The Phoenix Endangered by James Mallory

violently. With determination, Shaiara pushed the barrier through the debris upon the floor until it would go no further.
    “I think—once—there was much paper here,” Ciniran said quietly. “Long ago.”
    Shaiara nodded. Perhaps something remained—but if it did, would it be marked in any fashion she could read? She thought of the strange carvings upon the walls, and glanced at Ciniran. Her age-mate shrugged slightly. “I put my scarf over my face and went inside. The chamber is large, and its sides are filled with places where one might lay a body. Or even sleep. Now: dust.” Her expression was plain for Shaiara to read: how could there be so much paper in the world ? “And there are more chambers beyond.”
    Shaiara nodded. They left the barrier open, and continued.
    The next barrier opened into a chamber so small that Shaiara’s lamp lit every part of it. The walls were entirely covered in wood, and she could see that once they had been as elaborately inlaid as the barrier to the chamber itself, but now the walls were dried and cracked with age, and pieces of the inlay had fallen to the floor. She could not imagine what the purpose of this space had been.
    The next barrier could not be shifted at all, and the next several chambers further along the passage, upon being opened, contained much the same as had the first—contents rotted away to dust by the passage of uncounted years. Though there might be some information to be gained by searching them thoroughly, their contents were not that which had disturbed Ciniran so greatly.
    The barrier to that chamber slid inward easily, for in this chamber little had rotted away. Ciniran took the lamp from Shaiara’s hand and stepped forward into the darkness. Shaiara had counted fifteen paces, watching the small flame strike gleams from gold everywhere around her, when Ciniran stopped and lowered the lamp. There was a surface before her, a cube of green stone as tall as a kneeling shotor , and it was not opaque, but translucent, for even the tiny flame of the lamp made the stone glow.
    Shaiara reached into her pouch and withdrew the second lamp. In this room, she wanted all possible light. When she had filled it again and lit it, she set it beside the first.
    Ciniran had selected samples of the items here to bring back to their camp, but knowing Shaiara would come to see for herself, had not brought one of every item that was here. Now Shaiara lifted a long heavy chain from the top of the green stone cube—each link was fashioned in the seeming of an adder, its tail held within its mouth, and each adder’s eyes glinted with tiny gems. Beside it lay a dagger—cunningly wrought, but the blade was of soft useless gold. What manner of people were these, to have made weapons that could not be used?
    There were more cups, both the tall footed sort, and the more familiar ones such as Shaiara might use herself—though hers were clay or wood, and not gold, silver, or glass. There was another bowl of gold, so large that Shaiara could not encircle it with both arms, and it was filled with what seemed, at first glance, to be fresh fruit—both the figs and sand-plums familiar to any desert-dweller, and the strange new fruits the Nalzindar had only found here in Abi’Abadshar. Yet when Shaiara touched them, all were stone.
    There were tall footed cylinders of both gold and white silver, whose purpose Shaiara could not guess at, for though there was a small opening in the top, they would hold no more than a drop or two of liquid.
    And this was only that which stood upon the top of the cube. Along one wall there were chests—some of metal, some of wood—piled four and five and even six high. Some of the highest had fallen down and broken open, and this was the source of the disks Ciniran had brought back. There were gold ones, and others of white silver, and still others in metals of other colors—green and blue and red—and many that the years had simply turned black. Not