“It’s what?”
“Indiscernible. I can’t tell where it is. The land is too—odd.”
The stud stumbled. I dragged his head up, steadied him, let him walk on again. “What do you mean: odd?”
Del waved an encompassing hand. “Look around you, Tiger. One moment we are in desert sand, the next in Northern grassland. Then another step into borderland scrub; a fourth into wind-scoured stone.”
“So?”
“So. It is one thing to ride from Julah to Staal-Ysta and see how the land changes … it is entirely another to see the same changes in the space of ten paces.”
I hadn’t really thought about it. But now that she mentioned it, the land did change a lot. So did the temperature. One moment it was hot, the next a tad bit frosty. But one melted into the other and made it mostly warm.
We skirted, as did the track, the edge of a broad plateau. On our left rose the foothills of the North; to our right, beyond the plateau, stretched scrubby borderlands that, if the eye could see so far, would flatten into desert. Below us, directly northeast, was another, smaller plateau. In the center, on the top, stood the city of Iskandar.
It could not be characterized as a hilltop fortress, or even a desert city. There were no walls, only buildings, with dozens of alleys and entrances. Most were cluttered with fallen adobe blocks, crumbling away into dust, but shale walls marked foundations, mortared together with dried, grassy mud.
Once, the ruins might have been majestic, markers of human pride. But humans had returned, and the majesty was destroyed.
Iskandar was a warren overrun by desert vermin. There were carts, wagons, horses, danjacs, and countless human beasts brought to carry in the burdens. Most had moved into the city, filling in all the chinks, but many had staked out hyorts around the edges, creating little pocket encampments of desert dwellers unwilling to mix with city rabble.
We halted our mounts at the edge of the plateau. The trail wound down, but we didn’t look down. We looked across at the city.
“Tribes,” I said succinctly.
Del frowned. “How can you tell? They look like everyone else.”
“Not when you get up close; do I look much like a Hanjii?” I nodded toward Iskandar. “The tribes don’t build cities. They won’t live in them. Most of them travel in carts and wagons, staking out hyorts when they stop a while. See? That’s what all those tents are, skirting the edges of the city.”
“But they’ve just made their own city by all settling in one spot.”
“Special circumstances.” I shrugged as she glanced at me. “You don’t find this many tribes gathered together ever—at least, not without bloodshed. But if this Oracle’s got all of them stirred up, it will change things. They’ll suffer one another until the jhihadi question is settled.”
Del looked down at the ruined city. “Do you think the Salset are there?”
Something tickled inside my belly. “I suppose it’s possible.”
“Would they come for the jhihadi?”
I thought about the shukar. The old man’s magic had been failing, or he’d have killed the cat and left me with no escape. Among the Salset, magic is religion-based; when magic doesn’t work, the gods are looking away. They’d looked away from the shukar. Otherwise how could a mere chula kill the cat in the shukar’s place?
I thought about Del’s question. Would he bring them to Iskandar? If he thought he needed to. If he thought it would bring him honor. If the old man was still alive.
He had been a year before.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. Depends on how things are going.”
“You could see Sula again.”
I gathered up my reins. “Let’s go. There’s no sense in staying here just to gaze across the landscape.”
Well, there wasn’t. But I might have put it better.
Del turned the roan and headed down the trail winding off the plateau rim. Down, across, then up. And we’d be in Iskandar.
Where she might find Ajani at last.
The stud topped the final rise and took me onto the plateau where Iskandar jutted skyward. The trail, instead of narrow, was wide and well-rutted, showing signs of carts and wagons. It wound around trees and close-knit bushes, then split into five fingers. Five smaller tracks leading toward five different parts of the city, where they fractured yet again. Most didn’t enter Iskandar. Most stopped at clusters of hyorts; at knots made of wooden wagons.
Which told me a thing or two.
“What is it?” Del asked as she put her roan next to me.
I frowned bemusedly at the hyorts. There were tens and twenties of them staked between the plateau’s edge and the city. It changed the look of the place. Softened Iskandar’s perimeter. Altered the lay of the land in more ways than one.