I spent the day as usual, writing a love letter for an over-perfumed elderly lady, another for a pale youth in embroidered robes, doing accounts for a grain merchant, reading a love letter for a blushing girl of about thirteen, who hadn’t even blossomed yet. I recognized Sirnos’s handwriting on the last. It was obvious he’d given suggestions to the youth sending it—florid and full of banalities, including ebony hair and blood-red lips, neither of which she had. She was thrilled with it.

  At last, in the cool of the evening, stomach grumbling loudly because I’d eaten no midday meal, I headed home with my new book.

  I pulled the window curtain aside to release the day’s heat, settled on my bed mat, and examined the book. If it wasn’t a genuine Meluga, it was penned by someone with similar handwriting and attention to detail—a beautiful volume, worth far more than the eight bits I’d paid. It was the second volume of Histories of the Kings, in superb condition. The other books had probably been in a ‘show’ library of a person who could not read, but owned books to show his importance. He may have inherited this from someone who appreciated books for their contents.

  As I turned pages, a piece of parchment fell out. It had marked the history of King Neraros’s reign, over two centuries ago.

  The writing was difficult to read—the pen’s nib too broad for the small markings, so they were crowded and smudged. But as I picked out word after word it became obvious this was a set of directions, a guide from one place to another. How old the parchment was I could not say—it was creased and dirty, and the writing archaic. It may have dated from the time of King Neraros, or merely been handy to mark a reader’s place when they put the volume down.

  On a scrap of paper too small to use for my clients’ letters, I copied the directions. Then I held my lamp close and frowned at what I’d written. Some of the description sounded like places near this city of Miyajar. ‘Crescent Cliff,’ for instance, could be a rock outcropping about half a day away, which my people called ‘Demon’s Toenail.’ It had been years since I roamed the desert with my family, but not so long that I’d forget landmarks.

  I was racking my brain for any place that might be described as ‘Black Pillars’ when my neighbor Dumaishi called outside my window, “Ho, Safji, there’s a man here asking for you.”

  I poked my head out and looked down; a man in a travel-stained robe shifted restlessly from foot to foot. People in need of a scribe seldom came to my room, but I could use every bit I could earn, so I pulled on my headscarf, grabbed my lamp, and ran down the stairs. At the bottom I stopped so I could step into the street with dignity.

  The man was a traveler with a letter from a friend telling him where to stay in Miyajar. I could see why he had not waited until morning. I read his letter, gave him directions to the house described, and was about to return to my book when a woman hurried up. “You’re a scribe?” she asked.

  “I am.”

  She pulled a small book from under her shawl. “I’ve inherited this, and want to know what it says and if it’s worth anything.” She hovered close as I opened the book. It was old, but the script was clean and dark. Illuminations decorated every other page.

  “It looks at least a hundred years old, perhaps older.” While she stood almost too close, leaning over to see, I read a few pages. “It talks of King Neraros, who lived over two centuries ago.” Odd, that I’d just seen that very name in my book. “I’m no expert, but this book appears quite valuable.”

  I skimmed several pages, reading about King Neraros, until I realized the woman was getting restive. “Take this to Bemmum the Rarities Dealer, if you want to sell. Don’t let him cheat you. I think it’s worth a great deal, so if he scoffs and says it’s only worth a few bits, pretend you’ll leave. That should get him to take you seriously.”

  The woman, looking anxious, thanked me. She dropped three silver bits into my hand, then hurried off.

  I had, in a short time this evening, made back almost what I’d spent on the book. That pleased me greatly. If I hurried, I could still buy supper tonight.

  ~o0o~

  The next day, my business was busier than ever before. I read letters, wrote letters, made contracts, and filled out and stamped permits. I wondered if every other scribe in the market had taken ill; usually the female scribe was the last someone with serious business came to. It was gratifying, but as I worked, my mind kept straying back to the book I’d bought, and the strange note it had contained.

  The sun was setting when I headed home, with enough money that I could buy a bowl of lamb kebab. Licking grease from my fingers, I climbed worn steps to my room. During the day, I had solved the puzzle of the ‘Black Pillars.’ A cluster of columns, which my people called ‘Giant’s Pipes,’ rose from the desert floor a day’s walk from Miyajar. When I had been at Miyajar University, I’d heard scholars argue that they were natural, but what in nature made such even, six-sided pillars?

  I stayed awake far too late, but before I slept I had a match for each of the landmarks mentioned in the parchment. There was also a name for their destination: Hawzeh. I was certain I’d heard that name before, but recalled nothing about it. In the language of my youth, it meant simply ‘field.’ What was so important about a field? Unless this scrap of parchment was merely a guide to reach a farmer’s home.

  I turned the parchment over. I had looked at it briefly before, but it was dirty, and only six words were written there. Rather, six sets of symbols, for they formed no words I recognized. Painstakingly I copied them, holding the parchment close to my oil lamp to assure I had them right.

  The next day I sat on my mat beneath the shade of Rugmaker Gurmam’s awning. Though I yawned often, I had enough business to keep me awake. Requests for permits were common. Usually Scribe Habuk took these, since his expertise was known throughout Miyajar. Was Habuk ill? I should enquire. I wouldn’t want him angry with me for taking his work.

  At dusk I bought a bowl of stewed meat and vegetables, eating as I sat quietly in the crowd about Storyteller Shamim. The old woman told the tale of some long-ago hero, enhanced by glowing pictures she drew in the air—either with magic or artifice, I’d never been able to tell which.

  When she finished the story, as people tossed copper bits her way, I threaded through the crowd to stand beside her. Without looking at me, she said, “Why do you trouble me, scribe?”

  “I seek knowledge,” I said, and dropped a silver bit into her palm.

  “I encourage those who seek knowledge,” she said, finally turning her wrinkled face toward me. Her silver hair gleamed in the darkness with a trace of her magic.

  I was blunt. “Do you know tales of a place called Hawzeh?”

  She raised her brows. “Why would one such as yourself ask of Hawzeh?”

  “I’ve come across the name in my studies,” I said. Shamim had a way of knowing if one told her untruths. From the way she looked at me, she knew that though this was true, it was not the whole story. Perhaps I would tell her of my parchment, depending on what she told me.

  She turned away, raised her voice and called, “What there was in the oldest of days and ages and times: in those days was a king, a king with seven sons.”

  The people around Shamim, who began to stand after the end of her last tale, sat back down around her. I settled at her side, listening eagerly.

  She went on with her story, which started as many did, but then continued, “The king built a city, the grandest of cities, a city fit for a king of his greatness. He brought in the finest architects, and the most skilled workers in stone, wood, and metal. As construction began, he had the most powerful sorcerers in the land strengthen the buildings and roads with magic. The city was amazing and beautiful, but the king retained the name of the village it had been: Hawzeh.”

  My silver bit had been well spent. So the Hawzeh my parchment described was—perhaps—this great city.

  Shamim went on to describe how the king had moved his family, servants, slaves, and hangers-on to his new city. He transferred the library of his old capital to Hawzeh and spent the rest of his days, when not conquering other kingdoms or ruling his own, adding to this library.

  But this king was not to enjoy his grand city for long. Despite the best efforts of his sorcerers, the river that gave life to the city dried up—due, no doubt, to the magical efforts of his enemies. When the king died in a suspicious hunting accident, his sons abandoned drought-stricken Hawzeh and moved to other cities, squabbling among themselves as to who should succeed the king.

  “Where did the king’s sons go?” asked someone in the crowd before I had a chance.

  “The eldest of them moved to this very city where we sit in the cool of the evening. Miyajar. But this happened many years agone, and the strife between brothers was resolved long before your great grandmothers were alive.”

  Someone else asked about the fight between princes, and Shamim’s story veered off into a different tale. I slipped away quietly, my question answered. I knew which king that had been, the one with seven contentious sons. None other than Neraros, whose history my piece of parchment had marked. But his city—Hawzeh—why did I not remember reading of it?

  That night I turned from the parchment to the history of King Neraros in my book. I had not recognized the name Hawzeh because for many years his city had been known as Malun, the cursed city, and thus it was named in this history.

  For weeks after that, around my increasing business, I talked to people in the marketplace. I discovered Scribe Habuk was well, and annoyed that I had so much of his business. When I asked what people knew of the city Malun, there were many stories. It was haunted, most said. It had been abandoned all in a night, its treasures and wonders left behind, but those who sought to retrieve them disappeared.

  The books I consulted in the University of Miyajar gave me a rather different picture. People left the city gradually as farms around it failed. When King Neraros died the city was finally abandoned. An intriguing note in one of the books said that the king’s sons, uninterested in his library, had left it in Hawzeh.

  I decided I needed to visit Hawzeh myself. The unprecedented amount of business I had received in the last few months meant, for the first time since I’d left the university, I had money saved. I could take a few weeks, once the weather turned cooler, to seek the library in Hawzeh. For it was, of course, the library I sought. Rare, ancient tomes, I had heard. Several centuries in the desert heat, in a city no doubt mostly covered in sand, may have damaged them, but there should be some still readable. If I gave such books to the university, might they accept me back?

  I found my guide when she came to me with a letter to read. Short and stocky, tough and practical, Rumah became angry when the letter, from someone who’d hired her to guard a caravan, broke the contract.

  I looked at her with interest. “Since you won’t be going with his caravan, would you be interested in a short journey, just a few days?”

  She was interested.

  Rumah knew exactly what we’d need—donkeys, provisions, shelter. In a few short days the journey I’d merely pondered became reality.

  We set out before dawn, to travel as far as possible before the day became too hot. I rode one donkey, she another, and we had three more to carry provisions to Hawzeh, and the books I hoped to find back to Miyajar.

  I told her of the landmarks, and the place I sought. The fact that some thought Hawzeh haunted gave her no qualms. “I’ve traveled north and south, east and west, and never seen a haunt,” she stated. “It’s always the wind, or rats, or someone making trouble.”

  In three days we were far past Demon’s Toenail and Giant’s Pipes, traveling through a part of the desert my people had never visited, at least not that I remembered. We found shelter in an abandoned house. I wondered why anyone had built it out here where there was no water, then remembered Shamim’s tale of the river near Hawzeh drying up. Had this wasteland been farmland two centuries ago?

  The next morning Rumah and I took the donkeys between stone outcroppings, then down into what was surely the dried bed of a long-vanished river. Thorn trees and spiny bushes grew there, suggesting there might still be water beneath the sand and rocky soil.

  The donkeys scrambled up a steep embankment, using a trail of sorts, and as we topped the rise Hawzeh was revealed.

  It was magnificent, yet eerie. Broad streets, alabaster buildings, spires and towers. But the city gates were missing, and sand buried the streets. Empty doors and windows gave the alabaster buildings a disturbing resemblance to fleshless skulls.

  “Are you sure you want to go in, Safji?” Rumah asked, voice muffled by the scarf pulled over her mouth against blowing sand.

  In the light of day the city seemed merely sad, not ominous. Well, perhaps not very ominous.

  “I do,” I said firmly, deliberately pushing tales of haunts and demons to the back of my mind.

  From our vantage, it was easy to tell where the palace was. On a rise at the center of the city was a fortress, walls seeming intact. The broadest street led straight to its gates—gates that may have closed two centuries before and never opened again.

  Now that we were out of the riverbed, Rumah and I found the wind had risen to whip sand around our donkeys’ legs. Rumah turned in her saddle to scan the sky. “Storm coming,” she said.

  We rode quickly through the open gate into broad, sand-drifted city streets. The wind picked up. An ominous stain in the sky meant sandstorm.

  Rumah and I jumped from our mounts to peer through gaping empty doorways of the nearest buildings to see if they would provide good shelter. The nearest looked and smelled as if jackals laired in it. Rumah skirted it carefully, brightly painted bow strung, arrow nocked, in case the jackals were still there.

  We hurried farther into the city, closer to the fortress in the center. One large edifice, probably some noble’s home, had intact walls and ceiling, and we discovered, after we led the donkeys in, that we could close the door.

  While Rumah cared for the donkeys, I explored the house. Except for the lobby, where the door had been open, there was no sand anywhere. Light came from small holes in the walls and ceiling, and I wondered why sand had not blown through them. I was puzzled by the small room with basin on the wall and hole in the floor. Why have a privy in the middle of the house? Wouldn’t the smell be horrendous? At least time had taken the stink away.

  I knew the moment the sandstorm hit Hawzeh. The walls of the building we sheltered in were sturdy, but through those thick walls we heard the howl of wind and patter of sand against the building. Despite its age, the building kept sand out completely. None blew around the edges of the door or through the small holes that let in light.

  Glad of shelter, Rumah and I spread mats on the floor and made a meal of dates and flat bread seasoned with salt-cured lamb. The donkeys, in the next room, weren’t even restive. They seemed to welcome the relative coolness of the ancient building.

  After eating, we curled up on our mats for a nap. When I awoke, it was so cool in the house I thought it night time. But light filtering into the room was so bright that I wondered if I’d slept through the night, and into the next day.

  I used the privy; since we’d be leaving this building the smell wouldn’t matter. Then I noticed water dripping into the basin on the wall. I had no idea where it came from, but was happy to see it. I washed my hands and then held cupped palms below the drip so I could drink. The water tasted fresh and clean, much better than what we’d been drinking from goatskin bottles for three days.

  Pondering the presence of water in the house, I opened the door and peered out into late afternoon, not morning, sunshine. The sandstorm had passed over Hawzeh.

  Rumah woke when I opened the door and let in the heat of the day. She rubbed her eyes and came to join me in the doorway. “We slept too long,” she said. “Do you still want to search the city? We could wait for morning.”

  “I’d rather start now,” I said, looking toward the city center, where the blank walls of the palace fortress enticed me.

  The storm had sculpted the sand in the streets into fantastic patterns as it flowed around buildings. The donkey’s hooves made the only sound, echoing oddly between ancient walls.

  When we got to the fortress, we left the donkeys inside what might have been a shop, long ago. The gates towered above us, several times our height. I couldn’t see any way to open them from outside—no latch or handle, not even holes for fingers. Had the gates always been opened from inside?

  There was writing engraved into the stone walls on both sides of the gates. I stepped back several paces to see all the letters. It was old script, words broken in odd places so the writing fit the wall space.

  “I was right; this was King Neraros’s palace,” I muttered under my breath as I read the words. Then, louder, for Rumah’s benefit, I read, “Friends and allies may enter, but enemies shall feel the point of the spear, or the arrow through the heart.”

  I stepped farther back to take in the whole of the gates, and noticed something that made my heart stutter in shock. Nearly buried in sand drifted against the wall was withered flesh over bones—a human hand and arm.

  I dropped to my knees, scooping sand away until I found the skull, the neck, the chest. Right enough, there was an arrow through his heart. I say ‘his,’ for the corpse was dressed in a robe such as men in Miyajar wear. There was no sign scavengers had been at the body. I stood slowly, eyeing the wall with immense distrust.

  “He’s not been here two centuries,” I commented as I backed away, still watching the wall, looking for movement, ready to run. “Someone must live here after all. Bandits, perhaps.”

  “Wouldn’t we have seen some sign? Footprints, cleared paths?” Rumah backed away, too, and was farther from the wall than I.

  “Not after the sandstorm. And we weren’t looking before.” While Rumah went back to get the donkeys, I began to circle the compound, following the half-buried street at its base, as far from the wall as I could get. I spotted no arrow slits in the wall, and anyone standing atop it should be readily noticeable. Besides, the arrow which killed the man had not come from above, but straight at his back. He’d been killed by someone in the city street.