But when he drew the bone out again, there were no cracks on it and the message was erased. No answers because there was no one to answer. By that he knew that The Goddess was dead.”
“But where did The Bones come from?”
“That, young man, is a holy mystery, which only I may know. I can’t tell even you. Now you are dismissed.”
Another year passed. The manner of the visits began to change. Ginna was brought in secret to The Guardian, and told not to speak of what went on. So he confided only in Amaedig.
It was during his eighth year that he was ushered into the private chambers of Tharanodeth and he found The Guardian dressed in heavy shoes and a travel cloak, with a staff in his hand.
“We are going somewhere,” the old man said. “We are going now, while I can still make the journey.”
Ginna’s heart leapt. So far in his life he had never been beyond the walls of the palace, and there was much within those walls he had never seen. Beyond the palace there was the lower city, beyond that—
He could not imagine what was beyond that. He had seen a little, but only from windows. It was very far away. So were the stars.
It was after midnight then, well into the stillest hours of the night Ginna no longer dressed in fine clothes to visit The Guardian, and he was in his usual plain tunic, and without shoes. He was not ready for any journey, but he went. Tharanodeth took him down a long, winding staircase, through a secret passage, until they had descended for so long he was sure they were at the center of the Earth.
The stone floor was intensely cold beneath his feet. Damp slime squished between his toes. Then the floor ended and there was only rough stone. He trod gingerly.
“Get up on my back,” said The Guardian. “I’ll carry you.”
He did, and the old man staggered and let out an “oompf!” but he carried him for miles. Once Tharanodeth looked up at the dripping stalactites and said, “We are no longer in the palace, but underneath the city itself.” Then the way sloped down sharply. “We are at the heart of the mountain,” he said. A long while afterwards, as they began to move up again, he said, “Now we are just barely in sight of Ai Hanlo. We are well beyond the walls.”
It was still dark when they emerged into the open air beneath the stars. The moon was bright and nearly full, and the old man pointed to the west, where it was nearing the horizon.
There stood a mountain revealed in the moonlight, surrounded by barren foothills and topped with crags and sheer cliffs. But all over the mountain, like ivy growing on it, were towers and walls, terrace after terrace of tiny houses, more walls ringed with towers from which pennons flew, and at the foot of the mountain still more levels of houses with a thicker wall encompassing the whole. Two huge gates were visible. Atop each tower, spread all the way up the mountain, watch-lights burned, and there were lanterns in many windows. The lights were a natural part of the city just as the city seemed a natural outgrowth of the mountain, and the sum of all seemed an enormous beast with glittering scales and a thousand eyes, crouching beneath the moon.
Tharanodeth set Ginna down, and bade him look for a long time. They stood there until the moon set.
“Now that you have seen the city of Ai Hanlo from the outside, as it sits upon Ai Hanlo Mountain, you will understand what I mean when I tell you that our ancestors did not build the city when they came here from far away. They carved its foundations out of the flesh of the stone.”
He pointed to the golden dome of the summit “Behold. That dome and the towers surrounding it comprise only that part of the palace which is visible from this side. And yet there is enough there for you to spend your whole lifetime exploring and even then you could not know it all in its fullness. And around the palace is the city, through which you could wander all your days, and still some of its ancient secrets would remain hidden. Yet consider how small they are seen from this distance. Just one mountain surrounded by hills, beyond which are wide plains and other lands. Now come. I want to show you something.”
He took the boy on his back again with difficulty. “You are supposed to be underweight. Have you gotten heavier without my permission?”
“No,” said Ginna meekly, too overwhelmed to be aware of the levity.
They traveled for hours over the sloping, rocky ground. Constantly Ginna looked back at the wonder of die city, and slowly, as he watched, the curvature of the terrain hid it from him. To be out of sight of Ai Hanlo was wholly incomprehensible, like being adrift between life and death. And yet there he was.
The eastern sky was reddening in front of them. In all directions nothing was visible except stones and scrubby underbrush.
Tharanodeth stopped and set Ginna down.
“Stand here and look,” he said. “Look, and you’ll see the Earth as it always was, even before the death of The Goddess. I come here sometimes to reflect, when the toils of my station are more than I can bear. I come out here to where it seems that mankind and all his works have made no more impression on the Earth than the passing shadow of a cloud. I tell myself not to worry, to face what I must face with courage and dignity, for nothing matters ultimately. I come out here to watch the sun rise.”
And they stood still as the glow in the sky increased and all the secret colors of the desert were revealed. Formerly dun brown hillsides suddenly flashed orange and crimson. There were furtive yellows and even a wink of blue. The colors and the long shadows cast by the stones shifted and flowed like a long, soft cloth being dragged across the land.
Ginna was sure he had never seen anything so beautiful.
“There is much more,” said The Guardian, and he took him on his back again.
It was well into the morning when they came to that ridge which had been a mere line on the horizon. As Tharanodeth made his way up the incline, one hand on his staff, the other behind the boy’s knee as he carried him, he turned his face from left to right and back.
There were mounds of crumbled stone all around them.
“You are in a city of ancient mankind,” he said.
“Where?”
“Here. In every direction. This is why we waited till dawn. At night the ghosts of the inhabitants would howl in our ears.”
Ginna did not know if he was joking or not.
When they topped the rise, Tharanodeth said between labored breaths, “And here is another city.”
Ginna got down, stared, and gasped.
All the way to the horizon, towers taller than any he had ever seen filled the land. They were hollow and broken off at the tops. Each had hundreds of empty windows. Sometimes slender bridges stretched between them. Sometimes these were broken halfway, and sometimes the towers themselves were little more than suggestions of shapes in heaps of rubble. And at the feet of them were shells of countless lesser buildings, all nearly buried beneath the talus of fallen masonry and sand. A few stranger shapes, taller than anything else, flickered over the city like shadows cast by a candle in a drafty tunnel, not substantial at all.
“It is one of the dead places,” the old man said. “I have heard that there are even larger ones elsewhere. This was a city as we cannot imagine a city, built by men we can scarcely think of as men. Surely
