Part 2 (1/2)

The storm had all but died down. There was a continuous, low hissing of sand slipping slowly from the dome tent. But even that faded away after only a few more seconds, and we were left with our own heavy breathing.

The silence was shocking. My stomach rumbled, and 1 was ridiculously embarra.s.sed.

”Like it never was,” Scott said again. ”Let's go and see what it's left us.”

We exited the tent into a bloodred dusk.

And we saw what the storm had left behind. * * *

The landscape had changed beyond recognition.

Where the watering hole had been, a sand dune now lay. Where the neighboring tents had been pitched, there was now a wind-patterned expanse of loose sand. And the horizon that had once been apparent, viewed across packed sand and low, gentle mounds, was now hidden behind something new.

Rising out of the desert, a city.

I fell to my knees. I could not take in the immensity of what we were viewing. My mind would not permit it. It did not fit within the confines of my imagination, the limits of my understanding.

Scott was amazed, but not surprised. That was something that terrified me even more. He was not surprised.

”There it is,” he said. ”There it is, at last.” He walked across the altered landscape, ignoring the fact that ours was the only tent left standing. There was no sign of the others. They could have been anywhere.

”Scott?” I whispered at last. He turned and looked, smiling, but not at me. ”Scott, what's going on?”

”The City of the Dead,” he said. ”The storm gave it to us. Pete, you have to come and see it with me. Don't just stay here.”

”I'm afraid. It shouldn't be there, it's too... big.”

”Out of the desert, that's all. Please Please, Pete. You'll always regret it if you don't come. You'll think about it forever. It'll haunt you... believe believe me, I know. Live a little.” me, I know. Live a little.”

Live a little. Yes, that was what I wanted to do. Scott had lived a lot, and I only wanted to live a little. But still, I was terrified. I could conceive of no way that this could be happening. I looked past him at the ruins revealed by the storm. They seemed to begin just over a wide, low dune created at the western extremes of the old camp, and if they were as close as I believed they probably rose about twenty feet above the desert level. Only twenty feet.

But before the storm, there had been nothing there at all.

”They shouldn't be there...” I said.

Scott shrugged. ”The desert is deceiving. Messes with perspective. Come on.”

He was lying. But somehow I stood and followed.

The sand underfoot was loose and treacherous; more than once we both slipped and slid several steps down the side of the new dune. I could not take my eyes from the ruin rising before me. I tried to convince myself that I had been misled by Scott's certainty; that the structure was naturally formed, carved from solid stone by millennia of scouring wind. But it could only be artificial. There were the joints between blocks, the blocks themselves huge and probably each weighing several tons. And the windows, squared at the base, curved inward at their head, like traditional church windows back home. Around the windows, still visible here and there, ornamentation. Scrolls. Patterned carvings that may have been some sort of writing. And in one place, staring out at us as we approached, guarding the ancient ruin it formed a part of, the face of a gargoyle.

I tried not to look, but my gaze was drawn there. It had three eyes, two mouths, and though its edges had been worn by eons of erosion, still its teeth looked sharp.

”Scott,” I whispered.

”I know!” he said, excitement to my fear. ”Come on! I think this is just a part of it.”

We walked slowly up the low slope of the new dune. I glanced back once or twice at the remains of the camp we left behind. Only the single large tent was visible now, with a few sand-covered mounds here and there that may have been scattered equipment. Ahead of us, the old ruin revealed itself more and more with each step.

I was afraid to reach the top. Afraid to see whether this was just a part of it, or if there was so much more beyond. I so wanted this to be a single tall wall.

When we crested the hill, the world became a different place. Everything I had held true s.h.i.+fted, much of it drastically. My beliefs, my faith took a gut-punch and reeled against the a.s.sault. Scott touched my shoulder and then held on; he knew what I was feeling. I looked at him, and his eyes were ablaze with the thrill of discovery.

The ruins lay in a wide hollow in the desert. There was not one high wall. There was not even a single building. Spread across the floor of the depression in the land, seemingly growing from the ground, lay the remains of several large and dozens of smaller buildings. Sand and grit were skirted around bases and against walls, had drifted up and through openings that may have been windows, may have been wounds. Some of the ruins rose above the level of the desert floor, but many more had been revealed below, shown the sunlight for the first time in eons when the terrible sand storm had opened them up to view. The hollow must have been a mile across.

”Let's go down,” Scott said.

”Why?”

”I want to see. I want to know where the dead live. Look, over there!” He pointed to our left, and before the dark stone of the first tumbled building there was something in the sand, something dark, moving.

At first 1 thought it was a scorpion or small lizard. But as we moved closer I saw the reality. It was a foot, still clad in the remains of a sandal, bones stripped of flesh and dangling with sc.r.a.ps of skin, snapped or broken at the ankle. The illusion of movement stopped as we came closer, but I blinked several times and wiped sand from my eyes, waiting for it to move again.

Scott hesitated momentarily before picking it up. ”Here,” he said, offering me the relic. ”Touch something timeless.”

Before 1 could refuse he grabbed my hand and placed the skeletal foot there. It had no weight. Lighter than a feather, little more than a memory, it lay across my palm and fingers, yet seemed not to touch them. It felt warm, though that may have been the sun beating through its nothingness- And the sun struck down as this person walked, endlessly, herded with a thousand more, driven from one old land and taken toward another. Soldiers and settlers accompanied them on their way, using guns and boots if any of the ragged tribe lagged behind. This person was old by now, crying, leaving a trail of tears as she was torn away from her own lands for the first time ever, and she died from thirst and sorrow on strange soil- I dropped the thing back into the sand and it landed with a thud. It sat there motionless, and at any second I expected it to strike out.

”There's more,” he said. ”Signs of habitation.”

I shook my head, trying to dispel whatever it was I had imagined. Hallucination? Vision Hallucination? Vision? ”You really believe this place is what you said it is?”

”Of course!” he said. ”And there's more, much more. This is just the surface. I want to go down inside. Matthew is inside!”

”If that's true-if everything you're saying, all this madness, has an ounce of truth-do you know what this would do to the world? To religion, belief, faith?”

”I don't care,” Scott said.

”Why?”

”Because caring can't change the truth.”

I stared over Scott's shoulder at the ruined city risen from the sands.

”I want to go deeper deeper,” Scott said, and he turned and walked down toward the ruins.

I followed, sliding once or twice, starting a small avalanche that preceded us both down the slope. There were several more dark shapes in the sand, shapes with glimpses of white within, old bones, ready to crumble in the heat. I wondered if they were light and insubstantial like the foot. Light, but filled with memories waiting to be relived. I had no wish to touch them.

Scott reached the first ruin. He stood very close, hand held up in front of him, palm out, almost touching the wall. The stone sported some elaborate designs, letters or images, numbers or figures.

”Old,” Scott said. These are so old.”

”What language is that? Is that hieroglyphics?”

”An earlier form, perhaps. Though initiated separately. I've seen variations of this before, many times all across the world. I've been searching for so long, it's almost my second tongue.”

”What does it say?”

Scott turned to me and smiled, and his hand touched the rock for the first time. He sighed and blinked heavily, as if suddenly tired or drunk. ”You don't want to know,” he said. ”Come on.”

Scott and I circled the stone ruin. It was built from huge flat blocks, far too large to possibly be moved by hand, and old though it was, burial in the sands must have protected it from erosion by the winds of time. In addition to the strange markings there were several more of the gruesome gargoyles at various points on its upper surface, not corresponding at all with any opening or any particular s.p.a.cing. I glanced back, and our footprints seemed to have disappeared into the desert. The sand was so smooth, so fine that it had flowed back in to fill the depressions, leaving little more than dents in the surface. It was as though the buried city were swallowing our presence. Or wiping it away.