Drekk’s Route to Kara-Kum

Drekk waited, still uncertain in his own mind. “There is a hush upon the land,” he began at last. “Yes, that is it. Things are too quiet. There is a stillness in the air that is odd—especially this time of the year. Can you feel it? Sounds do not carry well in such airs, but yet I heard strange things on the wind today. A sound…a voice of some kind, I know not what. It was very odd. It spoke only once, and then silenced itself, as if to hide itself from knowing ears. For a moment it seemed to me that it was calling—beckoning from afar. Yet the land was empty. Nothing moved for as far as the eye could see. Nothing…” He looked at her, wondering how much she was understanding, and saw how she hung on his words with rapt attention.

 “Where?” Nala’s eyes betrayed a glimmer of fear, or perhaps they simply mirrored the anxiety and uncertainty she read on Drekk’s face.

 “That way,” he pointed south and east. “Something coming out of the Lop,” he decided on an impulse. “Or at least it called from that direction. I listened to see if anything answered, but heard nothing. If the Lop was singing to the great sand sea, then no word was returned, and her song was not welcome.”

 Nala’s eyes searched his face, questioning. “What is the Lop—Is it a place?”

 “That desert off to the east is the desert of the Lop-Nor. The Lop is the gravesite of Old Man Tarim. He brings all he has carried there: waters from the high mountains in the spring, the tears of summer clouds, the face of the moon and the dimpled reflection of the stars that ride on the river’s back, the touch of every man or woman who comes to the river to drink, and all their thirst, given to him when they take nourishment from the river. Everything that grows near the waters: the plants, the seeds, the roots of these reeds, all reach down to find this one tired Old Man. Everything that lives here does so at his whim. All the rivers watering this land come to this one place to die—the Lop. Have you ever wondered where a river begins, and how it ends? The Lop is the river’s end. It is a dry, desolate, empty place where the sky is heavy with grief. It has the smell of death about it, and the last breath of life there takes wing on a thousand, thousand Pi-qui, those little flying insects that haunt the airs. That, there to the east, is where Old Man Tarim dies. It is not a place you will wish to see.”

 Nala seemed to hold her breath as she listened to him, a knowing look emerging in her eyes. “But I did see this place…” she whispered.

 “What? What do you mean, you have seen it?”

 “I came that way—or at least I think I did. The ground was broken and cracked. There were strange carved towers of clay, and high dunes raked by the wind…”

 “You have been in the Lop? When, girl? Is that how you came down to Miran?”

 Nala clenched her lips, as if unwilling to say anything more, but Drekk only waited, his eyes a message that all would be well. “Do not be afraid to speak,” he reassured her.

 “I was lost,” she began. “I did not know where I was. But Rum-Jum, my friend, was all I had, and he seemed to know a way, so I let him carry me.”

 “Rum-Jum? You mean the donkey?”

 She nodded her head. “I just climbed on his back and he brought me to where you found me. I do not know how far we came. I was very tired, and sometimes I fell asleep to forget my thirst. But I saw the things you have spoken of. The little flyers—what did you call them?”

 “Pi-qui,” said Drekk. “But surely you could not have come over the Lop! It is ten times ten li! What else did you see?”

 “Tall pillars, towering up to touch the sky. Bare white bones. Little stones that tasted of salt. No living thing in any direction….” She seemed to quail with the memory.

 “The ancient city of the Dragon!” Drekk hissed in a whisper. “It was said that there was once an ancient people that lived in that place. They angered the river with their greed, and a great flood came over their city, sweeping it away. Rumors and legends are all that remain, and the Lop, of course. The stories tell of these pillars you have seen—were they red?”

 Nala searched her memory, and nodded, haltingly. “Yes—I think yes. But I was very tired and thirsty. I hid my eyes from the sun and covered my ears from the sound of the wind. I do not listen to things as you do. I am too fearful.”

 “Yes, red pillars of clay. That must be the Dragon City spoken of in the legends. It is hidden beneath the great salt marsh of Lop-Nor, or so the story goes. If you saw bones there, then you may have walked on the graves of the long dead servants of the Dragon.” He nearly shivered as he spoke. Nala became very afraid again.