The Burning City (62 page)

And they talked.

Whandall had first seen Morth of Atlantis from Lord Samorty's balcony, when he was learning how to lurk….

One night during the trek to find Morth, Green Stone had crawled into Lilac's blanket and gotten himself a long and heated lecture involving one-horns, rumor, custom, and the rights of parents. Lilac was still ticked at his father for suggesting otherwise. So was Green Stone….

Whandall's father had died robbing Morth of Atlantis. The Placehold men had died because…

When the gold fever really did ease off, hours later, Whandall tried to remember the long mad night of laughter and horror. How much of this had he actually
said?
Things he'd
never
confessed.

But he
had
told his son how the Placehold men died while Whandall
stayed to gather a kinless woman and mutilate the man who tried to strangle her. Told him about ruling the Placehold until Mother came home with Freethspat. How Mother's lover made him a murderer. How Whandall made Freethspat carry garbage… like a kinless… and why that was funny…

Green Stone was snoring gently.

Whandall wriggled around until his back was to his son's, head to foot, separated by backpacks stuffed with bottles. Dozing, he suddenly remembered a sense of being watched.

He swept an arm wide around, just above the packs. His hand smacked hard into a thin forearm, and closed. The arm tried to pull away. He followed through on the sweep, reached across, letting go to avoid a possible knife thrust, and had the other hand with a knife in it. Then Green Stone was twisting the intruder's head.

“Don't kill him,” Whandall said quickly. The struggling shape went rigid.

Whandall took the intruder's knife. “Let me speak first,” he said. “You're a very good lurk. We'll speak more on this. We need this gold for ourselves, but I can offer you something you'll
never
refuse. But I'm just not sure I want you yet. Let him speak, Stone.”

A boy of twelve or thirteen cried out in anger and terror.
“Who have you killed?”

“What?”

“You're Whandall Feathersnake!”

“Your face,” Green Stone told his father. “It's glowing.”

“That's wrong. I haven't killed anyone in six years!”

“Must be the raw gold,” said Green Stone.

“Yes. I don't kill lightly, boy. What's your name?”

Silence.

“Make one up. Never mind; we'll call you Lurk. Are you a bandit?” He didn't say
bandit's son.
Give the boy his dignity.

The boy said, “Yes. Do you need all of those bottles?”

“If the wizard would just
talk
to me, I might have an intelligent answer. Green Stone?”

“Father, Morth doesn't
know
how many he needs.”

“Stay with us, Lurk,” Whandall said. “I'm going to let go. In the morning we'll talk. If we don't need you, I'll send you home with the smallest of these bottles and a tale to make you famous. But if we need you, you'll ride Behemoth with us. I'm letting go now.”

He let go.

The boy went to his belly and backed away. Whandall had expected
that; he could have caught him. The boy backed under a stand of thorns and was gone.

Again Whandall and his son stretched out head to foot and back to back. Green Stone said, “He heard everything.”

“Yes.”

“I'm not sure what you said. I must have dreamed some of that. Gold fever. Did you ever tell Mother any of that?”

“No! You don't either, right?”

“Right. Why do you want Lurk?”

Whandall wondered if the bandit boy was still out there. “I've been thinking. If ever we hope to trade in Tep's Town, we have to do something about the Toronexti….”

By late afternoon they had carried those fearsomely heavy packs up to Morth and Behemoth. They slept the rest of the day and most of the night.

Then up and off at first light, down to the river and up the far hill before Seshmarls' colors flared. Gold madness had them again. They'd have carried more gold, and saved a smidgen of weight, by piling gold sand loose in their packs. Whandall convinced Green Stone that it would drive them mad: they would try to carry a mountain's weight of gold, and it would kill them.

Again darkness caught them, and again they filled bottles by moonlight.

The moon sank. They curled back to back with the gold between them.

From the darkness, from beyond a knife's reach, came the voice of Lurk. “I think you lie about riding Behemoth.”

“As you like,” Whandall said.

“He's not so big as all that,” Lurk said, “but he could crush a man with his foot, or his nose.”

“How close did you get?”

“I touched his hind foot.” When they didn't answer immediately, Lurk added, “His skin is rough. His smell is very strong. He opened one eye, and I smiled at him, and he watched me back away. You've wrapped his belly in—”

“Why did you touch him?”

“I got that close. Isn't that what you want?”

That was perceptive. “I need a man who sees all and is never seen. Did Morth see you?”

“No. You didn't see me either.” Lurk laughed. “When you think you're safe, you sleep on your back, feet apart, your arms for a pillow. Do you have trouble breathing?”

“No, but I did once.” Story for story, Whandall spoke his memory aloud: “I was healing from what the Lordsmen did to me. Broken ribs, broken arm, bruises everywhere… knees, kidneys… they smashed my nose and cheek and some teeth. Had to breathe through my mouth. I'd try to sleep on my side and wake up suffocating, and when I tried to roll over, everything hurt. So I learned to sleep on my back. You listening, Green Stone? I tried to go where I wasn't wanted. It's
dangerous
in Tep's Town. Lurk, it's
dangerous.
You could stay here and be safe.”

“What are you offering?”

“You'll serve the Feathersnake wagons.”

“That's
all?”

“What do you have now? If you like what you have, what you are, then go home.”

In the morning Lurk was there. They knew him: a thirteen-year-old boy, the oldest of the children on the hill. Straight black hair, brown eyes, red-brown skin, nose developing a hawk's prow. He wouldn't pass for Lord or Lordkin or kinless.

Lurk carried his share of gold-filled bottles as they made their way across the valley and up. By and by Lurk asked Whandall, “What are the Tornex to you?”

“Toronexti. They're gatherers who place themselves between me and what I want, between me and the Burning City.” Whandall told him what he remembered. He could paint a verbal map of the Deerpiss, the Wedge, the guardhouse at the narrows. But the Toronexti… “If the Spotted Coyotes never gave anything for what they took, if they took whatever they wanted and there was no way around them, that's the Toronexti. None of us knew them well. I think it's always been one family, like the Placehold… my family. They walked and talked like Lordkin. But Lordkin don't have their own wealth. Where do they shop? Where do they get their mates? It isn't a Lordkin who rises from his blanket and goes to a guardhouse because it's
time.
Be he sleepy, or horny and a woman nearby, be his throat sore and his nose running and some fool waiting to yell in his face, a kinless goes because his Lord expects him. Lords do that too. A boy on a roof does that when the bugs are on the plants, and so does a Toronexti guard. They're weird. Lurk, I need someone to spy on them.”

“And why should I come with you?”

“That's if Morth accepts you. You say Behemoth already has?”

Lurk waited.

“If you live, you will have stories your tribe will never believe and
never forget. You ride Behemoth's back with Whandall Feathersnake. A fire-colored bird wheels above you and waits to carry your messages. You learn what Whandall Feathersnake can teach. You'll watch me destroy the most powerful bandit tribe in the Burning City with your badly needed help. You'll help the last wizard of Atlantis destroy a water elemental. You'll get rich too, if everything goes right. I have never seen everything go right. You coming?”

Lurk gripped the fishnet like a dead man in rigor mortis. His face was buried deep in a patch of lank and matted brown hair. But Behemoth's ride was smooth, and by and by he looked up.

By and by he was sitting upright. Then he was pointing out landmarks.

When they stopped that evening, Lurk vanished.

Whandall set about making camp. He tried to think like a Hemp Road bandit. He wished he knew how far they had traveled. They'd come a good way…
maybe
farther than a bandit's child might find allies. Did bandits still fear Whandall Feathersnake? Or was he legend going myth?

It wouldn't matter. Whatever the truth of the stories, whether First Pines harbored bandits in exchange for a share of their loot, none would risk robbing Whandall Feathersnake without assurance that the tale would never be told.

But Lurk returned unseen bearing rabbits and a fat squirrel, and a coyote that was only stunned. “Some folk hold to a coyote totem,” he said.

Good point. “Let it go,” Whandall said. The beast limped away.

Morth summoned. Raccoons came. Watching raccoons skin the other creatures cost Lurk his appetite, but it surged back with the smell of broiling meat.

“Languages,” Whandall said. “If we are to trade in Tep's Town, we need more who can speak the language. Morth, can you teach Green Stone and Lurk?”

“Yes, but to what point? Magic doesn't work in Tep's Town. The knowledge would fade like dreams.”

“But if you teach them here, and they practice here? They'll remember what they practiced, even when the magic goes away.”

Morth nodded sagely. “Well thought. That should work. We need a safe place.”

“Safe?”

“All three of you must sleep,” Morth said. “Understand, there may be effects we do not know. They may gather some of your memories as well as your knowledge of the language.”

“You know the language,” Whandall said. “Use yourself as model.”

“Never, and for the same reason.”

“Oh.” Whandall thought on it. “So be it.”

And afterward, on the journey south, they spoke only the language of Tep's Town, but curiously, not as Lordkin and not as kinless. They sounded like Lords… almost.

Stone and Lurk were speaking as an eleven-year-old Whandall Place-hold understood Lords to speak. “Your mind does not accept that these two are Lordkin,” Morth speculated. “Hah! But can they pass?”

“Not for Lords, not for kinless, not for Lordkin. Lookers. Lurk, Green Stone, you know enough to trade, or you might even pose as tellers. In a pinch, talk Condigeano.”

The ridge had descended, but the company perched on Behemoth's back still had a god's-eye view of Firewoods Town.

Several new houses had appeared since Whandall Placehold came out of that forest. Sixty houses, half adobe and the rest wood, all built for mass and durability and looking much alike, like an art form,
planned
, were strung along three parallel dusty streets. Fenced yards. Flower gardens. All very impressive to a Lordkin boy.

All the townpeople were gathered at the north end of town, around and among fifteen big covered wagons drawn in a wide circle. There were tents. A hundred hands were pointing up, up at Behemoth.

Lurk whispered, “Do you think they see
us
as giants?”

Whandall said, “Morth?”

“I don't know. Ask.”

The Firewoods Wheel was turning.

It was not much more than a wide flat disk mounted horizontally. Twenty children crowded onto it. Adults and older children were pushing it around.

“The first go-round wheels ran themselves,” Morth said.

“But what's it for?” Lurk asked.

“Altered state of consciousness,” said the wizard. “In the old days
anyone
could sense magic. It was everywhere, talking animals, gods in every pond and tree. Stars and comets would shift position to follow events on Earth. Our ancestors missed that sense, so they invented wine and stage magic and the powders and foxglove I used to sell in Tep's Town, and the go-round wheel. Now too much of the magic is gone. It only makes us dizzy.”

They watched. The folk below watched back; the wheel slowed. Green Stone said, “Nobody's coming up to help us move this stuff, are they?”

The wheel had Whandall mesmerized. He could almost remember….

He shook himself. “Morth, stay here with Behemoth. We'll go down and get someone to carry.”

A crowd of merchants and townsfolk watched them come. The wheel slowed with their inattention.

Whandall shouted, “This is Lurk. He's with me.” He moved through the crowd a little faster than anyone could talk to them, he and Green Stone bracketing Lurk. They jogged to catch up with the rim of the wheel and began to push. Lurk caught a handhold and pushed too.