into the north, paused to lick their wounds in the northernmost of the old cities, and then—

History was silent on their doom. Even the myths hinted little. And to this day, no man could say what had become of the outlaw nation. Even its name and totem were forgotten in the mists of the remote past.

All memory of this event had been erased from monuments and chronicles. The People themselves had tried to forget that it had ever happened. But mysteries die hard, and live long on the lips of men.

And this was the story of the Lost Nation.

And now Ryker thought he knew the secret of the riddle, and the solution of the oldest mystery known to man.

Zhaggua!

The word meant "devil."

Might it not also mean "devil-worshipper"?

Far into the north the Lost Nation had fled in the beginning of time. Somewhere in the hoarfrosted desert-lands near the pole it had vanished from the knowledge of men.

And north was the road Valarda and her accomplices had been taking. Were they living descendants of the Lost Nation? Zarouk, perhaps, did not call them devils for nothing. Why had they come down out of their hidden realm? For the black stone seal he had taken from an

ancient tomb? And why had they gone back into the north, having thieved it from him?

Were they . . . going home?

Nothing could live in the frigid realms around the pole, Ryker knew. In ancient days, perhaps it had been warm and fertile, as once the polar regions of Earth had been, as scientists had known for centuries from oil deposits found in northern Greenland and the fossilized remains of prehistoric forests unearthed in Canada.

Once, aeons ago, perhaps the Martian Arctic had been ice and snow, too—frozen water. But no longer was this true. It had not been true for endless ages.

The ice-fields around the pole are composed of frozen carbon dioxide—"dry ice"—and nothing that lives and breathes could dwell in that bleak, dry, burning hell of incredible cold.

Unless it lived—underground.

There were vast caverns beneath the crust of Mars, Ryker knew, and labyrinthine systems of subterranean tunnels, extending for hundreds of miles. There dwelt the giant albino rodents, called
orthave,
which the People hunt for furs.

At least, this was true of the Southlands with which Ryker was more familiar. But might it not be true as well, here in the north?

Who could say?

Ryker had a grim hunch that before long he would be finding out.

If they let him live long enough, that is.

The next day the raiders broke camp and began the long trek north. Houm's caravan went with them. By now Ryker had put two and two together, coming up with four.

Houm was an agent of Zarouk, as Goro the Juhagir was. Houm's trading expedition was a fake. The wains contained food supplies and weapons, nothing more. Houm had lurked here and there in the country north of Yeolarn, awaiting word that the devil worshippers had either been taken or had eluded capture.

If they escaped, they would be heading north. And Yhakhah was the jumping-off-point for the north. So, when apprised of Valarda's escape, Houm had ridden hard for the oasis town, to be there ready and waiting. The trap had functioned perfectly.

And Goro was Zarouk's spy. Probably he had been in Yeolarn when Valarda danced and the mob tried to stone her. Very likely, Goro had taken no part in that mob, but had merely watched and waited from a place of safety and concealment. And when it became obvious that the three
zhaggua
and their Earthling dupe had fled the city, he had somehow conveyed word of this both to Zarouk in the south, and Houm in the north. Then he had made rendezvous with the prince his master, and together they had ridden hard for the Lost City, where, according to a prearranged plan, Houm and his fake caravan were loitering.

Goro was needed, for only he had actually seen the three devil worshippers, and only he could identify them for certain. Once he and Zarouk had seen Valarda dance, the search was over. And that very night, just before dawn, the trap had closed, and the hawks had seized their prey.

It would have gone beautifully, save for the maverick behavior of Ryker. But in the end, all things even out. And now, even though Valarda and Melandron and Kiki had escaped, it was known where they were headed.

North.

Beyond the dust desert of Meroe.

Across the narrow isthmus that connects the twin continental land masses of Casius and Boreosyrtis.

And into the shadow haunted, the trackless, the unmapped, the mysterious boreal desert called Umbra.

Umbra—the Shadowed Land.

They had named it uncannily well, had the old Earthling astronomers and mapmakers. For that dim arctic realm has been under the shadow of an ancient curse and an age-old mystery since Mars was young and warm and burgeoning with life.

Into the Umbra the Lost Nation had ridden, long ago.

Somewhere in the Umbra they had vanished from human ken, in the morning of time.

And there, in that bleak arctic waste, pockmarked with ancient craters, where the dry dust drifted under a cold, whispering wind, rose the timeless enigma of the Ptera-ton, the Sphinx of Mars.

Did it mark the entrance to an underground world?

12, The Keystone

They crossed the
desert, retracing the flight of Ryker and the others, and ascended to the top of the plateau, their beasts scrambling awkwardly up the steps of the eroded rock strata.

That night they camped on top of the narrow isthmus that once, perhaps, had linked two small continents, and against whose ancient and crumbling ramparts the long vanished oceans of Mars had once broken in flying foam.

Ryker wasn't sure why they had let him live, or why they bothered to bring him along, but he didn't much care. Revenge filled his heart like cold, heavy lead, and at least when Zarouk caught up with the three devil worshippers, Ryker would be in at the kill.

He shared wine that night with Zarouk, and fat Houm, and the little priest. Oddly, the desert prince seemed no longer to bear him any ill will. The red, terrible ordeal at the whipping post, perhaps, had satisfied Zarouk's hunger for revenge against the
F'yagh
who had spoiled his fun, captured and humiliated him.

For the moment, anyway, he seemed satisfied. But Ryker wasn't so sure. Men like Zarouk seldom forget a grudge. There would be a final reckoning later on, he thought. Right now, probably Zarouk kept him alive because he thought he might have a use for him.

When Xinga, the chief of the caravan guards, whom Ryker now understood to be one of Zarouk's chieftains, came to fetch him to the tent of the prince for wine, Ryker

went without a word. He could not be more completely in Zarouk's power than he was already, so what the hell.

The wine was cold and sour and strong, and Ryker savored it, listening to the conversation.

Zarouk asked what he knew of Valarda's ultimate destination, and Ryker told him—truthfully enough—that he knew nothing at all. Oddly, Zarouk seemed to believe him. So Ryker tried a question of his own, testing this new spirit of acceptance.

"Was it your men who hunted me out of the New City, and herded me into Yeolarn?" he asked. And he was surprised at the reply.

Zarouk burst out laughing, a harsh bark of laughter, true enough, but there was genuine humor in it.

"Poor dupe, it was the boy all the time—didn't you know?" he grinned.

Ryker blinked,

"The boy?
What
boy?"

"Valarda's imp, what's his name—"

"Kiki, d'you mean?"

The desert prince nodded.

"Didn't you even guess that? The little devil—why do you think the woman brought him along?"

Ryker didn't know, and said as much.

Dmu Dran spoke now, his voice a thin whisper.

"The creature is a
quaraph
," he said. And the nape-hairs at the back of Ryker's neck stirred as to a chill wind.

A quaraph!
Ryker shook himself numbly: the naked imp was a telepath—a Sensitive! The telepathic gene was more common among Martians than Earthsiders, he had heard, but still rare enough.

And now he began to understand how they had played him like a fish on a hook.

No one
had hunted him out of the New City and through

the winding ways of old Yeolarn. They had merely made him believe that it was so. Or Kiki had, anyway.

For a person who can read the thoughts passing through your mind finds it easy enough to
insert
thoughts into that mind. A telepath gifted and skillful enough can even convince your senses that they see or hear or taste or even smell things that are not really there.

They had played him for a sucker, all right.

He drank the wine moodily.

"Why me?" he asked at last.

The hunched little priest spoke up again.

"The stone seal you found in the old tomb,
F'yagh,"
he whispered between thin lips. "We know that it is somehow precious to the accursed
zhaggua,
although we do not know how or why. 'The Keystone,' the old texts name it. Its magic opens the door that leads to their hidden domain. Long ago it was stolen from them, and they want it back."