by Laurence Yep
The prince cleared his throat. “In the Federation, it is possible to fight with something more than swords. There are laws and courts.”
“We’re not a bunch of big-lunged orators,” Urmi [130] declared proudly. “We’re willing to die for a just cause.”
“And so are they, but they do not whip out a sword the moment they suspect they are losing the debate.” The prince pretended to slash at the air for a moment before he lowered his hand.
Her puzzled eyes searched his face. “Do you hate it here so much that you’d prefer a life in the glass cage?” When the prince didn’t answer her, she rounded on Sulu. “If you’re one of the homeless, how do you deal with it, Sulu?”
Sulu took his time while he considered several possible answers. His first inclination was to guard his own privacy, and yet he could sense Urmi’s confusion and even hurt. After the escape from the palace, he felt he owed her more than a curt answer.
“You become a chameleon,” he said finally.
Again, Urmi looked to the prince for help in understanding his friends. “A what?”
“It’s a creature that can change color”—the prince paused and scratched his cheek—“like a kita, but it’s a reptile.”
Urmi swung her head back toward Sulu. “You learn to hide?”
Sulu brought the toes of his left foot up behind the heel of his right—walking slowly and with precision while he hunted for an answer. But it was difficult—perhaps because he was now moving through psychological territory he had rarely explored. “No, you learn to read people’s moods and attitudes and to fit in.”
“A toe licker?” Urmi asked scornfully.
“Not at all.” Sulu lifted a hand up from his side and brought it down again. “You can be yourself. It’s just [131] that moods and attitudes of one world are different than those of another. They’re like a language, in fact. And you learn how to express yourself in that language.” He tried to shrug nonchalantly. “If you do it well, you get a reputation for being cheerful.”
“Like Sulu here.” The prince glanced at him shrewdly. “But in your own imagination you slip into fantasies of being a musketeer—and you claim that world as your own and you shape it as you see fit.”
“Yes,” Sulu said in surprise, “I suppose I did.”
“It still doesn’t sound right to me,” Urmi frowned.
Sulu sighed. “As a kid, I guess I just got tired of always being different. I wanted to pass for one of the other colonists.” He looked at Mr. Spock. “I guess I never had your strength of character.”
“You never had my training,” Mr. Spock suggested, much to Sulu’s surprise. It was the kindest thing that he could ever recall Mr. Spock saying directly to him.
Urmi wrapped her arms around herself as if she had finally understood how truly alien they were, and it made her feel terribly cold. “You three are harder to understand than ten thousand moons.”
“You flatter me, Urmi.” The prince touched his fingertips to his chest. “I shed no light at night.” As if eager to change the subject now, the prince took Mr. Spock’s hand. “It’s getting rather dark now, and since Angira lacks the civility of a moon to guide us, you will have to do with my hand, Mr. Spock. And perhaps Urmi will be so kind as to take Mr. Sulu’s. I can attest to the fact that he washes his hands when he can.”
Her cool, leathery palm closed around Sulu’s hand. “How do you people manage to see through such tiny eyes?”
[132] “Now, now,” the prince pretended to scold her, “don’t mock the handicapped. They can’t help it if they were born with such beady little eyes.”
“No, I guess not.” Urmi gave Sulu’s hand a guilty squeeze. “I shouldn’t make fun of the handicapped and the homeless.”
It had been a frustrating day for Lord Bhima. He had spent most of his time exploring the Old Chapel in a fruitless search for the secret passage. And in the end, he had given up and simply padlocked the chapel door so that no one else could go in or out. It had been nearly sunset when he had decided to inspect the land around the palace. But it had taken them most of the evening to reach the gulch.
And until just this moment, Rahu’s band of young fanatics had been inclined to regard him as a madman. They seemed to resent having to follow him about when they could have been covering themselves in glory by marching with Rahu’s army. But they were now coursing about like fine, purebred hunting dogs that had just caught the scent of their quarry.
When Lord Bhima joined the sinha lieutenant by the mouth of the gulch, he noticed how cautiously the lieutenant bowed his head to Lord Bhima. He still seemed to be unsure of a man who had not rallied to their cause until after the massacre had taken place.
Lord Bhima held his torch so that he could look at the tiny drops of dried blood on the ground. “So you found signs of someone’s being wounded?”
“Yes, Lord. And they seem to lead that way.” The lieutenant pointed toward the badlands.
“A wounded monk would head for the monastery,” [133] Lord Bhima mused. Suddenly he frowned at the young officer. “Why aren’t you wearing your cape over your chest?” The other dozen sinha had clasped theirs in front of them, but the young officer had hung his bloody one around his waist by his sword and dagger.
“It just gets in the way,” the lieutenant said. There was a slight curl to the corners of his mouth as if he felt superior to the cloaked Lord Bhima.
“The sun will be setting soon. It’s clothing, not virtue, that keeps out the cold. Put it on,” Lord Bhima ordered. He put all the authority he could into his voice.
The corners of the lieutenant’s mouth pressed into a thin, contemptuous smile; and, for a moment, it looked as if he were even going to argue with Lord Bhima. “I’ll be warming up soon enough when we begin our pursuit.”
Lord Bhima saw that he had sunk even lower in the lieutenant’s estimation. Well, he wanted obedience, not admiration. “This is a direct order, Lieutenant. I want you to wear your cape around your shoulders. I won’t have you showing off just to impress your men.”
“Yes, Lord.” Reluctantly the young lieutenant undid the clasp so that he could lift his cape to his shoulders.
“And when you’re finished, form up the men.” Lord Bhima looked at the badlands. “And be sure to send a scout ahead of us.”
“As you wish, Lord.” The young officer turned to obey.
Lord Bhima watched the officer speculatively. The three regiments of sinha had once provided the noble cadets who officered the army. As such, they had been as much an elite social club as a training school. But [134] Rahu and his allies had managed to transform the sinha into wild-eyed young warriors eager to die if they could restore Angira to its old ways.
They could run all day and all night if necessary and be ready to fight the next day. No, he decided, he would not want to be the quarry of hunters like these. It would be hard enough to hold them in leash.
Chapter Six
Though they hardly paused for any sleep, it still took them a night and half the next day before they left the mesas behind, climbing up through a gap that snaked through the side of a new ridge of mountains. Its curving sides looked like clay molded by some giant child’s hand and then left to dry.
It was several hours later that they stumbled on the remains of the massacre. Urmi, who was in the lead, casually took a large stride as if she were merely stepping over some large rock. Sulu, who was right behind her, looked down to see the skull lying on the rocky floor.
He stopped so abruptly that the prince almost ran into him. “What happened here?” he asked the prince.
The prince’s eyes widened as he looked ahead of them. Bones lay scattered all along the sides of the gap and along its floor. They seemed to glow in the shadows like the letters of some strange, deadly alphabet. “I don’t know.”
[136] “A battle or massacre.” Mr. Spock picked up a skull. Some sharp instrument had split it almost in two. “Several years ago from the look of things.” He pointed to sharp
scratches on the skull. “These are made by some animal’s teeth so I would surmise the bones have been scattered partly by scavengers.” He looked up at the arroyo walls, studying the bands of color. “But from the markings on the walls, I would say this area was subject to flash floods and they would have dispersed things even more.”
Urmi turned. “I should have warned you, but we’ve gotten used to the sight.” She motioned to the bones. “It was a caravan coming to our valley; but the bandits got to them.”
The prince walked forward slowly, as if trying to estimate the size of the caravan. “There are at least ten skulls here.” He pointed to small whitish lumps that lay up ahead of them. “And it looks like even more up ahead. So it wasn’t a small caravan.”
“The bandit bands have gotten larger and bolder.” Urmi waited impatiently. “They even raid the valley now.”
The prince took the skull from Mr. Spock’s hands. “But they were never that daring.”
Urmi adjusted her grip on her food sack. Like all their sacks, it was much lighter now. “It’s not just a few criminals or runaway farmers anymore. To start his land reforms, your father simply confiscated the lands from many of the lesser nobles and paid them only a fraction of what they were worth. And these nobles and their followers became bandits.”
The prince set the skull back down. “I should have known. The blame always seems to come back to my father and his plans for modernization.” He [137] straightened up. “But these poor traders should have been buried, Urmi.”
She looked about absently as if the bones no longer meant anything more to her than the rocks themselves. “Wake up, Your Highness. Those courtesies belong to an Angira that’s vanished. We barely have time to take care of our own dead.”
The prince turned to Sulu. “Now I know how one of those people feels in a Terran fairy tale when they come back after a night among the fairies and find twenty years have passed by in the real world.” He looked back at Urmi, almost pleading now. “As bad and violent as things were, you make the past seem positively kind and benevolent now.”
“I remember those times—they seem like a dream now. But that was many, many deaths ago.” She stalked toward Mr. Spock almost tauntingly. “Do you still want Angira in the Federation?”
Mr. Spock brushed his hands on his robe. “I do not mean to sound callous to the suffering of your people, but the Federation has helped worlds that have been much worse than this. Mixing pride with despair may be the deadliest of sins. It is certainly the most misguided of philosophies.”
Urmi halted almost wistfully. “I’d like to believe that there’s hope.”
Mr. Spock nodded at the sky. “I wish I could show you those worlds. I think that’s the only way you’d trust me.”
Urmi hesitated as if she were torn between her own convictions and the hopes that Mr. Spock held out to her.
“Why do you keep on fighting the truth?” the prince asked softly.
[138] Urmi came out of her reverie, staring first at the prince and then at Mr. Spock. “No,” Urmi said, “no. You won’t have me fall under the same spell as the prince.” And saying that, she spun around and started to walk along with quick, short strides through the bones—as if she were eager to get away not only from the scene of the massacre but from Mr. Spock as well.
Another ten kilometers found them climbing a pass. “We’re only three kilometers from Urmi’s valley now,” the prince said.
Before the prince could say anything more, Urmi held up her hand suddenly. “I think you should put on your hats.”
The prince set his hat over his head. “Why, what’s wrong?”
“There’s a song lizard who’s usually singing its head off at this time of day but it’s quiet.”
“Could it be dead?” Sulu asked.
“None of the local people would kill it.” She looked behind her but Mr. Spock and Sulu had already set their hats on their heads. The landscape was immediately screened by a dense weaving of straw. “There may be bandits about. If they are, they may still be too far away to get a good look at the offworlders. Let’s hope for the best.”
“But it’s broad daylight,” the prince protested. “Surely the bandits wouldn’t dare come this close to the valley right now.”
Urmi lowered her robes. “They would if they’re Lord Tayu’s men. He thinks he still owns the valley.”
Sulu and Spock were quick to copy Urmi, but the prince stood there surprised. “Lord Tayu? But he comes of such a fine, old house.”
[139] “His family’s bloodline wasn’t any protection from confiscation.”
The prince slowly lowered his own robe. “My father certainly has been busy making things miserable for everyone, hasn’t he?”
“Some people have a knack for it,” Urmi snapped. She looked at Sulu and Mr. Spock. “Now remember,” she said quietly, “move slowly in the robes or you’ll trip over the hems.”
The prince added. “And keep your heads bowed slightly. We must seem like monks who beg for our daily meal now. So we must think humbly, or”—the prince could not help turning his head mischievously toward Mr. Spock—“in your case, priggishly, Mr. Spock.”
They continued through the pass and down the other side of the ridge. Every now and then some pebbles cascaded down the sides—though whether a lizard did it or some larger creature, they could not tell. What made it even worse was the slow pace that the robes and hats forced them to adopt.
Urmi led them into an arroyo that wound its way down the next set of ridges. The stones seemed to gather heat so that the air rose in heat waves that made the outline of the few bushes and weeds waver. It was hot even when the arroyo’s curving sides closed in, reducing the sky to a thin narrow strip above them.
Despite the shade, Sulu was sweating heavily in his robes. “They certainly do their share of penance,” Sulu murmured to the prince. And as the walls of the arroyo seemed to close in, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were insects slowly crawling into some trap.
It was a relief, then, when the arroyo suddenly [140] widened. Its sides seemed to peel back in huge curving sheets like billowing curtains. When they rounded the bend, they found themselves on the eastern edge of a large, flat stone bay several square kilometers in area. Ahead of them was a shallow pond some fifteen meters across, fed by a sluggish stream that wriggled through another arroyo to the southwest.
Beginning on the western edge of the pond and spreading outward to fill the bay were-thousands of stone markers, some as small as a meter and made of crudely piled rocks, while others soared up two meters high and were of elaborate stonework. There were so many that they looked like the bristles on a brush.
They crossed the rocky dirt to the bottom of the pond. Kneeling, they raised water in their cupped hands to splash it on their faces—though the need to keep on their hats made it awkward. Then, after they had taken a drink and refilled their water sacks, they rose.
“We only have to cross that ridgetop and we’ll be in my valley,” Urmi tried to encourage them.
“What is this area?” Sulu asked in a low voice so that they couldn’t be overheard.
“It’s our cemetery,” came Urmi’s hushed reply. “My people have been using it for nearly a hundred generations.”
“And what are the jars?” Sulu pointed to the hundreds of jars that were scattered all about the cemetery. They were colored brown and were about a third of a meter high. Their tops were sealed with bright orange clay. “Are those offerings?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Urmi’s voice was edged with irony. “They are infants brought here to die because their families are too poor to feed them.” She [141] swung around to face them. “There are hardly any children under the age of five in the valley.”
“If anything would convince me how miserable people are, this would. Children are—or rather were—precious to us.” The prince seemed drawn to the edge of the cemetery.
“But isn’t there something that can be done?” Sulu
asked, horrified.
“Do you think we’d do this if we hadn’t already tried everything?” Urmi’s voice sounded strained—as if she were in pain. “The taxes and rents are already so high that we cannot feed any more new mouths.”
Suddenly the prince bent and lifted up a small skull and a handful of pottery shards. “The scavengers have been breaking the jars and getting to the corpses. But the priests are supposed to protect them.” He set the skull and shards back down.
“How can you expect the priests to do their duties when everyone else fails in theirs?” Urmi gripped a stone marker carved in the shape of a man’s head. “There are jars like these in every shrine and temple. Only the potters seem to make money nowadays. And do you want to know what happens to the older children?”
The prince placed his hands over his ears. “No, I don’t.”
Urmi reached up under his hat and grabbed his hand to pull it away. “They’re sold as slaves.” Her voice broke on the last word.
Since it was useless to try to shut Urmi out, the prince dropped his other hand. “I’m ... I’m sorry, Urmi. I apologize for what’s been done to your people.”
Before Urmi could say anything, a great shout rose [142] from the middle of the cemetery and a dozen ragged men popped up from behind the stone markers. Another dozen trotted out of the southwest arroyo to cut off their retreat.
“Bandits,” Urmi hissed.
Some were in worn, cracked boots, while most of them wore sandals, but there were two who were even barefoot. And here and there among the dirty rags of their soropas and cloaks, Sulu thought-he saw the glint of gold thread. Someone had made an attempt to sew large emblems on the fronts of their soropas, but the cloth had been so clumsily cut and sewn that it was difficult to tell what the emblems were supposed to represent—though they looked vaguely like some many-petaled flower.
A small Angiran padded forward. On his head was a long, floppy hat like a stocking cap. Sulu couldn’t help noticing that his fur, like the fur of the other bandits, was darker than any of the Angirans in the palace, and it lacked a certain luster. Several even had bald spots as well as a rheumy red line outlining their eyes.