Corvan searched the area below but now there was no one to be seen. He put a hand to his mouth to call out to the girl, but there was a sharp tug on his pant leg.

  "We must go, Sir. You have done well to save the girl's life but there is nothing more you can do for her. Now we must keep moving if we are to save your father and Gavyn." He turned away to pick his way between the piles of boulders.

  Corvan followed Tsarek but his mind was on the girl. She must have eaten lumien seeds to be able to see so well in the dark. Could women become Rakash? So far, he had not seen any, not even in the gatehouse cells.

  Tsarek stopped abruptly and Corvan bumped into him. The lizard turned left, stopped then threaded in and out of the piles of rubble as if he were trapped inside a pinball game. Finally, he jumped up on a boulder, checked his surroundings and then leapt back to the ground. "I cannot remember the way. So few markings are left."

  "Then let's wait until it gets light. The glow from this purple moss isn't bright enough right now."

  Tsarek shook his head. "There is no light to get. All the lumiens are gone. This city is dead."

  "City?" Corvan looked around and realized the piles of rubble were laid out in somewhat of a pattern. Random stacks of stones were all that remained of houses and other larger buildings.

  "Yes, this was once Katay Alba, the largest of the seven cities and the first one to go dark during the Great Destruction. All the lumien seeds were eaten and everyone died in the madness that followed. Anamir city, the one we came from, sealed themselves off from Katay Alba and built the gatehouse to protect their own lumiens."

  "Is this what will happen to Kadir?" Even as he asked the question, the burden of his own part in making Kadir another dark ruin brought on a wave of guilt. He had consumed Kadir's light and used up their precious resources. The mother plant in his cellar might have been able to save Kadir but he had not brought it back to them. His own actions were an ongoing reflection of the thoughtless actions that had brought on the Great Destruction.

  Tsarek was picking through a pile of rubble at their feet. "Kadir was successful until the Chief Watcher arrived. Once he started eating the seeds, others did the same. Then he created harsh laws against eating seeds, not to save Kadir but to preserve the seeds for his personal use. That when the Broken retaliated and took over half the city and the rest of the lights began to fade. The remaining lumiens have only survived because Kadir's cavern is so high it is impossible to reach the ones that remain."

  "But the ceiling is lower in the cavern of Anamir city, yet they have lots of lumens."

  "Anamir solved the lumien problem by separating the males into a secure section of the city. They are not allowed out to where the females look after the plants."

  "Girls never eat them?" Corvan asked.

  Tsarek picked something out of the dirt, looked at it wriggling on his paw, then tossed it aside. "A few have tried but the lumien power does not affect them in the same way. Females seem to have a better understanding of caring for the source of all life than the males do."

  Corvan pointed in the direction of the river. "The girl the Rakash boy captured could see me in the dark. Does that mean she ate lumiens?"

  Tsarek cocked his head to one side. "Yes, I saw her eyes. She could see us clearly, but I have never seen that happen to a girl before. The men, however, give in too easily to the desire and must be kept at a distance. In Anamir, if they are suspected of eating lumien seeds they are sent immediately to the gatehouse and then here to Katy Alba."

  Corvan looked at the darkness around them. "Their friends and families are willing to send their men and boys to this place?"

  Tsarek peered into alley formed by piles of stones behind collapsed walls. He pointed forward and gestured for Corvan to follow.

  “Most of the people in Anamir do not know that Katay Alba still has people in it.” He pointed around him at the mounds of rubble. "They do not know that this dead city is now being used by the Gatekeeper to train his Rakash army."

  "Army? How many are there?"

  "I am not certain. The Gatekeeper’s cell you were in was where they are first made dependent on his special elixir. The ones that survive that treatment are sent here to the holding area I will show you. It is only the ones that can survive the hardships of Katay Alba who become part of the Rakash army he is creating to take over all the cities of the Cor." Tsarek paused, then turned down a wider street. Corvan walked alongside him skirting pools of glowing yellow slime.

  "How many cities are left?"

  Tsarek halted in a clear space where two streets once met. He looked around for a moment and when he answered his voice was low. "In the beginning there were seven cities in the Cor, and they all enjoyed the full light of their lumiens. When the Great Destruction came, three of the seven fell into darkness, this one, Bandur and Rozan. Rozan is where the rebel men are from and that’s why their leader is trying to take over Kadir. He does not realize that the lumiens of Kadir will not recover and it will become just as dark as Rozan.

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  Tsarek turned to the right. “There is another city, Niva, just down the river from here, but no one has heard from them in a very long time, so it is likely dark too. The last city, at the far end of the Cor River is Dubok Kholm, the ruling city of the Cor. Dubok became isolated from the rest of the cities at the start of the Great Destruction. In Dubok the lumiens that have survived are now underwater so at least it has some light and food, enough at least for the one who lives there."

  Tsarek nodded for Corvan to follow along and headed to the right. As they turned a corner, he put a paw to his lips. Up ahead a curved hill of gravel and small stones rose toward the ceiling. The lizard pointed at the top and began to climb. Corvan followed close behind. No rocks were rolling his way. This time Tsarek was carefully picking his way up the slope.

  As they neared the top, Tsarek dropped down on all fours and crept in behind a lone boulder to peek over the edge. Corvan followed suit and join him. Down below, a wide circle had been cleared to the bedrock and the debris pushed out to the edges to create the high ring they were on. Concentric circular patterns of small, rounded domes spread out across the floor and off to the far side sat a large stone building. On each corner of the building a green light hung from a metal lamppost, illuminating the strange scene below with garish light.

  "Why have they made all those piles?" Corvan whispered.

  The lizard plucked a small rock from the ridge. Using the curve of two claws he whipped the pebble toward the domes, then crouched back down. The small rock bounced off one of the domes and instantly a white head poked from a small opening near its base. A long Rakash body squeezed out the hole and then stood looking up at the large building. Others began popping out from the domes nearby and the effect spread across the circle until many of the domes had a Rakash standing beside it. The domes appeared to be igloo like homes the Rakash army had built from the stone blocks of the old city, pushing all the unusable smaller stones into the circle of rubble that surrounded their unique barracks.

  A robed figure appeared on top of the tall building and struck the side of a huge metal gong three times with a thick rod. The Rakash chirped back, and then, one by one, then pulled back inside their domes. Tsarek waited until the man at the top of the building retreated inside before beckoning to Corvan to follow him away from the strange sight and back down the far side of the ring.

  At the bottom of the hill Tsarek turned into an alcove behind two huge stone blocks.

  Corvan gestured to the hillside and whispered, "What was that?"

  "The Rakash are conserving their strength while they wait for their next dose of the elixir. Each segment they are given an allotment and as the time draws near, they are more sensitive and react to any noise which might suggest their neighbor will get the elixir before they do. If left to themselves, they can swarm about and kill each other in the chaos. Their leaders have to be very careful."

  "They just wait inside those domes till feeding time?" Corvan asked.

  "For the most part they conserve their energy, but at times some of the younger one’s hunt about the cavern."

  "You mean they hunt for a mate? Like the girl by the river?"

  "No. Only the Rakash officers are allowed counterparts and some of them have stolen women from Kadir. The Rakash officers live better than the rest of the recruits but they are not allowed to keep their eyesight. The gatehouse master wants the leaders of his army to fight in the darkness without stopping for food or rest. Sometime soon, during a night of deepest dark, he will send his army to attack Kadir and take it over. He wants his own city ever since the people of Anamir have banished him to the gatehouse."

  "How many Rakash does he have?"

  Tsarek shrugged. "I have never counted as so many do not survive. Only some of those domes are occupied and the Rakash leaders live in the caves in the wall beyond the large building. That building used to be the library of Katay Alba and it is where I last saw your father alive. Gavyn was going back to see him but then he didn’t return. I fear the boy is also now trapped inside."

  "Then we need to get inside that library."

  "Gavyn knew of a different way inside but could not communicate it to me very well."

  Corvan dug into his pocket and pulled out the blue stone. "Maybe this will help us to see where he is now. This is the companion to the one I gave Gavyn. Sometimes, when I hold it, I can see what he is seeing."

  Corvan wrapped his hand around the flat disk and closed his eyes. The picture frame appeared again but this time it was dark, except for a strange pattern of circles with a square near the middle. It took a moment before Corvan realized it was an overhead view looking down at the Rakash barracks from somewhere higher on the cavern wall of Katay Alba. But which wall? He concentrated and the scene pulled toward him as if he had put binoculars to his eyes. Beyond the library building and the rings of the Rakash barracks he could see the ruins of round tower reaching almost to the cavern ceiling.

  Corvan opened his eyes. “I need to go back up for a quick look,” he said and climbed quietly back to the top of the rock pile to scan the ring of domes. The tower with its broken roof was a quarter of the way around to his right and to his left he could make out the far wall of the cavern. That had to be where Gavyn had been looking from. They needed to go there.

  As Corvan scuttled back from the edge he tripped over Tsarek crawling up behind him. He tried to catch himself and fell hard against the boulder they had just hidden behind. The stone teetered on its base and then slowly tipped over to go crashing down the slope. Tsarek grabbed his sleeve and yanked him along in the wake of the rock.

  Scrambling to the bottom they tore off down the wide street. Corvan did not look back but in his mind a swarm of white bodies were racing after them. With his eyes on Tsarek's back he sprinted to keep up as the lizard dodged in and around the mounds of debris.

  Corvan was completely out of breath when Tsarek finally ducked into the doorway of a building with three half walls still standing. Tsarek pointed for him to stay below the level of the walls and slipped back out the door.

  In a moment the lizard was back. "We must keep moving. We are being followed."