Siferra acts during the sandstorm

Siferra 89, a professor of archaeology from Saro University, was conducting excavations at the ancient site of Beklimot on the remote Sagikan Peninsula when a catastrophic sandstorm struck. Her actions during the storm—from initial horror and frantic preparation to the discovery of a multi-layered prehistoric city—transformed a potential professional disaster into the most significant archaeological find in Kalgash's history, one that would later provide crucial evidence for the cyclical destruction of civilization.

Confronting the Sandstorm

Siferra stood rigid with apprehension on the Sagikan Peninsula, watching a catastrophe rush toward her excavation site at Beklimot. The sky offered no comfort: only the cold, harsh gleam of Tano and Sitha was visible, casting jagged, ominous shadows against the deep somber blue of a two-sun-day sky. Dovim was barely rising on the horizon above the distant Horkkan Mountains, its dim red glow hardly any more cheering. A killer sandstorm was heading straight for Beklimot, and Siferra knew that in another few minutes it would sweep over the site, potentially destroying the tents, scattering carefully sorted trays of artifacts, and ruining their cameras, drafting equipment, and laboriously compiled stratigraphic drawings. Worse, the ancient ruins of Beklimot itself—the cradle of civilization, the oldest known city on Kalgash—were in jeopardy. The trial trenches she had sliced in the surrounding alluvial plain stood wide open, and the onrushing wind would hurl sand with terrible force against the fragile remains, scouring, eroding, and possibly ripping whole foundations loose. Siferra had exposed the site to possible harm by excavating it, a calculated risk, but to have laid the whole heart of the plain bare and then be hit by the worst sandstorm in a century seemed too much. She feared her name would be blackened for aeons if Beklimot was shattered as a result of her work. Eilis 18, one of her assistants, came running up, half breathless, reporting that everything they could nail down was secured. When he said it was "all up to the gods now," Siferra scowled and replied, "Gods? What gods? Do you see any gods around here, Eilis?" Thuvvik 443, the foreman of the workers, was wild-eyed with fear, asking where they could hide. Siferra ordered him to take the men below the cliff, insisting it would shelter them, though she felt far from convinced. When Thuvvik asked why she was not there herself, she gave him a startled glance, as if he thought she had a private hiding place, and told him to go. Across the way, near the six-sided brick building called the Temple of the Suns, she caught sight of Balik 338, their chief stratigrapher and meteorological expert, standing with an expression of anguish on his face, looking toward the north from which the storm was coming. Siferra realized that all the telltale signs had been there: the burst of fierce dry heat, the sudden dead calm, the strange moist wind from the south, and the khalla-birds taking wing and vanishing into the dune-choked western desert. But they had all been too busy working at the dig to pay attention, engaging in sheer denial. Now the cloud was an immense black monster filling half the sky, and the wind from the south had become a searing furnace-blast, with another even stronger wind bearing down from the opposite direction. Balik yelled for her to take cover, and though she did not want to—she wanted to run from one zone of the dig to another, holding down tent flaps, wrapping her arms around precious photographic plates, throwing herself against the newly excavated Octagon House to protect its stunning mosaics—she knew he was right. She ran for it, her sturdy, powerful legs carrying her easily over the parched, crackling sand. Siferra was not quite forty years old, a tall, strong woman in the prime of her physical strength, and until this moment she had never felt anything but optimism about any aspect of her existence. But suddenly everything was imperiled: her academic career, her robust good health, maybe even her life itself.

The Storm's Fury and Aftermath

The others were crowded together at the base of the cliff behind a hastily improvised screen of bare wooden poles with tarpaulins lashed to them. Siferra pushed her way in among them. Thuvvik moaned, asking her to make the storm turn back, as though she were a goddess with magical powers. The other workers, all men from the little village just east of the ruins, made holy signs at her and began to mutter prayers, a spooky moment that made her wonder if this was some kind of super storm. Balik said, "Here it is," and covered his face with his hands. The full power of the sandstorm broke over them. Siferra remained standing at first, staring through an opening in the tarpaulins at the monumental cyclopean city wall, as though simply by keeping her gaze fixed she could spare the site from harm. But gusts of incredible heat came sweeping down, so ferocious that she thought her hair and even her eyebrows would burst into flame. She turned away, raising one arm to shield her face. Then came the sand, blotting out all vision. It was like a downpour of all too solid rain, with a tremendous thundering sound of myriad tiny sand particles drumming against the ground, accompanied by a slithery whispering, a jagged scraping, a delicate drumming, and a terrible howling. Siferra imagined tons of sand cascading down, burying the walls, the temples, the vast foundations of the residential zone, the camp, and all of them. She turned away, face to the wall of the cliff, and waited for the end to come. To her surprise and chagrin, she found herself sobbing hysterically, sudden deep wails rising from the core of her body. She did not want to die, but she realized there might be something worse than dying: Beklimot, the most famous archaeological site in the world, was going to be destroyed purely as a result of her negligence. Generations of Kalgash's great archaeologists had worked there since its discovery—first Galdo 221, the greatest of them all, and then Marpin, Stinnupad, Shelbik, Numoin—and now Siferra, who had foolishly left the whole place uncovered while a sandstorm was approaching. She thought it was just as well she would not survive to read what they would say about her in every book on archaeology for the next fifty years. But then Balik whispered that he thought the storm was ending, and when Siferra peered out, she could not believe her eyes. The sky was clear deep blue, with the gleam of sunlight—the bleak, chilly white glow of Tano and Sitha, but the most beautiful light she ever wanted to see. The storm had passed through. The city was still visible: the great blocks of the stone wall, the shimmering glitter of the mosaics, the peaked stone roof of the Temple of the Suns. Even most of their tents were still standing. Only the camp where the workers lived had been badly damaged. Astounded, Siferra stepped out of the shelter and looked around. The ground was clear of loose sand; the hard-baked, tight-packed dark stratum was still visible, abraded in a curious scrubbed way but free of any deposit. Balik said wonderingly that the wind had picked up all the sand as fast as it fell and scooped it on to the south, a miracle.

The Discovery of Thombo

Siferra caught Balik by the arm and turned him to the side, away from the main sector of their excavation site. She pointed to the Hill of Thombo, an irregular middling-high mound some fifteen minutes' walk south of the main part of the city. No one had worked it in well over a hundred years, not since the second expedition of Galdo 221, and it was generally considered to be nothing but a midden-heap. But the sandstorm had ripped an erratic zigzagging strip from the face of the hill, laying bare much of the interior of its upper slope. Experienced field workers like Siferra and Balik needed only a single glance to understand the importance of what was now exposed. Balik murmured, "A town site under the midden." Siferra replied, "More than one, I think. Possibly a series." She pointed to a wall in crosshatch style under the corner of a cyclopean foundation. A shiver ran down Siferra's spine. Balik muttered, "In the name of Darkness! What do we have here, Siferra?" She replied, "I'm not sure. But I'm going to start finding out right this minute." She yelled at Thuvvik and his men, who still crouched in terror under the cliff, making holy signs and babbling prayers, to come out and work. Siferra paused only long enough to snatch a pick and a brush from the equipment tent, then went scrambling up the side of the Hill of Thombo, with Balik hauling himself behind her. She called out to watch out as she dug her pick into the hillside, sending a shower of loose soil tumbling down onto his head and shoulders. She cut into the hillside a second time, widening the storm gouge. She knew it was not the best technique—her mentor, grand old Shelbik, was probably whirling in his grave, and the revered Galdo 221 no doubt was shaking his head sadly—but they had had chances of their own to uncover whatever lay in the Hill of Thombo and had not done it. Now that the seeming calamity of the sandstorm had been transformed into serendipitous good fortune, Siferra could not hold herself back. She knocked a great mass of overburden away and went to work with her brush, revealing a charred layer right at the foundation level of the cyclopean city, indicating the place must have burned clear down to the stone. She pointed triumphantly with the tip of her pick at another dark line of charcoal near the foundations of the crosshatch-style building, showing that the second highest level had also been destroyed by fire. Together with Balik, she worked to lay bare the outer face of the hill, cutting swiftly through the ancient packing of windblown sand. Siferra cried out, "Do you see what I see?" and Balik identified another village in a style of architecture new to both of them, something very archaic. Siferra peered down toward the distant ground and declared, "You know what I think, Balik? We've got five towns here, six, seven, maybe eight, each one right on top of the next. You and I may spend the rest of our lives digging in this hill!" They looked at each other in wonder. Siferra felt almost calm suddenly, knowing it was time to go back to being a professional, to approach the hill like a scholar, not a treasure-hunter. She planned to let Balik take photographs, then take soil samples, put in marker stakes, and go through all the standard preliminary procedures before running a trial trench, a bold shaft right through the hill. She vowed that by the time they were done, they would know more about the prehistory of Kalgash than all her predecessors put together had been able to learn since archaeologists first came to Beklimot to dig.