Phylomon fell silent. For a moment no one spoke. He continued. “You say you want to get out of this town, but you must think me a fool. You would not seek the company of your father’s executioner!”
“I can endure your company,” Wisteria said. “As long as I can be with the man I love. I have no home here—you made sure of that—nothing left but him.”
Scandal broke in with a bit of trepidation. “Sir, you tell a good story, but I believe you were duped,” he told Phylomon. “It doesn’t settle right.”
“What do you mean?” Phylomon asked.
“Well, it’s easier to hammer an octopus ‘til it’s tender than to put it into words, but, as I told you earlier, that Javan Tech was the Queen Bitch of the town. I think she played upon your sympathies to get you to exact vengeance—and vengeance isn’t always the same as justice.” Scandal shook his head. “That Javan—she clung to Elyssa like a tick on a sheep. Elyssa just couldn’t shake her. I’ve been sitting here all day thinking about it. You know, Elyssa borrowed some nails from Javan—the copper kind, from Damis—and when Elyssa paid her back, Javan threw a fit. She claimed the bag was light and the nails were inferior quality, and she stumped up and down the street telling everyone, as if she were trying to convince folks that they ought to just take Beremon and Elyssa out in a boat and dump them into the bay.
“Well, Elyssa tried to make it up to Javan. She got several witnesses, me included, and we went to Javan’s door, and Elyssa apologized, saying, ‘Look, Javan, I’ve always valued our friendship. I would never cheat you—not on purpose, not on accident. Here’s fifty pounds of nails, all copper ones from Damis, in five different sizes. I want you to have them with my apologies.'
“But you know how some people like to nurse their wrath. Javan threw the nails at Elyssa’s feet and shouted, ‘I know what you're up to! You’re trying to put it all on me! You’re trying to blame it on me. Well, you’re a cheapskate and a thief and everyone will know it!”
Phylomon weighed the innkeeper’s tale against his own. Both of them were probably accurate, yet he couldn’t quite see all of the truth from where he sat. It was as if the the heart of the matter became obscured the more one examined the stories.
“Hunh,” Phylomon snorted. “It seems I’ve stumbled into a tale.”
“Ayaah,” Scandal mused. “You see, it went deeper than the nails. When Javan was young, she had her eye on Beremon. And when Elyssa married him, Javan sulked for awhile before she finally seemed to snap out of it. But I think down inside she never really got over him, especially when he started making it rich. Javan always felt that Elyssa had stolen Beremon from her.”
Phylomon looked up at Wisteria, and there was a strange glow in the girl’s eyes, as if she was just learning the truth. She’d never known of the love triangle, and Phylomon could see that the whole affair was finally making sense to the girl.
“Anyway, after that incident with the nails, Javan stumped up and down the streets all day long, talking to her friends, gossiping, trying to turn folks away from Elyssa. For months I hardly saw Elyssa with a dry eye. I think Beremon and Elyssa did what they did out of desperation and never considered the consequences.”
“It wasn’t both of them—it was my father!” Wisteria cried. “Mother wanted him to let her go, but daddy refused to listen.”
Phylomon considered a long moment, and realized that he may have executed Elyssa unfairly. She had done great evil, but that didn’t mean that she was completely corrupt.
Could Javan really have duped Phylomon into executing her rival? It seemed unlikely. Javan had seemed humbled, so humble that she wished trouble on no one. But in fact Phylomon had hardly known the woman. He’d taken her testimony at face value.
Could she have manipulated him so coldly? Slavery does such odd things to people, fills them with rage.
“And my father,” Wisteria said, “never sold anyone else. He just didn’t know what to do with Javan.”
“Does that justify his act in your mind?” Phylomon asked.
Wisteria clenched her teeth but held her tongue. Her face reddened, and her eyes misted with hurt and anger. She shook her head and began to cry.
“Perhaps not,” Scandal considered. “He did a terrible thing. But I’m not sure that his guilt justifies your act, either. You come into town, and you know there are slavers. They may have committed the crime ten, twenty years ago. You say that Javan Tech had changed, but it seems to me that the people you executed could have changed, too. They might not be the same people who committed the crime at all.”
Ah, Phylomon thought, so he has come up with a reason to simply sit idle, refusing to condemn the guilty.
That is the problem with the world—too many good men sitting idly by, while evil has its way. Thus moral laxity seems a virtue.
“I’ve been watching people for a thousand years,” Phylomon said softly. “Most men don’t really change much. Not ever, unless life hardens them in some way. I recall a man I met: He’d murdered a townsman when he was fifteen during a jealous fight over a woman, and the people in his town forgave him because of his youth. He established himself in the community, did well for himself over the years. When he was seventy-two, he found his wife kissing another man. He took an ax and killed them both.
“Now, I ask you, should they have forgiven his crimes the second time because of his antiquity? In his old age, is it possible that he’d become senile?
“One must wonder, had he ever really changed? Or did he only kill twice in his life because in all of his years, the right conjunction of motive and opportunity appeared only twice.
“Your father, Wisteria, would he have sold another woman into slavery under similar circumstances? Had he changed at all?”
“I … don’t know,” Wisteria answered.
Phylomon looked into her eyes and believed she did know. Yes, her father would have done it again. “What did he say about it?”
She answered, “He said, ‘It was a fun idea.’”
Phylomon chuckled. “Your father had a cruel sense of humor. I’m not sorry that I killed him, child, but I am sorry that it hurt you. You’re as much a victim of your father's callousness as Javan was. I am sorry.”
Even his executioner hurts, Phylomon thought. It is not easy to be the hand that wields the blade.
Wisteria nodded, rested her elbows on the table, and held her face in her hands. Her shoulders sagged a bit, relaxing, and Phylomon realized that she had found some peace with the situation. It wasn’t much peace, he knew, but he hoped that it would be the beginning of the healing process.
“Ayaah,” Scandal said, “you may be right. Maybe you knew Beremon better than we did. You’ve had time to get to know people. Still, I remember this sculptor—Blin Getaway. He had a pupil once who was studying a model, had been for several hours, and hadn’t put the chisel to the stone. Blin asked him what he was doing, and the student said he just felt he needed a little longer staring at the model so he could hold the woman in his mind, and then he would be ready to sculpt. Blin said, ‘It isn’t how long you look; it’s how deeply you look!' Now, I know you’ve lived what, twenty times longer than me? But you haven’t lived in my town, with my neighbors.”
Phylomon laughed softly and shook his head, held up his hands. “I bow to greater wisdom. I’m afraid my own observations would count little against Blin’s greater authority. After all, it’s commonly accepted that artists know everything.”
Scandal frowned, angered by the mocking tone in Phylomon’s voice. “Look here, sir, I’ll be blunt. I think if we took a poll, folks in our town would have voted for a little mercy on some of those people you slaughtered. Have you ever heard the word before, mercy?”
Phylomon said softly, “Mercy is a luxury affordable only to gods. When you forgive a criminal and let him go free, you place every man, woman, and child that exist in jeopardy, and you forever rob the victims of the opportunity to regain their peace of mind, their trust in their fellow men. No ma
n has the right to forgive a serious crime and fail to exact a just penalty. You may forgive Beremon and Elyssa, but you do us all a disservice.”
Wisteria swallowed. “This isn’t about my parents. This is about me. If you don’t trust me, then I won’t go. I’ll stay here. But I want to go. I want to be with Tull.”
Phylomon looked at the girl. Good ploy, he thought. A very good move for a temporary.
“It is only the kwea of this town she fears,” Tull said. “That is why she must leave. It happens that way even for humans, sometimes.”
The other Neanderthals at Tull’s back nodded in agreement, moved by the purely emotional argument.
“I vote that we let the girl come,” Scandal said, giving her the nod.
Phylomon looked at Wisteria and smiled. “Then I welcome you,” he said.
And his symbiote whispered, I taste your fear.
Chapter 12: Terror is for Children
Phylomon counseled Scandal on preparations for the journey and had him spend four extra days building a heavier axle for the wagon, fulfilling Chaa’s prophesy that the party would not leave until eleven days after Chaa had ended his Spirit Walk.
The mayor’s Dryad never returned to town.
Scandal’s wagon was massive, large enough to hold both the barrel and supplies. Scandal purchased a swivel gun that Jenks was selling for scrap, and he mounted it on a platform on the front of his wagon, although the gun rode too low to shoot over the back of his mastodon. The Rough held many dangers—woolly rhinos, dire wolves, giant Mastodon Men, great horned dragons. Such animals would usually be frightened of a large party of humans and Pwi, and while frightened animals are seldom dangerous, the gun made Scandal feel more comfortable.
At sunrise on the day the party was to leave, Scandal came out of his inn to inspect his wagon, already loaded to the hilt, and stared—the swivel gun had been stolen.
“By God’s flabby breasts!” Scandal shouted. “God rot the Starfarer's left testicle!” He climbed up on the wagon. He could not believe it—the gun weighed over two hundred pounds. He scanned the streets, searching for the thief, picturing someone struggling to drag the gun away. But the streets were empty. He heard only waves smacking the rocks below the inn.
Phylomon came from his room wearing a black Pwi breechcloth. “Did I hear you blaspheming my testicles?” he said mildly.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Scandal shouted. “The gun has been stolen!”
Phylomon studied the wagon from beneath. “The thief greased those bolts to keep them quiet. They were newly bolted; he needn’t have bothered.”
Phylomon wandered down the road toward Pwi Town, studying the dust in the street, then ambled back north. “He took it this way—rested here.”
Scandal hopped off the wagon, hitched up his sagging pants. Sure enough, there was a pockmark on the street where someone had rested the gun. Thirty feet away was another. The thief rounded a corner and the pockmarks came to an end; there was no sign of the gun.
“Shall we search the houses in this part of town?” Scandal asked.
Phylomon studied the ground. “The man who carried off your gun was at the end of his strength when he got here. Someone joined him. I doubt they hid it in town.”
“But—but—how will we protect ourselves out there?”
Scandal glanced vaguely to the mountains. “I don’t suppose this town has another gun we could purchase?”
“Just the town cannons,” Scandal said, nodding down to the turrets behind the inn where the ten inchers guarded the entrance to the port.
“I’ll look around,” Phylomon said, and for the next two hours Scandal marveled to see Phylomon the Wise, Destroyer of Bashevgo, Master Woodsman and Scholar, spend his time peeking under woodpiles, poking his nose into abandoned sheds, and peering at the tracks on every path that left the road.
Tull and the other Pwi arrived later in the morning.
Ayuvah came bearing his war spear and a shield made of painted tyrannosaur hide stretched over a wooden frame. The big Pwi rode the back of a giant black ox. He wore a wooden headband with a single sword fern tucked under his hair so that it flowed out the back. Little Chaa walked beside the bull, and their kin followed behind.
Tull had tried to recruit other Pwi, but none dared go to Craal. Yet to Tull, the group seemed well balanced. Little Chaa was named for the magic crow, and even at a young age, Little Chaa was a gifted empath who often dreamed of what it was like to be a heron eating frogs in a marsh, or a rabbit living in fear. Because of his empathy, Little Chaa could call a wild crow to land on his arm if he saw one. Such empathy would lead the child to become a great Spirit Walker. But Ayuvah was named for the dire wolf, a creature noted for its ferocity and strength, its keen ability to hunt, and Ayuvah lived true to his promise. Of the Pwi on the trip, only Tull did not have an Animal Guide, and that rankled him.
Many Pwi came to watch the party leave, and to offer words of comfort or warning. Etanai and Sava, Ayuvah’s wife and daughter, Chaa and Zhopila with their five remaining children were among them.
Fava bore a spear in one hand, and she walked up and wrapped an arm around Tull.
“I want come with you,” she said, watching Tull’s eyes. “I love you—not the way I should, now that I’m your sister. I want to join my spear with yours on this journey, the way we did in Hotland. I want to come with you.”
Tull looked back at Wisteria, saw Wisteria’s frown. “It wouldn’t look right,” Tull said, confused. “I’m married now.”
“I know, but you’re my brother now, too,” Fava said, sniffling. “If I can’t love you as a wife, I will still love you as a brother and a friend.”
“It would be hard for you,” Tull said.
“It would be harder for me to stay here, to sit by the fire and worry!” Fava answered loudly. Tull looked at the girl, embarrassed, not sure what to do.
Chaa came and took his daughter by the shoulder. “I’ve walked this future for you, my daughter whom I love. Tull would let you come with him, but I will not. You must stay!”
One old Pwi, a stranger with no hands, had come into town with the other Pwi. He’d stood patiently, until Chaa pulled Fava away, and then using the stumps of his arms he pulled a black leather bag off his neck and passed it to Ayuvah. The back rattled when it moved.
Ayuvah opened the bag, looked in. “Bones?”
“My bones,” the old man corrected, “from my hands. When I escaped Craal, the Blade-Kin-we-all-fear hunted me by night. They crouched on the ground and hunted by scent, like wolves, and when they caught me, they cut off my hands and put them in this bag. The bones are all that is left.”
“Why do you tell me this?” Ayuvah asked, revulsion twisting his features.
“So you will be careful. It is said that you are a great hunter, and you know how to hide your tracks. But if you will hide yourself from the Blade Kin, you must also hide your scent.”
Scandal whispered to Phylomon, “Is that true?”
“Ayaah,” Phylomon said. “The Neanderthal Blade Kin can run faster than humans, so they often help catch any Thralls who escape. I’ve known the Blade Kin to track down slaves using dire wolves, too.”
It was a bad thing for a Pwi to leave family, almost as painful as a funeral. Old Zhopila took it hardest—she was letting three sons go at once, and the stranger’s words frightened her. She kept telling them over and over again, “Beware of the Blade Kin! Beware of Adjonai. I will be here, waiting for you!”
Chaa took Tull aside and Phylomon heard him warn, “When the time comes, capture the serpents shev-mat-fwe-da, before the sun even thinks to move. And I must tell you now: Beware the Spirit Walkers of the Blade Kin. They are not connected to the Earth and to one another, so they cannot walk the future, and they have no Animal Guides to help them. Instead, they pervert their powers. These twisted ones are the hands of Adjonai! Beware of them or the hand of Adjonai will crush you!”
Phylomon and Little Chaa collared the old bull
mastodon and backed him between his tugs, the long poles that would hold him to the wagon. Little Chaa pulled Snail Follower’s right tusk and lifted a foot, and the mastodon put his trunk down for the young Neanderthal to step on, then gave the boy a boost. Little Chaa squatted on the bull’s neck and in moments the tugs locked into the hames, the collar that went over the mastodon’s neck, then Little Chaa took his seat on Snail Follower’s collar.
Little Chaa urged the mastodon forward and the wagon crept out of town, taking the road to Finger Mountain and beyond that to Gate of the Gods. Scandal rode in the front seat of the wagon, while Wisteria sat on blankets in the mouth of the barrel and looked out the back. Tull, Phylomon, and Ayuvah walked alongside.
The first day of the journey was a mere walk. The road twisted a serpentine path just out of town and headed up into the mountains through groves of fir and redwood. Always the river was nearby, slow waters overshadowed by redwood. Always the earthy smell of summer river water filled the air. After ten miles, Phylomon wanted to stop at High Valley, but the men were obliged to continue—the apples were on, and farmers had a hard time keeping elk out of the orchards. They didn’t need a mastodon to rip limbs from their trees.
When the Starfaring paleobiologists built Anee, they created sanctuaries—walled regions where flora and fauna could be introduced in something of a protected environment. Each sanctuary was surrounded by a wall thirty feet high and twenty feet wide, and these walls often enclosed a thousand square miles. Smilodon Bay was enclosed by such a wall, and the portal into the Rough was called Gate of the Gods.
Of course, the enclosure was really fairly small, in geological terms, and much of it had been destroyed.
When the party set camp that afternoon, Phylomon asked, “Who will be first watch?”
The men all looked at him in amazement. “We’ve still got eight miles before we reach Gate of the Gods,” Scandal answered. “We can worry when we get beyond the gate.”
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