The Black Stallion and the Lost City (11 page)

The Black’s room was unlike any stable Alec had ever seen, more akin to the private sitting room of a wealthy English lord than a stable for a horse. Rich tapestries hung on the wall. The bedding covering the floor was not common straw but some kind of impossibly soft, gold-colored grass, like extra fine wheat or oats, with sweet-smelling white flower petals mixed in.

The Black whiffed at the bedding and then moved to a feed trough, which seemed to be made of ivory. The water pail hanging on the wall beside it was plated with gold.

Alec heard soft voices outside. A moment later, attendants appeared at the door like ghosts bearing gifts for the Black, soft wool blankets, fine brushes, a sponge, pails of fresh grain, almonds and raisins. Then,
as quickly as they appeared, the attendants were gone again.

Alec sampled the Black’s food before he gave it to his horse. The grain smelled and tasted a little sweet, but otherwise he couldn’t detect anything wrong with it. The nuts and raisins seemed fine as well. This was something Alec would have done for his horse in any strange place they found themselves. There was always the possibility of the food being tainted or doped up. It only made sense to be especially cautious in a place like this, where he still felt more like a prisoner than a guest. The feed seemed safe enough, though, and Alec decided to give it a chance.

The Black set upon his food, and the guide beckoned to one of the rooms adjacent to the Black’s quarters. Plates were spread out on a table along with bowls of grapes, bread, cheese and yogurt. There were towels and dry clothes folded neatly on an ornately framed bed. A steaming bath waited in a marble tub.

“You okay?” Alec asked Xeena.

“This place,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Darius gestured to the tub and spoke. “He says this is my room,” Xeena said. “Yours is on the other side of the Black’s.”

“Sounds great,” Alec said.

The girl nodded and gave Alec a soggy smile. They
hadn’t had much to smile about in the last few hours, so it was nice to see. Darius spoke some words to Xeena, then bowed and began backing slowly toward the door. Xeena called a question after him, and he answered her in a soft, humble voice. Alec saw that she didn’t seem satisfied with the answer and asked it again. Darius only repeated his answer, even more quiet this time. Then he bowed again, stepped out into the hallway and was gone.

Alec looked at Xeena. “What was that about?”

“I asked for a telephone,” she said.

“What did he say?”

“It was hard to tell. The dialect he is speaking is very unusual, like I said; at least I’ve never heard it before. From what I can tell, he just keeps saying they will get the message out.”

Alec shook his head. “Let’s hope so.” He looked down at the serving bowls and suddenly felt his appetite returning. “Come on,” he said, picking up a piece of flat bread. “Let’s eat.”

After they finished a light meal, Alec stepped through the connecting door to the Black’s stable, where he spent the next few minutes tending to his horse. First he led the stallion out onto the wide balcony overlooking a spacious courtyard. Alec found a bucket of hot water and set to work getting his horse cleaned up and dried off. As he worked, he realized
that he had almost completely forgotten about his twisted ankle. It seemed to hurt hardly at all now. Maybe he hadn’t injured it as badly as he thought.

His gaze stretched to the opposite end of the courtyard. Beyond a line of carefully trimmed trees, he could see a much larger building, like a palace, crowned with gables and royal-blue tile. It was rectangular and framed by a long row of columns. In front was a wide patio. Figures dressed in white climbed up and down the stone steps between the palace and a sculpture garden in the courtyard below. Around the courtyard were small buildings and guest wings, like the one where Alec was staying. Everything beyond was bordered by the high stone wall separating this place from the world outside.

Where were they? Alec wondered. It looked like some incredible lost city hidden from the world for centuries. Of course, it couldn’t be that; it had to be some theme resort. Whatever it was, this place was unlike anything Alec had ever seen.

He rubbed down his horse with a soft cloth, the warm touch snapping him back to the present. There was a quiet alarm ringing in the back of his mind that told him to be careful and stay alert. Alec spoke to the Black in soothing words as he brushed the stallion’s coat, drawing on the touch of his horse to give him strength.

After cleaning the stallion’s feet with a hoof pick
that looked like it was gold-plated, Alec brought the Black back inside. The stallion seemed more curious than wary now. He nosed at the grain in his fancy ivory manger. Alec covered him with a stable blanket. It was made of a plush blue cloth, almost like velvet. As he pulled the blanket over the stallion’s back, he saw an image woven into the fabric, a rearing white horse with a Greek inscription written beneath. The figure resembled the horse depicted in the statues he had seen earlier. Alec had also seen the image on banners that hung from some of the buildings they had passed.

Alec double-checked everything, then left his horse and crossed through the connecting door into his own room again.

He picked up the clothes that were laid out for him on the bed, a white tunic, a rope belt and a blue cloak, the same sort of getup everyone else seemed to be wearing. Leather sandals were placed neatly on the floor by the door.

Alec took off his wet clothes and stepped into the bath, wondering who had drawn it for him. There was an ornamented faucet plated in gold at one end of the tub. Fine copper piping etched with designs led from the faucet into the wall. Despite the ornamentation, the plumbing seemed primitive and not what a guest would expect in a first-class resort, Alec thought. The
toilet was little more than a marble-lined hole in the floor. The room was lit by oil lamps hanging from the ceiling. He wondered if the people here even used electricity, as he hadn’t seen anything electrical anywhere.

After a quick bath, Alec dressed and opened the door to the balcony. The terrace spanned the entire upper floor of the building, and Xeena was standing over by the edge. Like Alec, she had washed up and was now wearing the uniform of everyone he had seen so far in this place—a sleeveless white tunic tied at the waist by a blue cord.

She laughed when she saw Alec. “You look good in a dress,” she said.

“At least it’s dry,” Alec said.

“How’s your boy?” Xeena asked, and then followed Alec to the stallion’s room to see for herself. The Black lifted his head from the ivory feed trough for a moment as they stepped inside. He came to Alec and eyed the girl briefly, then gazed out to the courtyard and the mountains beyond.

Alec glanced at Xeena and smiled. Gradually it seemed that the beginning of a friendship was growing between Xeena and the Black, Alec noticed. He didn’t pull away from her anymore when she approached, and he even let her stroke his neck from time to time.

Alec pointed at the Black’s gold-plated bucket. “Did you see that? It looks like gold.”

“Looks like it.”

“Same with the hoof pick.”

Xeena shook her head. “Could it be real?”

“To be honest, I have no idea what real gold looks like,” Alec said.

The Black snorted and Alec moved to his horse. “And did you see this blanket?” he said. “It feels like velvet. What’s that say there? Isn’t that in Greek? Or is it Russian?”

“It’s Greek,” Xeena said. “Old Greek. The classical kind that no one uses anymore.” She read the words sewn into the blanket. “I think it says, ‘House of the White Horse, particularly beloved of the gods.’ ”

“The gods?” Alec said. “Like the Greek gods?”

“Who else could it be?” she said. “It looks like whoever runs this place is trying to re-create a classical Greek city.”

“They certainly have the money to spend,” Alec said, “way beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I mean, who can afford a golden hoof pick?” He glanced at the Black and the white horse figure sewn into the blanket. “Any idea who this horse is supposed to be?”

“It might be Poseidon. He was the god of horses for the Greeks.”

“I thought he was the sea god,” Alec said.

“The god of horses too,” Xeena said. “But there were other horse gods and demigods, too, like Pegasus.
Zeus supposedly gave Achilles an immortal horse—I forget its name—and there were other horse-type creatures besides immortal horses too. Some of them weren’t always so friendly, like the centaurs that would get drunk on wine, crash wedding parties and carry off the brides.”

Alec took a deep breath and looked at his horse. They had to get out of this place. The Black needed to get checked out by a vet. He looked at Xeena. “You sure you’re okay? We’re lucky to be alive after getting dragged into that underground river.”

“I don’t know if it’s shock or what, but I feel pretty good now.”

“So do I,” Alec said, “but don’t ask me why. My leg doesn’t even hurt anymore.” He shook his head. “But we still need to get word back to the others. And I haven’t seen a sign of a telephone or anything electrical since we’ve been here.”

“No mirrors either,” Xeena said, “at least not in my room.” They both returned to the balcony and gazed over the wide plaza, which was completely empty except for a few distant figures, perhaps gardeners pruning a tree.

What sort of place had they stumbled into? Alec wondered again. For the first time, the thought struck him that perhaps this wasn’t a resort at all, that it was
something else, someplace that really did belong to another time, a real-life Shangri-la. Who could say where that underground river had swept them to? Maybe, like Dorothy in the
Wizard of Oz,
they really weren’t in Kansas anymore.

There was a
soft knock at Alec’s door, and he and Xeena stepped inside the room to see who was there. At the door were four attendants, young women in white tunics. They entered the room bearing vases of long-stemmed white flowers. With small steps, they brought the flowers to a table, eyes downcast, silent, with heads bent low deferentially.

Xeena spoke to the girls in Greek, then in what sounded like Italian. They looked at each other, and Alec thought he saw the glint of recognition in one girl’s eyes before she averted her gaze and her face became sullen and empty again. Whether she understood and didn’t want to answer or really didn’t understand what Xeena was asking her, the girl only smiled and shrugged. Then the mute attendants set the vases down and left the room as silently as they had come.

A white envelope accompanied the gift of flowers. Inside was a note written in formal-looking English
script. Alec picked up the note and showed it to Xeena. She read it aloud. “ ‘Medio bids you welcome and requests your presence at a banquet to celebrate the coming of the full moon. Spiro.’ ”

Alec couldn’t believe it. “A banquet? After everything we’ve been through, we’re supposed to get dressed up and go out on the town? This is just too much.”

Xeena shrugged stoically, as if nothing could surprise her anymore.

Alec paced the room a minute, trying to collect his senses. What a day it had been, he thought. So much had happened already it made his head spin just to think about it all. He pondered the possibility of slipping out on his own and trying to find a phone somewhere but decided against it. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving the Black just then, even with Xeena there. They didn’t seem to be in any danger. In fact, they were being treated extremely well here, almost as if they really had been expected guests. Aside from the fact that there did not seem to be any phones, there was nothing to complain about, except …

Except there was tension looming in the air, and something told him to be careful, as if he, Xeena and the Black might have walked into an attractive trap. As it was, there wasn’t much more he could do about it but sit tight and see what developed. And patience
was something Alec was practiced at, a skill required every day at the track, especially at the jumbled start of a horse race. Somehow, at that moment, he could feel the same sense of anticipation, as if everything was about to bust loose. He told himself to be patient, watchful and ready to move when the time came.

A soft breeze blew across Alec’s bare calves. He looked down at the sandals on his feet. He wished his jeans were dry so he could get out of this ridiculous outfit. It was like walking around in a knee-length T-shirt. He stepped over to where his pants were hanging on a chair and touched them. Still soaked. He felt the pockets and found a few coins inside one of them that had miraculously remained there through the ordeal in the river. They might be useful if he could find a pay phone somewhere. Meanwhile, he and Xeena passed some time pitching pennies against a wall while recounting to each other the events of this extremely strange day.

About a half hour later, Alec brought the Black out of his room and onto the balcony, letting him take a look around and scent the fresh breeze. The stallion peered out over the courtyard. His ears were pricked, his nostrils flared, his eyes alert. Alec watched his horse, and it gave him some comfort that the Black’s light feed seemed to have agreed with him.