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Arsene shakes his head with a sigh. “Alright. You win. This place is getting to me. I don’t know if it’s your ichor in my veins or the never-ending desert. But promise me you’ll say something before youneedit.”
“Trust me, you’ll know,” Nur mutters. He doesn’t look any happier, but Arsene can read every twitch of his face. Nur is pleased to have gotten his way.
Now they just have to get out of the desert before it kills them.
The sixth day disappears into the fog of time. Arsene is not just exhausted, but also sick of climbing dunes. There’s sand in his boots, in his pack, inside his clothes. His muscles ache from trudging up and down the endlessly shifting slopes. At rest stops they no longer set up the tent, instead laying out the bedroll under the stars for a scant few hours. He longs for a proper, restful sleep.
And hot food, while he’s at it.
And maybe for the tightness around Nur’s jaw to disappear.
At the top of the next dune, he pauses to catch his breath. There’s nothing special about the view at first—white fading to grey in the waning daylight, ripples upon ripples disappearing into the horizon. But something catches his eye.
There’s a dark smudge to the north. It could be nothing—a mirage.
“Come look at this,” he calls to Nur, who’s given up halfway up the slope.
“What is it? Another dune? A rock? A sand pit?” Nur sighs, getting to his feet.
“Just get up here before the light goes.”
He stares at the smudge until Nur reaches him.
“Is it the city?”
Nur takes the map out and orients them using the invisible stars. It still gives Arsene a twinge of panic to look at a map he can’t read. How can he be of any use to his mate if he can’t guide him, can’t keep him safe, can’t even feed him? But Nur never says a word about it.
Finally he puts it away. “It might be.”
“Might.” Arsene bites down on disappointment.
“By dead reckoning, it should be.”
The dark spotsmears across the horizon as they draw nearer. It has to be the city—and it’s big. Bigger than Ylenaise, the main township of New Yden. Bigger than the human city of Fairhaven. Soon it spans the entire horizon as far as Arsene can see. A megacity laid low. Within another day they reach the outskirts.
The first ruins they hit are just hummocks in the sand. The city looms large in their path, but out here it’s still desert. Slowly, the land flattens. The sand turns coarser, darker, crunching under Arsene’s boot. Artifacts of the previous world rise to either side—distant elevators standing on spindly legs, iron towers like lonely giants.
Soon the city proper engulfs them. Massive buildings lie crumpled atop each other. Some still stand, barely—listing, hollowed out and blackened. Huge steel beams lie crumpled likestring. Walls the thickness of three wagons side by side have been sheared in two by a mysterious force. The very sand under their feet is the dust of another time.
And everything is silent.
Almost by instinct Arsene leads Nur on a route that takes them around the skeletal structures, never through. He knows the history of the great war and the cataclysm that ended it, of course. But knowing is not the same as seeing. It feels wrong to walk where even the wind doesn’t go, as if they’d be trespassing.
As they push further into the city the ruins grow in size and number, and the true scale of the ancient site unfolds. They could walk this labyrinth of destruction for a long, long time and never find the caravan.
He also has the strangest feeling they’re being watched.
Chapter 37
ARSENE
Arsene gesturesat Nur to pause as they round the next building. He takes a drink and uses it as a pretense to scan their surroundings. No one is visible, but there’s an unmistakeable hush-hush of sand shifting unnaturally. Ghosts don’t have footsteps. Arsene quirks an eyebrow at Nur, who shrugs.
“Show yourself,” he calls.
Feet scrape over concrete, and a stinging volley of pebbles hits him. He hisses in annoyance.Human.He barely ducks in time to avoid the next round.
“Damn!”
