Ten years since he’d made an oath not to do murder, and ten days since he’d broken that oath.
Has it all been out of my hands?
Heavyhearted, he warmed his hands over the little fire, thinking of the hands of the blackpressers back at Wetwoodknee, of Ilik’s hands winding her clocks, and of the hands of whoever had shaped the granite flagstones from sweat and life and time.
Have I been a leaf in a breeze, imagining vainly that I steered my own course through the sky?
* * *
IN THE morning, Leaper continued the work.
Little by little, he uncovered the tumbled timbers of the watchtowers.
Perhaps in the forest they would have decomposed. Here, the cold and the mineral-rich mud from the cave mouth had preserved them. Leaper spent that day and the better part of the next day meticulously excavating the muddy hardwood lengths by hand from the riverbed. Then, stomach grumbling because he hadn’t stopped to forage for food, Leaper took the ropes from the ship’s rigging and trussed two of the timbers into a rigid ladder.
He measured it with even, weary paces, guessed that it would just be long enough to lean against the cliff face and get him to the cave mouth. Leaper worried that if the wind picked up there was a good chance it would blow the ladder down while he was halfway up.
Yet the surface of the water of the last lake was utterly still, reflecting the clear, orange-to-blue sheet of the star-pricked, early evening sky.
He hesitated, the call for Airak’s blessing trapped between lips and teeth. He held the biggest possible broken, burning branch from his fire steady in his left hand.
One no longer walks in the grace of Airak.
As nimbly and swiftly as he was able, carrysack on his back, one-handed, he scaled the ladder and found his footing in the cave mouth, his back once again to the departed sun.
The ground inside the cave was soft beneath his feet. Holding up the firebrand, he could see fifty paces ahead, to where the groove worn by the water narrowed to an arched tunnel some ten paces high and five wide.
To the left of the tunnel, the wall, only a few paces back from the dry riverbank, was covered in relief sculpture from ceiling to floor. Some was purely pictorial, a historical time line of sorts.
Some was writing. Words in something akin to but not quite the same as the physical language of the titans.
THE SOURCE, it said.
Winged creatures, like the one worshipped at Wetwoodknee, were shown as stars falling. Stars became stones. Stones became seeds, which grew into cone-covered conifers shaped like skeletons. Skeletons attracted fallen leaves from the surrounding forest, and took flight on wings that might have been feathered or scaled.
The hair stood up on the back of Leaper’s neck. He turned away from the carvings, holding his breath, extending the burning branch towards the other side of the cave. On the other riverbank, to the right-hand side of the arched tunnel, the cavern ballooned into a lair whose ceiling, some hundred and twenty paces high, was covered in limestone teeth.
A slitted pair of orange eyes watched him from near that ceiling.
Leaper’s flame danced in the gleam of those eyes, but also in the facets of a million clear jewels that covered the hide of the slender, silvery creature. Diamond scales of various sizes studded the long, sinuous neck and smooth, sharp-nosed head, extending all the way to the flared tip of the long, whiplike tail. In a nest of uprooted bushes and bones, it sat upright on powerful haunches, with folded wings, a proud, forward-thrusting, heart-shaped breast, and no front legs.
“One of them comes on the last day of summer,” the creature murmured through flared nostrils in a silent pattern of hot and cold air movements on Leaper’s skin. “One of them comes at the time required, on the last day of summer, as was foretold, as was foretold.”
TWENTY-FIVE
LEAPER SWALLOWED the urge to answer immediately.
First of all, the shock of it helped him stay silent; he couldn’t have been more surprised if the bridge or the ladder had spoken. Which meant that, subconsciously, he’d absorbed more than a little of Canopy’s arrogance, having expected that lower peoples—like Mitimiti’s, or like the people who had made the carvings in this cave—had, of course, worshipped lower forms of life. He’d expected the winged to be dumb yet powerful animals. Like chimeras.
Recognising that expectation made him deeply ashamed.
Secondly, even if he’d wanted to, he lacked the means to control the winds, to reply in the language of the winged. This was despite the understanding granted him by the stolen speaking-bone. He gripped his burning branch more tightly in an attempt to keep from shaking.
Are you Wept, he wondered, the largest and most beautiful of the winged? Why were you the only one of your kind spared by the titans? Why did they give you this mountain?
What was foretold?
Before he could give voice to those questions in an audible blast of Canopian, he took stock of the beast before him a second time. He saw the predatory stillness in the muscle, the intelligent yet resentful gleam in the eyes that went beyond mere instinct or feeble-witted reflection, and the laziness of overconfidence, for what they truly were.
This was a creature that could be flattered and placated. A creature accustomed to homage with an eye for insincerity.
And it had already witnessed his naked surprise.
Holding the image of the firewheel tree in his mind, flowing elegantly from roots to crown, feeding the sense of superiority that had shamed him a moment ago, Leaper embodied at once the boldness of the flaming flowers and a king’s calculated necessity of bowing before deities. He went to one knee, eyes lowered, with the burning branch stiffly upright and his empty right palm extended in supplication.
“Most holy salutations,” he said, hoping his posture would be understood if not his words, “from one who humbly serves Airak, Lord of Lightning, to one who is deservingly worshipped, body and soul, by the men and women of Wetwoodknee. If one may remark on one’s lack of preparedness for such a meeting? One who walks in the grace of Airak was fortunate enough to look upon your likeness, but did not dare dream of laying eyes on your true magnificence. In the world outside, it is not known that you dwell—”
“No, it is not known,” the winged one interrupted lazily, the exhalation from its nostrils hot and cold on the back of Leaper’s bent neck. “And for good reason. The one they worship was forced to abandon them, in accordance with the bargain.”
The bargain? The one you made with the titans in order to secure your safety and this mountain?
“One regrets to receive such ill news—”
“For good reason is this dwelling place not known.” The winged one, orange eyes widening, lowered its head from the ceiling to be closer to Leaper. The effect of bringing its flared nostrils closer was to increase the volume—or its equivalence. “It would not do to violate the terms. Yet how can I kill you? It is the last day of summer, and your intrusion was foretold.”
Leaper shot a glance at the tunnel opening at the back of the cave.
“One will go at once, if that is your holy desire. Is that the way to the city?”
The winged one drew its lips away from interlocked reddish-brown teeth. They were like myrtle roots stripped of their bark, dripping dark sap.
“There was a city here. A city forming a perfect circle. They called it Time. Time was the name of the circular city here, before thirteen-fourteenths of a titan came. Thirteen-fourteenths of a titan broke the city and broke the source of the spring. All the clocks are quiet.”
Thirteen-fourteenths of a titan.
“Which clocks, Holy One?”
Leaper remembered Ilik behind gauzy hangings in the brightness of her daytime chamber, her naked back turned. With complete clarity he saw again the minute tensions and relaxations in the muscles of her shoulders and back, which said she was taking something apart. He’d parted the gauze, laid a finger lightly on her spine and whispered, What hour is arrived, littl
e clock, little herald of endings? Is it time for hiding, time for lies? Or time to look my lover in the eyes?
He’d whispered that rhyme to her with growing frequency over the years, and it had always ended in scolding or sending him away.
Until one day, when she’d turned to face him, biting her lip with her crooked tooth. She’d dropped the clock on the floor between them, stepping on it in her haste to embrace him. She’d had her monthly bleed, and he’d had to take the stained bedclothes with him when he went.
“The clocks in the city,” snorted the winged one. “She searched for them, the last one to come.”
“She?” Could it be Ilik? If anyone is to make pilgrimage to a city of clocks, it would have been her. But, no. Coming here from Canopy would be a pilgrimage of years, not seasons.
“She lived in the realm of a wood god. The wood god commanded her, alleged the last one to come. Her trade was to make timekeepers from titan bones.” The winged one’s smile faded. “But she hungered for something different. Something special, to trap the soul of one-fourteenth of a titan. She needed the bones of Time, and so she’d found her way inside of a clock. A way to the city, Time, but nothing in the city was what she needed. What she hungered for. I am called Hunger. I would have eaten her, but her riddles pleased me. Her riddles pleased me, so I sent her on to the Birdfoot Valley, to find the bones of Time, even though I hungered for her bones.”
The skeletal remains littering Hunger’s nest seemed suddenly tremendously relevant. Out of the corner of his eye, in the extremely poor light of a single flame, Leaper tried to determine if the bones were human. He failed.
“Do you hunger now, Holy One?” He tried desperately to think up a riddle.
“Of course,” was Hunger’s reply. “Yet I cannot eat. Not yet.”
This time, when the winged one peeled back diamond-crusted lips, the jaw opened as well, twisted root-teeth untangling to reveal a dozen saliva-bathed, white-shelled eggs resting under a forked black tongue. Each egg was large enough to have contained an adult tapir.
Leaper felt the rush as Hunger inhaled through her mouth, closed her jaw gently, and spoke again through the controlled direction and temperature of her exhalation.
“You have seen me, and so the bargain demands that you die. Humans must not see me and I must not tell them what it is that thirteen-fourteenths of a titan does not wish them to know. That is the bargain. My life, for my silence.” The creases around her orange eyes deepened with mirth. “Whether my words contaminate the humans or the sight of me does, the bargain is broken. If I contaminate their human minds with truth, so that thirteen-fourteenths of a titan is forced to cast them away, losing the vastness of its power in the process, the bargain is broken.”
“The bargain is broken,” Leaper echoed, adding Hunger’s fondness for repetition to the tiny store of knowledge that might yet see him escape from the cavern with his life.
Is this my labour? Is this my help? Could Hunger be the carver of Ilik’s great statue? But she hasn’t hands, or even claws. She has wings, a tail, and a mouthful of eggs.
“The bargain is broken,” Hunger insisted, “if I go to the forest. The bargain is broken if I do not consume you. Yet you have come on the last day of summer. As was foretold. I cannot consume you. Nor can my children, when they hatch.”
“When will they hatch?”
“Soon.”
“Do these eggs have a father?”
“I am their mother. I am their father. I am their mother and father.”
“Like chimeras,” Leaper said, and instantly cursed himself again for thinking of Hunger as an animal. He ducked his head even before the blast of air alternately froze and seared him.
“Like chimeras?” The diamond-scaled tail thrashed. Diamond-covered wings raised and spread, filling the cavern’s width, and diamond-studded toes lifted to reveal curved, clear talons. Longer diamond scales covering the chest lifted and stood erect, like ruffled glass feathers. “LIKE CHIMERAS?”
Hunger opened her mouth wide a second time. Either her fury or her dark saliva had turned the white eggs a sickly shade of yellow, and instead of clumping together, they were arranged in single file, their pointy ends facing down her throat.
She swallowed them.
The bargain will be broken if I do not consume you.
The fire in her eyes turned from orange to yellow to searing white. She threw back her head, and the eggs made an obvious bulge as they travelled down her throat and disappeared behind her proud, prominent breastbone. Leaper had lifted his gaze with alarm; it was all he could do not to pivot and sprint for the tunnel.
Yet you have come on the last day of summer.
Her diamond scales turned orange and gold, as veined and opaque as autumn leaves; they lifted like the scales of a pinecone, and the eggs fell out, all twelve at once, as black and shiny as pine nuts.
As was foretold.
Then the cavern filled with light and the heat became all but unendurable as Hunger caught fire and her leaves shrank back into her skin, black and charred and hard, while the eggs in the nest shattered and steamed, the offspring emerging. White-skinned, tapir-sized bird shapes with long tails and beady black eyes floundered in the shards of black shells, nostrils already narrowing as they formed their first words.
What hour is arrived, Leaper thought with dismay, little clock, little herald of endings? Is it time for hiding, time for lies? Or time to look my demons in the eyes?
TWENTY-SIX
ONCE SHE had lovingly licked her hatchlings, corralled them between her feet, and eaten their shells, Hunger turned her attention back to Leaper, who was still in his awkward position of obeisance on the other side of the dried riverbed.
“You see now,” she said with a cooling wind, “why I could not eat you.”
No.
“One sees most clearly, Holy One,” Leaper lied. “Whoever foretold for you foretold truly.”
Foretelling the future? he wondered. Is that what humans can do for you, that you can’t do for yourself? Because if that’s the task expected of me, I really should have run while your attention was on the hatchlings. I’m no Servant of Ulellin.
But the winged one’s next words were indulgently contemptuous.
“I foretold it, wielder of lightning. That one-fourteenth of a titan who commands wind and leaves, does she command them half so well as I? Are the leaves her body and the wind her words, or is she a red-hearted meat-animal? She is a red-hearted meat-animal pulling leaves and winds vainly about herself. My prophecies are better than those of one-fourteenth of a titan.”
And besides, he had done a little prophecy-making, himself. At least, he’d seen the giant statue in the vision at Dusksight, a statue only he could possibly shape. It was time to be confident. Bold.
Leaper bowed a little deeper.
“No truer words have ever touched my skin, Holy One.”
Hunger lavished another lick on one of her offspring; it tilted its narrow, elongated head to watch her with one beady black eye at a time.
“Their skins are soft,” she said. “They need hard skins to fly high enough to join their kin. To become the stars. Yet only lightning can harden their skins, and one-fourteenth of a titan is greedy. One-fourteenth of a titan calls lightning only for himself, since the forest was formed. One-fourteenth of a titan, and the humans who serve him.”
“One”—one cannot call lightning, not here—“would consider it a very great honour to call lightning for the children of mighty Hunger. In—in the—in the forest you mentioned. In the forest, one might be able—”
“The titan is in the forest,” Hunger snapped. “We cannot go to the forest. Not I, who must keep to the bargain. Not my children, who have soft skins. They can be harmed. They can be killed. You must harden their skins with lightning while they stand in the cave of Time.”
“You can go close to the forest,” Leaper cajoled. “Under cover of darkness. On a moonless night. The night of the new moon, in fact, the
last day of summer. Right now. Tonight.”
“I did not foresee any such journey.” Her eyes narrowed. “And with my hatchlings learning to fly, it would take a night, and a day, and a night, besides. My children would grow tired. Close to the end of their strength. If they fell, I could not catch them. The ground would catch them. They would die. I may touch the dirt, for my skin is hard, but my children would die, just as lightning dies when it touches the earth. This cave, the cave of Time, is safe for them. The cave belongs rightfully to me and to the sky. But the ground is not mine. The ground is not safe.”
“One who walks in the grace of Airak can call lightning to strike them while they’re flying. Bring me close enough to the forest.” Airak’s teeth, am I to ride this creature now? First the crocodile, then the ship, and now a monster named Hunger? Leaper had resigned himself to an isolated retirement. A long and gruelling task of hand carving a tribute to his lost love, an atonement. Instead, he was bargaining with yet another master. Others had always wished to use him for his magical abilities. This time, most likely, he’d be eaten afterwards.
Bold. Confident. But who will carve the statue if the winged one eats me?
Hunger lowered her long neck, bridgelike, over the empty riverbed. Her huge, black-scaled head came to rest beside Leaper, so that he crouched at arm’s length from her slit-pupilled white eye.
“Very well. As was foretold. It is the last day of summer. You will give my children the gift of hard skins. Climb on my neck. It is time to go. It is time to leave the cave of Time. For a time. I cannot speak while flying. Nor will you be able to speak to me. But bring the lightning, and I will owe you a debt. Bring the lightning, and we will negotiate a new bargain.”
* * *
RIDING ON the back of Hunger was no more comfortable than being propelled by the prow of a flying ship that wasn’t meant to fly.
Leaper’s tongue had shrivelled with thirst within hours. He needed to piss. At dawn, and again at dusk, the winged one landed at the edge of one of the mirror-clear footprint lakes for Leaper to relieve himself and drink his fill. She was a faster flier than her children, but as soon as she glimpsed them catching up to her on the southern horizon, she was impatient to take to the skies again.
Tides of the Titans Page 21