Kthaahthikha

V - 1600

'Do you still think that the idea of the city is interesting?' he asked.

'Why?' I replied.

'For I have been contemplating it ever since I mentioned it to you. True, the event in the cave has never been long from my mind, but I had managed to supress any passion related to it until I happened to talk with you. The fact remains that such things have occured as I told you - whether you believe them or not being an entirely-other affair - and so I have longed wished to mount some attempt to find that city of Kaiyra. Unfortunately, I am very old, and soon i shall have to give away my expeditions into the desert, even, let alone to beyond the Black Sea.'

'It is a wonder,' I said. 'Of course, I can see what you are implying, but truth be told this was not a common expedition for me, either. Not only has it been a complete failure, but it was a great deal of effort to organise even this small trip. I am afraid it would be impossible to mount another.'

The Moor chuckled. 'No, friend,' he said, 'whilst I appreciate the sentiment, I was not referring to you going in my stead. Nonetheless, this seems an intriguing proposition.'

'Yes, but circumstances have already precluded it.'

'Not necessarily,' said Alim. 'By what means did you intend to make your way back to England?'

'I have a quantity of money waiting for me at the consulate, for I did not wish to purchase a ticket, being unsure of the length of my stay, and further more certainly did not trust to keeping any money with me into the desert.'

The Moor nodded his head. 'Wise,' he said. Then he puffed away at his pipe.

'Would your backers feel very angry if you were to take a lengthy detour,' he asked.

'They would undoubtedly be crimson with rage,' I replied, 'and threaten me with legal action upon my return.'

'Yet what if you should find something there that might surpass anything that the Sahara has to offer? A city inhabited by ageless beings buried away in the heart of the heart of the Caucasus.'

The next day I collected my personal effects from the British consulate and made my way to the port district to enquire about a ship. I managed to aquire passage on a old three-mast cargo vessel, a ship that would take much longer but compensate with the early departure and lack of other passengers. The ship was the Voidanyoi, and the captain as a swarthy Russian with a masteful array of curses for all the various languages of the peoples in his crew. There were no Englishmen aboard, but I am fortunate in having a rough command of Russian, and so was able to make myself understood.

We set sail with the morning tide and made our way out into the Mediteranean Sea. The weather was calm and the wind of a favourable trajectory, and the Voidanyoi broke across the waves at a fair clip towards the Bosphorous.

I had decided to investigate the cliams of Alim ibn Karim Al-Khayri for a number of reasons. The first was a sense of professional curiosity, and a believe that my backers should feel no justifiable chagrin, for the sum of money that I was spending to go to the Caucasus was no more than I would have spent on a pleasant steamer cabin home to England, although how I would make it back when this leg of the journey was done was something that I had not entirely thought through.

The second was that innate sense of curiosity that lurks in the heart of every human being. It is in the nature of our race to query the universe, and everything in it, and such is the source of every human endeavour - lead it to success or failure irrespective. How one deals with this curiosity establishes their nature as an individual. Should they shy away, hide from the questions, and create elaborate sophistries to avoid having to come to terms with those vast gulfs of human knowledge, then so be it. But others would rather investigate into the nature of things - to celebrate a dearth of understanding and set-out to conquer those regions yet explored, or yet well-known at any event.

For though I set-off then into what was in all probability a nothingness, an enormous canard perpetrated either upon myself, or upon an easily-led an addle-brained old Moor, it was certain that - should it prove to be true - someone had always known of these things, and the secrets that they were privy to would soon be brought out into the light of day, if only I might succeed.

I may be slowing / but I know where I'm going /so should you wish to follow / on we shall go.

Man that sucked.