And then there was the next door. And the next. By the time they had reached the last room, all three were hot, very tired, and very thirsty. Since Deyv had done most of the work, he was in the worst condition.
Here, though, the window in the wall gave light. Deyv was glad that they had not dropped through the doors on this side. The room was huge, big enough to hold his entire tribe comfortably.
Not only was there light, but the window was open. Apparently, it had not been closed for a very long time. Only a small amount of dirt had come in, though. The window was far enough above the ground to keep splashes of mud out except during the most driving rains. It was not high enough to keep animals out, yet there was no evidence that any had ever been there.
This was strange, since the cavernous room was festooned and carpeted with a thick growth. There was enough light to see that it was a sort of fungus. Deyv laid down on it to rest and found it a very soft bed. After a while, he had to get up and climb out through the round window. Thirst drove him and his companions to seek water. They found a pool in a hollow and drank deeply. Then he searched around until he found a gourd tree. He picked four of the fruit, cut them open, and shared the sweet meat with Jum and Aejip. Having hollowed out the thin hard shells, he filled them with water and returned to the room.
Deyv removed his compression cylinder from a pocket of his blowgun case after making a torch of twisted dried leaves that had blown into the room. He ignited some tinder in the cylinder and used this to ignite the torch. His flame showed that the fungus, so dull in the dim light, was actually a purple-and-red-striped glory. Stalactites of it pointed down from the ceiling, and here and there on the floor were stalagmites. Spider-web-like strands of the plant filled the corners from ceiling to floor. Many small hard nodules were visible just below the surface of the growth on the walls and ceiling.
Before the blaze went out, he saw he’d been mistaken in thinking that no beast had ever laired there. In one corner was a protuberance which looked like a bone. He picked it up, brushing off the sticky growth, and examined it. It looked like the thigh bone of an animal the size of Jum. It must have been there a long time, though. It was badly decayed.
He poked around under the surface and found pieces of rotted, deeply pitted bones, including the fragment of a skull. Deeper he found a long curved canine tooth, also pitted. Some large cat had once made this room its den or else it had crawled in there to die.
By then Aejip had returned from a short hunt. She dropped a dead bird in front of Deyv and sat back on her haunches. Deyv took it outside and skinned the fuzzy, almost wingless creature, gutted it, and cut off portions for all three. The cat and dog devoured their share, including the bones, before he had gathered together enough dry wood for a small fire.
Soon the odour of flesh had attracted a horde of black beetles spotted with green fleur-de-lys. Deyv caught a dozen of them and ate them as appetizers. The things were utterly without caution when swarming over dead meat, so he called the two pets and they lapped the insects up, crunching them between their teeth and swallowing them half-alive. A number fell in the fire, so Deyv picked them out and ate these. They were even better half roasted.
When it was sleep-time, Deyv closed the window and they bedded down. But the air became too stuffy. After a while he opened the window. Though this allowed access to predators, the window could be guarded. He stationed the two animals just under it and then half-closed it, propping it up with a stick. His sword was by his right hand and his tomahawk was by the other. Both animals would instantly awake if they heard strange noises near by or smelled a dangerous creature.
Then he had an idea and rose again. He tied one end of the rope to the stick so that he could pull on the other end and yank the prop out. The window would then bang down, frustrating anything that intended to get in.
Thus assured of safety, or as much as was possible in this place, he went to sleep.
5
In his dream Deyv had just leaped from behind a bush and grabbed a woman of an enemy tribe. He’d been watching her as she came up the path from the river. She was tall and had a beautiful figure, and the soul egg between her breasts was glowing with streaks of colour that matched those of his egg in colour and waveform. She was just what he wanted as a wife, and if he could subdue her before she screamed and warned her people, he would take her away to his tribe.
While grappling with her, he smelled a faint perfume, very pleasant. Her body was covered with some oil which made it difficult for him to keep hold of her. It was this oil that exuded the perfume, which, the longer he wrestled with her, made him the more excited. Unfortunately, the oil also made her slippery.
Eventually, she got loose and ran away. Then, just as he rounded a bend in the path, he was seized by her relatives. They tied him up with leather ropes and stuck the ends of sharpened bamboos all over his body until he bristled with them. Then the shaman danced in front of him and waved a sword. Deyv cried out with fear, though he did not want to. The shaman grinned, and the woman Deyv had grabbed came close to him and dumped a gourd full of the perfume all over him.
The shaman’s sword lashed out and its tip raked Deyv’s chest. He cried out with pain.
His eyes opened, and he knew that he had been dreaming. But he still smelled the heavy perfume. His body felt as if it had been penetrated by a hundred bamboo ends. And his chest felt as if it had indeed been sliced across with a sword tip.
Aejip’s snarling face was above him. Her paw raised and flashed down and struck him on the stomach.
Deyv thought that the cat had gone insane. He tried to call out for Jum to help him, but his voice was only a croak. His mouth and lips were very dry; his tongue seemed to be swollen.
Aejip struck him again, this time on the leg. Deyv tried to reach for his sword, but his arm seemed heavy. The perfume clogged his nostrils, and its heaviness suggested to him that he should go back to sleep.
The cat, still snarling, bit down on Deyv’s foot. It was not a hard enough bite to wound his foot, but it was certainly not the love bite Aejip often gave him. It hurt, and it made him sit up.
His legs and belly were covered with things. They were about the size of his fist, if the long thin legs were included. They had small heads with long beaks, and these were inserted into his skin. A number of their dead bodies lay around on the fungus; their smashed bodies had squirted blood.
Jum lay beneath the window, at least twenty of the things, like huge wingless mosquitoes, feeding off him.
Deyv, still somewhat stupefied, looked down. His chest was bleeding where the cat had raked it. But she had done it to awaken him before he had been sucked dry of blood.
One of the things raced up his arm and leaped, landing on his cheek. Its beak stung him and he slapped it. Its body spread out under the slap, and when Deyv removed his hand, the thing fell off. Meanwhile, Aejip was rolling over and over, crushing the frail creatures attached to her body.
After that Deyv got to his feet and began striking the things on his body. Some of them were so swollen with his blood that they popped when their shells broke. Having got rid of them, though not those which were swarming on the floor and dropping from the ceiling, he ran to the window. He opened it all the way to help dilute the perfume. Then he pounded on Jum’s body until his attackers were dead and the dog had been roused. Jum stood there, swaying and blinking for some time, watching Aejip and his master striking or stamping on the insects. Finally, he became fully conscious and joined in the battle. He did not help much; the things were agile and darted out of the way of his snapping teeth.
Eventually, the battle was over. Deyv stood panting, looking at the smashed bodies of at least a hundred of the things. There might have been more at the beginning, but these had gone out of the window or into the next room. The perfume seemed to be fading away. His body was covered with itching swellings. Though their fur hid them, the two animals must also be thickly spotted with welts.
Deyv went out of the
window and covered himself with mud to relieve the itching. Jum scratched vigorously until ordered to stop. Then Deyv came back and poked around the thick woolly stuff of the fungus with his sword until he uncovered more fragments of bone. These lay deep under the growth, though he suspected that they had once lain on top. They looked as if some kind of weak acid had eaten them away.
All the nodules just under the surface of the growth had burst open. It was obvious to Deyv that these had contained the insects. They had been curled up within them, waiting for whatever signal the growth sent out to awaken them. They would descend upon the unlucky victim, sleeping heavily with the aid of the perfume emitted by the fungus. Then the things, their bodies expanded with blood, would return to the nodules. The growth would dissolve the flesh of the dead victim with some sort of acid. It would open its body to allow the bones to drift downward, where they too would finally be dissolved. Deyv didn’t know for certain that this was the way events went. It did seem a likely explanation, however.
When he saw a half-eaten rodent in a corner near the window, he knew why Aejip had not been overcome by the perfume. Sometime during the sleep-time, before the plant had emitted its perfume, the cat had grown hungry. She had gone a-hunting, and she had returned with the remnant of the carcass to devour it at leisure, arriving just as the insects were starting to feed.
Deyv patted the cat’s head. ‘Good girl. You saved us.’
Jum was too miserable from his bites to growl with jealousy.
There was no sense in staying even if all the symbionts of the plant had been killed. It would be impossible to sleep. He picked up his weapons and ordered the animals to jump out of the window. The cat picked the rodent up by her teeth and obeyed. But Jum acted strangely. He trotted over to Deyv and looked up, whining.
‘What’s the matter, boy?’
Jum fixed his eyes at a point below Deyv’s.
Deyv looked down. Was he bleeding through the mud he’d plastered over his chest? Suddenly he knew why the dog was so disturbed.
His soul egg was gone!
6
Later, Deyv worked out that the thief had come in after he and the dog had fallen into a semi-drugged sleep and before the cat had returned. Jum had not smelled the thief because of the perfume’s overpowering odour. It had taken excellent timing and great daring, but the deed had been done.
At the moment, and for a long time after, Deyv was too distressed to reconstruct the situation. Nor did he wonder then why the soul egg had been stolen.
Since he had been a baby, he’d only removed the egg a few times, when a new cord had to be strung through the carved opening at one end. No person ever willingly let his egg out of his sight. When he was buried, the egg still lay on his chest.
To be without an egg was to be without a soul.
Deyv was a living ghost unless he somehow got his soul egg back. His own tribe would drive him back into the jungle if he appeared without his egg. He would be doomed to wander alone, shunned by all, friend or enemy, until he died. A foe would not even boast about killing Deyv or hang his head up as a trophy, since the head of a man without a soul was worthless. His killer would bury the body so that Deyv’s ghost would not haunt him.
Deyv had heard some horror tales about people whose eggs had been stolen by fellow tribesmen or women who hated them. This had not happened very often, and only a great hatred would bring a person to do such an evil deed. If the culprit were found out, he would suffer a terrible death, and be buried without his egg. According to the stories, the persons from whom the eggs had been stolen left the House. And they sat down in the jungle and grieved themselves to death within a few sleeps.
Stunned, Deyv squatted within a corner of the room and moaned. Jum whimpered and nuzzled him. Aejip had returned to the room after eating the rodent and she too was puzzled and distressed.
For a long time, Deyv sat, staring ahead, ignoring the animals, sinking deeper into paralysis and blackness. All was lost for ever. He would never again see his parents, brothers, sisters or friends. He would never know the joys of a wife or children. He was in a state of living death, and when the true death came he would not be any better off. He would be a ghost for ever wandering the Earth, denied that pleasant place which The Great Mother provided for those with eggs. The place where it was never too hot or too cold, food was easy to find and he would have lived in a great House with his family and all his ancestors.
The dog refused for a long time to leave Deyv’s side. Finally, hunger and thirst drove him out. When these had been satisfied, he came back to sit and look at his master with questioning eyes or to sleep. Aejip also went out, and when she came back she offered Deyv part of a carcass. Once, Jum tried to eat it, but she snarled and drove him away. When she was finally convinced that Deyv would not touch it – by this time the carcass was stinking – she permitted the dog to eat it.
The stench of rotten flesh, dog urine and dung filled the room. Flies and other insects crawled over Deyv, over his ears and eyes, and tried to go up his nostrils. At first the mud on his body gave him some protection. Then it dried and flaked off, and they had more skin to bite or sting. His belly swelled with gas, and the stench of that was added to the others. His thirst increased; his dry lips cracked. Still, he sat motionless, ever withdrawing into himself.
He was scarcely aware of anything by then, though he dimly heard the great storm outside the House. Thunder boomed; lightning hissed; trees toppled under the wind; rain blew through the window.
These sounds meant nothing to him, though Jum whimpered and quivered and Aejip lost her cool nonchalance. Deyv might have died during the storm had not a lightning bolt sent a feeler on the breeze through the window.
Much of its force was spent, but the shock was enough to knock him backward against the wall. Shaking his head, he crawled on all fours to the centre of the room. The cat and the dog lay paralysed and shivering, their eyes upon him. He got shakily to his feet and staggered to the window. Ignoring the flashes that seemed to hit very near by, he stuck his head out the window.
‘Thank you, O Shrekmikl, Great Son of The Great Mother!’ he croaked. ‘You sent your sky fire to wake me up, to drag me back from death! You showed me that I was wrong to just sit there and die! You showed me that I must be angry at the evil wretch who stole my soul egg! And you showed me that you favour me!’
It was possible that, without the lightning, he might have sunk just so far in his despondency and then hit the core of anger that was deep inside him. Whatever might have been, the bolt had struck, and it had roused him.
He waited until the storm was over, then climbed out of the window, dropped onto the ground, rose and walked weakly to the nearest pool. After slaking his thirst, he searched for and found some fruit which the wind had knocked off a tree. It was, however, two sleep-times before he felt strong enough to continue.
By then the thief’s trail, if there had been one, had been washed away. Deyv had no idea where to look. The thief had the whole world to hide in. Yet Deyv set out with an optimism unjustified by the facts. He felt that Shrekmikl had taken an interest in him, and would surely set his worshipper upon the right path.
He went back on the road he had left when the tharakorm’s tenants had chased him. He continued in the same direction. After many sleeps, he was at the foot of the mountain. The road ran up it, but was twisted and sometimes went straight up a precipice. There was no use trying to travel on it. Despite this, Deyv decided to see the other side of the mountain. Though he had seen evidence that a tribe was in the neighbourhood, he felt that he could do better elsewhere. There was no rational basis for this; he just felt it.
Instead of climbing the mountain, he went round it. This involved much struggling through a sometimes dense forest and through many swamps. He kept on and finally had rounded the peak. The country on the other side looked much like that he had left behind. Nevertheless, he felt that he had accomplished something worthwhile. Just what, he would have found hard to
define.
Here the ancients’ highway, coming down off the peak, curved towards his left. Sometime later it split into two, and he took the left. That was an unlucky direction, just as the left hand was the unlucky hand and a wind from the left was unlucky. However, Shrekmikl was left-handed, and he was the favourite son of The Mother.
Deyv observed a herd of huge pink bipedal beasts with long tails walk calmly through the next junction. They paid no heed to the clanging or the flashing green lights. If they could do it, why could not he? Though somewhat apprehensive, he followed their example, and nothing happened. After that, he saved time by not making a detour round the crossroads.
Once, while looking in the forest for a good place to sleep, he came across the remains of a fire in a thorn bower. It had been made by a single person who had left some footprints in the mud. They looked human, but the big toes were exceptionally long. Deyv wondered if the prints had been made by a Yawtl. Though he had never seen one, his grandmother had described this legendary creature. One of its features was a very long big toe.
Another characteristic of this creature was its addiction to stealing. Deyv brightened when he remembered this.
Perhaps he was on the right trail.
Unfortunately, the Yawtl was not going to leave any tracks while he was on the highway. Also, he could take another road any time he came to a junction. Despite this, Deyv always took the highway to the left. He also stepped up his pace. The animals complained in their way about this, but he ignored them.
Then one day after breakfasting, Aejip decided that she had had more than enough for the time being. She curled up in the cave they had found and refused to get up. It was evident that she intended to sleep for a long time before she would go on.
The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage Page 22