Over the next ten days, Dano led Jabalwan and Jaki through the tribal villages of his territory. Among the southern longhouses, which traded with the devil gods, a wasting plague shriveled the population. Neither of the sorcerers had seen the likes of it: high fever, noises in the chest like crackling fire, bluing of fingertips and toes followed hard upon by death. Jabalwan's cures proved no more effective than Dano's, and their impuissance reduced the soul-catchers to witnesses, drifting among the villages, helping the people die, and blessing the deathrafts as they carried corpses downriver to the afterworld.
At their return to Dano's fig grove, Jaki fell ill. At first he thought that the sight of so many dying and dead had sickened his soul, but soon chills blew through him and his flesh became hot to touch. Wawa scurried through the grove, bringing him figs, and when he saw that the offerings remained uneaten, he paced nervously over and around the boy's prostrate body, plucking at his fingers and ears, trying to rouse him. Finally Jabalwan tied the gibbon to a tree, where it sulked disconsolately.
Jabalwan himself began a healing fast, hoping for a vision that would enable him to cure the boy. The helplessness of the soul-taker allied with the hopelessness he felt for the Shadow Tribes. The shapes of the world change, he had learned early as a cloudreader, yet he had never accepted with his heart that all the Shadow Tribes would die in the times of iron, though the prophecies told him that was true. Why does the Life breed suicidal yearnings? Why is death a hunger of the living?
Even the monkeyfaces, the instruments of death for his people, believed in a god who became a man so that he would die. Reborn—yes. But not in this world. This world is death's world. I have looked. I know. The agony of will, our striving, is all we have while we have it. And so nothing is enough —for that is all we get. The rest is terror and emptiness. The sages did not lie. Jabalwan decided then that if Matubrembrem died, he would fast until he was dead, too.
Lying on his back in a bed of fig leaves, shivering as the fever's dew collected on his flesh, Jaki stared at the fume track of clouds. And he understood at last what Jabalwan had meant by seeing the Life in the sky. The seaward clouds laded the fever dreams of the earth. Everything around him existed also above him, mirrored in the wind. The blue of the sky held the emptiness of life — in his life, Mala's absence. His loneliness for her rode the upward surge of the clouds, sweeping the blazing emptiness — for what? The cloudshapes surged around their own heat, and each moment was the beginning. Sadness followed where the high wind sheared the tops of the clouds and vapors shredded and thinned away. Hope bloomed in the magisterial billowing, faces and animals in the streamers, visions in the sliding brightness. All of it blew away through emptiness taller and wider than anything on earth. Mother! he cried aloud, frozen in his loneliness, and tears mixed with his sweat.
In the fourth day of his illness, Jaki's fever broke, and Jabalwan ended his fast. The boy grew well enough by the afternoon to sit up and watch Dano and Jabalwan remove the head from the tree-stump keg. The flesh looked glazed, the hacked neck bloodless, dangling white strings. The solution Jabalwan had prepared had softened the bones, and under Jabalwan's direction Dano scooped out the skull like handfuls of soggy rice. Meanwhile Jabalwan heated white river sand in a cauldron. He laid out the deboned head flat as a pelt until the sand heated; then, he hung it from a small bamboo scaffold by its tattered neck strings, stitched its eyeholes shut, and filled the upside-down head-husk with hot sand. The sand sizzled as it filled the wet sack. Done, the head had the contours of a living man. Even the deflated nose extended again, the thorn-stitched eyelids bulging as if with dream-held sight. Jabalwan turned the head upright in the scaffolding, and adjusted the twine and vine strings to hold it in place while sand trickled from the neck. Within a few hours, the flesh of the head had shrunk with the cooling sand, and they repeated the process. Over the next few days, while Jaki recouped his strength, the head shrunk until it was no larger than a man's fist.
The Windbone tribe conducted a boisterous festival to celebrate the new war amulet. Steel rang on steel as the people clanged their weapons together to arouse the spirits of their ancestors as witnesses to their power. Arrack, tribal rice wine, passed among the celebrants in gurgling boar bladders, and by nightfall, when the sorcerers returned to the forest, the tribe frolicked, wild with drunkenness.
Jabalwan and Jaki left Dano at the fig grove, and they wandered deeper into the jungle, away from the war songs and laughter of the Windbone revelers. Once they had settled down for the night, Jaki said into the darkness, "Before we came to the Windbone villages, when we still traveled in the grass plains with Emang, you told me that the clouds are filled with visions. Teacher, I see now you are right."
In a voice just louder than the insects, the sorcerer whispered back, "So I have not been fooling myself all these years?"
Jaki laughed. Since his illness, the soul-catcher had been gentler with him, more watchful that he ate well and did not exhaust himself walking. "You told me then that there are three ways of sorcery. Bird omens and cloud-watching you have taught me. What is the third?"
"The most advanced and true of all sorceries," Jabalwan answered. "I know little about it, other than that it exists. It is an art higher than the clouds. It is star reading. Those who can discern the movements of the stars can read the world's destiny. While we see only our own fates in the clouds, the star reader identifies the fates of all tribes. In these hard days even a meager sorcerer such as myself can see the world closing in. And I am grateful for what I do not see."
*
Jabalwan led Jaki south. They avoided the plague villages and encountered few people during their long trek.
After many days, a bitter odor trailed on the morning breeze. Jaki thought the stink burned flesh from a plague village. "Worse," Jabalwan corrected him. "It is the plague itself." He pointed toward the crushed shape of chalk hills on the horizon. "Beyond that white wall is the village of the monkeyfaces themselves. Tomorrow we will see them."
The thought filled Jaki with unexpected foreboding. "Teacher — am I not the child of a monkeyface?"
The flesh between the sorcerer's eyes twitched. "You are. But you belong to the forest. You know the bird omens and you understand the clouds. You are not a monkeyface."
"Then why have you brought me here?"
"You are Matubrembrem — the devil's child. The people have waited for you in dread from the beginning of time. You are the last witness of the remembered earth. You must see what we are coming to. Surrender yourself and be glad. You will know both worlds."
The bitter stench grew stronger as they traveled, and that night Jaki could not sleep. The wind smoked with acrid scents of the monkeyface village that they would see at dawn. He remembered the tent villages and stone-walled cities of the Book, yet he knew that what he imagined and what he would see could not be the same. He thought of asking Jabalwan for the Book. Though he had come to respect and even cherish his teacher, the boy retained his wariness about discussing his earliest childhood and Mala's teachings with him. While healing the sick, the sorcerer often reached into his medicine bag and left it open while administering his cures, and Jaki had peeked in from time to time and seen the icon of Jesu nailed to his cross. That the god of his mother and of the monkeyfaces had a place in the medicine bag of the sorcerer impressed the boy, though they had not talked about it.
At first light, from the crest of a chalk ridge, Jabalwan and Jaki stared down at Bandjermasin. Dawn glowed over the paddies and shone in the serpent-coils of river streams that untangled across the delta to the sea. The clusters of stilt-raised longhouses looked frail as dead leaves. At the far end of the delta, nearest the sea, giant walls made of lashed-together trees surrounded a city of domes and spires, minarets and battlements. Just discernible in the shadow of the massive walls elephants lumbered, ridden by men with turbans livid as sparks in the brightening air. The elephants, laden with crates, marched toward the sea. As it grew lighter Jaki discerned
the ocean, a barren expanse blue as the sky, ruffling near the shore into waves like clouds. Several big ships had anchored just offshore, and their spiderwebbed shapes emerged from the dark like immense baskets trimmed in gold. His father had captained such a ship, Mala had told him. He strained to perceive people on the decks but could barely follow the elephants as they trudged to the loading docks.
The stink came from there. Fires flapped beneath cauldrons along the shore, uncoiling wind trails of gray smoke. "Tar," the sorcerer said. "The monkeyfaces heat the trees until they bleed black blood. They use the tar to seal their big ships. The air stinks with it, and the land is scarred." He pointed to swatches of jungle that had been cleared on the far banks of the river. "Their own land must have no more trees, else why would they come so far to take ours?"
Jaki wanted to go closer. Jabalwan refused. "The monkeyfaces are allied with the Star-and-Moon tribes. If we go to them, they will kill us or, worse, make us slaves. This is as close as we will go. So look carefully — and remember."
The sun had risen, and the river plain had found its colors. Jabalwan whistled softly and walked away, and the boy dipped his gaze toward the sea for one last look at the big ships. These were the vessels of his father. They had defied the depths and crossed the distances to be here, to make him. He raised his hand to the monkeyfaces, to the stories his mother had told him, stories that had always seemed more real than life, and then he turned away and loped back toward the jungle.
*
The stink of melting trees came and went like a bad memory as Jabalwan and Jaki headed toward the villages of the Claw tribe, just north of Bandjermasin. Many of these people made the short journey to work in the paddy fields around the walled city. Some had returned with parangs, turbans, and sandals and lived like chiefs, making and enforcing their own laws in their old villages. They defied the elders and hunted only for themselves. Jabalwan avoided them and ministered to the people who kept the old ways. He ignored the insults that the men in turbans and sandals cast at him and his devil's son, and he never met their gaze.
Troubled, Jaki told his teacher, "We must leave here. You can smell the evil."
"Evil!" Jabalwan said with disdain. "When you give your hand to the Spider you will see there is no evil. Only fear."
"I am afraid." The boy had grown since leaving the Rain Wanderers, and his lanky white frame stood as tall as the sorcerer's. Even so, his face still bore the countenance of a child.
"You are right to be afraid, little devil," Jabalwan said, squinting lazily as a turtle. "These people are rotting on the inside. They have forgotten themselves. We must be careful."
"But why do we stay?"
"You are Matubrembrem," Jabalwan answered with a pang of disquiet. "You must see what is coming."
"Why?"
"The Spider will tell you when you give it your hand."
The plague had killed many of the Claw people, and those who survived lived precariously by foraging and hunting or by working in the paddies of the new lords. Only a few of the families continued to plant their own rice, and most of that got stolen by the lawless gangs from the south. Jabalwan sought out these families and urged them to move deeper into the forest. The Claw people would not leave their fishing pools and their salt spring. Still, they honored the sorcerer, for though a stranger to them, he healed their sick, spoke their language with a dreamy cadence, and knew the old stories. They fed him and his devil, though they barely had food for themselves.
On a late afternoon, the sorcerer held the tribe spellbound with a tale of the world's creation. He described how the hawk, the predatory night itself, jealous of the sun, had tried to swallow heaven's light. But the sun was faster than the nighthawk and ran around it and shattered its skull with one blow from behind, spilling the world. "That is why the sun runs across the sky each day," the sorcerer said. "The sun is leaping a victory dance over the fallen body of its enemy, the night." He gestured at the silver rib of moon shining above the trees. "The moon and the stars are the broken pieces of the hawk's skull. The ocean is its blood. And its feathery corpse is the land and its forests. Our breath is the hawk's death cry, echoing down the generations, dimmer and dimmer."
At that moment the dark hollows of the forest shimmered with movement, and a war party of twenty men stepped into the clearing. They wore turbans and headcloths and some even had tar-stained breeches. Their soot-streaked faces seemed sunken from years of anger and despair.
The Claw headman, who had been entertaining the soul-catcher, stood up and demanded the intruders leave. Instead they strode to the longhouse, their gazes not wavering from the sorcerer. "Come down here, snakeman," one of them called. His rat eyes met the soul-taker's, and he showed chipped and rotten teeth. "You tell the people to leave here," he said in a broodful voice. "You tell them to go deep into the forest. When they go, who will work our fields?"
"Each tribe works its own fields," Jabalwan responded tautly.
"You speak of tribes, snakeman," the leader cried out. "This is not your tribe. You are not a Claw."
"I have invited him," the headman called down from the verandah. "He has healed the sick among us. He has told the old stories. He is more a Claw than you."
The gang hooted derisively, and their leader scuttled up the notched log and stood toe to toe with the headman. "My father was a hunter," he said vehemently. "My mother worked the fields. I am Claw. But I do not believe anymore in sorcerers. I do not believe in headmen. I have been south. I have melted trees for the big ships. My eyes are open now."
The headman did not flinch when the rogue warrior's parang came up under his jaw.
"The old ways are dead," the warrior said. "The Star-and-Moon tribes drive us from the fish pools and the salt spring. They have weapons from the monkeyfaces. We must get our own weapons from the devils in the south. No more talk of sorcery. No more running from the Star-and-Moon tribes. We are a new people now. We make our own laws."
"The law is inside," Jabalwan said from behind the headman. “It makes us.”
The new lord shoved the headman aside and closed to within a pace of the sorcerer. "What nonsense are you vomiting?"
"The law is inside," the sorcerer repeated, calmly, gazing into the back of the man's eyes. "Your fathers before you knew this. They obeyed the law — and so you are here now. If you ignore the law, you will die. Evil destroys itself."
"This is the law." The new lord raised his parang. "And it is you who will die."
"Fool!" the headman shouted. "You raise your sword to a soul-catcher? You are doomed."
The crowd jeered, and a war cry slithered among them. "I am not your enemy," Jabalwan said loudly. "We are all here now because our fathers observed the paths. They chose wisely. Why do you throw away their wisdom?"
The new lord spat. "You want to confuse us. You want us to stay ignorant like our fathers — beaten back into the jungle by the Star-and-Moon tribes. We will not! If our fathers were so wise, why are we hunted like animals by our enemies? Let us take the weapons we can get from the monkeyfaces and kill our enemies!"
"The monkeyfaces are your enemies," the soul-catcher said. "They make you serve them — like the Star-and-Moon tribes serve them. What will become of your children? You must leave this place."
"Who are you to tell us anything, snakeman? Look at the devil at your side!" He jabbed his parang in the air at Jaki. "He is a monkeyfaced whorechild. We will not listen to your lies."
Jabalwan pushed the man's sword-arm aside. "Then leave here and go back south."
"Not without your head." The new lord's parang blurred an iridescent arc in the falling light, and Jabalwan ducked aside, dodging the blade by a hair's breadth. The headman's family had retreated inside, and the sorcerer grabbed Jaki's arm and pulled him the length of the verandah, Wawa racing ahead of them. The rest of the gang leaped and surged up the notched log, and their leader charged Jabalwan with his parang spinning.
"Jump," the sorcerer whispered to Jaki, dropping
his hand into his medicine bag. He whirled about as a blade sliced past him, and his hand came out of the medicine bag gripping an open-fanged snake's head. The viper struck the leader between his eyes, biting reflexively into the flesh of his brow just beneath his headband. The new lord screamed and fell back, the snake still stabbing his face.
The crowd flinched to a stop and watched the man roll on the floor in agony, ripping the fangs from his flesh. The poison shot into his brain. He bucked and kicked, and then lay dead. The war party howled with rage and leaped over the side of the verandah, pointing their parangs at Jaki and Jabalwan's fleeing shadows.
Up ahead, Jabalwan pulled Jaki to a stop.
"Wait," the sorcerer panted. "We cannot elude all of them. We need help."
"Papan!"
"No. It is too dangerous for him this far south. I sent him back." Jabalwan opened the stopper on a bamboo tube and shook out the shaggy barkdust of the fire tree. The fungi had thrived and multiplied in the tube, and the blue light in Jabalwan's hand rang like crystal. "Rub this in your hair. Be swift."
As Jaki did so, Jabalwan removed his headdress and shook the tube over his own head. From the headdress he removed long black splinters and buried several in the ground, their points slanted to pierce. He stuck a scarlet feather in the ground as a warning.
The war party flew toward them as Jabalwan stood up. When they saw the sorcerer and the devil child lit with blue fire they slammed into each other in their eagerness to stop. The sorcerer pointed at the scarlet feather on the trail, shook his hand in a warding sign, turned with his arm around the boy, and strolled silently away.
Jaki could hear the men arguing whether to pursue or retreat, and then feet scuffling through the damp duff in pursuit. His legs tightened to run, and the sorcerer restrained him with a heavy arm across his shoulders. The next instant, a scream resounded, and the chase ended in a confusion of alarmed voices. Jabalwan swiftly led Jaki off the path and into a tangled darkness of waxy leaves and pliant branches. Arrows flew blindly through the forest avenue where they had been walking, and again Jaki flinched to run. "Relax, little devil," the soul-taker advised. "The chase is over. One of those who pursued us is wounded and in great pain. He will not permit the others to leave him."
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