THE AFTERNOON WAS a sweltering copper haze as Ulrem and the remnants of the Company fled across the Sician Plain towards the ruins of Targoth. The real carnage began as the fleeing rebels were consumed and the loyalist light horse and chariots turned to run down the survivors of the right flank’s collapse.

Pockets of resistance formed, but they were vulnerable to bold cavalry charges. With no archers of their own, any man who stopped to fight doomed himself.

Even those who beat a hard retreat fared no better. Terror was hot in their eyes as they made for the ruins of Targoth, scrambling and stumbling over the plain as Prince Margamon’s horsemen culled them with ruthless efficiency, bows whistling, raining down death on their foes.

By the time Ulrem staggered past the outermost walls of the dead city, he was virtually alone. He cast one glance over his shoulder at the butchery, and at the huge column of dust that hung over the battlefield like a fading monument to the futility of day. Another fool’s war, paid for with fool’s gold, and fools’ blood. He gnashed his teeth and slipped deeper into the interior of the ruins, following a line of recent sandal tracks in the sand.

He soon found a few other men in Company garb. They sat and laid in the shadows of tall dun structures sunk deep in the sands, with gaping, empty windows nearly at ground level in some places. Their voices were quiet against the hollow, tuneless whistle of the wind playing about the roofs and through the alleys.

Ulrem pulled off his coat of mail and threw it aside. He stripped his tunic to the waist, relishing the air on bare skin. The heat roiled off him fiercely. Then he took a deep draught of the skin-warm water in his canteen. It was nearly empty.

He recognized his fellow survivors but did not know their names. There were four of them in total, still wearing full battle dress. Two men knelt over another who lay in the sand, and a fourth laid off to the side, unmoving. Three survivors, then. The man on the ground whimpered and kicked while one of them pulled an arrow out of the man’s gut.

“The shaft is broken, Jilim,” the taller man said to the wounded man, tossing the bloody shaft aside. “The head’s still in there.”

“Please,” he whined, clutching his bleeding belly. “Please, please.” He repeated it awfully, the fear thick around his tongue.

Ulrem stepped up to look at the fourth man lying in the sun. Dead. They’d removed the arrows from him, but it was clear that he had bled out on the hot sands.

“What do you want, cut-throat?” The shorter of the two men, bearing a shock of black hair plastered to his head by sweat, knelt with fists balled on his legs. “Yes, I know you. Ulrem the blood-mad. Bribed your way to the front rank.”

Ulrem laughed. It was a croak at first, but grew to a rolling bellow. “You think I paid to be on the front line, whelp? They paid me to stand in their place. Paid me well! And he’s dead.”

They looked at the man on the ground. His begging had ceased. Now he lay still, eyes glassy and unfocused with the final epiphany of death. A dark crimson line ran from the corner of his mouth, stretching towards the sand.

“Any others?” Ulrem asked.

They glowered at him. “Sergeant Lidtho survived. Parts of the First and Third Shields, too. Lidtho took the rest of them deeper into the city. Said we could see to Jilim and then catch up. I think they were searching for places to hide.”

“Let’s go find them, then,” Ulrem said, striding away.

“Sun burial,” Ulrem said over his shoulder.

“What’s that?” the tall one asked the other.

“Means we should leave ‘em for the vultures. Savage! Who in the hells put you in charge anyway?” the squat one shouted at his back. Ulrem kept walking. Eventually, they caught up.

Jakt and Tolin were their names. They talked quietly as he led them deeper into the city. He listened but did not contribute, desiring a full canteen and a safe place to sleep more than idle chatter.

“Will Prince Margamon leave us be?” Jakt asked. He was the tall one, lanky, with white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes. Another Yimid, or Irdorian, if Ulrem had his mark. Far from home.

“Probably. The southerners are all afraid of this place. Say it’s haunted.” Tolin was a stark contrast to his companion: short, muscular, and dark of features. A southerner most likely, perhaps Collanian, but Ulrem couldn’t place the accent. The Company had drawn in many men from strange quarters.

“But if they don’t? Then what do we do?” Jakt’s voice was tight and worried.

“It's a big city,” Tolin said. “Lots of places to hide if they come for us.”

Ulrem doubted they would need to hide. The Rethi crown prince would not lead his army into the ruins, but not because of some ghost story. What good was hunting down crumbs after finishing a feast? They would strip the dead rebels, celebrate, and return home, eager for the triumph that no doubt awaited the victorious prince. The few souls who escaped Margamon’s wrath and fled into Targoth were meaningless.

So. He would hide out for a few days, and then decide where to go. With luck, there would still be water somewhere in the city. A well, perhaps, or thieves’ stores.

“We should find Sergeant Lidtho, regroup,” Tolin said.

“I don’t know. What if they turn on us? They’ll need supplies as badly as we do. Might be better to do for ourselves, I say.”

They bumped into Ulrem, who had stopped in his tracks. His sword was half-drawn, a glimmer of steel in the violet desert dusk.

“You chatter like children,” he growled. “Be still.”

Something had changed about the ruins. The darkening sky brought out an uncanny aspect about the crumbling walls around them. It seemed lighter than it ought, as if two moons shone. And then he caught it: clashing silver notes, incongruous amongst the dead stone.

“People ahead. Maybe travelers.”

“Is that music I hear?” Jakt said. “Can’t be the sergeant, then. When he sings, the dogs howl!”

“There ain’t travelers in Targoth,” Tolin hissed. “Maybe bandits. Herd raiders hiding out from lowland patrols.”

Ulrem saw no point in discussing what they could not see. He left them bickering and crept down the street, crouched low like a stalking tiger. The other men came behind him, swords still sheathed, eyes wide with fear.

Poking his head around the corner, Ulrem grunted with surprise.

A wide-open plaza awaited them, draped in crimson and rosy banners. All afternoon and into the evening, they had seen nothing but half-buried stone and collapsing walls. This place, however, was filled with people. Hundreds thronged the square, crowding in tight. A blazing pyre in the middle of the square lapped at the wicker legs of a huge wicker fetish shaped like a man, while a troupe of people danced around it in a long, sinuous line.

Others milled around, talking and feasting with great animation and spirit. It was hard to believe that he had not heard the raucous gathering as they approached, and yet here it was, plain as day before him. Ulrem scowled, searching for the source of this new trick.

“What are you doing in the shadows?” cried a woman who slid out of the nearest tangle of celebrants. “Come, have a cup, and dance with Laeila!”

Laeila was generously proportioned, though her bones were as fine as if a master artisan had sculpted a goddess. Bountiful bronzed hair was piled high on her head in a comb tied up with bright ribbons, and she wore a sheer purple tunic that fell only halfway down her dark thighs, baring her knees. A thin belt of gold cloth was tied tight around her waist, drawing the filmy fabric seductively over her breasts, which shifted back and forth as she shook her shoulders at Ulrem.

He glanced back at Jakt and Tolin, who were struck dumb. Laeila laughed at his resistance, and after a moment’s pause, Ulrem let himself be tugged away by her soft but insistent hands. Other women pulled at the two soldiers, drawing them into the crowd and away from him.

Ulrem studied the faces of the crowd as it parted around them, alert for sudden knives. He did not trust these folk. Many wore little more than loincloths, men and women both, and they howled at the sky with abandon. They seemed shameless, jumping into the dance around the burning statue, and then back out seemingly at random. On a small stage of tables shoved together, a cluster of people played long wooden pipes, shook tambourines, and beat on hide drums. The flames leaped higher as the dancing grew more frenzied, and cups of potent wine made their way from hand to hand.

“What is this?” Ulrem asked, taking a deep drink from a goblet pressed into his hands. In turn, he passed it off to a knot of laughing women with a young man at their core. He had his arms slung about them, his lips locked on the neck of the closest.

“Tonight is Raaesha!” Laeila cried, shouting the name again. Others took up the cheer and it echoed around the plaza. “Tonight we drink! Dance! We love, and celebrate the newborn summer! What land are you from that you do not feast on the day of the Great Sun?”

The new year? Already? The grim march with the Company to the edge of the Sician plain had stolen time from him, it seemed. Despite his suspicion, UIlrem felt the music and the fervor seeping into his bones. It was infectious, intoxicating, sapping even his dour aspect.

“Do your people not dance?” Laeila asked, squeezing his hands and brushing against him, filling his nose with her scent.

“We did not dance like…this,” Ulrem said, his eyes roving over the bare flesh and rhythmic, showy writhing.

They are lies! the echoes of the ring suddenly cried. Honeyed poison! They were always seething, but something had riled them up like a kicked hornet’s nest. What did those old ghosts know? Their voices grew distant. Ulrem smiled as they faded to an impotent hum.

Laeila turned to face him. She had huge, lovely eyes, so blue they were nearly violet. She fixed him in her gaze, as if he were all the world, and with a flick of her hand pulled the hidden pins that had held up her hair. It piled down around her shoulders in waves, framing her delicate face.

Raising hands above her head, Laeila began to sway back and forth, first from the hips and then from the shoulders.

“Then Laeila will teach you to dance, Ulrem Lionborn.”

“Lionborn? Few know that name,” he said, a dark memory threatening to undo the euphoria. He resisted feebly as Laeila pressed herself to him, curling one leg around his, undulating like an insistent tide. Worst of all, she was eager.

Her lips kissed his chest, his neck, and nipped at his jaw.

Ulrem mustered a final reserve of strength to fend her off. His strong hands found her shoulders. Searching her face, Ulrem asked, “Did you not see the battle outside? The death of the Golden Helm?”

“Battle? My love, there is no battle,” Laeila whispered, her breath on his neck making his black hair stand on end. “My uncle vowed to respect the auguries.” Then she locked his lips with her own, questing tongue crumbling the last of his resistance.

When at last she let him breathe, Ulrem felt cloudy, as if he were floating in a sunny pool. The faces around him stretched into an uncertain blur. What had been in that wine? His bones beat with the drums, his blood flowed with light and rhythm. He felt himself stirring as Laeila, coiled against him, stroked his back. He swayed with her, closed his huge hands around her back, and felt her ample flesh. The tips of her breasts poked him through that wisp of a tunic, and she moaned.

“How can you celebrate the new year in these ruins?” The thought emerged from nowhere, from some other time. He was beginning to feel the crowd around him as if they were members of his own flesh: one vibrating whole. The fetish burned brightly, a pillar of fire casting back the night.

“Ruins?” Laeila laughed, pulling his face down to hers again. “The streets will be a ruin in the morning. They always are. But the night is long, and dawn yet distant!”

Ulrem surrendered again. He danced with women who wore naught but strange, demonic masks. He drank deeply from silver chalices with snakes winding around their stems. He feasted with Laeila, and then feasted on Laeila, tasting the sweat of her flesh, her lips, her chest. The spiced perfume of her hair filled him, drove him half-mad. The night grew cold, but the heat of her was like a furnace.

The hard lines of the night bled together into a sensorial whole. Ulrem became a shining snake circling the sun, and his many mouths chanted a holy name as he came round to eat his tail: Imaahis… Imaahis! IMAAHIS!

When he at last stumbled back into the cool space beyond the dance, Laeila was waiting for him. Even as he careened towards her, thundering laughter, some part of his mind was pulling back from the mirth. Someone else was waiting for him…somewhere.

But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered on Raaesha, for the Great Sun was coming! The new year! Burn away the night, and fill the shadows with love!

Laeila led him away from the crowds when at last he could take no more. They stumbled down a street, past lovers pressed into dark alcoves. Revelers cavorted down the broad streets with pennants and lanterns, howling songs at the star-shot sky. Children wearing strange costumes threw handfuls of colored flour at passersby, giggling like demons and running off. Before long, Ulrem’s sweating, tingling flesh was stained with pink and blue and yellow, and yet he didn’t care. Every moment seemed to stretch beyond the horizon as he stumbled through Targoth. Only Laeila was a constant, a point of clarity at the eye of a scintillating dream.

Fires burned here and there at smaller parties as they darted laughing down broad streets. She had brought him closer to the heart of Targoth, Ulrem thought. Suddenly, dark forms rose up before them: men in heavy armor. They bore square shields and tall spears with barbed points.

“Get back!” Ulrem said, sliding in front of Laeila. He struggled to focus his eyes, fighting to maintain balance. When he reached for his sword, he found only air where the hilt should have been. Ulrem patted his chest and realized that his sheath was missing, too. He wore nothing but his loincloth. His memory was hazy, and it was difficult to tell what was happening from what had already passed.

“Get away from her, fool!” one of the armored men barked.

Ulrem wound back and slugged the man hard in the face. Instinct seized his limbs, and in the same motion, he tore the guard’s spear out of his hand. The man staggered back, clutching his face and yowling. The helmet had done him no favors: the thin nose guard had taken Ulrem’s fist, but his nose was broken nonetheless. Blood gushed from the wound. Laeila cried out, trying to stop him.

The other guard shrank behind his shield and leveled his spear. “Keep back from this jackal, princess! I will put him down.”

“No! Stand down! This man has come to help.”

“Princess?” Looking at her over his shoulder cost him his balance. He barely caught himself with the butt of the spear. The ghosts rose within him, hissing a senseless, furious buzz. It was all he could do to ride the edge of the storm.

“Captain Arax, why do you march the streets armed on Raaesha? Is the law not clear? No citizen of Targoth may bear weapons or tools on the New Year!” Laeila took on the air of command with unexpected speed.

“Princess, you must return to the palace,” the guard implored. “Your uncle has moved on the city by night! By treachery, he has seized the eastern gate!”

“My uncle? Arax, tell me what has happened!”

Ulrem lost the thread of their conversation. He remembered a man named Prince Margemon… A bastard, if there ever was one. No, he remembered. The bastard was Namokun, and it was his rebel banner that had led Ulrem to this forsaken place. But where were Jakt and Tolin?

The names came to him in a bolt of lucidity.

“Where in the hells am I?”

Alone.

The street was suddenly empty. Laeila and the guardsmen were gone. No couples enjoyed their private shadows; no devilish children’s laughter. A tomb-stinking wind flitted over the broken, sandy flagstones.

Ulrem found he was still wearing his tunic about his waist, and the broad strap was again buckled firmly over his chest. He drew his sword and found its familiar weight a comfort against the ruins, which seemed to press in on him from all sides.

The ring on his finger burned with fierce heat. Fragments walk here, the echoes of the ring whispered. The past is waking!

Not far ahead, Ulrem heard a blood-chilling scream. He dashed off after the sound, wondering if Tolin or Jakt had fallen afoul of some other trick of the silent city.