Chieftain of Andor

by Andrew J Offutt

  Cleve had apologized to Zivaat for having struck him, and had made ritual offer, “I bow to challenge and invective.” The words ceded the Orisan the right to challenge Cleve to combat, or to call down malignancy on his head, via cursing; the expression now loosely used on his native Earth, “Go to Hell,” had represented, in long-ago time, a serious attempt on the part of the curser to make the other genuinely accursed: to condemn him to the infernal regions. For words had power, those ancient Habiru of Earth had believed. Like Vilaat, Zivaat had had three choices. To challenge or curse, to defer either or both to a later time, thus keeping Cleve in his debt, on needles and pins. Or to dismiss the right, which Zivaat had done. He had foregone both rights, permanently.

  Thus, Cleve’s escorts were not captors, and they defended him from their people who struck and spat at him, calling out insults.

  There was, he mused with a grim smile, another possible explanation. Sometimes one made no claim against a life, or forewent challenge or invective, as a gesture of contempt. The second party would not stoop so low as to challenge, to curse, or to lay claim to the paltry life of one for whom he felt — or pretended to feel — contempt.

  Possibly, Robert Cleve thought. But he felt that was not the case. His words and his bravery and his prowess had won respect and friendship, or at least a truce, among the Orisan warriors.

  They took him to a wide-mouthed tunnelway flanked by two men. They were armed with metal swords resembling Zivaat’s weapon — which Cleve had returned. The guards were further distinguished by decoration: Blue pigment, with a look of permanency about it. had been applied to their bodies, forming five concentric circles radiating outward from their navels. One of them had also a diagonal blue line on his forehead, between his brows, which Cleve assumed set him apart as senior guard. Both men also wore the tight loin pouches worn by Cleve’s escorts.

  Cleve was approaching what served Orisana as palace, or governor’s mansion; the two men with the swords and paint must be elite guards.

  “We crave audience,” Zivaat said. “We’ve a Skyman with us, named Cleve. He — ”

  “Skyman, Zivaat? Cleve?” The guard who spoke looked past Zivaat at the muscular, bronze man who was not of Orisana. At his side, quite close, stood Siraa.

  “Why is he not bound?” he of the blue brow-stripe demanded. “Why is he allowed such proximity to one of Orisana’s most beauteous maidens?” The Orisan guard smiled at Siraa, nodding to her. “Shilaat has no need to see the dark-skinned creature; he’s seen many. Take it over to the slave compound, get it registered, and put it to work.”

  Zivaat stepped back one pace. “Bavuraat, your memory seems to have left you. You’ve forgotten who you are, who I am. Don’t presume to talk that way to me again, ever. Today I feel magnanimous. Next time I’ll report to Shilaat that you’ve allowed your post to go to your head and should perhaps be assigned to overseeing quarry slaves, or … to Oridorn duty?”

  Bavuraat stiffened. With fearful eyes, he bowed.

  “Zivaat is right,” he said. “I have allowed my elevation to this post outside Shilaat’s door to affect my manners. I am indebted to Zivaat for his warning, instead of reporting me.”

  “Tell Shilaat that I would speak with him, as soon as possible. Don’t tell him about the Skyman — let me explain. But unless Shilaat so decrees, Cleve is not a slave.” Zivaat folded his arms in an attitude of impatient waiting.

  Bavuraat looked astonished; his eyes flickered past Zivaat to Cleve. Cleve stared back. He found it hard to work up any feeling of friendship for a man who wanted to put “it” to work as a slave. A thought crossed Cleve’s mind, and he almost thought, as befit an Andorite warrior whose body he possessed: He’d love to show Bavuraat just which of them was more worthy of guarding Shilaat, whoever he was, and which belonged in servitude!

  The guard entered the broad doorway into the rock.

  They waited in silence, Cleve watching the passing of an Orisan chain gang. Five of the slaves were obviously the cannibals called Tree-men, although he did not see their faces; pigmented men stood out very brightly among a monochromatic people. The other three were even whiter than the Orisans, with hair so pale it was almost transparent; long and unkempt. Beside them marched three Orisans with fins strapped to their palms. One carried a desiccated llico tentacle; it must serve him as a whip. Cleve did not see the faces of the snowy slaves.

  “Shilaat will see you now,” Bavuraat said, and Cleve swung his head to see that the guard had returned from within the rock.

  Zivaat entered first, followed by Vilaat, the merman who’d saved Cleve’s life. Then Cleve, closely followed by Siraa — who looked shocked and refused violently when he waved her to precede him. Women are low among them, he thought; it is usually thus, once people progress to the point of learning to connect the magic of a woman’s childbearing with the man. Priorly, she was elevated, revered, served. Once the man learned he was necessary to the process of generation, he quickly reversed the situation, punishing her, consciously or not, for having venerated her. Among the Orisans, as among most of the people of Andor, women were chattels.

  Except, of course, the Starpowered witches.

  The others remained outside; once he was within the side cavern, Cleve heard the guard Bavuraat demand to know what was so special about that muscle-bound Tree-man with the weird hairdo. Cleve put up his hand to feel. For the first time he discovered that his hair was drawn back into a sort of thick pigtail, bound by a metal band. Behind him Siraa chuckled and touched him; she must have thought he was preening before meeting the Great Man. He wished he’d kept his big hand down.

  They were in a tunnel, and it wound. The luminous substance in the walls of the main cavern was not present here, and torches were set into the walls at brief intervals, on alternant sides. Gauging the intervals at three yards, he counted seventeen torches and eight turns before they reached the wider portion of the cavern: Shilaat’s chamber. In it was a broad, smooth slab of green-veined marble three feet high, behind which a much smaller slab was piled with llico hides and topped with some silken pelt of snowy white. On this sat Shilaat.

  He appeared to be a tall Orisan, with thinning hair, few lines in his paper-white face, and the growing belly that marked most executives, anywhere. His questioning smile faded as he caught sight of the man behind Zivaat.

  “I was not told you were bringing an Overworld slave with you, Zivaat. No slave has ever entered here before. And who comes behind — ah! Who is this?” Shilaat’s expression of displeasure vanished as he gazed at Siraa.

  “Siraa, Shilaat, hoping it pleases. She aided the Skyman Cleve when he was attacked by the Tree-men,” Zivaat explained. “He saved her from one of them, and later, under our eyes, he saved her from a llico, using my sword — which he then returned, although we had promised him only slavery. He is not a Tree-man, Shilaat, and he has saved Siraa, one of Orisana’s loveliest maidens. And — he thinks. Tell him what you told me about strangers, Cleve — not about why there are differences, but that there are, and about slavery and trust and friendship.”

  “I understand,” Cleve said, wondering why he was told so specifically to eschew his explanation of the Orisan’s origin. “May I have the permission of the thrico-noble Shilaat to speak?”

  “Thrice-noble,” Shilaat repeated. And he smiled. “Yes, speak, you with the tongue of light.” Not “golden-tongued”; light was more precious to these dwellers within the ground than the soft yellow metal so prized elsewhere by those so rich they were less impressed with real values.

  Cleve repeated his words about color and difference; the words he’d spoken to Zivaat just before he’d somehow stirred the merman’s ire. Then the story was told, and even Siraa, despite her station as a woman, was allowed to tell what she knew of the strange, colorful man from the Overworld. To his complete astonishment and embarrassment, she told everything. Shilaat even touched him to feel his warmth, although he was certainly as aware as Cleve and Siraa that he could never f
ully appreciate that warmth as had the Orisan woman.

  “Cleve, where are you from? What do you call yourself?”

  “Do you know the name Doralan Andrah?”

  Shilaat’s blank look was mirrored in the faces of the others. Cleve sighed and shrugged.

  “My name is Robert Cleve. I am from Earth. I am called an American.”

  “Erth? Uhmaireeekun?” Shilaat of Orisana shrugged. “I suppose it isn’t unusual that I have never heard those names. We are aware of the broad world above, but remain here in safety. Your teeth indicate that not all men of the Overworld eat people?”

  “Oh, no,” Cleve said, smiling to give Shilaat a good, reassuring look at his unsharpened teeth. “The Tree-men eat people, as you know, and the government of Russia is based on the eating of people, and of China. But these represent a small portion of the total population, Shilaat.” Cleve thought of the people-eaters among his own people, on his own planet, and he winced. There were many. Some of them did worse than merely eat their fellowmen; they chewed them up and spat them out and then sat on the pieces, hardly deigning to notice that they were there. The cannibal, at least, ate for a purpose.

  “Are all the people of the Overworld as you are, Cleve? With colors, I mean?”

  Cleve shook his head. “The greatest percentage are brown, or black, or yellow,” he said. “There are but a few so pale as I.” He spoke as a “white” man, nearly forgetting that on Orisan he was reddish-bronze.

  Looking concerned, Shilaat nevertheless nodded. “They rule?”

  “They’re working on it,” Cleve told him.

  “And … white people,” Shilaat asked. “Are there many of us?”

  “Shilaat, there are many people of my world who think they are white.” He looked down at his bronze body. No, he’d seen people return from Florida vacation with deeper color than this. And return to rule discriminatorily over people actually lighter than themselves — people they called black. He broke the news to the first white man he had ever seen, aside from albinos:

  “No, Shilaat. None is so fair as your people. But I assure you that those who call themselves white would find a reason for hating you. Because you ARE white, perhaps. More likely because of your hair and toes and eyes.”

  Shilaat nodded. “You are telling me that my people are better off precisely where they are, separated from the Overworld of evil. We know this. Is ‘American’ its capital?”

  Cleve grinned. “No, but … go ahead and think of it in that way, I don’t mind. And, yes, I suppose you’re better off here in” — he glanced around — “Camelot. Or Birchland, maybe. You ask these things, Shilaat — have you never before had someone here from, uh, outside?”

  “Only the Tree-men,” Shilaat said. “And they are … savages, eaters of human flesh, barbaric in their habits. And filthy. You are not of them, you are far different. They are more like animals. You are more like … us.”

  “I remind you,” Cleve said, smiling, “that both you and Zivaat had referred to me as ‘it’ and thought only of enslaving me — because I am different from you.”

  Shilaat regarded the top of his marble desk. Then he looked up. “Cleve of Earth is my friend and guest,” he said, and to Cleve: “We will dine together. He is to be treated as nothing less than an honored noble of Orisan. He will … advise me.” He looked at Cleve. Cleve smiled, inclining his head. Shilaat smiled. His eyes shifted to the slender but muscular girl at Cleve’s side.

  “Do you have family, Siraa?”

  She nodded.

  “Then I want to know your father’s name. Meanwhile, Cleve American will live with your family. Cleve American of Earth — is this satisfactory?”

  Cleve nodded, delighted. “Pai,” he agreed. “But in light of the things we’ve said to each other, calling me ‘American’ seems small. I am Cleve of Earth. That’s enough. And — I am honored and pleased to be so well treated and assigned by the thrice-noble Shilaat of Orisana.”

  The thrice-noble Shilaat of Orisana bowed his bald head with a little smile. Then he raised his hands to remove the necklace he wore, apparently as a mark of rank. Lifting it over his head, he indicated to Cleve that he was to bow his. Cleve did.

  “This will prevent any of my people from mistaking you for a slave, Cleve of Earth.” The gaze of his colorless eyes went past Cleve. “Zivaat, I am assigning you as Cleve’s guide. Siraa … come to dinner with our guest.” Which was how Robert Cleve of Earth, imprisoned within the body of Doralan Andrah of Andor, came by his rattling necklace of snowy fish teeth strung on a strip of the black, leathery hide of the llico.

  10 – The People in the Mountain

  Though the Orisans were not troubled with artificial modesty, they did cover — or decorate — themselves when out of the water they loved. In addition to the pouchlike groin coverings they wore, the men adorned themselves with bone jewelry and bits of agate, as well as sashes composed of some sort of hide covered with long, soft white hair or fur, extremely fine and silky. Siraa donned a breechclout of the same fur, slung very low on her slender hips. Around her neck glittered a necklace whose quartzlike azure stones must have required years of digging and laborious chipping. Cleve could not avoid watching them twinkle between her breasts as they crossed to Shilaat’s private cavern for dinner. They were stared at, they and their two-man escort, and Cleve felt sure the gazes were as much attracted by Siraa’s lithe loveliness as by his strangeness. Together, they were the cynosure of all Orisana.

  With his deep-bronzed skin, his glossy black hair so dark it gleamed with blue highlights, and his eyes like granite, he felt gaudy among these achromatic people.

  They were disturbingly uniform: skin the color of paper and appearing as thin, hair like mountain snow, eyes like black buttons floating in a pool of pellucid water. All the men wore the loin pouches; most of the females who’d reached the nubile stage wore the low-slung trunks of white fur, resembling pelts from the haughty, overpampered Persian cats of his native planet. Whence came they, he wondered. Fur, in this marvelous warm haven within the very planet? Obviously, they were unnecessary; if there were animals making their sunless homes within these caverns, they had no need of fur!

  Nor would any denizens of the jungle bordering the river outside require such silken pelts. And … white? No, no jungle creatures would have been provided by their creator with such coloration, guaranteed to be unprotective amid the gorgeous verdure outside.

  Unless — and Cleve was beginning to suspect — unless the god of Andor was insane.

  Dinner in the regal cavern of Shilaat, Grof of Orisana, consisted of mushrooms, small, rather dry fruits, and four kinds of fish. It was served by two slaves clad from neck to toe in extraordinarily loose gowns of deep, rich purple. The skin of the servants was even more pale, Cleve saw, than that of his hosts. There was a tissue-like quality about their almost transparent flesh, so thin and pale it was bluish, showing clearly its network of veins. Their hair fell in clouds like the angel’s hair of an Earthly Christmas tree, in rippling waves. Here was one people, Cleve was sure, who could truthfully say there was nothing to be done with their hair!

  But their hair, their skin, their long, long fingers with the transparent nails — these were far from the most unusual features of Shilaat’s almost matched pair of slaves.

  The two women were eyeless.

  Not just blind, not just sightless; eyeless.

  The bone structure, the barely defined sockets; these indicated that they had once possessed eyes, but not for many generations.

  Cleve restrained himself from querying Shilaat about the women — Gaise and Jaire — until they had finished their serving and retired at a word from their master.

  “Oridorns,” Shilaat replied. “Oridorna lies above us, also within the mountain. But they cannot leave, as we can. Even had they eyes, they would never see the great skyfire that burns us so, and their caverns have no lights in the living rock, as have ours.”

  Cleve frowned. He was within a mounta
in, then. And Orisana, “water land,” was merely the lower keep. Above it, in another cavern system, lay another people. Oridorna: “rock land.” Cut off by the Orisans themselves from egress through the watery channel the Orisans used. And somehow prevented, too, from leaving via another route. Trapped forever, within this mountain; to be born, to live, to die in total, eternal darkness, without ever drawing one breath of fresh air rich with the scents of the jungle along Sky River — so close.

  Thus cut off, compelled to live out their stagnant existences in complete lightlessness, the xanthochroid people of Oridorna had lost the need for eyes. And then, like the weird fish deep in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave on Earth, they had lost the eyes themselves.

  But — the women had seemed to move with sure grace, never once touching wall or table, setting down the glazed stone plates or bowls with nothing that remotely resembled a clatter or hard thump. And they kept their mouth open, both of them.

  “The Oridorns would like to be here, in the light, nearer the water,” Shilaat said. “We hold them back. Fortunately for us, neither their weapons nor their eyeless sight helps them, for they cannot invade us in any sort of mass, and we keep a constant guard posted at their three means of entry into Orisana. Occasionally we capture one, or a few. Occasionally our people are captured by them. They are of little use, save in serving and carrying.”

  Eyeless sight? Cleve wondered; perhaps the Oridorns had been compensated for the theft of their eyes by some sort of innate, biological radar, such as was possessed by the bats of his own planet. He wondered. Perhaps Daron, god of Andor with His many consorts, was not insane after all. Merely … quixotic, whimsical, capricious.

  Even though landbound in their subterranean keep, the Orisans were by necessity swimmers, and thus they had been given slender, streamlined bodies and webbing between fingers and toes to facilitate their swift passage through the water. Cursed with an enforced subterranean existence even more stringent, the Oridorns had evolved away from the eyes they did not need — but had developed some compensatory means of steering themselves around obstacles, for gauging distances.