temple and live to tell the story,' she breathed.
'Then you'll improve on his tale. Looks like we're going inside,' said Cheyne.
Yob waved at the guards standing at the temple's gate and motioned Og to lead the way down the steep, nearly invisible trail cut into the cliff.
Riolla put down her spyglass in amazement. She clicked her long, red nails nervously on the telescope's casing, trying to decide her next move. Og did have a lot of gumption, she had to admit. Either that, or the ore was bringing them as gifts to help with Rotapan's current renovation. She'd heard he'd started the twenty-fifth story on that hideous, top-heavy stack of bones. Who would have thought there were that many skeletons in all of Almaaz? Except, perhaps, in the closets of the Raptor, she thought, wincing.
Javin stared at Doulos until he remembered to blink. 'What did you say, my friend?' He fumbled in his pack for a candle and a firestone, struck a spark with the stone and brought flame to the candle, seeing plainly for the first time the Neffian's painted face.
Doulos nodded vigorously and reaffirmed his words. 'I followed you because you are the rightful, true king of Sumifa. I understand that you travel in disguise, for they would kill you otherwise. Look around.'
He took the candle and raised it to the walls in the cave, where Javin could faintly make out a series of pictographs etched into the stone, colored in vivid rainbow hues and spanning the entire length. Javin had seen a few of the characters before-on the juma scrolls at the university.
'See, here are the prophecies of the first juma, inlaid with ground pigments of precious stones so that we would not forget.'
Doulos began to read the glyphs, his voice swelling with the import of the words. 'There will come one from far away, out of the Circle, bearing the precious Book, and he will be the New King of Sumifa. His eyes will be like the dawn sky, he will have fire in his hands. He will destroy the djinn and bring freedom to all of Almaaz…'
Javin waited for him to finish. 'You can read? Is it not illegal for Neffians to read?'
'Muje, all of us can read this language. It is our very own. We helped invent it, hundreds of years ago.'
'Where do your people come from, Doulos? Why are you the slaves of the Fascini?' said Javin.
'We come from right here, Muje. We are those who are of mixed blood-part Fascini and part common Sumifan. I will tell you the story.
'A long time back, before the desert swallowed the old city, there was an evil prince, a worshiper of Caelus Nin, who turned into the wind and wrought great destruction. He was a sorcerer, and as he fought one of the Circle, another sorcerer, he killed the man and then caused the desert to cover his own city. It was said that nothing could harm him but one of his own. So he tried in this way to destroy his family so that none of them would ever break his power. He killed the first of his own sons when the boy was but a child.
'The boy's nurse found the child out in the desert, where it looked like he had fallen prey to thirst and then to the vultures. But the old nurse knew it was the sorcerer, for she had seen him once, stalking the children, and he had a claw like a hawk's. So to save the other child, she cried aloud to all the city that the younger son, too, had been slain, had fallen into a sandmire. It was the time of the Wandering, before we learned how to read the face of the desert, and many things of that kind happened. But she hid the younger son in these very caves-they were first known as the caves of Neffia, after the name of the little spring below us.
'While the boy grew up, the juma taught him many things: about the magical order of the Circle, some of whom yet lived, about the old city, about his father. Then he did not believe anymore in Nin and hated the god of his evil father. He chose, instead, to worship as the juma did, after the sayings and beliefs of the Circle, because they had believed in peace and tried to save the land from great destruction at the hands of the warring brothers long ago.
'He was a born fighter, but he went forth from here disguised as a meek herdsman, married a Sumifan slave woman, and his family lived in peace, enjoying the freedom of the land outside the city walls for a great many years, herding sheep and living in tents. They sought out the surviving members of the Circle and protected them as best they could, for the djinn had sworn to find and kill all of them.
'They became the Neffians, a large nation, but a peaceful one. Enough time passed that the evil prince, who had lost his human form, was satisfied that none of his line was left to bring him down. All of Sumifa believed it, too. The people had no one left to follow, and no hope.
'Then came the time of the erg raiders, after the great war. Sumifa needed leadership and fortification badly. So the evil sorcerer put another in the place of his sons, one that would do his every bidding, and declared that he was the ruler of Sumifa. This ruler then began to build the great walls and became fearful when the shepherds would not pay their tribute money to Nin to finish them, for the evil prince demanded much kohli from the new king, or he would kill him and replace him. So the new king went out to the desert with his armies and captured the shepherds after much horrible fighting, took all they had, and made them his slaves. He made us cut the blocks, lay the courses, and finish the walls that became our prison with our own money and our own sweat and blood. That king was the forefather of all the Fascini now. I suppose we are enslaved now because we lost our war then.
'My father was born into slavery, and his before him, and the others before him, back a thousand years. Sometimes our masters have been good to us, mostly they have not. When we have run away, we have used this place to hide, and when the juma yet lived, they helped us as best they could, hiding us for a night or two until a caravan would come and take the runaways with it toward the mountains.
'I have been here once before, when I was very young. My brother and I, his name was Rafek, had run. The old king was our master, but he sent armed men for us. Rafek had gone with a caravan two days before, but they had no room for me. I went back rather than make trouble for the juma. Look, there is my mark as a child. And Rafek's.' He pointed to two small handprints near the floor.
'And there are the names of all of us who have passed this way. The names of your people, Muje.' He swept his hand toward the ceiling of the small alcove.
Javin expected to see the names in the Neffian language carved into the ceiling; instead, he could barely make out some odd shapes. But when Doulos moved
the flame under them, he saw hundreds and hundreds of handprints outlined in red ochre and charcoal, as though the hands had been hastily placed against the rock-no time to carve a name-and the colored earth blown onto them, causing an exact print to remain when the hand was removed, like a wordless signature. The handprints looked like the wings of a thousand birds in flight, one upon the other. They spanned the ceiling of the cave, the long, bunioned fingers of old men and women next to the small prints of children and the entwined hands of lovers.
Javin had dug the fabulous ruins of the known world, had seen with his own eyes in the light of precise measurement the gemstone mosaics of Karjzia, and the gold-embossed, hand-painted funerary portraits in the vaults of Tralinga, and they had not moved him. But here is this dark cave, lit only by a small candle, the hurried marks of the hope of runaway slaves overwhelmed him.
'What happened to all of them, Doulos? Did they find freedom?'
Doulos shook his head. 'Some, like Rafek, made it out with caravans, when the traders passed through here to take on water. We have never heard again from them, but I know they lived. They must have. Our people-your people, Muje-are strong warriors still, well able to survive if they got the chance. Perhaps some settled somewhere outside of Almaaz. When they are strong and many, they will come for us.
'But most who ran away were brought back to the city. Their graves lie in the desert, outside the city walls, unmarked. These are now the shape of their names and the way they are still known to us.'
Doulos gave him back the candle. Javin sat in silence for a while, mulling another question that had presented itself.
'Doulos, you mentioned the djinn. Will you show me the glyph for that word?' Javin had heard Muni talking to the crew about this term.
'Yes, the djinn-you know, the evil wind.' Doulos pointed to a drawing of a pair of circles, one of them broken. 'Here it is called the 'dueco,' the double spirit. Not just the divided thing, but that which causes division. It is an old word, a hated word. In the juma writing, it always stands for the evil prince.'
Javin listened as Doulos read on, and when the slave had finished, he spoke, his voice quiet and gentle. 'Doulos, you have followed me here because of these stories? You have risked your life by leaving your master for the marks on these walls?'
Doulos lifted his head and looked Javin straight in the eye. 'Yes, my king. And I will go with you wherever
