Quentin had seen but little of the ruined city, but enough to know that the aura of fear which surrounded the mere mention of the name was totally unfounded. The legends which men told each other in the dark by firelight were assuredly false-if not outright fabrications designed to protect the privacy of the Caretakers and their mission to restore the city to its original splendor-a task which Quentin learned was, to the Curatak, the ultimate in devotion to a people they seemingly worshipped as gods.

The Caretakers believed that the Ariga, Dekra’s original tenants, would someday return to claim their city. The Curatak believed that in that day they would themselves become Ariga by virtue of their loving work.

Where the Caretakers had come from was less certain, for they seemed to care nothing of their own history, only in so much as it helped them to remember Dekra’s. But the original number of a few score had grown into several hundred over the years. Outsiders still occasionally wandered to the city and stayed to embrace the work. The Curatak did not in the least discourage visitors who held nothing but honorable intentions toward them or who wished to study the ancient ways. In fact they were always more than pleased to offer the arts of the departed Ariga to any and all who asked. This they also considered their sacred duty.

Durwin had visited the city on several occasions, staying once for over three years. He had seen and learned much in the ruins and had himself helped in the restoration of one of the main buildings-a temple to the god of the Ariga. A lone god with no name.

“Do you think I will be strong enough to leave soon?” asked Quentin when they had reached the lower floor. They entered a large area which had been partitioned off into smaller rooms, but which retained an atmosphere of light and openness in what would have been a dark, solid basement in any structure he had ever encountered. Quentin, feeling winded from his walk down so many stairs, sat on a three-legged stool while Mollena stirred herself in another corner of the room. Toli, apparently, had darted off on another of his ceaseless errands.

“Leave soon? That is up to you. You can leave when you feel you must. Or you can stay as long as you wish,” Mollena answered finally. Quentin looked at the old woman’s gray hair and wrinkled, stooped appearance. Anywhere else the woman would have been regarded as one of Orphe’s Daughters. But here she was as much a part of the natural surroundings as the strange architecture he saw and the exotic murals which lined the walls of nearly every building. And there was something in her spirit which made her seem as young and alive as any maid he had ever seen (although for Quentin, those were few indeed).

Quentin always had the impression that Mollena was refraining from telling him too much; that she knew more than she would bear him to hear. And not only Mollena-all the others he had met in the past few days spoke in the same cryptic way.

“Would you teach me something?” he asked, after watching her busy herself with preparing some small morsel for him. She turned to eye him with a long, sideway glance, her head held to one side as if weighing her decision.

“There are a few things I might teach you, though there are others far more learned than I. What would you learn?” she asked.

“I do not know-I mean… I would not know where to start. Tell me what you think I should know of this place, of the world.”

“What I think does not matter a great deal. You must choose yourself how you will go,” Mollena answered, setting a small table before him which contained a bowl of dried fruit and a cup with a warm yellow liquid. “Eat now. Regain your strength. Consider what will help you accomplish your purpose, and that I will teach you.”

Quentin ate and did as she suggested, but at the end of his meal he was no closer to an answer to his own question.

“It’s no use,” he announced, pushing the bowl away from him and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I do not know enough about this place or its people to decide what would serve me best to learn.”

“Well spoken,” said the old woman with a warm smile. “That is the first step toward knowledge. Come, I will guide you through the city and we will find the answers you seek.”

Toli appeared at the doorway just as they made to leave, so the three started off together.

A firm friendship had grown up between Quentin and the quiet Jher, who seemed to hold his friend in reverential awe as someone who possessed strong mystical powers. Anyone who could survive the poisoned talons of a Harrier’s hawk qualified as deity in Toli’s opinion, as in the simple peasants’ regard as well. He seemed determined to serve Quentin as bodyguard and cupbearer, and he made a point of insisting upon learning Quentin’s tongue so that he might know how to serve his master more efficiently.

Quentin, for his part, considered Toli’s quick thinking and lightning reflexes in pulling him to the ground on that black night as the only reason he still walked among the living. The hawk had barely scratched his upper arm with its hollow, poison-filled metal talons-the bird was trained to the throat.

So, out of gratitude Quentin busied himself with teaching Toli and taking up the task of learning the gentle Jher’s lilting speech. He was surprised to find that, after the rigors of temple training in the official temple code language, the Jher tongue was not as obscure as he feared. There were only a handful of basic sounds which were combined to form more complex words and sentences.

With steady work and patience Quentin and Toli began to eke out a method of communication with each other.

The old woman led them along wide, tree-lined avenues, which in another day Quentin imagined would have been jammed with carts and people bustling to and fro, buying and selling. He looked at the tall buildings of ingenious design-lofty towers which rose with an effortless grace. And although they used the same stone Askelon’s builders had later used, Dekra’s architects did very different things with it. Their skill was such that even the most solid, massive structure appeared airy and light, well-proportioned and elegant. A city designed by poets.

Dekra’s only temple sat in the center of the city, and all lines focused upon this center. The streets ran in concentric rings and intersecting angles from the temple, which was large enough to accommodate all inhabitants of the city with ease.

It was toward the temple that Mollena directed them.

Quentin walked through the quiet streets, some of them more closely restored than others, in a kind of waking dream. The city of the vanished race was an exotic, alien place-itself a city of dreams. He stared in awe around him, gazing in wonder at the strangeness of the place. He wondered what the people themselves had been like.

“What happened to the people?”

“No one knows. Oh, we find things from time to time, and there are many theories among us, but the answer to our most perplexing question remains a mystery.”

“But this we know: they left all together and all at once, very quickly. We have found pots still on the ashes of the fire that burned under them with the charred remains of the meal which was being prepared still untouched. We have found, in the merchant quarters, moneyboxes left open and the contents inside and undisturbed. Once we found a table set with writing instruments and the fragmented remains of a letter in composition-the pen laid aside in mid-word, as if the writer were called away suddenly and unexpectedly, never to return.”

The old woman stopped and looked around; her face revealed an excitement no less aroused than Quentin’s own. “The answer is here, within these buildings and walls. Someday we will find it.”

Quentin was silent as they continued their easy stroll. After a time he ventured another question. “What were the people like, Mollena? Were they very different from us?”