Song of Time

2

More than seventeen centuries old itself, the "new," shining city of Sumifa lay in a wide, flat valley between the eastern desert near the Fallajian territories and the western erg, which merged with the scrubland controlled by the fractious Wyrvil ore kingdoms in the west. The Nantas River, a slow-moving ribbon of silt-laden water, turned the valley green during the winter months, but even that dried up during the summers.

Since it was the month of Sul, the Nantas had reappeared, and Cheyne chose a path alongside it where he would be a little cooler from the constant breeze across the water. A herd of sheep bound for a drink passed him on the other side, the shepherds in their brilliant red-and-purple robes waving at him in succession as they prodded their thirsty sheep toward the water. Chameleons the colors of the blue-gray rocks sunned themselves in droves, bobbing their heads and racing instantly for cover when he strode by them. A lone skiff floated downstream, a red-haired Neffian slave at the tiller, another dragging a net full of shiners into the boat. Cicadas harped, their songs rising and falling in rhythm with the waves of hot wind coming in off the erg. Within the hour, nearly hypnotized by the heat and the low, flat countryside, Cheyne found himself at the majestic, golden Lion Gate bridge, the main entrance to Sumifa, capital city of Almaaz, oldest settlement in the west, the only part of the continent known to have escaped most of the flooding of the Great Thaw after the Wandering.

Architecturally, nothing much had changed in the years since Sumifa's population had moved from the basalt-and-limerock foundations that Cheyne and Javin were excavating to this huge, walled fortress town. Like the ruins at the dig, only on a far larger scale, the town was laid out in irregular concentric circles, each one with a gate of its own for better protection from attack. The gates were staggered inside the city, no two aligned, so that to walk into Sumifa was something like walking into a high, stout maze. In the records of the chaos that had followed the Artifice Wars, scribes wrote that these walls had preserved the city from siege by raiders and the fiery assaults of thirst-crazed military tribes wandering the dunes in search of their lost leaders. However, modern-day Sumifa made use of its fortifications in a way not evidenced at the old ruin. Between the poor and the merchant classes, and again between the merchants and the wealthy Fascini, stood the ten-foot-thick, twenty-foot-tall basalt walls, each a solid, grim reminder of the even more invincible, unseen divisions in the city.

The smell of roasting meats mixed with the strong odor of shirrir spice pulled at him, but Cheyne ignored his sudden, clawing hunger and passed over the sluggish Nantas and on through the outer part of town quickly and warily, keeping the totem firmly in his hand and his hand hidden in his robes.

Though the dig had opened a month before, this was Cheyne's first time in Sumifa alone. Always before, since Javin would not tear himself away from the site for a moment, Muni had accompanied Cheyne, and they had come for supplies or tools, or to bring a few small finds in to help appease the Fascini. They were in and out within a couple of hours, then back to work. But Cheyne took his time today. Things looked different somehow, a little more interesting. He remembered to keep to the middle of the wide, elevated road that twisted through the Barca, avoiding the pickpockets and the potholes, but kept a sharp eye out for the elf he was searching for.

As he came to the next gate, a half a mile into the city, one of the Fascini's royal purple sedan chairs, carried on four sides by ochre-painted Neffian slaves, suddenly veered, nearly pushing him off the highway.

"Hey!" Cheyne shouted as he fell roughly against a retaining wall, forgetting he had neither rank nor position in ancestor-worshiping Sumifa.

He fumbled the totem, but caught it just as a sharp reply came from inside the sedan and the slaves abruptly halted, all of them staring at him openly, their mouths agape. A pale, bejeweled hand snaked out of the purple embroidered curtain-a bit threadbare, Cheyne noticed from his new proximity-and twitched it aside. From the way the man sat so close to the side, Cheyne had the vague impression that there were two people in the chair.

"You dare to occupy the road when I have need of it? Doulos, ask this slave just why he is loose and who he belongs to. Demand of him his name."

The words could have been carved in ice, despite the searing heat. Cheyne grimaced at the irony. He had sought the answer to that very question all his life, and now it was the very reason he had defied Javin and come into town.

Still unable to see who had spoken to him, Cheyne dusted his hands off, picked up his pack, and walked closer to the chair. Before the nearest Neffian could repeat his master's question, or warn the young man with his eyes, Cheyne pushed back the curtain a little farther and received a sharp whack on the hand from the occupant's riding crop.

"Don't touch that, you renegade slave! I asked you a question. Who are you, and how dare you block the way of my runners? or place your unworthy hand upon my carriage! Do you not perceive who I am? Speak my words, Doulos," he ordered the Neffian, who began to repeat it all again, hysterics included.

Cheyne stood back, patiently listening and rubbing his smarting fingers, but thinking only about what he had seen of the people in the sedan. The woman was veiled, but the man was gaunt, black haired, green eyed, ashen skinned, and sported a thin mustache, twisted into a sneer. Though this was Cheyne's first actual contact with the Fascini, he had no trouble recognizing all the marks of Sumifa's leisure-loving, sickness-ridden upper crust.

But who was the woman? She wore no purple and no matron's veil. He knew that, on rare occasions, Fascini took wives from the richest families of the Mercanto, or from unprovable, if questionable, nobility in distant cities, but [avin had said that if you weren't bom into the caste, you could never really belong, and the Fascini liked it that way. Fewer people, more wealth. Especially since the western caravans had stopped. Goods were ever more expensive and harder to come by. Of course, that also meant greater profit. For some.

The patient Neffian had finished and stood waiting for Cheyne to answer.

"I'm not a slave. I'm from the… east," Cheyne answered cautiously, remembering the problem out at the site. "I didn't see your chair in time. But your runners nearly ran me over."

"Oh, for Nin's sake, address the right-hand man, you fool. You can never talk directly to me. The east. The east. Where they have no culture, no appreciation for time-honored traditions. Where your persons of rank freely mingle with commoners, where slaves whose ancestors lived in actual caves deign to talk to royalty. Really, you foreign people should not be let inside Sumifan gates until you know how to behave. You have humiliated me. Do you know I could have you flayed in the Four Most Awful Fashions for what you just did? As it is, I am in far better humor than usual. I will have you buried alive, instead," said the Fascini, his voice rising with impatience.

While the Neffian took a deep breath and began to repeat his master's words again, Cheyne shook his head, perplexed as to which was his most grievous sin: being in the way to be run over, or telling the Fascini about it. He settled on the latter, but none too surely. The Neffian shrugged his shoulders, a look of concern replacing his careful blankness. Cheyne decided at that point that the Fascini was serious about the burying alive part. Cheyne was about to leap the guard rail and try to disappear into the Barca when he heard his reprieve.

"Maceo, he could not have known he spoke to the royal heir of Sumifa. You have just been announced as king this afternoon. He has done nothing to warrant death." A small voice, raw with strain, pleaded with the Fascini.

Maceo shot the curtain across its rod, leaving Cheyne straining to hear the fervent conversation within. The Neffian stared ahead again, unblinking until he and the others simultaneously lifted the chair, as if they had heard an order Cheyne could not. But Maceo had the last word.

"Nameless idiot! Unknown fool! Today the woman saves your worthless life. When I am installed as king, if you dare to tread these streets, you shall pay for this insult," the Fascini shouted as the chair swerved onto the thoroughfare, a red ribbon falling from the woman's side of the chair.

The next set of gates loomed just before him and Cheyne slowly walked toward them, soon losing sight of the sedan as the Neffians rounded a curve in the highway, then turned off abruptly, heading, strangely, Cheyne thought, toward the worst part of the Barca.

Despite the crowd that had gathered to witness his very public dressing down, all Cheyne could think of was the weeping woman.

Cheyne bent and picked up the red ribbon before a passing wagon ground it into the cobbles. It smelled of rich myrrh and bergamot, dark, strong scents both. He put it in his pack and passed through the gates, wondering what the face behind the veil looked like.

"I told you, I don't know, it could be Elclesian or Trufi ganzite. Or it could even come all the way from the Chimes, though I've never seen any of that fabled stone." The shopkeeper sneered, tired of guessing. "Looks like any other old totem except for that last mark and the odd cut. Where did you say this came from?" The slouching clockmaker set the totem on his cluttered counter and waited for Cheyne to answer.

"Thanks. Thanks very much for your trouble. It was an outside chance anyway; I know this sort of thing isn't really your business."

True enough. Cheyne had tried the clockmaker's shop just because it was there. It was the last place he had time for, and it had turned out to be by far the most distasteful.

Cheyne had wandered around the Mercanto for three hours, searching every antique stall and every art dealer's store he could find, and each time he had received a puzzled look or a shrug of the shoulders. As for the elf, his questions had provoked only laughter and the repeated response that no elves had been seen in Sumifa since before the Wandering. Worse, no one seemed to know anything about the last glyph on the totem, or even care, for that matter. Which made it very odd that the disheveled clockmaker continued to stare at Cheyne, his droopy face still lifted in expectation of an answer to his question as two greenbottle flies chased each other above his head.

Cheyne nodded his good-bye, returned the totem to his pack, and made for the door. The sun had moved over the westernmost part of the wall, marking it time for him to get back to the site. Javin would be mad enough already.

"Ah, perhaps I know of someone else who could help you with your dilemma," the clockmaker wheedled. Cheyne stopped at the door and turned around. "Her name is Riolla Hifrata. She is a worthy woman, well schooled in the antiquities. Here is her address."

The shopkeeper fumbled at the sleeve of his grease-spotted caftan and withdrew a small, dirty scrap of parchment with an even dirtier hand. His face unreadable, he slid the gilt-edged fragment toward Cheyne. One of his clocks began to click and bang in the back room, then every other one in the shop chimed in. Thanking the man, Cheyne grabbed the parchment and left the din, his ears ringing.

It seemed that the streets had emptied somewhat while Cheyne had been in the shop. Only one shabbily dressed vagrant hunched in the shade of a market stall, a nearly empty bottle in hand and humming to himself, completely unremarkable except for a truly enormous nose protruding from under the folds of his hood. Cheyne marvelled, keeping his amazement to a polite smile as he passed the man.

He read the card as he walked toward the Inner Ring Gate, wondering if he really had time to make this visit and then deciding that if favin were mad already, Cheyne might as well make their confrontation worth his while. And after all, he hadn't run into any real trouble from the incident out at the site. In fact, aside from Prince Maceo, no one had given him more than a second glance.

The western wall cast a longer shadow than Cheyne would have liked, but the lure of the card was impossible to deny. Since his search for the elf had proved futile, this could be the one chance he had at finding out what the glyph meant. The Fascini might already be demanding that Javin close the dig, and if they had to leave, Cheyne knew he would never get back here again. He hurried through the vacant streets and quickly came to the address written on the small square of vellum.

"The Arcanum" read the painfully elaborate gold lettering on the sign. Hie little shop was built up against the Citadel's wall and as closely to the gate leading to the Inner Ring as it could be. Cheyne pulled the chime and waited impatiently for several long minutes while the peephole slid open, then several more until the door was unbarred to admit him. Apparently, the Arcanum served a rather exclusive clientele.

Inside the foyer, Cheyne was assaulted by the pungent odors of cinnamon, clove, and shirrir smoke, an illegal narcotic spice, probably smuggled in on one of the few remaining caravans, which traveled irregularly and eastward only. He stood in near darkness for a moment, his eyes adjusting, until he was able to see the woman who had admitted him.

"Hello. I have come to-" he began, but the woman held up a plump, razor-nailed hand to silence him.

"Yes, I know why you have come. Vinzo sent a runner the minute you left his shop. Please enter my counting room, where there is more light," the woman replied in a cultured accent, her voice an unpleasant rasp.

Cheyne felt a marked uneasiness, but allowed himself to be swept forward through a purple beaded curtain and into a well-lit room. Lining the white plaster walls of the room were stacks of books and scrolls, and on every flat surface rested some kind of clock or timepiece. No wonder the scruffy clockmaker had this connection. He had probably supplied most of these objects.

A steward spread a cloth on the red velvet chair Cheyne was offered while the woman settled herself directly opposite him, a small glass-topped table between them. On it, half a freshly cut blood orange glistened, and a small ruby-studded dagger dripping with the dark red juice lay very close to the woman's hand.

"My name is Riolla Hifrata. I have, as you see, a certain interest in antiquities. Perhaps i can help you. May I see the object?"

Cheyne hesitated, his gaze impolitely fixed on the creature before him. He had never seen anything like Riotla. She seemed to be a little older than he, but it was hard to tell-under the heavy, pale face paint, she could have hidden either youth or age. Her eyebrows arched up her forehead in thin, dark lines, and her bright pink smile seemed to be drawn permanently on full lips. Her eyes were vivid blue, the color of the high mountain lakes in Tarnrish, back home in Argivia. But the feature that continued to hold Cheyne's attention crowned Riolla's entire head. A bright, brassy sweep of curls rose to an impossible height and then cascaded halfway down her back, tendrils of it curling around her throat, framing her pendant: a single black pearl. Never had he seen such hair. Or such red hair. Though she affected the manners of the Fascini, Riolla looked as Neffian as the runners who bore Maceo's sedan.

"I said, may I see the object?" she repeated, a note of perplexing urgency in her voice.

"Oh. The object. Yes, well, I was wondering if you could help decipher the markings. I believe they must be Old High Sumifan, and it seems that no one reads that anymore. That's really all I need, you see." He fumbled, pulling the totem cautiously out from his pack.

"Of course, Muje…" She smiled, the corners of her mouth dimpling.

"It's Cheyne. lust Cheyne," he replied.

"Cheyne. Of course." She startled for a moment, then shifted her eyes distastefully away from him. He had no last name-an unforgivable sin in Sumifa. And he looked like a slave, with those blue eyes and that fair head of hair. "Just put it here." She patted the tabletop.

Cheyne hesitated, somewhat surprised. Cheyne wondered why Riolla had invoked the same rule of conduct as Maceo when clearly she was no Fascini, but he set the totem down on the table anyway. The steward picked it up, wiped it off, and handed it to her.

After a few moments of squinting at the glyphs, Riolla had written down six of the seven symbols and their meanings. She tapped the tabletop idly for a few minutes, giving the last glyph her complete concentration. The clocks in the room ticked and hummed in their particular rhythms. Riolla said nothing. Finally, Cheyne shifted uncomfortably in the delicate chair, its flimsy back giving forth a loud, grinding wrench. Riolla looked up at him and smiled mechanically, her answer composed.

Cheyne knew she was lying before she began to speak.

"This last one is the sign of the whirlpool. It is not seen often, for obvious reasons. The family looks to be of no importance either when this was inscribed or, certainly, later. There you have it."

She smiled even wider, waiting for his agreement. When he only looked away, she turned her attention to the totem again, pretending to admire its lines and the workmanship.

"Ah, where exactly did you find this piece, if I may ask?" she pressed gently, professional veneer thinly covering her intense interest.

"I picked it up out on the dunes," Cheyne said, reaching for the totem. Riolla feigned more appreciation and ignored his extended hand.

"Of course. You are a digger, no?" When he winced, her smile became tragic. "Cheyne, I like you. I am sorry I could not tell you that you had a valuable or important piece; I know how hard you people work for the little that you find. But I think I will make your coming to me worth your while. I do not ordinarily do this sort of thing, but I really want to help you on your way. I will buy this piece," she said generously. "I'll give you twenty kohli for it, and you'll never have a better offer, tell you why: it's really not worth even ten kohli-it's just that this particular totem comes from the time before the Wandering, and as you see, I collect things from that era." She waved her sharp nails around the room.

"Thank you, Riolla, but it's sort of special to me, too, even though it has no other value."

He swept up the totem from the table, his hand accidentally sending the delicate dagger sliding to the very edge of the little table, where it teetered on its hilt, blade pointing toward his host. Riolla followed the path of the knife and then slowly looked up at Cheyne, saying nothing. He stuffed the ganzite block into his pack and made ready to leave. Riolla's painted smile dropped an inch and her eyes hardened into glittering sapphires.

"Of course. That will be fifty kohli for the consultation, then. And leave my calling card here," she pronounced flatly.

After paying every antique dealer in the Mercanto, fifty-two kohli was all the money he had left. He reached into bis pack and gave it to her, noting that Riolla's adoption of caste law didn't seem to affect the exchange of money, took the paper she had drawn the symbols' meanings upon, and left Riolla Hifrata sitting frozen in artful rage at her table, her calling card pushed under the sticky blade of the jewelled knife. Before he had found the front door, the steward had stripped the cloth from the velvet chair, folded it, and laid it neatly atop the trash heap in back of the shop.

Just as the Arcanum's door slammed behind him, he heard the last bells ring three times, a few minutes apart, signaling the closing of first the Citadel's doors, then the Mercanto's, and finally the outer gates of the Barca. That meant two walls to try to scale if he didn't make it in time.

He rushed down the narrow, winding streets, trying to remember just how he had found the Arcanum to begin with. The shadows confused and redirected his memory, making certain shops appear where he had not seen them before, and losing the prominence of other landmarks in their long crawl across the city. Cheyne began to feel the edges of panic. He was a stranger with no name and no standing, and now no money, caught in a city where those were the only things that could pry you out of trouble. And trouble, he had been told by Muni time and again, always came out at dark in Sumifa.

Thoughts of favin's distress at his absence rattled through his mind as well-in all the times Javin had taken him to help crew the digs, Cheyne had never so directly ignored Javin's warnings. The trip hadn't even been worth the expense of Madame Hifrata's information, much less Javin's trust. His concentration caught up in this whirl of guilt and angst, he did not notice the beggar he tripped over until it was too late.

It was a fortunate fall. Had Cheyne's head not dropped as he rolled over the oddly familiar vagrant, the well-aimed throwing disk that sailed over them both would have taken it from his shoulders. The discus bounced hard off a basalt wall, brass blade ringing sweetly as it spun into the sand.

"Stay low!" the beggar growled, listening intently to the tone of the disk. "And follow me."

He drew his short dagger and rolled around the corner of a bungalow, dragging Cheyne along with him. They pressed themselves against the hot brick walls for a moment, then when the footsteps passed by, the vagrant motioned to Cheyne to follow him up a rope ladder. Cheyne had little choice. He could already hear the soft footfalls of the assassin heading back toward them, the man no doubt having figured out their trickery.

Cheyne hauled himself up the rope to the flat roof of the building, its surface baking his feet through his boots with the lambent heat of the desert day. It wouldn't take the assassin long to figure this out, either. Cheyne was about to raise that point, but the beggar had no intention of staying up there. He drew the young archaeologist to the edge of the bungalow facing the street where Cheyne had been attacked, and when the thug came trudging back the same way, let out a piercing wail and leapt off the roof onto the man below.

By the time Cheyne had found a safer way down a trellis, the vagrant had joined the killer in a knife fight, which was far more evenly matched than Cheyne would have thought possible. The vagrant had some acrobatic skills, and he was giving the assassin all he could handle, though neither had drawn blood yet. When he saw his chance, Cheyne waded in and threw a staggering roundhouse punch, dropping the assassin like a sack of salt.

Cheyne dusted himself off and took the ornate, curved dagger from the assassin's hand. It was the same one he had seen on Riolla's table, the juice of the orange still sticky on its blade.

"Oh, nicely timed," congratulated the vagrant. Cheyne turned to face his benefactor.

The beggar's hood had dropped in the scuffle, and Cheyne now saw why he looked so familiar. The beggar's nose was a veritable colossus, reminding Cheyne of the twenty-foot-tall head of Nin outside the crushed wall at the dig. The eastern face and the statue's gargantuan ears had long ago weathered away or broken off, leaving the head's stem western face an unbalanced joke for all time. As if he read Cheyne's mind, the vagrant quickly pulled up his ineffective hood, his sunburned nose still protruding noticeably from it.

"Wait-you were outside the clockmaker's shop…" Cheyne began.

"Yes. And now I am about to be there again, unless you give me a better place to be…" The beggar crooked his finger toward the swinging sign on the raqa shop up the alley. "Nothing like a little rumble to work up a thirst. Would you care to buy me a drink?" Cheyne noticed that he swerved oddly, and moved to take his arm.

"Here, are you all right? Let me help you. But I can't buy you a drink. All I have left is two kohli," he apologized, searching for the coins.

Which were missing, of course. The beggar shook his head, his nose exaggerating the motion. "No, No. I'm perfectly all right," he wheezed heavily in Cheyne's face. The smell of soured raqa nearly succeeded where the assassin had failed. Cheyne realized he had discovered the apparent source of the beggar's remarkable bravery.

"Here. Please let me help you to some shade. I'll get water-" Cheyne said, fumbling.

"Water? No, I think not, my good man. What is called for now is vintage raqa, the sweet, crushed heart of the desert prickle, left at least a week in its delicious grief, and perhaps a loaf of solid bappir, probably the same age," the grinning beggar disagreed, his verbal abilities, like his bravado, seeming to rise to the occasion. "I'm fine, truly, young sirrah. A few bruises when I sober up. But then I'll never feel them now, will I? And thank you for the coins." Cheyne checked his pocket and frowned. "Now, now, a generous man will never go hungry. You can get out just the other side of that stall. Best be going now. Before that gentleman who wanted your head wakes up."

Cheyne knew he was right, but the bells had stopped ringing, and outer gates were closed by now anyway. He was stuck here overnight, and this poor soul seemed to be his only friend in the city, even if he had taken his last two kohli. He wasn't going to let him part company just yet. But when Cheyne turned to see where the man had pointed, the beggar immediately disappeared into the deepening shadows.

With no other choice left, Cheyne brushed himself off and headed for the curry stall where the vagrant had said was a way out of the city, hoping it wasn't a trick. The stallkeeper had raised a hand in a peculiar gesture when the beggar had pointed his way.

When he reached the tent, Cheyne eyed the roasting morsels with keen regret. He must have looked ready to drop with hunger, because the stallkeeper, clearing his brazier for the day, left a haunch of lamb on it and nodded to Cheyne as he seemed to melt into the wall. The young man eagerly grabbed up the meat, not minding the several grains of sand he found included. The lamb was tough and dry, stringy and oversea-,soned, but Cheyne wolfed it down.

In another moment, he stood hovering in front of the stall, ticking his fingers, still wondering how to get out of the Mercanto. Then he saw how the stallkeeper had disappeared so thoroughly-behind the flimsy tent, almost invisible in the deepening shadows, a large crack parted the stonework. Cheyne looked around, and finding no one to tell him he couldn't, took a deep breath, scuttled through the narrow passage, through a dark slaughterhouse, and out into the Barca. From the well-worn path under the wall and the cloying smell of old blood, both the butchery and the hidden entrance had probably been there since antiquity.

Exhaling, Cheyne walked through the shabby streets until he found the outer wall, and then studied it for similar openings. Behind the hanging tent cloth and lean-tos, he found dozens of such breaches, most of them seemingly natural, that had been made in the outer wall over the centuries.

It looks so solid from the outside, but it's just layers and layers of whitewash. I guess the Fascini wouldn't repair anything they didn't have to look at, Cheyne mused.

Soon he was on the flat, dusty road back to the older ruin, wondering just exactly what he would tell Javin.