Category: The Alarna Affair

Chapter Five–The Discovery of the Guardians’ Door

Chapter Five–The Discovery of the Guardians’ Door

“Father’s gone on business for the moment,” Djaren said, opening the carriage door for his mother.

“He’ll be home quite soon, I imagine.”  Hellin Blackfeather picked her small daughter up nimbly and set her in the carriage.  Ellea bore this with dignity and chose a window seat for herself.  Hellin took the hand Tam offered and climbed up into the carriage, revealing in that motion that her full skirts were in fact voluminous trousers.  The Professor followed her in.  Jon wavered a moment, finding his choices were to sit between Hellin Blackfeather and the Professor, or next to Ellea, who was regarding him steadily with some unreadable expression.  She edged over an inch.  Jon took the motion as an invitation and sat down carefully.  The Professor smiled across at him.  Tam and Djaren took the remaining seats.  Djaren wiped dust from his spectacles with an equally dusty handkerchief and settled them back on his nose with a smile.  “Off to the dig.  Wait till you see it!”

They traveled over an arid landscape on bumpy roads while Djaren described the dig and what had already been uncovered.  Ellea interrupted him halfway through a description of some jeweled daggers.  “The thieves took those.”

Djaren looked embarrassed.  “We didn’t want to tell you right off,” he explained, looking from Tam, to Jon, to the Professor.  “No sense in alarming you, but yes, you’re not the only ones to have run-ins with thieves lately.”

“What else did they take?”  The Professor sounded worried.

“The usual things,” Djaren said.

“Everything shiny and small,” Ellea answered at the same time.

“And the household silver,” Hellin smiled ruefully.  “I’m afraid one of the maidservants has a dangerous taste in suitors.  She alone had access to the household, and she disappeared with the lot.  I only hope the girl was plucky enough to get her fair share.  The thieves of Alarna are not very egalitarian in their divisions.”

“Mama Darvin told you not to hire her,” Ellea said.

“I know, I know,” Hellin Blackfeather sighed, “but I felt that girl had spirit, and could make good use of some opportunity.”

“Well, she did that.”  Djaren grinned.

“As Mama Darvin has been continually reminding me.”  Hellin wrinkled her freckled nose at her son.  Jon decided that Lady Blackfeather was a great deal younger than he and Tam’s mother.  She was extraordinarily lovely.  Jon had expected something quite different.  Hellin Blackfeather’s name appeared as a co-author on all of Doctor Blackfeather’s writings.  Jon had thought she would be older, or sterner, or maybe even more like his own round, dimpled mother, whom he was trying manfully not to miss.

“Haven’t you called in the authorities about the theft?” Tam asked.

“Of course,” Djaren answered.  “But Alarna is a small province.  Thieves and authorities are close cousins here.  Though up till now we’ve been on good terms with the lot of them.”

“We’ve been fortunate,” Hellin explained.  “We Shandorians are allowed to dig where others–”

“Like the Arienish,” Djaren put in.

“–are not,” Hellin finished.

“They take things home with them,” Ellea explained.  “Big things.”

“One noble took home a whole temple, it’s true,” Djaren said.  “We, on the other hand, are here for the history.  Father’s discoveries have founded two museums and four libraries.”  Djaren looked proud.  “We work with governments to find and preserve treasures.”

“Yes,” Hellin remarked dryly.  “We dig up antiquities and document them.  Then the governments sell them to foreign nobles.  Priceless artifacts for a quick penny.”

“But isn’t it dreadful to them to lose their history?” Jon asked, appalled.

“It would seem common sense to treasure the past, but not everyone does.  Men see money for old rubbish, not a loss of valuable history.”

“They forget,” Ellea said gravely.  “And what you forget about will come and bite you.”

The carriage rumbled to a stop at last and the party tumbled out to find themselves amid a small city of bright tents, red and green and dusty yellow as well as plain canvas.  It was a little like the festivals that happened back at home when the clans came down at harvest time.  Except here it was hot, and oddly quiet.

“It’s the time of the midday rest,” Djaren explained.  “The people of Alarna know there’s no point working in this heat, and they know their land, so we take on Alarnan customs while we work here.  Later as the air cools work will begin again and continue until the sun sets.  Come see the house!”

The “house,” as it turned out, was a great jumbled maze of tents, stuck one onto another in rooms and passages.  Jon had once built a similar structure on a much smaller scale using sheets and his mother’s kitchen chairs.  The tent with the main entrance was crimson, and Djaren drew back the curtain-like doors to reveal reed mats and colorful rugs inside.  A row of sandals sat in a row just inside, and the Blackfeathers began to remove their shoes.

“We guessed at sizes,” Djaren explained.  “I think, Tam, you’ll want to wear Harl Darvin’s spare set, there.  He won’t mind.”

Tam set down the too small pair of slippers he had been considering, and smiled in some relief.  “Aye, those look righter.”

Jon found a pair of blue slippers that seemed to be his size exactly, and set his shoes carefully beside Tam’s boots, before straightening up and looking round.  Tam was already staring at their hosts exotic looking home.  There were paper lanterns and brass ones.  There were low tables, high chests of drawers, and colorful pillows everywhere.  Even more exciting, there were lots of bookshelves.  Books and scrolls were open on almost every available surface.  With a nod of encouragement from Hellin, Jon and Tam began to explore.  Djaren followed after, grinning.  “Ask me anything.  I’ve read nearly everything in here.  Mother says I’m a walking encyclopedia.”

Ellea yawned.  “You shouldn’t brag about that.”

“I wasn’t,” Djaren made a face at her.

She made one back.

Hellin Blackfeather clapped her hands. “Ellea dear.  Do help me find Ma Darvin, won’t you?”

Ellea nodded, with a sudden little smile. “I bet she has biscuits waiting.”  She skipped out a doorway through a beaded curtain into a green walled corridor.

Djaren went over to a very large old steamer trunk thickly papered with stamps and labels from all over the world, and opened it with a casual little kick.  It was three quarters of the way full with copper pieces, an odd and inconvenient sort of treasure chest.  Djaren tossed the new copper coins in, and let the lid back down with a thump. Tam had stopped before a glass case full of weapons.  He passed over a jeweled scimitar and some graceful blades with carved ivory hilts to admire a big black Shandorian great-sword.  It looked very old indeed, pitted and chipped with age and most likely famous old battles.  “You can tell that old sword has seen some days,” Tam said, impressed.

Jon’s attention however was drawn to the bookshelves.  He lingered over the bindings, finding several scripts and languages he didn’t recognize.

“That’s in Kardu,” Djaren said, noting the book Jon was looking at.  “I’m just learning.  I could teach you what I know.”

Jon grinned.  Despite the dust and heat, this place was beginning to look like paradise.

Blackfeather tent

A short, kindly-faced woman bustled in from the green tent passage with a big copper tray.  Ellea trailed her, carrying a tray of biscuits.

“I heard the carriage, Hellin dear,” the woman said.  “You all must be parched.  Come have a drink at once.  Are these the boys?”

The boys turned to be introduced to Mama Darvin.  She was clearly Shandorian too, with the look of the northern clans, only rounder.  She had warm brown skin, merry almond eyes, and a long black braid that wrapped around her head twice.  She insisted everyone sit down amid cushions and drink sweet water with ginger before exploring any further.

Ellea solemnly deposited a biscuit in everyone’s hands and then sat as well, both hands full, to nibble first one biscuit and then the other in turn, working her way in concentric circles to the center of each.

Djaren ate his biscuit normally, so Jon did too.

“Anna won’t leave off with that contraption,” Ma Darvin was saying.  “She’d be here to greet you but just before the midday the men moved the last debris from the north passage.  There are some carvings she’s bound and determined to record before they go on.”

“Anna does the sketching,” Djaren explained.  “Whenever we find anything, she draws it.  She’s very clever at it too.”

“And she should be content with that, but no!” Mama Darvin threw her hands skyward.  “Now she must drag out all the equipment and photograph it too.”

“You have a camera?”  Jon was impressed.

“I figured out how to work it first,” Djaren said, “but Anna laid claim to it.  And she does take better pictures.  Here’s one she took of us.”  Djaren brought down a framed photograph from an overloaded armoire dripping antiquities with labels.  Jon examined the picture with interest. There were the Blackfeathers just like in the newest kind of papers, black and white and in their best clothes.  Hellin was smiling and had a fine frock.  The children stood, Ellea looking a little sullen in a starched dress with ribbons, Djaren very stiff and upright and wearing a tie.  Behind them stood a tall dark figure who must be Doctor Blackfeather.  There was something a little odd about his eyes.  Jon frowned and closed his own eyes a moment, trying to fix in his mind what the man looked like.  He opened his eyes and studied Doctor Blackfeather’s face again, but couldn’t seem to hold the image in his head.  The man looked striking somehow, but also just as one would expect Djaren and Ellea’s father to look.  Black hair, long like Djaren’s, a serious face like Ellea’s, and odd eyes.  In another moment Jon had forgotten what the man looked like again, and had to study the picture all over.  Tam, waiting impatiently for a turn, finally took it from his hands.

Next Djaren showed them their room, half green tent, half faded blue, with a cot on either side piled high with blankets and quilts.  “Don’t let the heat fool you,” Mama Darvin said, plumping down pillows and setting thick blankets on the beds. “It can get harsh and cold here at night.”

There was a writing desk, oil lamps, plenty of pens and ink and some good paper in neat stacks.  Best of all, there was a bookshelf just for Jon.  He carefully unpacked his own books from home onto it and felt at once more comfortable.

“And now that you’re settled,” Djaren said, “you must come and see the dig!  If there are new carvings we have to see them.  Right away!”

Back by the line of shoes, they found Professor Sheridan already waiting.  “There’s so much I have still to see here.”  He smiled.  “You’ve uncovered so much in the last months.  I’ve quite missed the excitement.  Let’s go see the new discoveries.”

“I’ll wait here for Corin,” Hellin said.  “I expect he’ll be arriving shortly.  You go on.”

The children were back in their shoes in a matter of moments and then out into the blinding sun, Djaren carrying a jar of ginger water for Anna at Mama Darvin’s insistence.

Djaren navigated the maze of tents with ease, pointing out landmarks of interest as they went.  “There’s the well, and the bath tents, and that’s where the foreman Harl Darvin lives, with Mama Darvin and Anna. And here is the dig!  Careful down the steps.”

The dig opened out before them, a vast honeycomb of excavated rooms and passages, emerging roofless from the earth.  It was a little like standing on a plateau and looking down into a network of canyons.  Yellow sand and grey crumbling soil gave way to pale limestone and chipping red plaster.  The Gardner boys duly admired the ruins.

“That must have taken a bit of work to clear,” Tam said, looking at the wheelbarrows and stacks of shovels.

“Look at the drainage channels.”  Jon pointed.  “How clever.  Bronze weapons, but they were rather advanced in other ways, weren’t they?”

Djaren detailed the layout of the city under excavation, and related the order of finds, of buildings, and what was in them as he guided them down into the dig itself.  They descended a rope ladder and a set of wooden stairs and walked though a maze of ancient houses until they came to a thin corridor, still partially blocked with dirt.  In the middle were a large sun umbrella and a curious hooded apparatus on a tripod, under which someone in skirts was humming.

“Anna!  The Professor is here, and we’ve brought the guests too,” Djaren announced.

The apparatus and occupant jumped, with a muffled word that Jon didn’t know, but which raised the Professor’s eyebrows.

The tousled head of a pretty girl appeared from under the hood.  “You startled me.  I was taking the last exposure, but you’ve made me jostle it.  I shall have to try again.  No interrupting!”  She dived back under the hood again while adjusting the apparatus.  After an uncomfortable minute or two, there was a bright little explosion from a dish extending from the contraption, and the girl emerged again, looking pleased.  “Done.  Now introduce me at once.”

“This is Anna Darvin,” Djaren obeyed, “our artist and photographer.”

Anna Darvin

Anna bore only a passing resemblance to her mother.  She was about Tam’s age, but shorter, with fine northern features and a shape more like Lady Blackfeather’s than like Mama Darvin’s.  She had dark curly hair, tanned brown skin and startlingly blue eyes.  She wore a simple and dusty blue dress with a leather apron full of pockets, paint and pencils.

Jon introduced himself, unsure of whether to shake her hand or bow.  He settled on a polite nod.  Tam dropped his hat when Anna turned to him.  He picked it up, turned it round in his hands and nearly dropped it again.  “Tam,” he said, with a reddening face.

Anna smiled at him.  “I’m pleased to meet you, Tam Gardner.”

Tam mumbled something unintelligible, and the Professor suggested they clear the way to the carving.

Anna and Djaren disassembled the apparatus and packed it away quickly, in spite of Tam’s oddly clumsy efforts to assist.  Anna folded down the sun umbrella and used it to wave at the revealed carvings with a flourish.  “Isn’t it fine?  I have a good sketch of the winged fellows.”

Jon peeked around the older children’s backs to see the fascinating carvings.  He was excited to find several different scripts and languages, and carved figures.  On either side of a block of script were two figures, winged men with beards.

“Guardians,” Djaren said.  “That’s a good sign, do you see?  They are only found guarding royal chambers, tombs, or treasures.  There’s more to be found nearby, with them here.  That is, if robbers haven’t already looted what they are guarding.”

“I find the multiple scripts most encouraging,” the Professor said, sounding breathless.  “And this one, this is Sharnish.  No one has ever been able to translate it.  It’s a dead language.  No one speaks it or remembers it.”

“Until now.”  Djaren’s eyes shone.  “See, there is script in four languages.  Translate one and we can begin to understand all the Sharnish inscriptions in these ruins. With study–”

“–we could be the first to find out the secrets this place has been trying to show us,” Anna finished, looking triumphant.  “Or at least you two linguists can, and then tell us in plain trade common.”

Jon pushed his way carefully to the front and examined the whole panel of carvings.  He knew something suddenly, looking at it, something that had nothing to do with the languages.  The edges of the panel were all obscured with chips of stone and dirt, but he knew what they would reveal.  “This is a door,” he said.

Chapter Four–Introducing the Blackfeather Family

Chapter Four–Introducing the Blackfeather Family

Jon told the Professor and Tam about seeing the pickpocket on the train but did not mention seeing the great black wing.  He didn’t want the Professor to think he was telling stories, and Jon was unsure himself of just what he thought he had seen.

Tam was excited at the news about the thief.  “If I see the little sneak about, I’ll make him give up that watch right enough,” he declared.

“Was your pocket watch terribly valuable?” Jon asked the Professor.

“I confess I don’t really know,” the Professor replied.  “I myself treasured it.  It was a gift from a good friend.  But it was a thing only, not the friendship itself, and all things are transitory.”  The Professor touched something near his collar, and Jon noted than he wore something strung about his neck, under his shirt.

“I won’t be able to sleep a wink,” Tam grumbled.  “Thieving foreigners all over the place.  We should keep alert, and take turns at sleeping.”

“I think we can be reasonably safe by taking the precaution of locking our compartment in the night hours,” the Professor said.

Tam still insisted on staying vigilant, but the rest of the long journey passed uneventfully, without signs of thieves or any more mysteries.

The train pulled at last into their station under a blazing midday sun.  The land about was hot and dry, with a few gnarled and wind blasted trees and strange tumbled rock formations in the distance.  The station stood at the center of a small sun-baked town of clay-daubed buildings and canvas awnings.  Among the buildings, people went about all in foreign clothes, mostly robes and bright headscarves.  Women carried very large and heavy looking baskets on their heads, while small children ran to and fro in dirty tunics or in nothing at all.  Leaning out the compartment window, Jon smelled bad smells and good smells and all sorts of very new but very old smelling aromas in the hot air.  Being home in Shandor smelled like clover and horses and little streams and cool winds tumbling down from the mountains to tell one about the cedars and pines they passed.  Alarna smelled like spices and strange foods and sweaty people in very hot sun and perfume and old crumbly mud walls.  It wasn’t crowded like Merigvon, where the crowd never ceased, but as the train pulled in it suddenly became crowded like an anthill.  Carts pulled up and workmen bustled to unload one of the freight cars even as the train came to a full stop.  Children crowded up around the train, calling out in languages Jon did not know, or perhaps in accents too thick for him to understand.

“Stay close to me as we disembark,” the Professor said.  “There should be someone waiting for us.”

The hot wind hit Jon as he, Tam and the Professor stepped off the train onto a dusty platform, and Jon had to squint his eyes against it.  He gripped the Professor’s hand, so as not to lose him.

“Eabrey!” the clear and pleasant voice of a woman exclaimed. “We’re over here.”

Hellin Blackfeather

Jon turned, still squinting a little, to see a small greeting party waving at them from under a large green sun parasol.  The woman who had addressed the Professor by his first name was very pretty and wore clothing finer and more fashionable than anything Jon’s mother owned.  She looked like something from the papers, with a pile of dark copper-colored hair pinned up on her head and a brimmed hat with feathers.  Her face was merry and freckled and she waved an ungloved hand at them.  Beside her were two children, a boy with spectacles who looked only a little taller and older than Jon, and a small girl with a solemn face and ribbons in her long black hair.

The Professor brightened.  “Hellin, how good of you to meet us.”  He led the boys down off the platform to stand before the lady.  “Lady Blackfeather, may I introduce you to Tam and Jon Gardner, of Markerry, Shandor.”

Tam nodded his head to the lady, a little awed, and Jon did the same, “Lady,” he said, not sure how best to address her.

She smiled at them both.  “Call me Hellin.  It’s lovely to meet you at last.  How was your journey?  Set those bags down at once.  Porter! Do please put these in the carriage, thank you.  This way.  Would you gentleman care to stop for some refreshment before we head for the dig?  We shall.”  Lady Blackfeather herded them all about as quickly as she had the porters, not giving them time to respond past nods and murmurs.  The spectacled boy gave Jon and Tam a friendly grin.  They all found themselves bundled past reaching children and loud merchants who shoved their wares forward in handfuls, into a shop across the street.  Jon tumbled down into a chair beside Tam’s.  He found himself exchanging an awkward stare with the girl with hair ribbons across from him, before a waiter set a tall pitcher of mint water and a platter of sandwiches between them.

Djaren and Ellea Blackfeather

Across the room, the Professor guided Lady Blackfeather aside and they spoke too quietly to be heard by the children.  The boy with spectacles took the opportunity to address Jon. “You’re Jon, right?  I’m Djaren Blackfeather.”  Djaren had straight dark hair tied back in a tail like the Professor’s and green eyes, bright and eager behind his spectacles.  He grinned at Jon.  “I read your essay.  I thought it rather brilliant.  I’m so glad you’ve come.”

Jon blinked, startled.  “I, I’m glad you liked it.  I didn’t know Doctor Blackfeather had children.”

“Well, he does, and we’re them.”  Djaren grinned again.

A small pale hand pushed the plate of sandwiches a few inches to the left, and the serious girl with hair ribbons peered at Jon again.

“This is my sister Ellea.”  Djaren gestured to the little girl, who was regarding them now unblinking, with the same sober face she had kept since they first saw her.  Jon found her gaze a little unsettling.

“Hello,” he said. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Likewise,” Ellea said, taking a sandwich.

“Hear hear,” Tam said amiably, taking four of the small sandwiches, which all fit in one of his hands.  “These are funny little things.  Would you like some of the water with the leaf bits?” he asked Ellea.  She nodded and he helped lift and pour from the large pitcher.

Djaren pushed the sandwiches toward Jon.  “Mother says your essay was best because you have a real observational eye and take the time to think things out, rather than ramming hypotheses about like runaway carts.  You’re mad bright too.”

“Um, thanks.” Jon accepted a cup of mint water from Tam, and fished out a mint leaf with his spoon, suddenly shy.

“Djaren dear, thank you for continuing our introductions.” Lady Blackfeather floated over in folds and ruffles of nice fabric and snagged two glasses of water and a little plate of sandwiches. “Do entertain our new guests.  I am sorry, gentlemen, if I neglect you.  I must have another moment with Professor Sheridan.”

Tam and Jon nodded, and Lady Blackfeather excused herself and the Professor to a separate table across the shop, where she made him drink a full glass of water before they began to speak again in low voices.  Jon wished he knew what they were talking about.

Tam seemed to have the same impulse.  “Ten to one it’s about the theft,” he said.

“Theft?” asked Djaren, with interest.

Jon and Tam spoke over one another telling all about the theft in the station and the pickpocket on the train.  Djaren and Ellea listened with great interest.  “But what was in Uncle Eabrey’s satchel?”  Ellea spoke again in her careful quiet voice.  “Thieves don’t steal papers.  They don’t sparkle.”

“That’s a good point,” Djaren agreed with his mouth full.  “What were they after?  It isn’t as if Uncle Eabrey looks the least bit wealthy.”

“He’s your uncle?” Jon asked, surprised.

“More or less. Good as,” Djaren explained.  “Father and he grew up together like brothers, from the time they were boys.  Father always sort of looks out for Uncle Eabrey, and Eabrey’s always looking for clues to help with Father’s cause.  They’ve worked together for ages.”

Ellea smiled oddly over the shrinking pile of sandwiches, and delicately sipped her mint water.

“He didn’t seem much upset by the theft,” Tam said.  “He said nothing valuable was lost.”

“And that’s odd too,” Djaren said, “because the only thing he ever gets really worked up about is his research, and what he’s uncovered.”

Jon was still keeping an eye on the grown-ups, and so he noticed when the Professor pulled the ebony feather from his breast pocket, and handed it across the table to Djaren’s mother, who took it with a secret smile, and tucked it carefully into her hat.

“Well, everything seems in order,” Hellin said, returning to them with the Professor at her side.  “Your packages should be ready to collect and then we can be on our way.  Djaren dear, do collect up the copper pieces will you?  Leave a half silver.”

Of course,” Djaren said amiably, resorting small coins on the tabletop.  “We collect coppers,” he explained to the Gardners.  “You never know when you’ll need a penny.”

“Aren’t silver more handy?” Tam asked.

“Only if you plan to spend them like money,” Ellea said.

Djaren handed the last two sandwiches to Tam and Jon to pocket.  “At last! Come on!”  He gestured them along with him out the door and into the hot street again.  “I order the papers, three of them, but they only come in once a month.  Along with any books we order in.  We didn’t come into town last month so now I’m two months behind, and I’ve had nothing new to read.  It’s intolerable.”

“We’ve got papers,” Tam offered, keeping step beside the shorter Djaren.  “The Professor got a lot of them.”

“Really?  Good!  Then Anna and I can have at them at once.  She’s following some story or other in the Times, and I was worried we’d have a fight for the first paper.”

“That story?” Tam looked a little befuddled.  “Well, it doesn’t end. Not as yet anyhow.  The lady just faints a few more times.”

“I think,” Ellea said, “that she is being poisoned.”

“And I told you,” Djaren sighed, regarding his sister, “that Arienish women are always fainting.”

“No one faints that much.  She’s dying, and just doesn’t know it yet.  All her silly troubles will be for nothing because she is going to her grave in a year.  It’s inevitable.”

“Well, don’t you go telling Anna that,” Djaren said.  He looked at the Gardner boys.  “My sister is very cheerful, as you’ll notice.”

Ellea stuck out her tongue at her brother, somehow primly.

Jon exchanged a look with Tam and grinned.  He was beginning to quite like the Blackfeather children.  He exchanged a glance with Tam, a little smile to see if he felt the same way. Tam smiled back and nodded.  “It’s a terrible heat, but the folk are good,” he told Jon.  “Mind you wear your hat.”

*  *  *  *  *

Kara watched, hot, hungry and annoyed, from under a wagon as the strange little entourage passed.  The bug-eyed boy was walking beside a little princess in hair ribbons with a frock that looked like ruffles and frosting.  The lout was there too, and the skinny man with all the scars, whose watch was now in her pocket.  A very fancy lady was talking with him and showing them all to a dusty carriage.  Mostly Kara glared at the new boy.  He was particularly annoying.  He could pass as easily for a girl as Kara did for a boy.  Kara at once disliked the arrogant turn of his head, his long hair, fine features, and pretentious spectacles.  He obviously had far too high a regard for himself.  You could tell by how he smiled all the time and never seemed to shut up.

Kara was so busy watching them that she nearly missed her chance to roll unnoticed from under the wagon before it began to lurch away.  She blamed this on the heat and her now raging hunger.  She swore and followed silently behind some workmen carrying trunks, hefting a heavy canvas bag of things she had collected in the baggage car.  She entered the crowd at the next corner, safely anonymous, and began searching for the sign for the next meeting place.  Her sharp ears caught three dialects here, but trade common seemed most prominent, which was lucky.  She didn’t understand the other two.  She discouraged a smaller and far more amateur would-be pickpocket with a hard kick that made him curse and run off.  She was just sizing up some of the local merchants as possible fences or marks, when she found what she was supposed to be looking for.  Under a faded wooden sign depicting a red pitcher she found an old man leaning by the door in the shade.  She planted herself in front of him with her hands on her hips and waited for him to take notice.  After a frustrating moment he finally did.

“Ah, little one.  I have no coins for you.  Be gone!”

“That’s not what you’re supposed to say.”  Kara gave the white-haired man a dark look.  “Alehd mentioned you were a fool and half blind, but I don’t find that enough of an excuse.”

“What a temper the small one has,” the old man muttered to himself.  He squinted down at Kara, and spoke in a hushed tone.  “I have seen the least and the greatest of thieves, in all kinds and all manners, but you are the smallest they have ever sent me.  Don’t you have some home to go to?  This is no life for a little one like you.  You will make your mother cry.”

Kara sighed and bit back curses.  She would not stab him. The daft old fool looked honestly concerned about her.  Getting old, getting soft, Kara thought.  “My last home was a packing crate,” she growled.  “I am tired, and I am hungry, and my mother is as dead as you are about to be if you go tell Negal that you have turned away the best lock pick in all Charesh and the five provinces of Corestemar.”

The man lifted both hands, palm up.  “Easy now.  I do not send you away.  You are welcome here, little–” he caught Kara’s dangerous look, “–master lock pick.”  He smiled as he said it, exposing gaps of missing teeth and a hundred new wrinkles.  “But where is Alehd, is he not with you?”

“He missed the train,” Kara said shortly.  “And he didn’t pay me for my work.”

“But there is work here in plenty.”   The old man gestured to the doorway.  “Here the finest of tomb thieves have gathered in my father’s time, and my father’s fathers.  The tombs of Alarna have been my family’s living.  Things have changed now with the new visitors.  We have now not to steal from the dead, but from other thieves.”

Kara nodded slowly.  “Archeologists.”

“And what are they but thieves themselves?  It is all the same under the sky.”

“Don’t flatter them,” Kara said.

© 2007 Ruth Lampi

Chapter Three–An Unexpected Passenger

Chapter Three–An Unexpected Passenger

The Professor and his charges boarded their new train without further incident.  It was bigger than the last train, painted green, with brown upholstered bench seats in little walled compartments. A hallway beside the compartments ran the length of the passenger cars, of which there were sixteen.  The eight luggage cars and six freight cars were all off limits to passengers.  There were also three dining cars, two for the more well off passengers and one for everyone else.

The boys had explored all they were allowed of the train in a very short time, found the nearest lavatory, and chosen how they wanted to sit in their own car.  The Professor remained remarkably calm about the loss of his watch and satchel.  Jon wanted to ask him about the feather, but felt it was impolite to do so.  The Professor was being so very kind to them.  Unlike other grown ups, it didn’t matter to him who read what paper first, and so both boys were invited to share freely in the wealth of words before them.

Tam was at first reluctant to touch the things, but in a little while he found a story serialized in the Arienish National Times, of which there were three issues collected.  He began to work his way through it slowly, mumbling half aloud to himself in sections.

Jon was delighted to find that seven of the papers were in trade common, and of the rest, two were in Levour, which he could read fairly well, having learned it in the last year.  Two more were in Germhacht, another language he could read passably.  The Professor read from some paper in a queer alphabet that he explained was Corestemarian.

At length Tam reached the end of the Times without reaching the end of the story, and snorted with disappointment.  “It was a ridiculous story anyway,” he said.  “The lady kept having fainting fits at the least thing, and all the folk used too many words to say what they meant.  If people really went on like that it would be a crazy sort of world.”

Jon grinned behind his paper.  He had found a fascinating piece about some archeologist’s finds in the southern continent that contented him for some time until at length even he got restless.  Later in the afternoon he took a stroll up and down the hallway, and a made a game of keeping his balance as the train lurched through some dry and rocky countryside.  He was trying to follow a track of winding red in the carpet when another passenger pushed him rudely out of the way without a word of excuse.

Jon looked up indignantly to find that the passenger who had jostled him aside was none other than the ragged pickpocket who had stolen the Professor’s watch.  He stared at the boy who was, once closely regarded, thin, sharp featured, and foreign, with dirty dark skin and ragged curls of dark hair tumbling down untrimmed about ears and neck.  He wore a man’s coat, overlarge on skinny shoulders, and had a hole in the knee of his trousers.

“You!” Jon exclaimed.  “You stole from the Professor!”

The boy looked back at him and made a hand gesture that Jon was unfamiliar with.

“Give it back please.  The Professor is a good man.”

The boy gave him an incredulous look.  “Well, you’re hopeful, aren’t you?” he said at last, dryly, with an accent Jon could not place.

“Please,” Jon tried again, stepping around in front of the boy.  “I’m Jon.”

“How nice for you.”  The boy, little taller than Jon, easily pushed him out of the way.  “Now run along and play.”  The boy gave Jon a shove that set him off balance, and breezed down the hall to the last doors leading toward the freight cars.

“You aren’t allowed to go down there!” Jon said.

The boy gave him a cool glance back over his shoulder.  “And yet,” he said with a wave, and opened the door.  There was a sudden rush of fresh air from outside, and the boy swung himself out between the cars and began nimbly to climb up the ladder to the top of the train.  Jon stared in mingled horror and awe.  He wondered if he ought to go after the boy, or go tell the Professor what had happened.  He was still standing in the hall, looking at the open door, when the late light streaming in at the train window was obscured by a large dark shape.  Jon looked to his right, out the window, to find it covered by a huge jet-colored wing.  There was a rattling from above and down the ladder shot the pickpocket, looking pale under his layer of dirt.  The boy dashed past Jon with amazing speed, and light poured in as the wing lifted again.

“Wait!  Jon called.  “Did you see him too?”  There was no answer.  The pickpocket slammed his way through the first door and on to the next, down the line of passenger cars, impossible to catch.

There were no more glimpses of either thieves or black wings that afternoon, though Jon searched hopefully through the passenger cars.  He came back at last to the compartment where Tam and the Professor were now sleeping.  Jon tried to take up a paper, but found himself unable to concentrate on it.

?Jon in Corridor

Kara swore silently to herself as she crawled between two tall, precarious stacks of luggage and maneuvered her way on hands and knees around first a crate and then a steam trunk.

It’s too big to follow me here.  I can go places it can’t.  If I hide it won’t find me, she told herself.  It wasn’t fair, but Kara was used to that.  Whatever she did, wherever she fled, the dark and the strange followed her.  It didn’t matter if she hopped a train to the far ends of the earth, the terror always followed.  Things began to happen.  Things went wrong, as things always went wrong, and she had to run again.

This time it was something new, a thing she had never seen before and wished now she’d never seen at all.  She shivered and made herself as small as possible to squeeze between two packing cases.  She grazed her knee against one sharp corner of a crate and further tore the fabric of her already ragged breeches.  She bit back curses and a cry as blood, thick and dark, rose in the shallow wound.  Stupid, stupid, she told herself.

Pulling herself out around a steamer trunk, at last she found a place to curl, in the middle of a full luggage car, in a cave formed of other people’s things, hidden from view.  With a few expert blows from her boot heel she broke the lock on a large trunk and pried it open, careful of the other boxes and cases piled high atop it.  Inside she found clothes, and better, a soft fur coat in which to burrow.

She climbed into the trunk and set about raiding it and making a sanctuary for herself.  She found a man’s razor, which she pocketed for a ready weapon; a pair of breeches that were too large for her, which she pulled on right over her own and tied with a black cravat; and a pearl bracelet, carelessly tossed in a pocket of a ladies’ coat.  She took the bracelet but discarded the lacy pink coat with disgust.

She pulled out the pocket watch she’d nabbed off the weak scar-faced man, the one Alehd had told her to distract while he went after the real prize.  Alehd was supposed to have met her on the train.  He never appeared at the meeting point.  Kara tried not to think of that.  It wasn’t as if she liked Alehd anyway.  She examined the watch, opened it.  There was an inscription carved inside the cover.  Kara didn’t know the language, but then Kara didn’t read at all.  She sniffed, and put it back in her pocket.

Return it.  What an absurd concept.  I stole it fairly and it’s mine.  What a very dull little boy. Kara patted the pocket with the watch and the one with the pearl bracelet and felt a little comforted.  Even if Alehd did not make it, and so could not pay her, she would have something to start over on.   The only thing she lacked here was food, and she wasn’t about to go venture out to the kitchen cars with a giant great thing waiting for her in her favorite spot on top of the train.  She curled into the fur and tugged the steamer trunk shut about her hiding place.  Better to stay hidden and safe and hungry.

Chapter Two–A Daring Theft and a Most Mysterious Apparition

Chapter Two–A Daring Theft and a Most Mysterious Apparition

Terminal at MerigvonThe grand terminal at Merigvon could be seen from some distance, gleaming amid the city’s spires. The great glass roof seemed to slide arching over them like a glittering clamshell as the train pulled slowly in. Other trains passed quite close to them, alarming Jon until he remembered they were all on their own tracks and couldn’t possibly collide. Dozens of tracks led into the cathedral-like building, and trains of all kinds stood puffing and steaming under vaulted arches of steel, stone, and glass. Statues stared down grimly from the high ornamented arches and balustrades on either side of the hall. Cherubs, soldiers, and ladies in flowing robes with scrolls and baskets of fruit were everywhere upon the high walls. Stone wreaths and angels, memorials of some foreign war, stood at the east end of the hall, winding around the largest clock Jon had ever seen in his life. The Gardner boys regarded the place with wonder, faces pressed close to the window.

“This is the crossroads of the continent,” Professor Sheridan informed them, straightening his hat carefully. “We will change trains here, and be able to stretch our legs.”

“Do they have papers?” Jon asked, hearing his own voice rather smaller and more breathless than he wanted.

“Quite a few. I telegraphed ahead to have certain titles bundled and ready for my arrival. We shall have a pile of reading for the next leg of our journey.”

Jon returned the Professor’s smile readily.

Tam insisted on carrying both cases of luggage—Jon’s, heavy with books and papers, and his own lighter case with the broken handle that had to be held just so. Professor Sheridan, as before, carried only his satchel.

As they stepped down off the train Professor Sheridan checked his pocket watch against the large clock on the eastern wall and satisfied himself that it was correct. He slipped the watch back into a frayed pocket of his waistcoat. “Come along. Let us see if we can brave the crowd and find some tea before our train comes in.”

Tam followed after the Professor, lugging both cases, and Jon tried as best he could to keep up, despite the crowd pressing all round. He heard Tam mutter something about more people than he’d ever seen, but then his brother’s voice was lost in the howl of steam from a train pulling out. A man in a heavy fur pushed Jon sideways out of his way, and out of sight of Tam and the Professor. Jon had a frightening moment trying to find them again while caught behind a large procession of porters pulling along big carts of luggage. He was shoved first to one side then another, but found himself at last pushed along to an archway where a very panicked looking Tam and the calmer Professor were waiting for him.

“You hold to my coat now,” Tam ordered. “I’d have you hold my hand but I can’t with the cases. One of those luggage men tried to take them from me, if you’ll believe it. I won’t go letting someone else carry our things to who knows where. You stay close now.”

“Why don’t you walk at my side?” the Professor suggested.

He ushered them carefully through a small maze of galleries full of shops, and up an ornate iron stair to a tea shop, where he settled the boys at a table on a balcony overlooking the terminal. He ordered tea and cakes for two, then stood. “I will be back in a moment. I’m going to pick up those papers.”

The boys were able, from the vantage of the balcony, to admire the great terminal at their leisure.

“This is as big as the Great Hall in Shandor, maybe,” Jon said.

“Nah. The Hall is higher,” Tam insisted, looking impressed nonetheless.

“Look at all the trains. I bet you could travel anywhere in the world from here.”

“Not to Shandor you couldn’t. You have to go on good honest horseback all the way from Sherard station to get to Markerry and out to our farm. We don’t need trains back home.”

Jon remembered the horse ride to the first train station fondly, but he liked the trains just as well. “I wonder what the next train will be like. Maybe there will be even more cars this time. The Professor says some trains have dozens of cars. That one down there has twenty-three.”

“The next train will be like our last train,” Tam grumbled, rubbing his back. “Rumbly, fast and loud. You’d think a thing going on two rails could travel smooth.”

The tea came then, with an assortment of little cakes that neither brother could find any reason to grumble about.

“Ought we to save some for the Professor?” Jon wondered, a little too late, looking at the single cake remaining.

“I’ve the money from Mum. I’ll stand a second course if he wants some,” Tam decided. Comforted by this decision, they split the last cake between them. The Professor appeared a moment later, carrying in both arms a bundle of papers so thick it made Jon’s heart leap. The Professor insisted on paying the bill, over Tam’s protestations, though when Tam saw what the bill was for tea and cakes for two at the grand terminal he turned a little pale. “Please, gentlemen,” the Professor said, “you are both my guests.” With that he ordered a box of the cakes to take along, and gave them to Jon to carry for safekeeping.

They wound their way back down the staircase and out into the crowd again. Jon was very careful to stay close beside Professor Sheridan, and so it was that he saw the dark ragged boy in the oversized coat deliberately bump into the Professor and snatch his pocket watch.

Jon cried out indignantly. The urchin regarded him with cool defiance, and just as suddenly as he had appeared, he dashed off into the crowd with the Professor’s watch in hand.

“Thief!” yelled Jon. Tam had seen it too, and he dropped the cases and took off after the boy, bellowing.

The Professor lifted a hand and seemed about to say something when an ill-shaved and gruff looking man behind him pulled suddenly at his satchel, setting the Professor off balance and sending the bundle of papers falling to the floor. The gruff man pulled the satchel from the Professor and ran in the opposite direction, leaving a scene of chaos behind him.

The Professor shouted for the station guard, and seemed torn for a moment whether to chase the second thief or stay with Jon. Some station guards saw the man running and gave chase. Professor Sheridan frowned, sighed, and began gathering his scattered bundle of papers. Jon stared, distressed, after the man fleeing with the satchel who raced across some open tracks just ahead of a train that was pulling in. As he disappeared behind the moving train, something huge and dark swooped by overhead, sending up a gust of wind along with the rush of air from the train.

Jon stared, looking up as a winged figure in flowing black plunged down from amid the ranks of statuary and swooped low over the crowd. The figure’s wings were big and black, the span of a train car’s length. The face, only briefly glimpsed, was a man’s, unearthly beautiful and calm, still as a statue, with terrible, strange, burning eyes. He was there and gone in an instant, sweeping over the moving train and diving to ground on the opposite platform, invisible now along with the thief. Jon stared around open-mouthed to find the crowd already calming, oblivious to what he had just seen. No one looked up, pointed, or seemed in the least alarmed by the sudden gust of wind kicked up by giant wings.

The train that obscured the thief and the apparition finished pulling out and the opposite platform was visible, empty of anything interesting whatsoever. There were no thieves or winged figures to be seen.

“Did you see? Professor there was . . . are you all right, sir?” Jon looked down anxiously at the Professor, who was on the ground again, not fallen, but retrieving the last of his papers, and one large ebony feather.

The Professor examined the feather with keen interest and glanced up and around, as if looking for something. His brow smoothed and he tucked the feather carefully into an inner pocket of his coat. He rose and dusted off his coat, visibly collecting himself, then lifted his eyebrows in a look of mild apology to Jon. “Quite a day. But it’s all right. We have the important things.” He hefted the papers, and nodded at Jon. “I see you still have hold of the cakes. That’s lucky. Let’s see if we can retrieve your headstrong brother.”

“But Professor, your notes, your research!”

“All in my head, as strong as on paper,” the Professor assured, oddly calm.

Jon admired the man very much for holding together appearances for his sake, but felt the Professor must be very upset about losing all his research, not to mention his possessions. “But you’ve been robbed.”

“It happens,” the Professor answered. “But this time nothing of great importance has been lost. See, here’s your brother.”

Tam jogged back to them, panting. “That little pickpocket was fast. He got away from me, I’m sorry, sir.”

“A man stole the Professor’s satchel!” Jon told him.

“Bloody foreigners!” Tam cried, aggrieved. “What kind of place is this?”

“It’s all right,” the Professor said, his voice still calm and soft. “Let us find our train, gentlemen, before we have any other misadventures.”

Tam caught up the cases and gripped them firmly, looking suspiciously from side to side as he followed close on the Professor’s footsteps. Jon hurried along beside him. “Tam, did you see . . . anything unusual, while chasing that boy?”

“Not unless you count a great lot of clumsy foreigners.”

“You didn’t see, well, anything that looked like a living statue, did you?”

“No. Why?”

“No reason. I just thought I saw something.” Jon frowned at the Professor’s back and thought of the feather he had picked up. But the Professor hadn’t looked up when the winged figure had passed over, or noticed the wind. No one had seen the man with wings but Jon. I know I saw that, Jon thought. Why didn’t anyone else?

Apparition at Merigvon

Chapter One–The Remarkable Professor Sheridan

Chapter One–The Remarkable Professor Sheridan

Tam and Jon“The train is stopping.  I think we’re here,” Jon Gardner told his brother Tam.

Tam leaned over to join Jon in peering out the compartment window at the gray, misty view outside.  The train gave out a loud hoot and one long slow lurch that sent the luggage sliding beneath the seats, and then it was still.  The mist outside parted to reveal a busy platform with bustling porters and passengers.

“Those are fine horses,” Tam observed, squinting out at the road beyond the station where bright carriages passed to and fro.  “Don’t know about those carriages though.  Gaudy.”

One gilt carriage stopped to let out an especially gaudy set of foreigners in fine clothing.  Porters scrambled to carry a great array of boxes and trunks from the carriage to the train.  One porter dropped the end of an enormous trunk and a foreign man in a top hat waved a cane and shouted at him.

“You don’t think Professor Sheridan is with them, do you?” Jon asked, suddenly a little nervous.

“Nah.”  Tam rubbed at his nose.  “The professor’s a good honest Shandorian, right, like us.  We’ve no use for gilt carriages.”

“I think we should get out and have a look round.  I want a paper.  I bet they have papers here.  New ones, from today even.”  Jon peered about, looking for shops, or the boys who had gone around waving papers at the last stop.

Tam, sandy haired and big framed, leaned back in his seat and frowned.  “That’s nonsense.  It’s best we stay right here where the Professor can find us.  I won’t be losing you in that crowd.”  Tam caught his brother’s disappointed look.  “And who’s to say you could read the papers here?  They might be foreign.”

“We’re in Vellinos.  They’re bound to speak trade common here.  We’re just south of Arien.  They might get the Arienish National Times.”

“You’ve got one of those in your case already,” Tam pointed out.

Jon sighed.  “But Tam, it isn’t new.  They make a new one every week.”

Tam shrugged.  Tam could read, he just didn’t care to, not like Jon did.  A puff of steam outside obscured the view from the window and showed Jon his own reflection briefly in the glass.  A thin boy with large blue eyes looked back at him, his blond hair cut neatly short, his best clothes rumpled from several days’ travel.  He was not wearing the cravat his mother had carefully tied onto him.  Jon looked about for the thing.  Should he be wearing it to meet the Professor?  The Professor was famous, after all, and Mother had wanted Jon to make a good impression.  His essay had certainly made enough of an impression to win him this great opportunity: a summer working with Professor Eabrey Sheridan at the archeological dig site in Alarna, along with the equally famous and even more mysterious Doctor Corin Blackfeather.  Jon found the cravat wedged between two seat cushions and pulled it free to find it was a wrinkled mess.

The window was clear again and Tam was looking outside now, with the familiar dubious expression that said he wasn’t comfortable in strange and foreign parts.  Tam was here to look after Jon, and for no other reason.  At nine, even a very mature and intelligent nine, Jon Gardner was not permitted to travel alone, but with thirteen-year-old Tam along, big for his age and steady, Mother trusted they would get safely to the Professor’s watchful eye.  She had left Tam with all kinds of instructions, and he was taking them quite seriously.

“I don’t like the look of that fellow,” Tam muttered, frowning at the crowd of folk now boarding the train.  Jon looked, but saw no one especially suspicious.

“Too pale,” Tam explained.  “Like he’s never seen the sun or plowed a field.  The man behind him is as dark as honest dirt.  He seems all right.  He didn’t object when the rude, pale fellow butted in line.”

“The pale fellow is Arienish, I think.” Jon said.  “Nobility maybe.”

“Don’t see nothing noble about him,” Tam said.  “He needs some sun.  And he’s wearing gloves.  What kind of man wears little white gloves?”

“It must be a fashion,” Jon said.  The Shandorian fashion for men consisted of a sturdy work shirt, breeches, suspenders, and a vest and jacket.  Jon’s jacket, folded in the corner for a pillow, was grayish blue.  Tam’s, slung over an open valise, was brown.  Mother had let Tam’s coat out recently to make more space in the shoulders.  The new cloth was a little darker than the old.

“Is that the Professor, do you think?”  Tam pointed out an elderly fellow with enormous whiskers in a trim dark coat.  Jon looked him over, but wasn’t sure.

“Maybe that fellow.”  The next man was dark skinned, in a big coat, and carrying a large valise.  “Him, maybe?”  Tam pointed out another man with a beard, but he moved a step to reveal a family in company with him, noisily boarding the train.

“Pardon me,” a soft adult voice spoke from the door behind them.  “But am I correct in assuming that you are Tam and Jon Gardner?”

Eabrey

The boys turned to find a young man at the door of their compartment, looking in. He was an adult, but not much taller than Tam, and carrying only a single worn satchel. He had calm eyes, an awkward smile, and long blond hair pulled back in a tail. His clothes were somewhat old fashioned and showed signs of wear at the cuffs and hem. He wore tall leather travel boots, like the northern clans in Shandor did, but also a hat of an Arienish fashion. Most peculiar of all, the man’s young face, and his hands and neck as well, were webbed over with a faint tracery of old scars. Jon wondered what had happened to him. Without the scars, the man would have been considered handsome. The man smiled at them, a little nervously, and took off his hat. “I’m Eabrey Sheridan. That is, Professor Sheridan, if you like. You are the Gardners?”

“We are, sir, and it’s good to see you, sir.” Tam rose and shook the Professor’s hand heartily. Jon shook the scarred hand next, suddenly speechless in the presence of the man who had been his idol for some years. Jon was very surprised to find the Professor so young. For a man with five doctorates, who had written over nine volumes and hundreds of essays, he was not at all what Jon had expected.

The Professor seated himself on the cushions Tam hurriedly cleared of stray luggage, and Jon continued to stare at the famous scholar, unable to help himself. The Professor’s ears, revealed now that his hat was at his side, were a curious shape, like leaves, and came up through his long hair. There was scarring there too, but like the rest, old. Jon tried to ignore all the spidery light lines of scars and focus on the man’s blue eyes. “It’s an honor to finally meet you, sir,” he said. “I’ve read all your books.”

The Professor raised his eyebrows and smiled again, mildly. “I hope they didn’t bore you. My students tell me I have a long winded and old-fashioned way of rambling when I get too involved in a topic.”

“I liked your books, sir. I especially liked what you had to say about the inscriptions discovered under the castle in Shandor, and your translations of the Ancients’ text there. I believe you are right in thinking that the wing rune describes an entity rather than an action.”

The Professor looked surprised and pleased. “I look forward to hearing what you think of the text found in the ruins at Alarna then. I’m eager to see it myself.”

“Has Doctor Blackfeather offered a translation?” Jon asked.

“He is waiting for us, and for some papers I’ve brought with me,” the Professor said, gesturing toward his satchel. “I have been studying the legends and the history of the site to try and get some idea of what we might find at the dig. Most scholars agree that Alarna was once the center of a great civilization. They used bronze weapons and had superior skills in masonry, which they used to build great cities and temples. Certain texts mention that Alarna was ruled by an immortal god-king who conquered many neighboring lands. He was a harsh, cruel ruler who demanded many sacrifices. One day a great warrior from an unknown land slew him and brought his temple crashing to destruction with all his wealth and glory in it.”

“So we might be digging for buried treasure?” Tam asked.

“Likely not.” The Professor smiled apologetically. “The tomb robbers of Alarna are famous for their exploits. Any treasure will be long gone, but we hope to find clues to what really happened between the warrior and the god-king. If we can discern the events of that encounter, it may have some bearing on other, er, historical encounters with which Doctor Blackfeather and I are concerned. In studying.” The Professor brushed some unseen dust from his worn trouser knees, looked up, and smiled at Jon. “What I find most fascinating is that Doctor Blackfeather’s expedition has found writing of the Ancients on a tablet at the Alarna site.”

The Ancients, Jon knew, had lived in Shandor long ago. They were the people who built the foundations of the castle and had left artifacts, stories, and traces of their bloodlines and culture to Shandor’s people.

“As you likely know,” the Professor said, “it is rare indeed to find their written language anywhere outside of Shandor.”

“Uh,” said Tam. “Right. Old writing.”

Jon smiled at his brother’s bewildered look, and then at the peculiar Professor Sheridan. It was wonderful to finally meet someone who could speak the same language of old civilizations, ruins, and stories. Tam was a good brother, but his interests were all in horses, farming, and the soil of Shandor: not for its history but for its everyday present. “Professor Sheridan, can you tell us more about the ruins at Alarna? Is it true there are underground rivers, and that they found a gallery of tombs with the people encased all in painted clay?”

Tam was asleep before an hour had passed. The conversation paused only long enough for the three to have dinner from the supper cart, hours later.

“How long will it be until we reach Alarna?” Tam asked that evening.

“Two days,” the Professor replied. “Tomorrow we switch trains at the grand terminal in Merigvon and take the southern line down overnight to an outpost station in Alarna. We’ll travel by carriage from there, out to the dig.”

Tam sighed. “We’ve already been on the train four days. I didn’t know you could be so far from home. How many days would it take to walk back, do you think?”

Jon thought. “Over a year, probably, unless you had wings.”

© 2007 Ruth Lampi