The Hidden City

meaning.
    ‘I’d hate to have to cross that in the summertime,’ Kalten said.
    ‘Truly,’ Sparhawk agreed.
    ‘The slavers’ trail swings north here,’ Bevier noted, ‘probably to go around those flats. If a Cynesgan patrol stumbles across us out there, we might have trouble convincing them that we’re attached to that caravan we’ve been following.’
    ‘We’ll just say that we got lost,’ Kalten said with a shrug. ‘Let me do the talking, Bevier. I get lost all the time anyway, so I can be fairly convincing. How far is it to the other side, Sparhawk?’
    ‘About twenty-five leagues, according to my map.’
    ‘Two days—even if we push,’ Kalten calculated.
    ‘And no cover,’ Bevier added. ‘You couldn’t hide a spider out—’ He broke off. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at an intensely bright spot of light on the mountainous western horizon.
    Talen squinted at the light. ‘I think it might be the landmark we’ve been looking for,’ he said.
    ‘How did you arrive at that?’ Kalten asked skeptically.
    ‘It’s in the right direction, isn’t it? Ogerajin said that we were supposed to go northwest from Vigayo to the Plains of Salt. Then he said, “From the verge of the Plains of Salt wilt thou behold low on the horizon before thee the dark shapes of the Forbidden Mountains, and, if it please Cyrgon, his fiery white pillars will guide thee to his hidden City.” There are mountains there, and if that light’s coming from right in the middle of them wouldn’t it almost have to be coming from the pillars?’
    ‘The man was crazy, Talen,’ Kalten objected.
    ‘Maybe,’ Sparhawk disagreed, ‘but everything he described is right where he said it would be. Let’s take a chance on it. It’s still the right direction.’
    ‘About the only thing that might cause us any trouble would be if we stumbled across a helpful Cynesgan patrol and they decided to escort us back to that caravan we’ve been following for the last few days,’ Mirtai observed.
    ‘Logically, our chances of coming across a patrol out there on the flats are very slim,’ Bevier suggested. ‘Cynesgans would normally avoid that waste in the first place, and the war’s probably pulled almost everybody off patrol duty in the second.’
    ‘And any patrols unlucky enough to cross us won’t be making any reports in the third,’ Mirtai added, suggestively putting her hand on her sword-hilt.
    ‘We’ve tentatively located the pillars,’ Sparhawk said. ‘And if Ogerajin knew what he was talking about, we’ll have to take a line of sight on them to penetrate the illusion. Now that we’ve found them, let’s not lose them. We’ll just have to take our chances out there on the flats. If we’re lucky, nobody will even notice us. If not, we’ll try lying to them, and if that doesn’t work, we still have our swords.’ He looked around at them. ‘Does anybody have anything else to add?’
    ‘I think that covers it,’ Kalten said, still somewhat dubious.
    ‘Let’s get started, then.’
    ‘They just broke off and ran away, friend Vanion,’ Kring said a day or so later. Kring’s face was baffled. ‘We were using those tactics Tikume and I came up with, and everything was going more or less the way we expected, and then somebody blew a horn or something, and they turned tail and ran—but where? If what we’ve been told is true, there’s no place in the whole world they can go to catch their breath.’
    ‘Did you have anybody follow them?’ Vanion asked.
    ‘I probably should have, I suppose, but I was concentrating on luring the Cyrgai across the border.’ Kring smiled at Sephrenia. ‘That Styric curse doesn’t seem to have worn thin in the last ten thousand years, Lady. Three full regiments of Cyrgai went down like newly-mown wheat when they crossed the border.’ He paused. ‘They’re not really very bright, are they?’
    ‘The Cyrgai? No. It’s against their religion.’
    ‘You’d think that at least a few of them would have realized that something was wrong, but they just kept running across the border and falling over dead.’
    ‘Independent thinking isn’t encouraged among them. They’re trained to follow orders—even bad ones.’
    Kring looked at the bridge crossing the Sama. ‘You’ll be operating from here, friend Vanion?’ he asked.
    ‘I’ll put a force on the other side of the bridge,’ Vanion replied. ‘But our main camp will be on this side. The river marks the boundary