True to his word, Thelios concealed his new friend within a small, covered cart he kept in his small stable adjacent to the garden. To the sound of the horse's hooves ricocheting off the city's high walls, Starlex peeked through a slit in dark curtains covering the back of the carriage.

  From her relatively safe vantage, the city appeared less maze-like and threatening. Thelios deftly navigated the cart around each bend, stopping at times to let women carrying shopping baskets items to cross. When the street opened to a wider boulevard and Thelio's horse increased its gait, Starlex peered through the cart's small back window. She gasped at the sight of the behemoth white ziggurat casting its shadow across half the city. Green gardens spilled over the sides of each of its tall steps, increasing in size at each level. Its highest level was edged in gold so bright it competed with the sun.

  “Is that the king’s palace?” Starlex asked Thelios.

  “Yes,” replied Thelios. “You will meet him soon.”

  Starlex wasn’t sure if she wanted to meet this monarch, but she held her tongue and observed the streets. The men appeared much like the citizens of Oran, but the women with their downcast eyes and their long shrouds limiting their movements seemed more heavily burdened than the women of Oran who rode astride their horses like the men and drove their own carriages. She reflected on her nightly rides through the Pale Forest on her horse, Sola. She couldn’t imagine the price a woman in this city would pay for exhibiting such freedom. A billow of garish silks in a dark alley snatched her attention. She shuddered when she realized it was Krego’s brothel she was observing and sank back into the darkness of the carriage.

  Thelios, seeming to sense her discomfort, flicked the whip with his wrist and the gray mare picked up the pace as they headed for the city gates.

  The market, shaded stalls selling foodstuff, linens, and spices running along both sides of the wide boulevard teemed with activity. From beyond Thelios’s wide-brimmed hat, Starlex could see wavy pink mounds of desert sands in the distance.

  She pressed the flagon of water against her dry lips.

  “It won’t be much longer now, little one,” said Thelios over his shoulder.

  Cradling her belly, Starlex closed her eyes and gave into the slow rocking of the carriage. She had been only asleep for a moment and had the faintest glimmer of a dream where she was in Oran tower observing through Flenn Illymium’s telescope a shower of night stars with the mother and daughter moons slipping quietly over the ice-capped peaks of Kadaar when the cart jolted to a halt.

  Thelios stretched his arms over his head with a groan and alighted from the carriage.

  “Milady,” he said, offering Starlex his hand.

  She took it and stepped onto the warm sand, glad to see that Thelios had parked the horse and carriage in a shaded spot. While Thelios poured some water into a small bowl for the horse to drink from, Starlex saw that they were standing in what appeared to be the site of colossal ancient ruins.

  A crumbling citadel wall, as far as the eye could see, bordered a grassy savanna with scattered trees. Pillars of various heights poked jaggedly against a cloudless sky. The sun hung like a fireball over their heads.

  “What is this place?” Starlex adjusted her veil to keep the glare from her eyes.

  “This is what remains of the old city,” Thelios said, removing his hat to wipe a linen cloth over his face. He gazed admiringly at the ruins. “Pralavía it is called." The name of the ancient city slipped off his tongue like notes from a song.

  "Come," he said, taking her hand in his and leading her through what was once the city gate. Now only half a looming wall remained to cast a long shadow over them. The other wall was composed of a pillar crumbling into a pile of sand.

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  “A king ruled this city. This,” Thelios raised his arm and pointed admirably toward the base of an enormous pyramid some distance away, “was his temple. Pralavía was cradled in the delta of two rivers which gave it life, but when the rivers dried up, the king thought that somehow he had angered his god, so he paid his people back for their labor by bringing their children right here.”

  Thelios stopped to pause before the pyramid’s remains. “They were sacrificed, sometimes thousands in one day. The king himself split their chests with his knife, pulled out their still-beating hearts, and held it up to sky god and cry for mercy, for the rain to feed the crops and fill the river.”

  “Heavens,” Starlex whispered.

  Thelios’ mouth made a grim, downward turn between his white beard and mustache. “Those rocks still have the stain of children’s blood on them.”

  He turned solemnly and walked toward the most preserved structure in the ruined city, two stories on one side degenerating into a crumbling mass of stone bricks on the other. Starlex trailed behind through the lengthening shadows of the pillars which once held up a roof that now lay in scattered shards, half-buried in the sand.

  Thelios waited for her at the threshold of an arched doorway. Starlex blinked into the sudden enveloping darkness. The cool, dry air had a salty tang to it. Although Starlex could barely see at all, Thelios appeared to know the way as they skirted along a wall and the floor changed from soft sand to rock.

  “Watch your step, little one,” Thelios said, his voice an echo as he led her down a few worn stone steps leading to more darkness. A gust of cool air moaned through a chink in the wall, and for the first time, Starlex wondered if she had been wrong to trust Thelios so completely. His large hand that held hers gave no clues to his intention. Could he be leading her into a trap? A fate worst than Krego presented to her at the foul-smelling brothel?

  “Where are we going?” she asked, hearing the alarm in her voice echo through the cavernous space.

  “Patience,” Thelios droned.

  The wall they had been tracking along suddenly disappeared and a bright shaft of sunlight shot through an oculus in the ceiling hovering two stories above their heads.

  “We’ve reached the center of the pyramid, little one.” Thelios’ tone was soft but reverential. He was panting a bit from their exertion. “Rest here,” he said, pointing at a smooth stone slab.

  Starlex gratefully sat down. The weight of her baby pressed uncomfortably against her pelvis. She was suddenly very thirsty.

  Thelios stood in the center of the oval of light on the stone floor. He pulled a torch from a spent fire and dragged a small piece of slate along the stone slab where Starlex now sat. After three attempts, he managed to produce a spark. He lit the corner of a piece of linen cloth he kept tucked into his tooled leather belt and brought it to the torch, blowing his breath in small puffs until it flamed.

  He smiled in the yellow torchlight. He walked to the outside of the perimeter of sunlight and ran the torchlight along the wall. He gazed back at Starlex with a playful glint in his dark eyes. There on the smooth stone wall was a faded mural depicting the world she thought she had lost forever.

  “It can’t be,” she said, standing slowly and walking toward the depiction of Oran Tower, pierced by bolts of lightning. The paint was faded but she could make it out plainly. She ran her fingers over the pock-marked wall.

  “This mural once glistened with gold and jewels, but the thieves got to it many years ago.” Thelios cast his dark eyes over his shoulders. “Is this your world, little one?”

  She trailed her fingers over the crimson sea, depicted with choppy waves and the Zetax, the sea dragon breaching from the depths, white fangs framing her gaping maw.

  Starlex stared at the mural with wide-eyed wonder, but when her fingers reached the peaks of Kadaar she sank to the stone floor and wept.

  Thelios’ hand found her shoulder and pulled her softly to her feet.

  “Little one, your tears have confirmed what I’ve always hoped was true,” whispered Thelios as his gaze slid from one side to the mural to the other. “Thousands of years ago the king of this city was overtaken by his people who had tolerated enough of his murderous way. One night, a group of men and women, all parents of the children he had sacrificed to his silent god, attacked his palace. There’s a picture of the battle here.”

  Thelios swung the torchlight toward the opposite wall. “The citizens only had crude tools to fight; the king’s men rained down many arrows from the palace walls, but the people fought for three days and nights until the king’s guards were slain one by one, and at last the king was dragged from his palace," the timbre of Thelios' voice rose in the manner of a gifted storyteller. "They chained the king like a slave and brought him here, to the only time in nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine years when the sun is eclipsed by the moon in that location.” Thelios pointed dramatically to the oculus above their heads. “The king was taken in chains, along with the last remaining members of his household who in the end turned on him, through that hole in the sky. He was never seen again.”

  Starlex tamed her beating heart enough to ask Thelios in a soft whisper, “What was the king’s name?”

  “His name was Corellas Davadas the Third, the cruelest monarch who ever ruled this world.”