The Last Days of Shandakor

Leigh Brackett

Startling Stories

April, 1952

I

He came alone into the wineshop, wrapped in a dark red cloak, with the cowl drawn

over his head. He stood for a moment by the doorway and one of the slim dark

predatory women who live in those places went to him, with a silvery chiming from the

little bells that were almost all she wore.

I saw her smile up at him. And then, suddenly, the smile became fixed and

something happened to her eyes. She was no longer looking at the cloaked man but

through him. In the oddest fashion—it was as though he had become invisible.

She went by him. Whether she passed some word along or not I couldn't tell but an

empty space widened around the stranger. And no one looked at him. They did not

avoid looking at him. They simply refused to see him.

He began to walk slowly across the crowded room. He was very tall and he moved

with a fluid, powerful grace that was beautiful to watch. People drifted out of his way,

not seeming to, but doing it. The air was thick with nameless smells, shrill with the

laughter of women.

Two tall barbarians, far gone in wine, were carrying on some intertribal feud and the

yelling crowd had made room for them to fight. There was a silver pipe and a drum and

a double-banked harp making old wild music. Lithe brown bodies leaped and whirled

through the laughter and the shouting and the smoke.

The stranger walked through all this, alone, untouched, unseen. He passed close to

where I sat. Perhaps because I, of all the people in that place, not only saw him but

stared at him, he gave me a glance of black eyes from under the shadow of his

cowl—eyes like blown coals, bright with suffering and rage.

I caught only a glimpse of his muffled face. The merest glimpse—but that was

enough. Why did he have to show his face to me in that wineshop in Barrakesh?

He passed on. There was no space in the shadowy corner where he went but space

was made, a circle of it, a moat between the stranger and the crowd. He sat down. I saw

him lay a coin on the outer edge of the table. Presently a serving wench came up, picked

up the coin and set down a cup of wine. But it was as if she waited on an empty table..

I turned to Kardak, my head drover, a Shunni with massive shoulders and uncut

hair braided in an intricate tribal knot "What's all that about?" I asked.

Kardak shrugged. "Who knows?" He started to rise. "Come, JonRoss, it is time we

got back to the serai."

"We're not leaving for hours yet. And don't lie to me, I've been on Mars a long time.

What is that man? Where does he come from?"

Barrakesh is the gateway between north and south. Long ago, when there were

oceans in equatorial and southern Mars, when Valkis and Jekkara were proud seats of

empire and not thieves' dens, here on the edge of the northern Drylands the great

caravans had come and gone to Barrakesh for a thousand thousand years. It is a place of

strangers.

In the time-eaten streets of rock you see tall Keshi hillmen, nomads from the high

plains of Upper Shun, lean dark men from the south who barter away the loot of

forgotten tombs and temples, cosmopolitan sophisticates up from Kahora and the trade

cities, where there are spaceports and all the appurtenances of modern civilization.

The red-cloaked stranger was none of these.

A glimpse of a face—I am a planetary anthropologist. I was supposed to be charting

Martian ethnology and I was doing it on a fellowship grant I had wangled from a Terran

university too ignorant to know that the vastness of Martian history makes such a project

hopeless.

I was in Barrakesh, gathering an outfit preparatory to a year's study of the tribes of

Upper Shun. And suddenly there had passed close by me a man with golden skin and

un-Martian black eyes and a facial structure that belonged to no race I knew. I have seen

the carven faces of fauns that were a little like it.

Kardak said again, "It is time to go, JonRoss!"

I looked at the stranger, drinking his wine in silence and alone. "Very well, I'll ask

him."

Kardak sighed. "Earthmien," he said, "are not given much to wisdom." He turned

and left me.

I crossed the room and stood beside the stranger. In the old Courteous High Martian

they speak in all the Low-Canal towns I asked permission to sit.

Those raging, suffering eyes met mine. There was hatred in them, and scorn, and

shame. "What breed of human are you?"

"I am an Earthman."

He said the name over as though he had heard it before and was trying to

remember. "Earthman. Then it is as the winds have said, blowing across the desert—that

Mars is dead and men from other worlds defile her dust." He looked out over the

wineshop and all the people who would not admit his presence. "Change," he

whispered. "Death and change and the passing away of things."

The muscles of his face drew tight. He drank and I could see now that he had been

drinking for a long time, for days, perhaps for weeks. There was a quiet madness on

him.

"Why do the people shun you?"

"Only a man of Earth would need to ask," he said and made a sound of laughter,

very dry and bitter.

I was thinking, A new race, an unknown race! I was thinking of the fame that

sometimes comes to men who discover a new thing, and of a Chair I might sit in at the

University if I added one bright unheard-of piece of the shadowy mosaic of Martian

history. I had had my share of wine and a bit more. That Chair looked a mile high and

made of gold.

The stranger said softly, "I go from place to place in this wallow of Barrakesh and

everywhere it is the same. I have ceased to be." His white teeth glittered for an instant in

the shadow of the cowl. "They were wiser than I, my people. When Shandakor is dead,

we are dead also, whether our bodies live or not."

"Shandakor?" I said. It had a sound of distant bells.

"How should an Earthman know? Yes, Shandakor! Ask of the men of Kesh and the

men of Shun! Ask the kings of Mekh, who are half around the world! Ask of all the men

of Mars—they have not forgotten Shandakor! But they will not tell you. It is a bitter

shame to them, the memory and the name."

He stared out across the turbulent throng that filled the room and flowed over to the

noisy street outside. "And I am here among them—lost."

"Shandakor is dead?"

"Dying. There were three of us who did not want to die. We came south across the

desert—one turned back, one perished in the sand. I am here in Barrakesh." The metal of

the wine-cup bent between his hands.

I said, "And you regret your coming."

"I should have stayed and died with Shandakor. I know that now. But I cannot go

back."

"Why not?" I was thinking how the name John Ross would look, inscribed in golden

letters on the scroll of the discoverers.

"The desert is wide, Earthman. Too wide for one alone."

And I said, "I have a caravan. I am going north tonight."

A light came into his eyes, so strange and deadly that I was afraid. "No," he

whispered. "No!"

I sat in silence, looking out across the crowd that had forgotten me as well, because I

sat with the stranger. A new race, an unknown city. And I was drunk.

After a long while the stranger asked me, "What does an Earthman want in

Shandakor?"

I told him. He laughed. "You study men," he said and laughed again, so that the red

cloak rippled.

"If you want to go back I'll take you. If you don't, tell me where the city lies and I'll

find it. Your race, your city, should have their place in history."

He said nothing but the wine had made me very shrewd and I could guess at what

was going on in the stranger's mind. I got up.

"Consider it," I told him. "You can find me at the serai by the northern gate until the

lesser moon is up. Then I'll be gone."

"Wait." His fingers fastened on my wrist. They hurt. I looked into his face and I did

not like what I saw there. But, as Kardak had mentioned, I was not given much to

wisdom.

The stranger said, "Your men will not go beyond the Wells of Karthedon."

"Then we'll go without them."

A long long silence. Then he said, "So be it."

I knew what he was thinking as plainly as though he had spoken the words. He was

thinking that I was only an Earthman and that he would kill me when we came in sight

of Shandakor.

II

The caravan tracks branch off at the Wells of Karthedon. One goes westward into Shun

and one goes north through the passes of Outer Kesh. But there is a third one, more

ancient than the others. It goes toward the east and it is never used. The deep rock wells

are dry and the stone-built shelters have vanished under the rolling dunes. It is not until

the track begins to climb the mountains that there are even memories.

Kardak refused politely to go beyond the Wells. He would wait for me, he said, a

certain length of time, and if I came back we would go on into Shun. If I didn't—well, his

full pay was left in charge of the local headman. He would collect it and go home. He

had not liked having the stranger with us. He had doubled his price.

In all that long march up from Barrakesh I had not been able to get a word out of

Kardak or the men concerning Shandakor. The stranger had not spoken either. He had

told me his name—Corin—and nothing more. Cloaked and cowled he rode alone and

brooded. His private devils were still with him and he had a new one now—impatience.

He would have ridden us all to death if I had let him.

So Corin and I went east alone from Karthedon, with two led animals and all the

water we could carry. And now I could not hold him back.

"There is no time to stop," he said. "The days are running out. There is no time!"

When we reached the mountains we had only three animals left and when we

crossed the first ridge we were afoot and leading the one remaining beast which carried

the dwindling water skins.

We were following a road now. Partly hewn and partly worn it led up and over the

mountains, those naked leaning mountains that were full of silence and peopled only

with the shapes of red rock that the wind had carved.

"Armies used to come this way," said Corin. "Kings and caravans and beggars and

human slaves, singers and dancing girls and the embassies of princes. This was the road

to Shandakor."

And we went along it at a madman's pace.

The beast fell in a slide of rock and broke its neck and we carried the last water skin

between us. It was not a heavy burden. It grew lighter and then was almost gone.

One afternoon, long before sunset, Corin said abruptly, "We will stop here."

The road went steeply up before us. There was nothing to be seen or heard. Corin

sat down in the drifted dust. I crouched down too, a little distance from him. I watched

him. His face was hidden and he did not speak.

The shadows thickened in that deep and narrow way. Overhead the strip of sky

flared saffron and then red—and then the bright cruel stars came out. The wind worked

at its cutting and polishing of stone, muttering to itself, an old and senile wind full of

dissatisfaction and complaint. There was the dry faint click of falling pebbles.

The gun felt cold in my hand, covered with my cloak. I did not want to use it. But I

did not want to die here on this silent pathway of vanished armies and caravans and

kings.

A shaft of greenish moonlight crept down between the walls. Corin stood up.

"Twice now I have followed lies. Here I am met at last by truth."

I said, "I don't understand you."

"I thought I could escape the destruction. That was a lie. Then I thought I could

return to share it. That too was a lie. Now I see the truth. Shandakor is dying. I fled from

that dying, which is the end of the city and the end of my race. The shame of flight is on

me and I can never go back."

"What will you do?"

"I will die here."

"And I?"

"Did you think," asked Corin softly, "that I would bring an alien creature in to watch

the end of Shandakor?"

I moved first. I didn't know what weapons he might have, hidden under that dark

red cloak. I threw myself over on the dusty rock. Something went past my head with a

hiss and a rattle and a flame of light and then I cut the legs from under him and he fell

down forward and I got on top of him, very fast.

He had vitality. I had to hit his head twice against the rock before I could take out of

his hands the vicious little instrument of metal rods. I threw it far away. I could not feel

any other weapons on him except a knife and I took that, too. Then I got up.

I said, "I will carry you to Shandakor."

He lay still, draped in the tumbled folds of his cloak. His breath made a harsh

sighing in his throat. "So be it." And then he asked for water.

I went to where the skin lay and picked it up, thinking that there was perhaps a

cupful left. I didn't hear him move. What he did was done very silently with a

sharp-edged ornament. I brought him the water and it was already over. I tried to lift

him up; His eyes looked at me with a curiously brilliant look. Then he whispered three

words, in a language I didn't know, and died. I let him down again.

His blood had poured out across the dust. And even in the moonlight I could see

that it was not the color of human blood.

I crouched there for a long while, overcome with a strange sickness. Then I reached

out and pushed that red cowl back to bare his head. It was a beautiful head. I had never

seen it. If I had, I would not have gone alone with Corin into the mountains. I would

have understood many things if I had seen it and not for fame nor money would I have

gone to Shandakor.

His skull was narrow and arched and the shaping of the bones was very fine. On

that skull was a covering of short curling fibres that had an almost metallic luster in the

moonlight, silvery and bright. They stirred under my hand, soft silken wires responding

of themselves to an alien touch. And even as I took my hand away the luster faded from

them and the texture changed.

When I touched them again they did not stir. Corin's ears were pointed and there

were silvery tufts on the tips of them. On them and on his forearms and his breast were

the faint, faint memories of scales, a powdering of shining dust across the golden skin. I

looked at his teeth and they were not human either.

I knew now why Corin had laughed when I told him that I studied men.

It was very still. I could hear the falling of pebbles and the little stones that rolled all

lonely down the cliffs and the shift and whisper of dust in the settling cracks. The Wells

of Karthedon were far away. Too far by several lifetimes for one man on foot with a cup

of water.

I looked at the road that went steep and narrow on ahead. I looked at Corin. The

wind was cold and the shaft of moonlight was growing thin. I did not want to stay alone

in the dark with Corin.

I rose and went on along the road that led to Shandakor.

It was a long climb but not a long way. The road came out between two pinnacles of

rock. Below that gateway, far below in the light of the little low moons that pass so

swiftly over Mars, there was a mountain valley.

Once around that valley there were great peaks crowned with snow and crags of

black and crimson where the flying lizards nested, the hawk-lizards with the red eyes.

Below the crags there were forests, purple and green and gold, and a black tarn deep on

the valley floor. But when I saw it it was dead. The peaks had fallen away and the forests

were gone and the tarn was only a pit in the naked rock.

In the midst of that desolation stood a fortress city.

There were lights in it, soft lights of many colors. The outer walls stood up, black

and massive, a barrier against the creeping dust, and within them was an island of life.

The high towers were not ruined. The lights burned among them and there was

movement in the streets.

A living city—and Corin had said that Shandakor was almost dead.

A rich and living city. I did not understand. But I knew one thing. Those who moved

along the distant streets of Shandakor were not human.

I stood shivering in that windy pass. The bright towers of the city beckoned and

there was something unnatural about all light and life in the deathly valley. And then I

thought that human or not the people of Shandakor might sell me water and a beast to

carry it and I could get away out of these mountains, back to the Wells.

The road broadened, winding down the slope. I walked in the middle of it, not

expecting anything. And suddenly two men came out of nowhere and barred the way.

I yelled. I jumped backward with my heart pounding and the sweat pouring off me.

I saw their broadswords glitter in the moonlight. And they laughed.

They were human. One was a tall red barbarian from Mekh, which lay to the east

half around Mars. The other was a leaner browner man from Taarak, which was farther

still. I was scared and angry and astonished and I asked a foolish question.

"What are you doing here?"

"We wait," said the man of Taarak. He made a circle with his arm to take in all the

darkling slopes around the valley. "From Kesh and Shun, from all the countries of the

Norlands and the Marches men have come, to wait. And you?"

"I'm lost," I said. "I'm an Earthman and I have no quarrel with anyone." I was still

shaking but now it was with relief. I would not have to go to Shandakor. If there was a

barbarian army gathered here it must have supplies and I could deal with them.

I told them what I needed. "I can pay for them, pay well."

They looked at each other.

"Very well. Come and you can bargain with the chief."

They fell in on either side of me. We walked three paces and then I was on my face

in the dirt and they were all over me like two great wildcats. When they were finished

they had everything I owned except the few articles of clothing for which they had no

use. I got up again, wiping the blood from my mouth.

"For an outlander," said the man of Mekh, "you fight well." He chinked my

money-bag up and down in his palm, feeling the weight of it, and then he handed me

the leather bottle that hung at his side. "Drink," he told me. "That much I can't deny you.

But our water must be carried a long way across these mountains and we have none to

waste on Earthmen."

I was not proud. I emptied his bottle for him. And the man of Taarak said, smiling,

"Go on to Shandakor. Perhaps they will give you water."

"But you've taken all my money!"

"They are rich in Shandakor. They don't need money. Go ask them for water."

They stood there, laughing at some secret joke of their own, and I did not like the

sound of it. I could have killed them both and danced on their bodies but they had left

me nothing but my bare hands to fight with. So presently I turned and went on and left

them grinning in the dark behind me.

The road led down and out across the plain. I could feel eyes watching me, the eyes

of the sentinels on the rounding slopes, piercing the dim moonlight. The walls of the city

began to rise higher and higher. They hid everything but the top of one tall tower that

had a queer squat globe on top of it. Rods of crystal projected from the globe. It

revolved slowly and the rods sparkled with a sort of white fire that was just on the edge

of seeing.

A causeway lifted toward the Western Gate. I mounted it, going very slowly, not

wanting to go at all. And now I could see that the gate was open. Open—and this was a

city under siege!

I stood still for some time, trying to puzzle out what meaning this might have—an

army that did not attack and a city with open gates. I could not find a meaning. There

were soldiers on the walls but they were lounging at their ease under the bright banners.

Beyond the gate many people moved about but they were intent on their own affairs. I

could not hear their voices.

I crept closer, closer still. Nothing happened. The sentries did not challenge me and

no one spoke.

You know how necessity can force a man against his judgment and against his will?

I entered Shandakor.

III

There was an open space beyond the gate, a square large enough to hold an army.

Around its edges were the stalls of merchants. Their canopies were of rich woven stuffs

and the wares they sold were such things as have not been seen on Mars for more

centuries than men can remember.

There were fruits and rare furs, the long-lost dyes that never fade, furnishings

carved from vanished woods. There were spices and wines and exquisite cloths. In one

place a merchant from the far south offered a ceremonial rug woven from the long bright

hair of virgins. And it was new.

These merchants were all human. The nationalities of some of them I knew. Others I

could guess at from traditional accounts. Some were utterly unknown.

Of the throngs that moved about among the stalls, quite a number were human also.

There were merchant princes come to barter and there were companies of slaves on their

way to the auction block. But the others…

I stayed where I was, pressed into a shadowy corner by the gate, and the chill that

was on me was not all from the night wind.

The golden-skinned silver-crested lords of Shandakor I knew well enough from

Corin. I say lords because that is how they bore themselves, walking proudly in their

own place, attended by human slaves. And the humans who were not slaves made way

for them and were most deferential as though they knew that they were greatly favored

to be allowed inside the city at all. The women of Shandakor were very beautiful, slim

golden sprites with their bright eyes and pointed ears.

And there were others. Slender creatures with great wings, some who were lithe and

furred, some who were hairless and ugly and moved with a sinuous gliding, some so

strangely shaped and colored that I could not even guess at their possible evolution.

The lost races of Mars. The ancient races, of whose pride and power nothing was left

but the half-forgotten tales of old men in the farthest corners of the planet. Even I, who

had made the anthropological history of Mars my business, had never heard of them

except as the distorted shapes of legend, as satyrs and giants used to be known on Earth.

Yet here they were in gorgeous trappings, served by naked humans whose fetters

were made of precious metals. And before them too the merchants drew aside and

bowed.

The lights burned, many-colored—not the torches and cressets of the Mars I knew

but cool radiances that fell from crystal globes. The walls of the buildings that rose

around the market place were faced with rare veined marbles and the fluted towers that

crowned them were inlaid with turquoise and cinnabar, with amber and jade and the

wonderful corals of the southern oceans.

The splendid robes and the naked bodies moved in a swirling pattern about the

square. There was buying and selling and I could see the mouths of the people open

and shut. The mouths of the women laughed. But in all that crowded place there was no

sound. No voice, no scuff of sandal, no chink of mail. There was only silence, the utter

stillness of deserted places.

I began to understand why there was no need to shut the gates. No superstitious

barbarian would venture himself into a city peopled by living phantoms.

And I—I was civilized. I was, in my nonmechanical way, a scientist. And had I not

been trapped by my need for water and supplies I would have run away right out of the

valley. But I had no place to run to and so I stayed and sweated and gagged on the acrid

taste of fear.

What were these creatures that made no sound? Ghosts—images—dreams? The

human and the non-human, the ancient, the proud, the lost and forgotten who were so

insanely present—did they have some subtle form of life I knew nothing about? Could

they see me as I saw them? Did they have thought and volition of their own?

It was the solidity of them, the intense and perfectly prosaic business in which they

were engaged. Ghosts do not barter. They do not hang jeweled necklets upon their

women nor argue about the price of a studded harness.

The solidity and the silence—that was the worst of it. If there had been one small

living sound…

A dying city, Corin had said. The days are running out. What if they had run out?

What if I were here in this massive pile of stone with all its countless rooms and streets

and galleries and hidden ways, alone with the lights and the soundless phantoms?

Pure terror is a nasty thing. I had it then.

I began to move, very cautiously, along the wall. I wanted to get away from that

market-place. One of the hairless gliding non-humans was bartering for a female slave.

The girl was shrieking. I could see every drawn muscle in her face, the spasmodic

working of her throat. Not the faintest sound came out.

I found a street that paralleled the wall. I went along it, catching glimpses of

people—human people—inside the lighted buildings. Now and then men passed me

and I hid from them. There was still no sound. I was careful how I set my feet. Somehow

I had the idea that if I made a noise something terrible would happen.

A group of merchants came toward me. I stepped back into an archway and

suddenly from behind me there came three spangled women of the serais. I was caught.

I did not want those silent laughing women to touch me. I leaped back toward the

street and the merchants paused, turning their heads. I thought that they had seen me. I

hesitated and the women came on. Their painted eyes shone and their red lips glistened.

The ornaments on their bodies flashed. They walked straight into me.

I made noise then, all I had in my lungs. And the women passed through me. They

spoke to the merchants and the merchants laughed. They went off together down the

street They hadn't seen me. They hadn't heard me. And when I got in their way I was no

more than a shadow. They passed through me.

I sat down on the stones of the street and tried to think. I sat for a long time. Men and

women walked through me as through the empty air. I sought to remember any sudden

pain, as of an arrow in the back that might have killed me between two seconds, so that I

hadn't known about it. It seemed more likely that I should be the ghost than the other

way around.

I couldn't remember. My body felt solid to my hands as did the stones I sat on. They

were cold and finally the cold got me up and sent me on again. There was no reason to

hide any more. I walked down the middle of the street and I got used to not turning

aside.

I came to another wall, running at right angles back into the city. I followed that and

it curved around gradually until I found myself back at the market-place, at the inner

end of it There was a gateway, with the main part of the city beyond it, and the wall

continued. The non-humans passed back and forth through the gate but no human did

except the slaves. I realized then that all this section was a ghetto for the humans who

came to Shandakor with the caravans.

I remembered how Corin had felt about me. And I wondered—granted that I were

still alive and that some of the people of Shandakor were still on the same plane as

myself—how they would feel about me if I trespassed in their city.

There was a fountain in the market-place. The water sprang up sparkling in the

colored light and filled a wide basin of carved stone. Men and women were drinking

from it. I went to the fountain but when I put my hands in it all I felt was a dry basin

filled with dust. I lifted my hands and let the dust trickle from them. I could see it

clearly. But I saw the water too. A child leaned over and splashed it and it wetted the

garments of the people. They struck the child and he cried and there was no sound.

I went on through the gate that was forbidden to the human race.

The avenues were wide. There were trees and flowers, wide parks and garden

villas, great buildings as graceful as they were tall. A wise proud city, ancient in culture

but not decayed, as beautiful as Athens but rich and strange, with a touch of the alien in

every line of it. Can you think what it was like to walk in that city, among the silent

throngs that were not human—to see the glory of it, that was not human either?

The towers of jade and cinnabar, the golden minarets, the lights and the colored silks, the

enjoyment and the strength. And the people of Shandakor! No matter how far their souls have gone

they will never forgive me.

How long I wandered I don't know. I had almost lost my fear in wonder at what I

saw. And then, all at once in that deathly stillness, I heard a sound—the quick, soft

scuffing of sandaled feet.

IV

I stopped where I was, in the middle of a plaza. The tall silver-crested ones drank wine

under canopies of dusky blooms and in the center a score of winged girls as lovely as

swans danced a slow strange measure that was more like flight than dancing. I looked

all around. There were many people. How could you tell which one had made a noise?

Silence.

I turned and ran across the marble paving. I ran hard and then suddenly I stopped

again, listening. Scuff-scuff—no more than a whisper, very light and swift. I spun around

but it was gone. The soundless people walked and the dancers wove and shifted,

spreading their white wings.

Someone was watching me. Some one of those indifferent shadows was not a

shadow.

I went on. Wide streets led off from the plaza. I took one of them. I tried the trick of

shifting pace and two or three times I caught the echo of other steps than mine. Once I

knew it was deliberate. Whoever followed me slipped silently among the noiseless

crowd, blending with them, protected by them, only making a show of footsteps now

and then to goad me.

I spoke to that mocking presence. I talked to it and listened to my own voice ringing

hollow from the walls. The groups of people ebbed and flowed around me and there

was no answer.

I tried making sudden leaps here and there among the passersby with my arms

outspread. But all I caught was empty air. I wanted a place to hide and there was none.

The street was long. I went its length and the someone followed me. There were

many buildings, all lighted and populous and deathly still. I thought of trying to hide in

the buildings but I could not bear to be closed in between walls with those people who

were not people.

I came into a great circle, where a number of avenues met around the very tall tower

I had seen with the revolving globe on top of it. I hesitated, not knowing which way to

go. Someone was sobbing and I realized that it was myself, laboring to breathe. Sweat

ran into the corners of my mouth and it was cold, and bitter.

A pebble dropped at my feet with a brittle click.

I bolted out across the square. Four or five times, without reason, like a rabbit

caught in the open, I changed course and fetched up with my back against an

ornamental pillar. From somewhere there came a sound of laughter.

I began to yell. I don't know what I said. Finally I stopped and there was only the

silence and the passing throngs who did not see nor hear me. And now it seemed to me

that the silence was full of whispers just below the threshold of hearing.

A second pebble clattered off the pillar above my head. Another stung my body. I

sprang away from the pillar. There was laughter and I ran.

There were infinities of streets, all glowing with color. There were many faces,

strange faces, and robes blown out on a night wind, litters with scarlet curtains and

beautiful cars like chariots drawn by beasts. They flowed past me like smoke, without

sound, without substance, and the laughter pursued me, and I ran.

Four men of Shandakor came toward me. I plunged through them but their bodies

opposed mine, their hands caught me and I could see their eyes, their black shining eyes, looking at

me…

I struggled briefly and then it was suddenly very dark.

The darkness caught me up and took me somewhere. Voices talked far away. One of

them was a light young shiny sort of voice. It matched the laughter that had haunted me

down the streets. I hated it.

I hated it so much that I fought to get free of the black river that was carrying me.

There was a vertiginous whirling of light and sound and stubborn shadow and then

things steadied down and I was ashamed of myself for having passed out.

I was in a room. It was fairly large, very beautiful, very old, the first place I had seen

in Shandakor that showed real age—Martian age, that runs back before history had

begun on Earth. The floor, of some magnificent somber stone the color of a moonless

night, and the pale slim pillars that upheld the arching roof all showed the hollowings

and smoothnesses of centuries. The wall paintings had dimmed and softened and the

rugs that burned in pools of color on that dusky floor were worn as thin as silk.

There were men and women in that room, the alien folk of Shandakor. But these

breathed and spoke and were alive. One of them, a girl-child with slender thighs and

little pointed breasts, leaned against a pillar close beside me. Her black eyes watched

me, full of dancing lights. When she saw that I was awake again she smiled and flicked a

pebble at my feet.

I got up. I wanted to get that golden body between my hands and make it scream.

And she said in High Martian, "Are you a human? I have never seen one before close to."

A man in a dark robe said, "Be still, Duani." He came and stood before me. He did

not seem to be armed but others were and I remembered Corin's little weapon. I got

hold of myself and did none of the things I wanted to do.

"What are you doing here?" asked the man in the dark robe.

I told him about myself and Corin, omitting only the fight that he and I had had

before he died, and I told him how the hillmen had robbed me.

"They sent me here," I finished, "to ask for water."

Someone made a harsh humorless sound. The man before me said, "They were in a

jesting mood."

"Surely you can spare some water and a beast!"

"Our beasts were slaughtered long ago. And as for water…" He paused, then asked

bitterly, "Don't you understand? We are dying here of thirst!"

I looked at him and at the she-imp called Duani and the others. "You don't show any

signs of it," I said.

"You saw how the human tribes have gathered like wolves upon the hills. What do

you think they wait for? A year ago they found and cut the buried aqueduct that brought

water into Shandakor from the polar cap. All they needed then was patience. And their

time is very near. The store we had in the cisterns is almost gone."

A certain anger at their submissiveness made me say, "Why do you stay here and

die like mice bottled up in a jar? You could have fought your way out. I've seen your

weapons."

"Our weapons are old and we are very few. And suppose that some of us did

survive—tell me again, Earthman, how did Corin fare in the world of men?" He shook

his head. "Once we were great and Shandakor was mighty. The human tribes of half a

world paid tribute to us. We are only the last poor shadow of our race but we will not

beg from men!"

"Besides," said Duani softly, "where else could we live but in Shandakor?"

"What about the others?" I asked. "The silent ones."

"They are the past," said the dark-robed man and his voice rang like a distant flare of

trumpets.

Still I did not understand. I did not understand at all. But before I could ask more

questions a man came up and said. "Rhul, he will have to die."

The tufted tips of Duani's ears quivered and her crest of silver curls came almost

erect.

"No, Rhul!" she cried. "At least not right away."

There was a clamor from the others, chiefly in a rapid angular speech that must have

predated all the syllables of men. And the one who had spoken before to Rhul repeated,

"He will have to die! He has no place here. And we can't spare water."

"I'll share mine with him," said Duani, "for a while."

I didn't want any favors from her and said so. "I came here after supplies. You

haven't any, so I'll go away again. It's as simple as that." I couldn't buy from the

barbarians, but I might make shift to steal.

Rhul shook his head. "I'm afraid not. We are only a handful. For years our single

defense has been the living ghosts of our past who walk the streets, the shadows who

man the walls. The barbarians believe in enchantments. If you were to enter Shandakor

and leave it again alive the barbarians would know that the enchantment cannot kill.

They would not wait any longer."

Angrily, because I was afraid, I said, "I can't see what difference that would make.

You're going to die in a short while anyway."

"But in our own way, Earthman, and in our own time. Perhaps, being human, you

can't understand that. It is a question of pride. The oldest race of Mars will end well, as it

began."

He turned away with a small nod of the head that said kill him—as easily as that.

And I saw the ugly little weapons rise.

V

There was a split second then that seemed like a year. I thought of many things but none

of them were any good. It was a devil of a place to die without even a human hand to

help me under. And then Duani flung her arms around me.

"You're all so full of dying and big thoughts!" she yelled at them. "And you're all

paired off or so old you can't do anything but think! What about me? I don't have anyone

to talk to and I'm sick of wandering alone, thinking how I'm going to die! Let me have

him just for a little while? I told you I'd share my water."

On Earth a child might talk that way about a stray dog. And it is written in an old

Book that a live dog is better than a dead lion. I hoped they would let her keep me.

They did. Rhul looked at Duani with a sort of weary compassion and lifted his

hand. "Wait," he said to the men with the weapons. "I have thought how this human may

be useful to us. We have so little time left now that it is a pity to waste any of it, yet

much of it must be used up in tending the machine. He could do that labor—and a man

can keep alive on very little water."

The others thought that over. Some of them dissented violently, not so much on the

grounds of water as that it was unthinkable that a human should intrude on the last days

of Shandakor. Corin had said the same thing. But Rhul was an old man. The tufts of his

pointed ears were colorless as glass and his face was graven deep with years and

wisdom had distilled in him its bitter brew.

"A human of our own world, yes. But this man is of Earth and the men of Earth will

come to be the new rulers of Mars as we were the old. And Mars will love them no better

than she did us because they are as alien as we. So it is not unfitting that he should see

us out."

They had to be content with that. I think they were already so close to the end that

they did not really care. By ones and twos they left as though already they had wasted

too much time away from the wonders that there were in the streets outside. Some of the

men still held the weapons on me and others went and brought precious chains such as

the human slaves had worn—shackles, so that I should not escape. They put them on me

and Duani laughed.

"Come," said Rhul, "and I will show you the machine."

He led me from the room and up a winding stair. There were tall embrasures and

looking through them I discovered that we were in the base of the very high tower with

the globe. They must have carried me back to it after Duani had chased me with her

laughter and her pebbles. I looked out over the glowing streets, so full of splendor and

of silence, and asked Rhul why there were no ghosts inside the tower.

"You have seen the globe with the crystal rods?"

"Yes."

"We are under the shadow of its core. There had to be some retreat for us into

reality. Otherwise we would lose the meaning of the dream."

The winding stair went up and up. The chain between my ankles clattered

musically. Several times I tripped on it and fell.

"Never mind," Duani said. "You'll grow used to it."

We came at last into a circular room high in the tower. And I stopped and stared.

Most of the space in that room was occupied by a web of metal girders that

supported a great gleaming shaft. The shaft disappeared upward through the roof. It

was not tall but very massive, revolving slowly and quietly. There were traps,

presumably for access to the offset shaft and the cogs that turned it. A ladder led to a

trap in the roof.

All the visible metal was sound with only a little surface corrosion. What the alloy

was I don't know and when I asked Rhul he only smiled rather sadly. "Knowledge is

found," he said, "only to be lost again. Even we of Shandakor forget."

Every bit of that enormous structure had been shaped and polished and fitted into

place by hand. Nearly all the Martian peoples work in metal. They seem to have a

genius for it and while they are not and apparently never have been mechanical, as some

of our races are on Earth, they find many uses for metal that we have never thought of.

But this before me was certainly the high point of the metal-workers' craft. When I

saw what was down below, the beautifully simple power plant and the rotary drive

set-up with fewer moving parts than I would have thought possible, I was even more

respectful. "How old is it?" I asked and again Rhul shook his head.

"Several thousand years ago there is a record of the yearly Hosting of the Shadows

and it was not the first." He motioned me to follow him up the ladder, bidding Duani

sternly to remain where she was. She came anyway.

There was a railed platform open to the universe and directly above it swung the

mighty globe with its crystal rods that gleamed so strangely. Shandakor lay beneath us,

a tapestry of many colors, bright and still, and out along the dark sides of the valley the

tribesmen waited for the light to die.

"When there is no one left to tend the machine it will stop in time and then the men

who have hated us so long will take what they want of Shandakor. Only fear has kept

them out this long. The riches of half a world flowed through these streets and much of

it remained." He looked up at the globe. "Yes," he said, "we had knowledge. More, I

think, than any other race of Mars."

"But you wouldn't share it with the humans."

Rhul smiled. "Would you give little children weapons to destroy you? We gave

men better ploughshares and brighter ornaments and if they invented a machine we did

not take it from them. But we did not tempt and burden them with knowledge that was

not their own. They were content to make war with sword and spear and so they had

more pleasure and less killing and the world was not torn apart."

"And you—how did you make war?"

"We defended our city. The human tribes had nothing that we coveted, so there was

no reason to fight them except in self-defense. When we did we won." He paused. "The

other non-human races were more stupid or less fortunate. They perished long ago."

He turned again to his explanations of the machine. "It draws its power directly from

the sun. Some of the solar energy is converted and stored within the globe to serve as the

light-source. Some is sent down to turn the shaft."

"What if it should stop," Duani said, "while we're still alive?" She shivered, looking

out over the beautiful streets.

"It won't—not if the Earthman wishes to live."

"What would I have to gain by stopping it?" I demanded.

"Nothing. And that," said Rhul, "is why I trust you. As long as the globe turns you

are safe from the barbarians. After we are gone you will have the pick of the loot of

Shandakor."

How I was going to get away with it afterward he did not tell me.

He motioned me down the ladder again but I asked him, "What is the globe, Rhul?

How does it make the—the Shadows?"

He frowned. "I can only tell you what has become, I'm afraid, mere traditional

knowledge. Our wise men studied deeply into the properties of light. They learned that

light has a definite effect upon solid matter and they believed, because of that effect, that

stone and metal and crystalline things retain a 'memory' of all that they have 'seen.' Why

this should be I do not know."

I didn't try to explain to him the quantum theory and the photo-electric effect nor the

various experiments of Einstein and Millikan and the men who followed them. I didn't

know them well enough myself and the old High Martian is deficient in such

terminology.

I only said, "The wise men of my world also know that the impact of light tears away

tiny particles from the substance it strikes."

I was beginning to get a glimmering of the truth. Light-patterns "cut" in the electrons

of metal and stone—sound-patterns cut in unlikely looking mediums of plastic, each

needing only the proper "needle" to recreate the recorded melody or the recorded

picture.

"They constructed the globe," said Rhul. "I do not know how many generations that

required nor how many failures they must have had. But they found at last the invisible

light that makes the stones give up their memories."

In other words they had found their needle. What wave-length or combination of

wave-lengths in the electromagnetic spectrum flowed out from those crystal rods, there

was no way for me to know. But where they probed the walls and the paving blocks of

Shandakor they scanned the hidden patterns that were buried in them and brought them

forth again in form and color—as the electron needle brings forth whole symphonies

from a little ridged disc.

How they had achieved sequence and selectivity was another matter. Rhul said

something about the "memories" having different lengths. Perhaps he meant depth of

penetration. The stones of Shandakor were ages old and the outer surfaces would have

worn away. The earliest impressions would be gone altogether or at least have become

fragmentary and extremely shallow.

Perhaps the scanning beams could differentiate between the overlapping layers of

impressions by that fraction of a micron difference in depth. Photons only penetrate so

far into any given substance but if that substance is constantly growing less in thickness

the photons would have the effect of going deeper. I imagine the globe was accurate in

centuries or numbers of centuries, not in years.

However it was, the Shadows of a golden past walked the streets of Shandakor and

the last men of the race waited quietly for death, remembering their glory.

Rhul took me below again and showed me what my tasks would be, chiefly

involving a queer sort of lubricant and a careful watch over the power leads. I would

have to spend most of my time there but not all of it. During the free periods, Duani

might take me where she would.

The old man went away. Duani leaned herself against a girder and studied me with

intense interest. "How are you called?" she asked.

"John Ross."

"JonRoss," she repeated and smiled. She began to walk around me, touching my

hair, inspecting my arms and chest, taking a child's delight in discovering all the

differences there were between herself and what we call a human. And that was the

beginning of my captivity.

VI

There were days and nights, scant food and scanter water. There was Duani. And there

was Shandakor. I lost my fear. And whether I lived to occupy the Chair or not, this was

something to have seen.

Duani was my guide. I was tender of my duties because my neck depended on them

but there was time to wander in the streets, to watch the crowded pageant that was not

and sense the stillness and the desolation that were so cruelly real.

I began to get the feel of what this alien culture had been like and how it had

dominated half a world without the need of conquest.

In a Hall of Government, built of white marble and decorated with wall friezes of

austere magnificence, I watched the careful choosing and the crowning of a king: I saw

the places of learning. I saw the young men trained for war as fully as they were

instructed in the arts of peace. I saw the pleasure gardens, the theaters, the forums, the

sporting fields—and I saw the places of work, where the men and women of Shandakor

coaxed beauty from their looms and forges to trade for the things they wanted from the

human world.

The human slaves were brought by their own kind to be sold, and they seemed to be

well treated, as one treats a useful animal in which one has invested money. They had

their work to do but it was only a small part of the work of the city.

The things that could be had nowhere else on Mars—the tools, the textiles, the fine

work in metal and precious stones, the glass and porcelain—were fashioned by the

people of Shandakor and they were proud of their skill. Their scientific knowledge they

kept entirely to themselves, except what concerned agriculture or medicine or better

ways of building drains and houses.

They were the lawgivers, the teachers. And the humans took all they would give

and hated them for it. How long it had taken these people to attain such a degree of

civilization Duani could not tell me. Neither could old Rhul.

"It is certain that we lived in communities, had a form of civil government, a system

of numbers and written speech, before the human tribes. There are traditions of an

earlier race than ours, from whom we learned these things. Whether or not this is true I

do not know."

In its prime Shandakor had been a vast and flourishing city with countless

thousands of inhabitants. Yet I could see no signs of poverty or crime. I couldn't even

find a prison.

"Murder was punishable by death," said Rhul, "but it was most infrequent. Theft

was for slaves. We did not stoop to it." He watched my face, smiling a little acid smile.

"That startles you—a great city without suffering or crime or places of punishment."

I had to admit that it did. "Elder race or not, how did you manage to do it? I'm a

student of cultures, both here and on my own world. I know all the usual patterns of

development and I've read all the theories about them—but Shandakor doesn't fit any of

them."

Rhul's smile deepened. "You are human," he said. "Do you wish the truth?"

"Of course."

"Then I will tell you. We developed the faculty of reason."

For a moment I thought he was joking. "Come," I said, "man is a reasoning

being—on Earth the only reasoning being."

"I do not know of Earth," he answered courteously. "But on Mars man has always

said, 'I reason, I am above the beasts because I reason.' And he has been very proud of

himself because he could reason. It is the mark of his humanity. Being convinced that

reason operates automatically within him he orders his life and his government upon

emotion and superstition.

"He hates and fears and believes, not with reason but because he is told to by other

men or by tradition. He does one thing and says another and his reason teaches him no

difference between fact and falsehood. His bloodiest wars are fought for the merest

whim—and that is why we did not give him weapons. His greatest follies appear to him

the highest wisdom, his basest betrayals become noble acts—and that is why we could

not teach him justice. We learned to reason. Man only learned to talk."

I understood then why the human tribes had hated the men of Shandakor. I said

angrily, "Perhaps that is so on Mars. But only reasoning minds can develop great

technologies and we humans of Earth have outstripped yours a million times. All right,

you know or knew some things we haven't learned yet, in optics and some branches of

electronics and perhaps in metallurgy. But…"

I went on to tell him all the things we had that Shandakor did not. "You never went

beyond the beast of burden and the simple wheel. We achieved flight long ago. We have

conquered space and the planets. We'll go on to conquer the stars!"

Rhul nodded. "Perhaps we were wrong. We remained here and conquered

ourselves." He looked out toward the slopes where the barbarian army waited and he

sighed. "In the end it is all the same."

Days and nights and Duani, bringing me food, sharing her water, asking questions,

taking me through the city. The only thing she would not show me was something they

called the Place of Sleep. "I shall be there soon enough," she said and shivered.

"How long?" I asked. It was an ugly thing to say.

"We are not told. Rhul watches the level in the cisterns and when it's time…" She

made a gesture with her hands. "Let us go up on the wall."

We went up among the ghostly soldiery and the phantom banners. Outside there

were darkness and death and the coming of death. Inside there were light and beauty,

the last proud blaze of Shandakor under the shadow of its doom. There was an eerie

magic in it that had begun to tell on me. I watched Duani. She leaned against the

parapet, looking outward. The wind ruffled her silver crest, pressed her garments close

against her body. Her eyes were full of moonlight and I could not read them. Then I saw

that there were tears.

I put my arm around her shoulders. She was only a child, an alien child, not of my

race or breed…

"JonRoss."

"Yes?"

"There are so many things I will never know."

It was the first time I had touched her. Those curious curls stirred under my fingers,

warm and alive. The tips of her pointed ears were soft as a kitten's.

"Duani."

"What?"

"I don't know…"

I kissed her. She drew back and gave me a startled look from those black brilliant

eyes and suddenly I stopped thinking that she was a child and I forgot that she was not

human and—I didn't care.

"Duani, listen. You don't have to go to the Place of Sleep."

She looked at me, her cloak spread out upon the night wind, her hands against my

chest.

"There's a whole world out there to live in. And if you aren't happy there I'll take

you to my world, to Earth. There isn't any reason why you have to die!"

Still she looked at me and did not speak. In the streets below the silent throngs went

by and the towers glowed with many colors. Duani's gaze moved slowly to me darkness

beyond the wall, to the barren valley and the hostile rocks.

"No."

"Why not? Because of Rhul, because of all this talk of pride and race?"

"Because of truth. Corin learned it."

I didn't want to think about Corin. "He was alone. You're not. You'd never be alone."

She brought her hands up and laid them on my cheeks very gently. "That green star,

that is your world. Suppose it were to vanish and you were the last of all the men of

Earth. Suppose you lived with me in Shandakor forever—would you not be alone?"

"It wouldn't matter if I had you."

She shook her head. "It would matter. And our two races are as far apart as the stars.

We would have nothing to share between us."

Remembering what Rhul had told me I flared up and said some angry things. She

let me say them and then she smiled. "It is none of that, JonRoss." She turned to look out

over the city. "This is my place and no other. When it is gone I must be gone too."

Quite suddenly I hated Shandakor.

I didn't sleep much after that. Every time Duani left me I was afraid she might never

come back. Rhul would tell me nothing and I didn't dare to question him too much. The

hours rushed by like seconds and Duani was happy and I was not. My shackles had

magnetic locks. I couldn't break them and I couldn't cut the chains.

One evening Duani came to me with something in her face and in the way she

moved that told me the truth long before I could make her put it into words. She clung

to me, not wanting to talk, but at last she said, "Today there was a casting of lots and the

first hundred have gone to the Place of Sleep."

"It is the beginning, then."

She nodded. "Every day there will be another hundred until all are gone."

I couldn't stand it any longer. I thrust her away and stood up. "You know where the

'keys' are. Get these chains off me!"

She shook her head. "Let us not quarrel now, Jon-Ross. Come. I want to walk in the

city."

We had quarreled more than once, and fiercely. She would not leave Shandakor and

I couldn't take her out by force as long as I was chained. And I was not to be released

until everyone but Rhul had entered the Place of Sleep and the last page of that long

history had been written.

I walked with her among the dancers and the slaves and the bright-cloaked princes.

There were no temples in Shandakor. If they worshipped anything it was beauty and to

that their whole city was a shrine. Duani's eyes were rapt and there was a remoteness on

her now.

I held her hand and looked at the towers of turquoise and cinnabar, the pavings of

rose quartz and marble, the walls of pink and white and deep red coral, and to me they

were hideous. The ghostly crowds, the mockery of life, the phantom splendors of the

past were hideous, a drug, a snare.

"The faculty of reason!" I thought and saw no reason in any of it.

I looked up to where the great globe turned and turned against the sky, keeping

these mockeries alive. "Have you ever seen the city as it is—without the Shadows?"

"No. I think only Rhul, who is the oldest, remembers it that way. I think it must have

been very lonely. Even then there were less than three thousand of us left"

It must indeed have been lonely. They must have wanted the Shadows as much to

people the empty streets as to fend off the enemies who believed in magic.

I kept looking at the globe. We walked for a long time. And then I said, "I must go

back to the tower."

She smiled at me very tenderly. "Soon you will be free of the tower—and of these."

She touched the chains. "No, don't be sad, Jon Ross. You will remember me and

Shandakor as one remembers a dream." She held up her face, that was so lovely and so

unlike the meaty faces of human women, and her eyes were full of somber lights. I

kissed her and then I caught her up in my arms and carried her back to the tower.

In that room, where the great shaft turned, I told her, "I have to tend the things

below. Go up onto the platform, Duani, where you can see all Shandakor. I'll be with

you soon."

I don't know whether she had some hint of what was in my mind or whether it was

only the imminence of parting that made her look at me as she did. I thought she was

going to speak but she did not, climbing the ladder obediently. I watched her slender

golden body vanish upward. Then I went into the chamber below.

There was a heavy metal bar there that was part of a manual control for regulating

the rate of turn. I took it off its pin. Then I closed the simple switches on the power plant.

I tore out all the leads and smashed the connections with the bar. I did what damage I

could to the cogs and the offset shaft. I worked very fast. Then I went up into the main

chamber again. The great shaft was still turning but slowly, ever more slowly.

There was a cry from above me and I saw Duani. I sprang up the ladder, thrusting

her back onto the platform. The globe moved heavily of its own momentum. Soon it

would stop but the white fires still flickered in the crystal rods. I climbed up onto the

railing, clinging to a strut. The chains on my wrists and ankles made it hard but I could

reach. Duani tried to pull me down. I think she was screaming. I hung on and smashed

the crystal rods with the bar, as many as I could.

There was no more motion, no more light. I got down on the platform again and

dropped the bar. Duani had forgotten me. She was looking at the city.

The lights of many colors that had burned there were burning still but they were old

and dim, cold embers without radiance. The towers of jade and turquoise rose up

against the little moons and they were broken and cracked with time and there was no

glory in them. They were desolate and very sad. The night lay clotted around their feet.

The streets, the plazas and the market squares were empty, their marble paving blank

and bare. The soldiers had gone from the walls of Shandakor, with their banners and

their bright mail, and there was no longer any movement anywhere within the gates.

Duani let out one small voiceless cry. And as though in answer to it, suddenly from

the darkness of the valley and the slopes beyond there rose a thin fierce howling as of

wolves.

"Why?" she whispered. "Why?" She turned to me. Her face was pitiful. I caught her

to me.

"I couldn't let you die! Not for dreams and visions, nothing. Look, Duani. Look at

Shandakor." I wanted to force her to understand. "Shandakor is broken and ugly and

forlorn. It is a dead city—but you're alive. There are many cities but only one life for

you."

Still she looked at me and it was hard to meet her eyes. She said, "We knew all that,

JonRoss."

"Duani, you're a child, you've only a child's way of thought. Forget the past and

think of tomorrow. We can get through the barbarians. Corin did. And after that…"

"And after that you would still be human—and I would not."

From below us,in the dim and empty streets there came a sound of lamentation. I

tried to hold her but she slipped out from between my hands. "And I am glad that you

are human," she whispered. "You will never understand what you have done."

And she was gone before I could stop her, down into the tower.

I went after her. Down the endless winding stairs with my chains clattering between

my feet, out into the streets, the dark and broken and deserted streets of Shandakor. I

called her name and her golden body went before me, fleet and slender, distant and

more distant The chains dragged upon my feet and the night took her away from me.

I stopped. The whelming silence rushed smoothly over me and I was bitterly afraid

of this dark dead Shandakor that I did not know. I called again to Duani and then I

began to search for her in the shattered shadowed streets. I know now how long it must

have been before I found her.

For when I found her, she was with the others. The last people of Shandakor, the

men and the women, the women first, were walking silently in a long line toward a low

flat-roofed building that I knew without telling was the Place of Sleep.

They were going to die and there was no pride in their faces now. There was a

sickness in them, a sickness and a hurt in their eyes as they moved heavily forward, not

looking, not wanting to look at the sordid ancient streets that I had stripped of glory.

"Duani!" I called, and ran forward but she did not turn in her place in the line. And I

saw that she was weeping.

Rhul turned toward me, and his look had a weary contempt that was bitterer than a

curse. "Of what use, after all, to kill you now?"

"But I did this thing! I did it!"

"You are only human."

The long line shuffled on and Duani's little feet were closer to that final doorway.

Rhul looked upward at the sky. "There is still time before the sunrise. The women at

least will be spared the indignity of spears."

"Let me go with her!"

I tried to follow her, to take my place in line. And the weapon in Rhul's hand moved

and there was the pain and I lay as Corin had lain while they went silently on into the

Place of Sleep.

The barbarians found me when they came, still half doubtful, into the city after

dawn. I think they were afraid of me. I think they feared me as a wizard who had

somehow destroyed all the folk of Shandakor.

For they broke my chains and healed my wounds and later they even gave me out of

the loot of Shandakor the only thing I wanted—a bit of porcelain, shaped like the head of

a young girl.

I sit in the Chair that I craved at the University and my name is written on the roll of

the discoverers. I am eminent, I am respectable—I, who murdered the glory of a race.

Why didn't I go after Duani into the Place of Sleep? I could have crawled! I could

have dragged myself across those stones. And I wish to God I had. I wish that I had died

with Shandakor!

MNQ

January 19, 2008

12,000 words

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