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.“Could it have been your Lagos?” Tasha asked him.“I don’t think so.If the Lagos had ever found this place, they would be here still.I don’t believe they have ever gotten past the guardians.Tasha stretched, hands balled into fists and arms reaching for the heavens, her back arched, belly sticking out.She yawned and said, “We won’t find the answer up here.We should make for the building with the statue.”Tempted though he was by the prospect of learning more about this fascinating place, Pehr was also deeply concerned about walking into it unprepared.He said, “There may be animals, or any number of terrible things waiting for us down there.”“Terrible things like what?”Pehr knew that if he mentioned ghosts or spirits, demons or goblins, she would simply laugh it off, so he only shrugged.“I didn’t believe in the Lagos until I saw one face to face, but they’re real, and they’re terrible things.”“You just said that there could be no Lagos down there.”Pehr shook his head, unsure if Tasha was being obtuse on purpose.“What I’m saying, Tasha, is that we are walking into the unknown.”“You’ve done that twice before,” she reminded him.“First into the jungle, and then into the plains.You’ve survived both times.”“Those who traveled with me were not always so fortunate.”“I told you, Pehr, I do not fear dying in this place.I fear only missing things that I must not miss.I am going, whether you will come or not.If you don’t want to go, I won’t blame you.You can wait for me here, I suppose.I do not think any more of the guardians will bother me.”“I’m not letting you go into that place alone, whether you fear it or not,” Pehr said.Tasha favored him with a cool grin, having expected this answer.The road down to the city was steep and winding, and there were large sheets of metal posted along its edges, covered in all sorts of characters, some of them obscured by blooms of lichen.Neither could read them; Pehr’s people had no writing, and Tasha’s used only a very basic set of symbols to represent common things like tral or grass.Had they been able to read the signs, they might have chosen a more direct course through the city and thus been spared some of its wonders and its horrors alike.But they couldn't read the signs, and so after a moment more of quiet contemplation, they began to make their way down to the buildings below, walking side by side.Somewhere in the city a bird of prey gave a long, shrieking cry that faded off into the air.There was no answer; this place was dead, and had been dead for thousands upon thousands of years.Chapter 18The streets on the outskirts of the city were not the clean, concise grid that made up its innermost sections, but instead a haphazard maze of twists and turns.Even to Pehr’s uneducated eye, the structures that lined these streets seemed slipshod and hastily built.Many of these lesser buildings were made not of metal but rather a curious material that seemed a strange fusion of sand and stone.Pehr saw that this was only a coating, however, and in many places it had flaked away from the substructure entirely.Most of the buildings had collapsed in upon themselves long ago, and of those that still stood he suspected there were few that would bear his weight should he attempt to explore them.Tasha left him no time to consider this course of action, moving comfortably through the twisting streets as if she had lived her entire life in this place.She seemed disinterested in this part of the city, though Pehr thought they could learn a great deal about its former inhabitants simply by peering into a few darkened interiors.When he suggested this to Tasha, she told him it didn’t matter; the people who had inhabited these buildings could not provide her with the answers she sought.“Can you not tell, Pehr? Those who lived here … they didn’t build this city.They came after, when the decline had already begun.That’s why there is no planning, no sense to the way the streets are laid out.After the real builders stopped their work, others came into the city like parasites to use what was left behind.”“Why didn’t they inhabit the places that already stood?”Tasha shrugged.“I do not know.”“But where did the builders go? Where did these ‘parasites’ go? How do you know all of this?” Pehr asked, striding along beside her and trying to take in the overwhelming amount of visual information with which the city was assaulting him.To his right there was some sort of covered cart, made of metal, that stood in the black and crumbled remains of what Pehr supposed must once have been its wheels.To his left there was a pile of corroded metal chunks in all shapes and sizes, so large that it dwarfed the one nearby structure that still stood.Tall poles of metal lined both sides of the road, capped by curious, bulbous protrusions.“Some by observation, some by guess,” Tasha said.“The rest we will need provided for us, but we will find out what happened to the inhabitants.Or the builders, at any rate.I don’t care about the parasites – no doubt they squandered what was left and moved on.That’s what parasites do.”“What a lovely vision,” Pehr said.Dusk was imminent, and the idea of being trapped for the night in this city with its countless ghosts was not doing anything for his mood.“I’m not here to make up pretty stories,” Tasha said.“Our legends said that the city of the Gods lay in these mountains, and truly, those who built this place would seem like gods to us … but they were only people, Pehr, and so were the parasites that came after.People do not always behave in ways that are pretty.”Pehr knew that this was true and he grunted an acknowledgment, continuing to walk and watch.The streets were becoming more orderly now, and some of the buildings were in much better shape
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