Dragon City. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ People had gone missing here, traders and settlers, young and old. No one had explored the place and come back to tell of their findings. Mahmett half expected to find the place full of bones, the remnants of the dead, lost perhaps in the labyrinthine streets and alleyways of the dream. And yet there was nothing, no sign of people, no litter or damage. No footprints or scrapings. No trail of string.

       If this was the labyrinth, then no monster came to greet them even as they neared the center; instead it remained obstinately silent, just the cawing of the birds and the raindrop pitter-patter of beating insect wings as they navigated by the sun. The insects didn’t stop—why would they? Nothing lived here, nothing rotted or discarded, so nothing remained to make them stay.

       The three young men had trekked for hours, and Yasseft regaled them with stories of his own womanizing. Yasseft was older than Mahmett and Panenk, and his exploits seemed a thing of wonder to the younger men. They egged him on, assuring each other of what they would have done in the same situation, of how they would satisfy flocks of maidens. It was nonsense, of course, but it was only natural that the young men would choose to dream when walking within a place that seemed plucked from one.

       They turned a corner, and up ahead they saw a great saurian head looming over them like some dinosaur from another era, its reptilian smile indulgently benign. The thing had narrow eyes that shone with a faint trace of fire red in the blazing afternoon sun as it glared at them from its high arching neck. For a moment all three men took it to be alive, and they reared back in fear, as if the thing might snap down on that thick neck, the flat arrowlike head reaching toward them down the length of bone-white street. But it did not. It merely waited there, serene in its majesty, a lizard sovereign waiting for who knew what.

       “Is it a statue?” Mahmett asked, not daring to look away.

       Yasseft studied the head where it loomed high above them like a cloud, blotting the sun where it waited. He estimated that the head was at least as large as a toolshed; perhaps even larger, like the house of newlyweds.

       “I don’t like it,” Panenk finally said, breaking the silence that Mahmett’s brother had left.

       “Who made it?” Yasseft said aloud, knowing neither of his companions could supply the answer.

       “Six months ago, this whole region was empty,” Panenk reminded them. “This place came to life…” He stopped, embarrassed and scared by his unfortunate choice of words.

       “There’s no life here,” Yasseft stated firmly, as if to reassure himself. “Nothing. Not even death. It’s empty.”

       “But people have searched,” Panenk said. “People have looked and they have never come back. There are things, man-made things…”

       Yasseft fixed him with his stare. “What things?”

       “My grandfather spoke of his time with the army,” Panenk said. “He saw things that had been made. Not just to hurt people, but to change landscapes. Perhaps this is one of those things.”

       He turned to Mahmett, asking the lad’s opinion but the boy didn’t answer.

       Though silent, Mahmett had doubled over, his arms wrapped around his stomach.

       “Hey, Mahmett,” Panenk urged. “Hey, what’s up with you?”

       Mahmett looked up when he heard his name, and Panenk saw the way he ground his teeth, the fearful look in his wide eyes. If he had tried to speak, no words had come out.

       “Yasseft,” Panenk hissed. “Your brother…”

       Hearing the edge to Panenk’s tone, Yasseft turned his attention reluctantly from the dragon’s head at the end of the street and checked on his younger sibling. Mahmett clutched at his stomach as if trying to hold his intestines in place, and sweat beaded on his forehead like cooking oil. “What is it? Something you ate before?” Yasseft asked.

       Mahmett shook his head, the movements jagged and abrupt as if he couldn’t stand to do so for long. “S-something inside…me!”

       As he spoke this last, his mouth opened and a torrent of water rushed up his throat and past his teeth, splashing on the ground in a rapidly forming puddle.

       Yasseft grabbed him by the elbow, pulling him close and looking at his brother as the younger man remained doubled over. “Look at me, let me see,” Yasseft urged.

       Mahmett looked up, his dark brows arching in whatever pain it was that was driving itself through his body like a knife. Yasseft had been there when his brother had been born fifteen years ago, and he saw something in his brother’s eyes that he had not seen for a long time. He saw tears, the type that stream like pouring water with no effort from the one who cries. Water streamed from Mahmett’s tear ducts, thick lines running down the dusky skin of his face almost as if they were placed there by a paintbrush.

       “What is it?” Mahmett mumbled, seeing the fear in his brother’s eyes.

       “You’re crying,” was all Yasseft could think to say.

       From deep inside, Mahmett felt the swirl of liquid charging through his guts, racing and churning with the power of nearby thunder, rocking his frame and shaking his very bones. “I f-f-feel…” he began, but a stream of saliva threatened to choke him, blurting from his mouth in a wave.

       Yasseft’s grip slipped but slightly, and Mahmett tumbled to the chalky cobbles of the street. He hit hard but made no cry of pain. It was almost as if he was anesthetized, or more likely that whatever pain was driving through him required more attention than a simple blow to the knees.

       Mahmett lay shuddering on the ground, his mouth widening, tears streaming down his cheeks.

       “What is it?” Panenk asked frantically. “What is with him?”

       “I don’t know,” Yasseft admitted. “It’s like a fever.”

       They stood there, aware of how helpless they must appear in the face of this. They were the eldest of their little group, they had played together almost since birth and they had had it drummed into them that they were to keep little Mahmett safe. Suddenly a hundred near-misses were remembered: climbing by the power lines, when Mahmett had fallen from an olive tree, and when they had climbed over the neighbor’s wall for a ball, only to come face-to-face with his mean-tempered mastiff. And now Mahmett was collapsed on the ground in a strange city with not a soul in sight.

       “Shit.” Yasseft spit. “We need to get him back. I don’t know what’s got into him but we can’t stay here.”

       “I didn’t even want to come here in the first place,” Panenk reminded him, looking at the younger lad with worry. He wanted someone to blame now, and it wasn’t going to be him.

       Yasseft crouched and placed his hands beneath Mahmett’s shoulders. The glistening, sunlit water at the side of the street sparked and shone like a polished mirror at the edges of Yasseft’s vision. “Just grab him,” he ordered. “Help me. We’ll carry him.”

       Though dissatisfied with the arrangement, Panenk at least had the good grace to raise his complaints while lifting his cousin’s ankles. “It took three hours to get here,” he said. “It’ll take twice that to get back if we have to carry him, and it’ll be nightfall long before that.”

       Yasseft didn’t answer. He stood there, СКАЧАТЬ