The Bone Orchard
The city is silent now. I take up my pen by candlelight, and the night presses against my window.
At the end of life there are few things left for a man to fear, but tonight the dark worries me like nothing has since I was young.
I have made the decision to write to you because today a man that I had never seen before stopped and looked at me with recognition in his eyes.
How shall I begin?
It is my habit to sit outside my door in the mornings. An old man enjoys the clamour of city life all the more, now that he is no longer a part in it.
This morning, I noticed a young man among the crowd. It was only his clothes that drew my eye at first, for he was dressed for travel with a heavy pack over his shoulder, but he wore a foreign garb that I did not recognise, well-travelled though I am myself. He was unremarkable in every other way. A man not even born when I first crossed the desert.
Perhaps he felt my gaze, or something else made him stop suddenly amid the throng and look at me, first with curiosity and then with unmistakable recognition.
I do not know what I could be to him. An old man on a stool beside the street, skin burned from hard journeys under the sun, and a ruined right hand.
Then suddenly he smiled with grim humour and blew me a silent kiss, as the crowd carried him away. My last glimpse of him was walking confidently away, and then the crowd swallowed him.
I went indoors and thought about the way he had looked at me, and wondered if it could possibly be recognition that I felt as well.
What I saw might mean nothing, but it is the reason that I have decided to accede to your requests, and send for your keeping the last of my papers.
With the greatest of affection.
Your uncle.
I. The City
Three days later, we came to the edge of the buried city.
It was Lietgarda who first saw the house, miles away across the flat, indistinct in the desert haze. She always had the best eyesight of any of us, but when we reached the house, it was just a shell, buried so deep by the sand that I had to crawl through the door on hands and knees. The roof was gone, and the walls were an empty box beneath the sun.
"Is this the place?" asked Nort, when I crawled outside.
"No, it's deserted." I said. "Nobody's lived here for years."
"That's not true," said Lietgarda quietly. "They're all still here."
We left immediately.
As we walked, we passed other buildings, swallowed by the desert. Once, I think that I saw the spire of a sunken cathedral rising above the sand, but as evening drew on we left them behind. The ground started to rise and the sand became firmer underfoot. I put away my compass, for the setting sun led our way.
There was no wood for fire, there on the open desert, so when night fell we shared out the last of the water in the twilight and huddled close to sleep. I lay for some time, listening to Lietgarda's measured breathing and Nort's snores before I slept and dreamed.
I dreamt that I was in that same desert night, under stars that lit the sand as white as moonlight. People milled in slow, wide circles, half-unseen, men and women in the spring-growth of their youth. Their bodies seemed no more than shadows flowing over the sand, and yet a luminesence followed each of them. After a time, one seemed to notice me, and broke away from the others. As the figure came closer I saw that she was a tall woman with skin as black as the shadows under the moon. She spoke to me in my dream, but though her eyes told of loss, her words were in a language that I did not understand.
I awoke on cold sand, alone again in the desert, but for my companions who slept untroubled beneath the stars that last time.
When Nort woke, I was still sitting there, staring into the violet sky. We had journeyed higher the previous evening than I realised, and in the new light the desert lay below. Before us, the land rose in stony ridges.
Nort wiped cracked lips and sat up.
"You didn't sleep?" he said.
"I slept," I said, and paused. "I had troubling dreams. I think that we should move on quickly."
Lietgarda tossed in her sleep but neither of us moved to wake her. A Walker will wake when she chooses, and besides, it would not have been a kindness. Our water was gone.
"What did you dream about?" said Nort, conversationally.
"There was a woman who tried to speak to me, but I couldn't understand her tongue."
"I thought you spoke every language."
I shrugged. "It was just a dream. Is any of the fruit left?"
"A few. I'll fetch them for you." We had collected the fruit from a tree we found growing on the edge of the desert, days before. Their skin was like new leather, and the flesh was bitter but running with juice.
"No," I said. "We'll save them. Share them out, later."
"If we don't find water, that won't make any difference."
When Lietgarda woke, Nort and I were already preparing to leave. She sat up, pulling her fingers through the tangles in her hair, and began gathering her bedroll.
"What did the black woman say to you?" she asked, and I felt ice in my spine. "She stayed with you till morning, but you just sat there, staring at the sky. You wouldn't listen to her"
"You're mistaken," I said. I had my back to her as I struggled my blanket into my pack, but I could imagine her knowing smile
"It's just a matter of choosing to listen. You should have spoken to her," Lietgarda went on. I put down my pack.
"I don't talk to dreams," I said. "You're the Walker, you talk to them. If I'm going to play your role, I might as well leave you here."
"You should have spoken to her; she was more than a dream."
I stood there with her, in the chilly desert morning, trying to think of what to say.
"Would you like one of the fruit, Liet? There's still some left."
We left the place where we slept, and climbed higher, into bare hills that bordered the desert. In the morning there had been a breeze coming down from somewhere higher up, but as we walked the sun turned the sky white, and the breeze became a hot wind in our faces.
We ate the last of the food as we went, but each ridge seemed the same and there was still no sign of life. I stopped looking at my compass when I could no longer see the needle clearly, and Nort trudged behind me, supporting Lietgarda with his arm.
The sun was already well ahead of us, when we saw a line of trees on the crest of the next hill. We struggled up the slope, into a stand of dead, brittle willows that lay along the ridge. Before us, the ground fell in a succession of cliffs, to a waterless plain, strewn with boulders and broken trees. In the smoky distance, the sun was setting behind a line of mountains.
I took my compass out, and stared at it as I stood on the edge of the cliff. Lietgarda sat down heavily on the ground, and Nort came to my side.
"I don't know if you're ready to abandon this business or not, but none of us will see tomorrow if we don't find water." he said.
"There's no way down." I think that I had hardly heard him. "We've got to go on, but I can't see a way down from here."
"Look around," he said, angry at last. "Even if we find a way down, we'll die there. Listen to me. There must have been water here once. Maybe there still is, lower down the hill, but we've got to find it now. Your quest can wait."
I looked out across the plain, squinting into the sun as it sank between distant peaks. There was the suggestion of a valley there, I thought. A few days walk, perhaps, but out of my reach. I watched until the sun disappeared, and tried to memorise the shape of the mountains and the valley.
"You're right," I said, and turned from the edge to lead the way back through the grove.
Shadows were gathering amongst the dead trees, and the wind turned cold again. We went in single file down the hill for maybe a mile, keeping the cliff to our right, when the breeze took a moist taste, and we found ourselves walking through grass. Withered stuff, but alive and after days breathing the sterile desert air, its scent seemed cloying,
The grass was growing among stones in the dry bed of a stream, where water had once poured over the cliff edge. In the darkness below, a light flashed once, then went out.
We found a path nearby, that descended steeply through a natural gap in the cliff. Here and there, cracks in the stone had been hollowed out, and to my surprise, someone had put lighted candles in them. Their light flickered against the arms of the cliff, as we passed between them.
When it emerged from the cleft, the path turned right, along the base of the cliff. In the candlelight, we could see a fence running beside it, and trees and bushes beyond that. From somewhere close I could hear the sleepy clucking of chickens.
Further along the path we found water at last, seeping down the cliff from higher up. Somebody had carved a recess into the wet rock, catching some of the flow in a tin mug that lay gently overflowing in the candlelight.
I carefully took the mug out, feeling water run down my fingers for a moment, and turned to let Lietgarda drink first , but there was only Nort behind me. He looked around too, and then turned back in surprise.
"I thought she was right behind," he said.
We found Lietgarda at the top of the cliff, sitting on the ground, with her arms wrapped tightly round her knees. She relaxed when we got there, and sipped the water.
"What happened, Liet?" asked Nort, crouching down beside her. "Why didn't you come with us?"
Lietgarda took another sip from the mug, and gave us an embarrassed smile.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know what happened to me, but I just couldn't go down there. I suddenly felt that we would die and I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. I'm better now. I'll follow you."
We drank from the spring that ran down the cliff, and I left the mug where we found it. Nearby, the path turned from the base of the cliff, and we followed it downhill by starlight, through an orchard of flowering trees. Nausea had passed, and in the verdant night air, my fatigue began to fall away.
Someone had excavated a shallow channel alongside the path, carrying water from the spring down through the trees. It fed into a trough at the bottom of the hill, behind a tall, shuttered house. As we came down the final set of steps, we heard the door open, and a lamp flared in the night.
II. Machiel
I awoke, not on grass or sand, but with the sensation of cool sheets against my body. In the dark, the embers of last night's fire glowed on the hearth. I lay without moving for a moment, then reluctantly pulled myself out of bed and found my way to the window by the crack of daylight. Nort groaned behind me, and turned over in the other bed, when I pushed the shutters out, letting cold morning air into the room.
The window looked down on a garden, grey in the shadow of the cliff. The morning sun had not yet risen above the cliff, though the dead trees there stood in silhouette against a brightening sky.
I went out without waking Nort again, leaving him snoring with his pillow over his head. The house was still in darkness, but I found my way down to the kitchen in the milky early morning light.
Close to the big window, an old man with grey, curling hair stood peeling artichokes. He looked up as I came in, and I recognised my host from the previous night.
"Good morning," he said, putting down the knife and wiping his hands. "I didn't expect to see you up. You were dead on your feet when you came, last night."
Barent. That was his name. I remembered now. He and his sister Christyntje had taken us in the night before. I had seen her in the doorway, holding a candle in each hand as Barent came out to greet us. He had even embraced Nort in a show of camaraderie, kissing him on both cheeks.
"Last night I didn't thank you properly," I said. "I don't know what we would have done if we hadn't found you."
"There's no need for that. It's been a long time since we've had guests here.
"Do you and your sister live here by yourselves?"
"Not at all. We do what's needed, but the house and the farm are Machiel's. He would be here to welcome you too, but he sometimes goes back to spend time in the buried city."
"I think that we walked through it the day before yesterday, but we didn't see anybody there. What happened to the city?"
Barent paused before replying. "It's been a long time since I've been there. You should ask Machiel to tell you its history, when he comes. We've been expecting him since before yesterday. That's why we light candles in the night, so that he can find his way home."
I was about to speak again, when somewhere in the house, a woman's scream tore the silence.
I stared at Barent for a moment and he returned my look of surprise, then I ran for the stairs.
Nort was already in the corridor, opening the door to the bedroom beside our own. We went in, to find Lietgarda sitting bolt upright in bed with the blanket across her lap, staring in wide-eyed horror at an elderly lady sprawled on the floor.
Barent had followed us into the room more quickly than I expected. He knelt by his sister and helped her to her feet.
"I just wiped her face," said Christyntje. "I thought that perhaps the lady had taken a fever."
"This is my fault," I said. "I should have told you that my companion mustn't be woken when she is asleep."
"That's alright, there's no harm done," said Christyntje, steady on her feet now. Lietgarda was breathing more easily as well.
"Liet, do you feel unwell?" said Nort.
"No, but for a moment I thought... It was just the shock, that's all."
"I think we should leave Lietgarda to get up," I said.
Christyntje and Barent cooked us millet porridge, with eggs stirred into the pot, and afterwards my friends and I walked in the orchard above the house. In daylight I saw that the trees were like none that I had known before. Some were in blossom, and some were in bud. Others were laden with soft skinned fruit, the colour of wheat. They had no perfume except the moist smell of sap, but orange pollen from the flowers drifted in slow patterns amongst the leaves, bright flecks in the light of the sun rising above the cliff wall.
At first we walked together in silence, but when the house was a safe distance below, Nort said "Fever be damned. That woman was up to something. What really happened, Liet?"
"She touched my face as I slept, and woke me," said Lietgarda. "No more than you saw yourself."
Lietgarda stared at the trees as she spoke, not meeting my eye.
"Are you sure there is nothing more you can tell us?" I asked. "You never screamed like that when Nort or I accidentally woke you."
Lietgarda sighed, but still didn't look at me.
"You have to understand that last night I was walking as deeply as I have ever gone. There are... currents here that I've not felt before. I was trying to grasp them. When you're in that state of mind, you don't see things the same in the physical world.
"In my other eyes, Christyntje entered my perception as a great rapacious bird, but patient and alert, poised over me. It scared me more than anything has, since I walked for the first time. I lashed out, but then I awoke, and it had been a phantom of my mind. I had hit an old woman."
"Is that all that you can tell us?" I pressed.
Leaves moved in the breeze, and the pattern of dappled light shifted on Lietgarda's face as we walked.
"It's as much as I can say right now. I don't know if I trust my feelings any more. Nothing has felt right since we came here."
"Do you think that we're in danger here, is that it?"
"No. Well, maybe, but that isn't it. There are presences here. I've been seeing them on the edge of my vision since we came to the buried city, but I can't grasp them. I can't talk to them. I wish more than ever now, that you had spoken to that lady when you had the chance."
As we walked between the trees, I was suddenly aware that we were being watched.
We had come to the path that led from the spring, down which we had come the night before. I looked up the slope, and saw a man standing further up the hill, staring at us. His hair was white, but the keenness of his gaze took my breath away, and his ancient leather coat billowed against the sun as he leapt down the path to us.
"Visitors," he shouted as he came. "Travellers in the desert. You must forgive me for not being here when you arrived. My name is Machiel, and you are welcome in my home."
Machiel led us back down the path to the house, and greeted Barent and Christyntje like friends he hadn't seen for years. There was an infectious intensity to the man that charged everything he did, and I thought that I understood how he commanded his servant's loyalty, alone though they were, here in the wilderness.
When Machiel finished speaking with them, Christyntje put a steaming pot of bitter aniseed tea on the kitchen table and then they left us alone with him.
Machiel poured the tea, and sat back on his chair.
"Let's introduce ourselves," he said. "My name is Machiel De Erst and this is my home. Now you know three quarters of everything there is to know about me."
I introduced my companions and myself and started thanking him for his hospitality, but Machiel waved formalities away with his hand.
"I wonder," he said, and paused. "I wonder why three lone travellers choose to cross the desert? There are no roads here and we're not on the way from anywhere or to anywhere, so you can't have gotten lost."
I picked my words carefully. "We were in need of the most direct route west, and that took us through the desert."
Machiel frowned. "People don't come to the desert without good reason," he said. "But never the less, here we both are, you and I. I wonder, is that coincidence or did you come looking for something?"
I took a breath before replying.
"It was just coincidence, but that doesn't mean we were not fortunate to find you."
"Indeed. There's no food or water that I know of for eight days hard journey. Your errand must be urgent, that you brave the desert unprepared."
"We all stay or go where the forces that possess us dictate," I said.
Machiel looked at me for quite some time before he spoke.
"It must be a secret indeed if I haven't already earned it. Well, we all need a few secrets. But what you seek may prove less important than that seeking it brought you here. Come with me and I'll show you something, and then maybe you'll answer my question.
I left Lietgarda and Nort in the kitchen, and followed Machiel up three flights of stairs, to a dark room at the top of the house.
"A moment," Machiel said, and threw the shutters out with a bang. In the light I saw that we were in an attic that had been made up as a study, and the open window looked out across the plain to the mountains and the afternoon sun.
"It's too dark to work in here in the mornings," Machiel said and carefully swept a layer of sand from the desk beside the window.
"I haven't shown this to anybody for years," he went on. He went to a wooden box at the back of the room, opened it, and lifted out one of the thickest books that I had ever seen. It reminded me of the volumes that you sometimes see in monastery libraries, from before the time of the rift. Machiel carried it to the desk, and began leafing through the book, page after page filled to the edges with tiny handwriting. For a moment I thought that he had forgotten me, then he spoke again.
"You've seen what remains of the City," he said, talking quietly, without taking his eyes from the pages. "But you can't imagine what it was. Before the first brick was made anywhere else in the world, there were palaces here, and wide streets and markets, and in the square before the cathedral there was a fountain that reached higher than the spire and fell like mist across the City, throughout the summer."
"I had never heard of it," I admitted. "What was its name?"
"It was the City, of course? What other name did it need, when the rest of the world still cowered in the night?"
"I've heard stories about the birthplace of civilisation before," I said. "I'm doubtful there was ever a single one."
Machiel in his surety was not the least bit riled, and turned another page, his eyes still on the book.
"I have listened to the stories too," he said. "There's some truth in them, but it's an echo, as half-memories of the City's glory."
"Who can say where stories begin?"
"I can, and I say to you that on the plain before us, the families of men first ended their long wandering. They raised the City, and in time their children went out like missionaries, taking what they had learned, the seeds of civilisation to the world beyond."
As he spoke, the breeze began to rise again, carrying dust from the plain. I stared out through the window, across the desolation to the mountains.
"Why here, of all places?" I asked, and Machiel suddenly smiled, as though I had asked the most pertinent question.
"Memory lingers here."
The metaphor escaped me, and perhaps it showed on my face because Machiel went on, suddenly hasty.
"Take me, for example. I've spent half of my life among the ruins, exploring the City's empty ways, clearing away the sand. I found rooms beneath the Cathedral which were unopened since the Final Years, and learned their secrets."
"You're talking about the invention of writing," I said. "You found records from the City?"
"Yes, that's what I meant," said Machiel, but I thought he seemed disappointed in my response.
"I've spent my life writing the history of the City," he went on. "Everything that I have learned is in my book. From Affairs of State to the pettiest secret. The History of The City."
He carefully closed the book and put his hands on its leather cover, looking me in the face.
"Then you are a historian?" I said at last.
"I was born studying things, and I know the City like no other. One way or another, I'll finish the History before I die."
I paused. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you ought to know, of course. People don't come to the City without a reason, whether they realise it or not."
"Thank you," I said. "But I've already said that we didn't come here intentionally, and time presses us. We'll be moving on tomorrow."
"I was hoping that you and your companions would stay with us for longer. I would like to show you the interior of the City, and you might help me with my work."
"I'm sorry," I said, and Machiel nodded. He opened a desk drawer and took out a small box of pens and a tiny bottle of ink.
"These are very precious to me," he said. "I had to go a long way to get them. If you will excuse me, it's getting late and I've a lot to do before it gets dark."
Nort was in the kitchen when I came down.
"Did you find out anything useful?" he said.
"I don't quite know. Where's Liet?"
Nort dropped his voice slightly. "She's keeping an eye on Christyntje, while I had a look around. Machiel is telling the truth about one thing, there's nobody else here. I walked through the orchard, and followed the line of the cliff in both directions, but the trail just leads out into the desert. There's nowhere to go except back into the desert."
"Did you find anything else?" I asked.
"I saw Barent on the path that runs down the other side of the house, past the chicken coop, but he didn't see me. I followed him to the edge of the orchard. There's something there I need to show you."
The graveyard was laid out beneath the trees in the corner of the wood furthest from the house, where the fertile land petered into open desert. Dusk had started to bleed colour from the landscape and the wind was rising again in the branches.
"What do you think of that?" Nort said, talking quickly. "I stood over there and watched Barent digging. They're rather shallow for wells, eh?"
I went down on one knee to look more closely.
The graveyard was ancient, even compared with the age of the encroaching desert. Worn, toppled tombstones littered the sand as far as I could see.
The graves under the trees were unmarked, and looked old enough to have vanished entirely as well, had not someone kept them tended. The only recent graves were the three, open in front of me. Barent had heaped the soil on the grass to one side, and left the shovel ready, propped against the trunk of a tree.
"Three empty graves," said Nort. "One each. How do you think they intended to do it? Poison?"
"I don't understand," I said. "What have they to gain from killing us? We've eaten their food, and taken no harm. If they wanted to hurt us, why not when we slept last night?"
"How do I know that? Maybe the other two need Machiel's say-so first. Maybe Machiel wanted to study you. The important thing is that now we know what they intend us, so we can strike first."
"You'd kill them after they took us in?"
Nort paused, and turned to look out across the desert.
"I'll follow you," he said. "Perhaps to death in this wilderness. I've made that commitment. But I can't fight the desert. Of course it's a relief to find an enemy I can touch."
"We can't kill people just because we're afraid of what they might do."
We walked back to the house, and the wind hissed in the leaves.
In the dusklight, Barent lit the oil lamps in the kitchen, and we sat dinner with our hosts. I could see that Nort was watching Machiel and the others as they ate, but Lietgarda sat calmly eating, deep in thought. Machiel talked genially throughout of the doings of the City, as though it were current gossip, not the history of a dead people.
"Tell me of the City's end."
I looked up. Having spoken, Lietgarda was looking at Machiel with quiet expectation.
Machiel took a short breath.
"The Final Years came without reason or warning, and the wheel of seasons failed." he said. "A long, burning summer that parched the crops to their root, and a winter without relief from the heat. In spring the Great Fountain failed, and the water in the Cathedral Pool turned bad. Then wells within the city began to go dry, and the mountain springs that fed the aqueducts died. Summer brought dry winds that carried sand up from the south and turned the sun black. What harvest there might have been rotted in the earth. Strife. Death amongst those who had forgotten it. In a little over a year the City was scoured from the earth, and its death pangs were unequalled."
Nobody spoke. In the oil light I couldn't make out Machiel eyes. Finally I said "They couldn't all have died."
"The desert took the land, and there's nothing left, except for the shells of houses, covered and uncovered by the wind as the years pass, and the bones of men and women under ten feet of sand."
Lietgarda said "What did you mean, 'death amongst those who had not known it'?" Her words were measured and precise. Did Machiel hesitate?
"It was a gift given to those who founded the City, that they did not age in the same way that people do now, and they died rarely and only by accident. But they were not many, less than a thousand dwelt in the City, I think, and they did not mingle their blood with others. The travellers, the slaves, or ambassadors from the newborn kingdoms who dwelt in the City's outer parts. The Founders kept themselves apart, and that was their downfall in waiting, maybe. When the City fell, they ended.
"We're very close to the wellspring of civilisation, here. Not the palace or cathedral, but here on the edge of the hills, where the holy trees still grow. This was the place they settled in the first days, before the City was founded, and this was where they always buried their dead, among the roots. The water never quite went dry here. You've drunk it yourselves. But the desert encroaches a little further every year and one day it will sweep the last orchard away."
Machiel went quiet, and the only sound was the faint hiss of the lamps.
"Machiel," I said. "I've reconsidered. If you're amenable, my friends and I would like to stay here with you for a few days longer."
Nothing for a moment, then Machiel's face was broken by a sudden smile.
"We would be honoured," he said. "There's a lot that I would like to show you."
Afterwards, Christyntje and Barent busied themselves with dishes, and Machiel excused himself.
Nort came over to me.
"Cemeteries for people who don't die?" he whispered. "That man's a fool or a lunatic. There's harm in these people or I've never known it. Did you mean what you said about staying here?"
"Of course not," I said. "Machiel isn't telling us all he knows. There's something unnatural here, but maybe there's more chance of walking away if Machiel expects us to be here longer."
"Then we leave tomorrow?"
"Tonight. While they're asleep."
Machiel came back to the table and drifted back into reveries of the City. I didn't have a chance to speak with Lietgarda until later that night, when Nort and I met with her, in her room.
"We can't leave yet," she said. "I came so close to grasping the currents last night. Let me Walk here for one more night, and I'm sure that would be enough."
"Enough for what? Machiel can keep whatever mysteries there may be here. We have our own errand."
"Just for an hour then, please."
"There's an early setting moon tonight," said Nort, unexpectedly. "If we wait past midnight, there will be moonshadow to cover us when we leave."
Outvoted, I shrugged.
"An hour then," I said. "But don't oversleep."
Lietgarda smiled, as Nort and I went out.
Somebody had made the fire in the hearth by our door, and left an oil lamp on the mantle. Nort carefully closed the shutters and lit the lamp with a splint from the fire, then we settled down to wait.
"We'll refill our flasks from the trough," I said. "And when we're clear of the orchard we can find somewhere to lay up until it's light enough to see the way."
"And which way's that?" asked Nort.
"West. The same as always."
"If we turn back, we could probably make it back to the river," said Nort evenly. "From there we could get down to the coast, and try to pick up the trail again. We don't know if there is any way to cross the plain. We'll do nobody good if we perish there."
"That could take months," I said. "And we might never find the trail again. The trail crosses the plain, and so must we. We've wasted too much time already."
Nort sighed, but nodded, and opened his pack.
The night wore on, and the fire slowly collapsed into embers. I lay in thought on the bed, as Nort checked through his pack for the third time.
"It'll be dawn in an hour," he said, and paused, but I didn't speak.
"If we don't wake her, it'll be too late to go without being seen."
I sighed and pushed myself off the bed.
"I wish we hadn't waited, but she's a Walker, so we have to trust her judgement. You're with us because you know the dangers on the road, and she knows... other things. We'll have to give her as much time as she..."
As I spoke, there was a soft knock on the door. Nort blew out the lamp, and for a moment there was only the glow of the embers on the hearth as I opened the door. Lietgarda came in, and I made sure the door was shut before I relit the lamp.
"I've got your stuff ready. Can we go now?" said Nort, as he lifted his pack onto his shoulders, but Lietgarda just stood there. Even in the dim light, she looked as though she had gone nights without sleep since that evening.
"Yes," said Lietgarda, eventually. "I've never felt in such need of rest, but we should go quickly now."
"Not until you've told us what happened to you," I said, and Nort rolled his eyes and dropped his pack onto his bed with a sigh.
"It may not be safe here," said Lietgarda.
"But, you said these presences you felt weren't dangerous."
"Ha. And I was right, wasn't I?" Lietgarda rubbed her eyes with the side of her hand, before going on. "There's nothing more harmless than a dead body, so imagine how safe a thousand bodies must be. Or a million."
"Are you talking about ghosts?" asked Nort, but Lietgarda shook her head firmly.
"Life shines out in darkness, but we ourselves shine so much more brightly still. Most go their lives with their eyes shut against their own brilliance, seeing just the afterglow and ghosts of true images. To be a Walker is to open those eyes and use them, to spite the pain and see the candle-flame, even on the face of the sun.
"Breath leaves the body in an instant, but the presence of life remains for a while, a light to those who chose to see. I was once on a battlefield where many men had died, and the night was filled with hundreds of candles. But the honest slain don't linger, and by morning a truer darkness fell on the field."
"Well," said Nort. "All that sounds like ghosts to me."
"This place," Lietgarda said. "The buried city and the hills were the scene of long murder, I think. There are countless spirits here. They're so thick in the air that I didn't recognise them for individuals at first, even though I could almost see their light with my daylight eyes. I can't express how wrong that is. Something that I can't see is holding them here."
"Is there anything that we can do?" I asked.
"Nothing that I can do for them. I spent the night going deeper and deeper, but they can't see me or hear me, and I don't know why. I know of others more skilled than I, but I wouldn't ask them to risk coming here. There have been so many murders in this land, that I don't believe they will ever cease. It doesn't matter to the quest whether we turn west or east. The way will attend to itself. But if we don't leave here tonight, we never will."
Nort rolled his eyes slightly.
"Let's be away then," he said, and hefted his pack over one shoulder, but as he did so, there was a quiet knock on the door. Three slow taps. Lietgarda and I stopped in act of buttoning our packs and she met my eye for a moment, before turning her face to the floor.
III. The Plain of Boulders
The door opened and Machiel came into the lamp light, followed by Barent and Christyntje. He stood for a moment, taking in the sight of we three, and the packs on the floor.
"I heard voices, and here's a thing," he said. "I take it that you had plans today other than visiting the City with me."
"We saw the open plots," I said. "We know what you're doing. It's too late. We're going now."
I took my pack, and began to walk toward the door, Lietgarda and Nort following after, but Machiel didn't move
"I want you to know that this isn't the place or the time that I intended," he said, and he smiled. "But it certainly isn't too late, either."
And then Christyntje and Barent collapsed. They dropped as if pole axed, not just unconscious but bodies clearly lifeless before they hit on the floor. Machiel stood quite still, amid their tangle of limbs, watching us with that gaze of his. Behind me, I heard Nort gasp, and I think that Lietgarda stumbled.
I took a step towards Machiel "What have you done?" I shouted.
"They had grown old in their bodies. There weren't many years left to them."
"You've killed them. What for?"
"I thought you understood but it's of little account now." He glanced at Lietgarda and Nort, standing behind me. "Do it," he said.
Something hit me from one side and I went down hard, my arm held fast behind and my face against the floor. I twisted my neck to look, and pain tore my shoulder. Nort had his knee on my spine, holding me down.
"Ah, that feels better than peeling artichokes" he said, and pulled my left arm back further. Standing beside him, I saw Lietgarda smile and stretch out her arms like one newly woken, and despair took me. I thought that I understood, but too late.
"Try not to hurt him," said Machiel, stepping forward, out from the bodies. He crouched to bring his face close to mine.
"I know that it hurts," he said. "I've had ones that I loved taken this way as well, and it was cruel of me not to take you all at once, but I need to talk to you."
"Whatever you've done to them, please let them go and you'll never have to see us again, I swear..."
I could hardly talk, but Machiel listened and shook his head slightly.
"It always had to end this way, from the moment you first came here," he said. "But it's done now. Your friends are gone, and their pain is over. Yours is only for little while, I promise."
"What are you? Is this the secret you found, buried beneath that city?" I tried to shout, but Machiel simply put his hands on my head, as though calming an animal, and his smile seemed sad, but natural.
"I found only words," he said. "No magic, I assure you. The gift that was given to my people runs deeper than that. It isn't locked in rooms."
"Your people?"
Machiel took a breath.
"I was not a prince among the Founders," he said. "But I was there when we crossed the mountains and I was there when we laid the first stones. There was much I didn't know of my own history, until I found the room of the annals. I've spent lifetimes scratching through the rubble to find it again, because I am a part of the City, and though the years and love and exile separate us, it will always be so."
"Your City is gone. It's dead. Why do you stay, then?" I spat.
"Because, I'm all that's left. The ruins you saw speak nothing of the glory of what we made here. Even the annals are just words, endless corridors, endless shelves of gold and silver plates inscribed with mere words. But memory keeps it real," and he struck his chest with the flat of his hand.
"No, it's dust. Less than history. It's forgotten."
"Don't tell me that. I left the City long ago, and I've traced far countries with my footsteps. I was far away when the Final Years came upon us. But I felt it; each one of us did, though half the distance in the world might separate us.
"It took me six years to return, and by then it was over. The storms left nothing but a handful of other survivors and a scrap of the holy forest clinging to these hills. We few used to meet by chance, upon a time, coming or going, wandering the desert ruins, or sitting beneath the trees. There wasn't a one of us who could ever leave for good, and yet none have returned since before your grandfather's father was born. So, I am the last. The Founders are gone, and I'm the last. Ha! I envy the others, now. They've found the only rest that's left to us, but what rest is there for me, when I am the last memory of what we were? I can't let that die.
"But, that isn't what keeps my children here. They were born far from the City, though I brought them here to receive their birthright. They could leave if their love for me were not to hold them. Do you see why my book is so important, now? It will be what's left of the City, after I'm gone. Not just what I knew, but what I felt. It will be me, or all of what I am that survived the City's fall.
"My book is almost finished. Thirty years perhaps, and then I can be done with it. I can be done with everything, and my children can go free. But you have to understand that I mustn't die, not yet, or the City will die forever."
"What do you want from me?" I said.
"Whatever you can give. My children are secure for a while, thanks to your friend's sacrifice." A pang of loss drove into my chest, but Machiel spoke on, regardless. "But how long before my fingers grow too brittle to write, again? Before it's time for me to risk going back to the world outside, to the throngs where a single missing body won't be noticed? Do I have that time?" He shrugged, to answer to his own question.
"And along come you, a young man with years and to spare. I put my mark on you, a shared moment of pain, and the years are mine, not yours. Unless you can offer me something else."
"Please don't," I stuttered, as horror grew. "Don't do that. I'll stay here, I'll help you. Together we can finish it in time."
Machiel nodded once. "That was the offer I came here to make you, tonight. I can take you to the hidden rooms and show you the City. You'll come with me?"
"Please don't kill me. I'll do it."
"Yes, I think that you will, but I'll mark you, in case you change your mind. Understand that there will be a price, and a reward. My people's gift isn't locked in dungeons, it's still here in the water here, and the air and in the fruit. You may receive it yourself, when you have stayed here a little longer, and you might learn to be less judgemental about what other people will do to survive."
The weight on my back had begun to relax, and I thought that if I kept Machiel talking for long enough, I might yet escape. But then, the strangest thing. Machiel bent down, as I lay there pinned on the floor, and he kissed me once on my forehead. Nobody made any sound, for a minute, and then the pressure was gone. I clambered to my feet, supporting myself on a bed post against the pain in my legs, too unsteady to think of running yet.
Barent and Christyntje were there. It was strange, how quickly I had accepted the loss of my friends. Their movements were the same that I had slowly grown accustomed to, during the long months of our journey, but when I looked at their eyes, my friends were gone. The tangled heap that lay still by the door were less than bodies, I thought, undeserving of reverence paid to the departed.
Machiel followed my eye.
"The City has passed, yet we remember tradition. When bodies are finished with, they go to nourish the holy woods," he said, and I thought of the three open plots there, waiting beneath the trees and the colourless, brightening desert sky. The water under the cliff had been a trap, and I had doomed my friends when I brought them here. Better, perhaps, to die in the desert. But each one of us had already accepted risk, in the overwhelming face of our task, and while I lived, I might still carry through what they had died for.
Barent took hold of the bodies without ceremony, dragging them out of the room by the ankles. I heard them bump on the stairs, and a minute later the kitchen door banged in the silence.
"You have made the right choice," said Machiel, almost to himself. "You can't imagine how many years I've lived among the bones of my people. So many bodies I walked our ruined streets in."
Keep talking, I thought, as I tested my weight on my legs, but what I said was "Where does this, unique ability come from?"
"The holy question," said Machiel. "Our families wandered the land beyond the mountains since before time. Gathering what grew, killing what could be caught with our hands. We were animals. There were only a few hundred of us left after the black winter, when we crossed the mountains.
"The plain was not a desert, then, but lush with grass that stretched forever, and you could walk for days through the hills without leaving the shade of the trees. In those days we couldn't catch the beasts on the plain, but there were carcasses to be scavenged, and the fruit grew wild and there was water. So there we remained, satisfied under the orchard eaves, and there we changed.
"Only the trees are now as before. Some said afterwards that it was their fruit, or the water we drank. But they didn't understand. I was here from the first, and it wasn't the fruit or water that wrought our change, that granted the gift. I've always known that it was the spirit of this place that changed us forever.
"The first years here were dark. It is easy to scorn death when it's inevitable, but as we learned how we were changed, a witless fear of death grew in us. And so a man might die quietly in the night, and in the morning maybe his children recognised their father's mad eyes looking at them from their mother's face, or their brother or sister. Lovers slew in fear those that had kissed them, and strong and weak preyed equally on each other. The gift was given us unasked, and it almost destroyed us.
"In time our reason returned, and we learned to survive, to live without death. We who remained went back upon a time, to the lands beyond the mountains to find whatever people still lived like animals there. Not all returned to us. Our gift doesn't confer safety from the dangers in the world, but those that did brought fresh bodies for the Promised Land. It was a promise that few of them received from us because life, as they say, must go on."
"You murdered them," I said.
"And what if we did? You still don't understand. You've listened to what I've said and you still imagine that you're humanity's natural state, soft and secure. You're not. I remember life under the winter moon"
He brought his lips almost against my ear to hiss, but whether in anger or in frustration at me, I couldn't tell.
"Everything that you have, you have because of us. What of agriculture and livestock? Writing, architecture? Do you really believe that a single lifetime, no matter how it is spent, is long enough to raise yourself out of the mud? We were the founders also of your city, of every city, and we repaid what we took a hundred times over."
"And what of the people whose bodies you stole?"
"We don't talk of that." said Machiel.
"No," Christyntje said softly. It was the first time she had spoken with Lietgarda's voice, and I tried to recognise a trace of my friend's accent. There was something of Lietgarda still there, I thought, and for a moment I wondered if part of her still lived, but then Christyntje spoke on.
"He'll have to know, if he's going to live here."
"Very well," said Machiel, and he drew himself up slightly. "This body, I found on a street in a city, far from the desert. His neighbours never knew why the young scholar left in the night without a word."
"And, the others?" I asked. The words were like chewing metal.
"Barent is burying them. They're gone. What does it matter now?"
"They came to us as children," said Christyntje. "A brother and sister, perhaps. We found them wandering, on the plain before the orchard. Maybe they had gotten separated from travellers, or maybe they were survivors from a caravan that foundered in the desert, I don't know. There was no sign of others, and they never spoke a word. We brought the boy and the girl here. We marked them and raised them. And when they were old enough, we took them."
Christyntje left her words hanging, rather like Lietgarda might have done.
"And was that what your civilisation learned?" I said. "To raise children as livestock."
"How dare you judge what we did?" shouted Machiel. "You know nothing of the City."
"I know that you're murderers. How can you live like this?"
Machiel came at me, and I thought that he was about to hit me, but then he grabbed me by my shoulders.
"Yes, I live like this, though days are endless. I betrayed my people long ago, but here, now, I will honour them and I will do what I must to live and assuage their memory."
Machiel released me, and change came into his voice.
"It seemed cleaner before," he said, more quietly. "When the gift was first given, it wasn't enough to just want to live; you had to want it enough to risk everything that you had in the wilds outside the City. Civilisation changed that. What a wonderful thing, it seemed to us, when we first tamed the wild goats of the pastures, that we were taking what we had learned on our own kind.
"I was not a lord of the City, but I was a founder still, and I had my responsibilities. In those days I looked after the big houses in the outer-city, where the young outsiders lived, until they were ready. Until they were old enough. But that was in the later years and maybe I was too old, even then. I don't know how many men and women I watched grow into adulthood, with a Founder's mark on them."
Machiel was silent for moment, before he spoke again.
"And so she came into my life. So many centuries have passed, but it's her face that I see when I close my eyes, as clearly as I see you now. She was not a Founder, but one who lived in one of my houses. Raised for consumption. I have existed for longer than you can imagine, but the years with her were as close to a life as I ever had.
"I loved her, and I promised that I would never let her be taken. If it were possible, I would have died forever, to take her mark from her. All that we could do was to flee into exile, so that we should live and be forgotten, and die far from the City. I swore that I would never take another's body, and I that freed me, and I was more alive than I would never feel again.
"But we were not forgotten. The Final Years came on the City, and amid despair, some high lady remembered the little slave girl, she had marked a lifetime before.
"And my love cried out beside me in the night, and then she was gone. I knew that far away the City was dying, even as I put my hands to her neck. I kept my promise to my love, but I broke my vow to myself. The only birthright I had to bequeath our children was here, and for that I needed to live."
Machiel's fury subsided as he spoke, but I could not say where amid his memories, he walked.
I stood close to Machiel and spoke softly.
"You are a murderer," I said. There was a moment before his eyes focused on me, and as he opened his mouth, I hit him as hard as I could, yelling with the anger that suddenly welled up in me. He fell, and there was blood on the bed sheets. I expected Christyntje to leap on me as I ran, but nothing happened to stop me opening the door onto the dark corridor outside.
And then Machiel was in my mind, and I was on the bedroom floor again.
I've never known how to express what happened. I don't suppose there's another person living who knows what it feels like to have somebody else inside you, stretching himself out like a yawn into your arms and hands and fingers. If I hadn't been ready, I would have been lost as quickly as my friends had been.
My right arm was yet free, and I put it into the fire. I pushed my hand as fast and as far as I could into the bright embers on the hearth, and for a moment, in encompassing pain, as two voices screamed, I forgot about Machiel and my friends. I forgot myself, even.
It couldn't have been more than a few minutes before I came to. The cinders were still smouldering on the carpet, and he pain had gone, but my arm felt deathly cold and my right hand was black with caked blood.
Machiel stood close by, rubbing his wrist reflexively. Lietgarda - no, Christyntje was there, and Barent was back, standing next to her with the kitchen knife in his hand.
"I should compliment you on your presence of mind," Machiel said, speaking slowly. "That hand won't be writing for anybody, I think. I could still take you, you know? No matter where you are, at any time I choose."
He came closer again, as I struggled to get up.
"And it seems that you didn't know that I write with my left hand."
Then he looked at my burned hand again, and frowned. "That's going to give you pain for the rest of your life, I think, so perhaps I'll let you keep yourself to yourself, for the time being."
As I struggled to my knees, Barent came forward purposefully with the knife, but Machiel stopped him.
"I'm not vindictive," he said. "Stay, or go, if you still want to."
I fled the room, and they did not pursue me. In the kitchen, I grabbed bottles of water and what food that I could carry, and then I ran from the house into the grey morning light. My hand burned again as though it was still in the fire, and I stumbled and fell among the rocks.
I must have lain there all day. It was night once more when I woke, shivering in spite of the warmth. I would have begun walking there and then, but I couldn't see a path and I had a terror of finding my way back to the house in the night. Instead, I sat awake, trying to rest and listening for the sound of quiet, familiar footsteps in the darkness.
When daylight came again, I started toward the mountains, threading my way between boulders the size of hills.
Thirst overtook me, and pebbles ran like a stream beneath my feet as I stumbled on. Sometimes the boulders turned into ruined houses, worn down by the wind, and I thought that I was walking along deserted city streets. There was never any sound except the wind, yet I would put my hands over my ears and ran, until the visions had passed.
It took me four days, I think, to cross the plain, walking without hope or sight, head bowed beneath the sun. It was blind luck that I found my way to the valley I had seen from the cliff top, so long before. I didn't feel the ground rising at last beneath my feet, or damp grass press my face when I finally collapsed.
Some hunters found me on there, on the very edge of the desert and took me back to their camp, higher up. Their people were migrants who summered in the valley, crossing the mountain when spring opened the passes, to pan for gold in the fresh snowmelt.
I stayed with them for a month, spending the days wandering the sunlit uplands, letting my hand heal as best it could. It was cool beneath the trees, and the air teemed with insects. Birds like darting jewels fished the quick mountain streams. I had been amongst sterility for so long that I had forgotten there was that much life in the world.
None of the men that I met in the valley had ventured the plain of boulders or seen the buried city in the desert, but they told me strange, conflicting stories of a kingdom east of the desert, overturned long ago and laid waste for their crimes. Some said that they were slavers, or cannibals who made war and carried people back to their city to be consumed. I don't remember the tales, for I had turned my back on the desert and listened only to news of the countries that lay across the mountains.
There were no seasons in the lands I had crossed, but in the valley it was late summer when I gathered my things and took the steep path that would lead me to the pass. My compass was lost on the plain, but once again I let the setting sun show my way.
Years later, when events had run their course, I returned to the buried city and found the farm by the cliff, swept away by the desert. The spring had gone dry and the orchard was choked with sand, as was the house.
I explored each room in turn, but there was no sign of those who had lived there. The shelves in the study were bare, and when I dug the great wooden box out of the sand, it was empty. In a way, I was relieved to find myself alone there, though I had gone back there seeking revenge. For myself, and for friends who had never left.
The house burned simply, in the clear twilight, yet I was afraid to sleep in the shadow of those cliffs and returned to desert, fleeing the memories that inhabit that place in the night.