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FOUR




François made his way back toward the fisherman’s house. “Hey, look!” he called to his friends. “Look what I found!”

After their meeting with the Neshili elders, the party had sent the elders back to the palace. The elders, and Sapal in particular, had urged the party to come with them. One of their guards had had a keen eye for Lowanna, and seemed also to urge that the party accompany the elders back with particular enthusiasm.

But Surjan, once relieved of the concern that he might be in danger of being imprisoned or executed, was struck by the much stranger fear that he might be about to become a king, and he had wanted to delay that process. After much pleading, he had agreed at least to send a message—not of acceptance, but a simple message stating that he had slain old king Zarum and would come to the palace in the evening.

What exactly the palace, and for that matter the city around it, looked like remained to be seen. François was prepared to be underwhelmed.

The party had washed and then fallen into interminable discussions. Given that the course of action was already committed, François eventually grew bored and wandered away in search of novelty. Now he held a trove of purple fruits that he had determined to be edible, and moreover informative, and he returned to share his find. The sky clouded over and stiff winds sent gray sheets of cloud scudding across the sky.

Arnun raced up to him, holding one of the empty traps. The boy was wiry, with big-knuckled hands like the paws on a puppy and a shock of thick, black hair. “There was nothing in here, boss!”

François had taught the boy and his two sisters the word “boss.” He knew he was borrowing from Samuel Clemens, and it delighted him.

“Why did you pull the trap up?” François asked. “We discussed this, you go out in your coracle and check each trap once a day, in the morning. If there’s a crab in it, you take the crab. Either way, you put the trap back. We just placed that trap this morning. You shouldn’t be checking it until tomorrow, and you shouldn’t pull it out unless the trap is broken and needs to be replaced.”

“I had a dream, boss!” Arnun said.

François resisted the urge to quote Martin Luther King. “You had a dream about what? Did you dream there was a crab in the trap?”

“Yes! Only there wasn’t!”

François nodded, trying to be patient. “So, maybe this shows that your dreams aren’t a good indicator as to whether or not there’s a crab in the traps.”

“It shows that a sorcerer has been meddling with our traps!”

François managed to neither sigh nor laugh. “Maybe. Do you have protective charms?”

The boy nodded.

“Are they good ones? Do they usually work?”

“Usually,” the boy conceded.

“And are all your dreams always of things that are real in the world?” François asked. “Or sometimes do you have dreams that are more mysterious omens?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe you dream of a crab in a trap not because there is, in fact, a crab in the trap, but because guests have come to your home, and we bring abundance, like a catch of crab.”

Arnun frowned. “Maybe. Yes, sometimes I have dreams that are omens.”

“Me too,” François said. “So I find that the wise thing is to follow my procedure. Have good protective charms, and check my crab traps once a day, in the morning. And otherwise, I leave the traps alone. What if there’s a crab wandering across the sand where this trap was right now? If you hadn’t moved the trap, you’d have caught a nice, fat crab, but instead, he’s getting away.”

Arnun turned and raced for the beach.

Because he now knew that he could, François threw his voice into the grass beside the running boy. Masking his voice as a low growl, he called out, “Boss is wise and right!”

Of the million things at which he had tried his hand in his life, ventriloquism had never been one. And then this morning, in a moment of stress and trying to distract the Neshili elders, keep them off balance, François had suddenly discovered that he knew how to throw his voice.

This was a brand-new talent that François could only explain, essentially, as a preternatural ability. He had always been generally allergic to ascribing things to mystical, magical mumbo-jumbo, but he was becoming more open to the concept. And it was for that reason he didn’t totally dismiss Arnun and his countermagic charms and concerns about a crab-stealing sorcerer.

But the boy needed to learn to implement a process and then stick to it.

The party was forming up at Muwat’s hut, Marty rising from a nap and Surjan coming up from the beach, where he seemed to have bathed and combed his hair and beard.

“Marty!” François called. “Gunther! Look at this!”

The two men met him at the head of the path that led up toward the city and its Sacred Grove. He showed them his find.

“What is this, a plum?” Marty asked.

Gunther just gazed at the fruit thoughtfully, as if it had asked him a riddle.

François sliced one of the fruits open. “I’ll give you the plumlike color, but look at the starlike pattern in the pulp and note the strong sweet smell.”

“Star apple.” Gunther looked up the coast as he spoke.

“Yes, star apple.” François felt mildly annoyed. If the German was going to scoop his discovery and take the big reveal, he should at least act excited about it. “Which means we are where?”

Marty shook his head. “Thirtieth parallel north, more or less.”

“The Caribbean.” Gunther still looked distracted.

“Are you okay, Gunther?” Marty asked.

Gunther nodded weakly.

“He’s fine!” François snapped. “He’s also right. This fruit is native to Panama and the West Indies. In the twenty-first century, it’s in Southeast Asia, too, but I don’t think we’re in the twenty-first century.”

“Gunther, what’s bothering you?” Marty pressed.

“Yes, Gunther,” François said. “What’s bothering you? What has you so gloomy that you can’t get excited about us discovering where we are on the globe?”

Gunther rolled his shoulders, shuddered, and shook his head. “I’m excited.”

Marty frowned at François and shook his head, and at that moment, Surjan, Lowanna, and Kareem joined them.

“Let’s go see Surjan’s kingdom,” Kareem said.

Surjan led the way in a brisk walk.

“You understand,” Lowanna said, “that in the same way these people expected that someone would come along and kill their old king, they expect that one day someone will kill their new king, too?”

“I haven’t said I’d accept the job,” Surjan said.

“And they will fawn all over the new guy when the time comes,” she continued.

“I haven’t said I’d take the job!”

“Of course you’ll take it!” Lowanna laughed. “You’re a man, and they just asked you to be king!”

“Leave me alone.”

“You know there’s probably a harem.”

“Aagh!”

As anticipated, the city, when viewed unemotionally and by the light of day, wouldn’t amount to a medium-sized town in the twenty-first century. Ten thousand people might inhabit the conglomeration of huts hugging the rim of a bright blue bay. A vast stone shelf stood off from the bay, sheltering it from the ocean’s waves. Along the bay bristled a row of stone docks, at which moored sailing vessels. Most were small fishing boats, but a few were larger, and he wished he had the time to run down and examine them. Among the huts lay stretched strips of berry patches and tiny orchards, garden plots and what looked like livestock yards. On a hill overlooking the whole area sprawled a building of baked brick and tile, a palace three stories tall and several times larger than any other building in the town. It had several wings lurching out in different directions from the central pile.

“Why build such a large place?” Marty murmured.

“That’s easy,” Lowanna said. “Government architecture isn’t really about utility, it’s about communication. You build the biggest, fanciest palace you can for several reasons. It impresses your own people as to the wealth, power, and effectiveness of your ruling dynasty. It instills civic pride and builds the sense that your people are a people who can accomplish great things. And it intimidates visitors, pushing them away from wanting to fight you and toward wanting to ally or trade with you.”

“Or,” François pointed out, “the big fancy building was constructed by a previous civilization, which is now gone, and the current population is using the old building for all the reasons you mention. Think Stonehenge. The current inhabitants—that is, the twenty-first-century inhabitants—of the Salisbury Plain couldn’t build Stonehenge with all the will in the world.”

“Sure they could,” Lowanna said. “They’d just call in a construction company from London.”

“Fine, smarty-pants,” François said. “We’ll ask these people if they hired a construction firm from London to build their palace.”

“I’d feel a lot more dismissive about the idea that something was built by an ancient lost civilization if we were still back in the twenty-first century,” Marty said.

“It’s true what they say, then,” François told him. “Travel has broadened your horizons. I can say that even my views on things have evolved over just the last few weeks of our journey together.”

The Neshili stared as the party entered Nesha and climbed its hill. The city’s roads were dirt tracks, some no wider than footpaths. The party stuck to the main thoroughfares, which were reasonably even streets. Occasionally, they crossed a wide flat paving stone, suggesting an older highway that had been obliterated by time.

François cheerfully shared the star fruit with Kareem, who was the only member of the party interested, and they polished off the sweet fruits before they reached the palace, spitting out the hard, flat seeds as discreetly as they could.

The palace gate was an arched entryway, red brick over blue tiles. The three elders from their morning meeting stood beneath it, beaming, clustered about a veiled woman. Two unveiled women, both quite young, positioned themselves to either side of the woman whose face was hidden. Behind them stood other people in white togas, and to either side of the arch, men with spears.

“Look at that!” Lowanna called.

François spun about, his attention pulled away from the people waiting in the gate to the bay and the ocean beyond. A mass of ice, like a sixty-foot-tall replica of the Matterhorn, drifted toward the bay. François started, taking two quick steps down toward the bay before he realized that the boats in the harbor would be protected by the stone shelf.

“There’s nothing to fear,” Surjan said.

Moments later, the iceberg calf crashed into the stone. The collision dumped ice and snow onto the rock slab in heaps, then sent a much-reduced iceberg spinning away along the coast.

“The king was right!” Tudhal intoned.

“I’m not your king,” Surjan said.

“Not yet, Your Majesty.” The veiled woman lowered herself slightly in a curtsey.

Surjan growled.

“Send someone to get the ice at least,” François suggested. “Crush some star fruit over it, or . . . I don’t know, do you have sugar cane?”

“You are rightfully Zarum the Fifth,” the veiled woman said.

“I will not take a dead man’s name,” Surjan growled. “I am not convinced that I will take his throne.”

“And his queen,” the woman said softly.

“Told you,” Lowanna said.

“We didn’t come to take a throne,” Surjan insisted. “Or a . . . woman.”

“There are also the queen’s handmaidens,” the veiled woman said. “Nirni and Kuzi.”

“We didn’t come for any women at all,” Surjan growled. “Women are not prizes.”

“You came to slay monsters,” the woman said. “It is the king who slays monsters.”

“If you will not be king,” Tudhal said slowly, “then you must wait in the Sacred Grove and fight all comers until another man slays you. Then he will be king.”

“I like my chances,” Surjan said.

“And I like a man with strong will,” the veiled woman said. “You will need that will, if you are to be king. Come, at least see our home.”

“‘Our’ home?” Surjan asked.

“I am Halpa,” she said. “I am your queen.”

“Your Majesty.” He inclined his head.

“Your Majesty.” She curtseyed again. “If you will not take the name Zarum, perhaps you will be Singh the First. The Lion King. It is a noble name.”

François suppressed a giggle.

“I . . . cannot be the Lion King,” Surjan said. “The gods would not like it. It is a taboo. There will be no Lion King.” He looked over his shoulder at François. “No Lion King, you hear me, minstrel?”

Queen Halpa took him by the arm. “King Surjan, then. No doubt Surjan the First, to be followed by many of the name.”

She led Surjan under the arch and all the others followed. François found himself walking beside Ammun, the genealogist and poet.

“So then,” Ammun said, smiling widely, “whence do you come? Are you from the other half of the fleet? Are you from the City of the Gods?”

Fleet? François considered his options. Bluffing might lead to revelations, but also to missteps. Mystery would allow him to continue to conceal his hand—or his lack of one.

“We come from very far away,” he said.

“That is obvious.” Ammun looked down at François’s clothing. The party were all still dressed in their twenty-first-century gear, shredded from having made it through a season of rough wear in the fourth millennium B.C.E. “Your clothing is outlandish. Also, your sophistication tells me that you are a royal party. Tell me the truth, is King Surjan already a king in his native land? Or at least a prince?”

François nodded slowly. “The men of King Surjan’s people are all men of majestic courage,” he said. “And the women are all princesses.”

“I knew it.” Ammun grinned. “I have won a bet with the priest, thank you. And why are you traveling in disguise?”

“Disguise?” François asked.

“You are dressed as beggars.” Ammun’s brow furrowed in open disdain.

“We have traveled a long way,” François said. “We are rather the worse for wear. We would be happy for new tunics, if you could help us obtain them.”

“The king already possesses an opulent wardrobe,” Ammun said. “I will provide for the rest of you.”

The party had stopped, and François looked about. They stood in the center of a large courtyard, and Queen Halpa pointed down at what looked like an open shaft in the middle of the floor as she spoke to Surjan. The shaft must once have been built as a well, because the remains of the casing still rose three feet above the courtyard floor, terminating in stylized toothy crenellations. François had fallen back several ranks and couldn’t hear well what was being said.

“Is that water?” he asked.

“Water comes into the palace by pipeworks,” Ammun said. “That is the Well of the Beast.”

François smiled. “What is the Beast? Is that the entrance to the land of the dead?”

“Not the land of the dead, François Garnier.” Ammun didn’t smile at all. “That is the lair of a monster.”

“What kind of monster lives beneath a palace?” François asked. He didn’t ask, though he wanted to, what kind of idiot builds a palace on top of the lair of a monster?

“Not a monster that will trouble King Surjan, I am sure of it.” Ammun rubbed his hands together. “Come, let us find you new clothing.”



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