Somehow the other figure simultaneously became aware of his presence. Perhaps it noticed the direction of the other man’s gaze. Without turning, it announced in a tenor voice smooth as the syrup the women of the village made from distilled honey, “Come in, traveler. You are welcome here.”
Ehomba hesitated. The other man was still staring at him. An urge to turn, and to run, welled up sharply within the herdsman. But that inviting voice was compelling and besides, as always, he was curious.
Walking around the hut from back to front, he mounted the porch steps and entered. Like the windows, nothing barred the doorway. It was a portal without a barrier. Like the rest of the hut, it was enticing.
“Come in, come in!” The larger figure seated in the rear of the main room beckoned encouragingly. As he entered, Ehomba noticed that the man already present continued to stare at him. “Take a seat.”
Ehomba remained standing. “I do not want to interrupt a private conversation.”
“Not at all, not at all.” The figure in back smiled, though it was a doleful sort of smile, the herdsman thought. It was a ghost of an expression from which all honest sentiment had fled; a shell, a shadow, from which all real contentment had been wrung like washwater from a rag. Nevertheless, he took a seat, crossing his legs beneath him and setting his spear to one side.
As soon as he did so, the other man present let out a groan. “Well, that’s beggared it! We’re both done for now.” He dropped his head.
“Done for?” What odd manner of speech was this? Ehomba wondered. Up close, he considered the other occupants of the room more closely.
The man seated on the mat next to him was of average height, with heavily knotted legs and a stocky, muscular upper body. His black hair was long and tied up in a tail in back while his facial features were like none the herdsman had ever seen before, with narrow eyes and small nose set above a wide mouth. The face was inordinately round in contrast to the athletic build and the forehead high and intelligent.
He wore light leather armor that must have been a burden in the jungle heat. Beneath it could be seen a white shirt of some silken material. Below the waist the man was clad in very little: a loincloth that was bound up between his buttocks over which protective leather straps hung no farther than midthigh. This unusual raiment was matched by its owner’s disposition, which was dyspeptic at best.
“Why couldn’t you have just run?” he was muttering. “Didn’t you see me trying to warn you off when you were peeping in the window?”
“I was not peeping,” Ehomba explained decorously with a glance in the direction of the master of the house. “I was reconnoitering.”
“Well, it sure as Gibra didn’t do you any good. You’re in here now, and he’s got you, too.” The speaker nodded in the direction of the third occupant of the room.
Unperturbed, Ehomba turned toward their nominal host. “Is what he says true?” he asked quietly. “Do you have us?”
“Oh, most certainly,” the other replied in his lugubrious voice. “Once caught, none can escape me.”
“That is strange. I do not feel caught.”
“Don’t worry about it. You are.”
The speaker was not entirely human, Ehomba saw. Or perhaps he was merely representative of a type of humanity the herdsman had not previously encountered. One thing Ehomba was ever conscious of was his unabiding ignorance. That was why he asked so many questions. The habit had frequently driven his elders to distraction.
The squat shape confronting him was massive and blocky, rather like a squeezed-down, compact version of a true giant. It had a lantern jaw and dark, deep-set eyes. Perhaps its most notable feature was its great mane of red and gold hair, which swept back from not only the forehead but the cheeks to flow in a single continuous hirsute waterfall over its shoulders and back until it touched the floor. The nose was crooked and the upper body much too big for the lower, as if it had been grafted onto hips and legs from another person entirely. Ehomba would have called the face apelike had such an appellation not been denigrating to the monkey. It was ugly—there was no getting around it—but not grotesque. There was even a bizarre, alien warmth to it.
It did not warm the man seated next to him, however. “Don’t feel caught, eh? Try getting up.”
Ehomba attempted to comply, only to find that he could not rise from the mat. Looking down, he saw that the tiny fibers upon which he was seated were anything but inanimate. They were twitching and rustling in spasmodic silence. A fair number already gripped his lower legs and sandaled feet, but not by wrapping around them and holding them down.
They were boring into them, skin and sandals both.
Looking to his left, he saw that his neighbor was suffering from the same affliction. He was as tightly fastened to the mat as if he had been rooted there. Which was, in fact, precisely what was happening to him.
After waiting a moment for realization to strike the newcomer, the stocky figure extended a hand. “Too bad for you, but I can’t deny that it’s nice to have some company.” He nodded curtly in the direction of their host. “I was fed up with being able to talk only to him.”
“Tut,” murmured their hairy host, “surely my conversation is not so intolerable.”
“Of course it is, but I suppose you can’t help it.” Despite circumstances that were obviously less than conducive to casual joviality, he grinned as he looked back at Ehomba. “I’m Simna ibn Sind. I come from a country that’s far to the northeast of here. And I sure wish I was there now.”
“Why aren’t you?” the herdsman asked him.
Simna looked away, still grinning. “Dispute seems to dog me the way a sweat bee pesters a runner. I find that I have to keep moving in search of outer as well as inner peace.”
“Have you ever found it?”
The fine-featured face looked around sharply. Then the smile widened. “Not yet, but I understand that it’s a condition devoutly to be desired. I’d hoped someday to be able to appreciate more than just the theory.”
“I am sure that you will.”
“Don’t you get it, uh ... ?”
“Ehomba. Etjole Ehomba. I am a herdsman from the south.”
“Yeah, well, it’s time to stop deluding yourself, friend. You’re stuck here just like I am, and neither of us is going anywhere. We’re going to sit here until we rot.”
“Of course you are.” Their host was most agreeable. “That is what people do in my company. That is what everything does in my company.” He sighed resignedly. “I do so wish others wouldn’t take such a negative view of what is after all a most vital and necessary process.” The great-maned head shook slowly. “So few stop to consider what kind of place the world would be without me.”
“And what is that?” Ehomba inquired with interest. “What are you? Who are you?”
“I thought you might have guessed by now, traveler.” Again the intimation of an imitation of a smile. “I am Corruption.”
“I see. By whom were you bribed?”
“No, no; you don’t get it, do you?” A man of short sentences and peppery disposition, Simna looked disgusted. “He’s not corrupted. He is Corruption. Take another look around you. Take a good look.”
Ehomba did so, and found that by squeezing his eyes tight together, certain aspects of his surroundings that had heretofore escaped his notice suddenly stood out in stark contrast to what he had initially believed he was seeing.
All those colorful flowers growing in planters and pots on the porch, for example. Gazing at them afresh, he saw now that they were wilted and dying; the petals wrinkled as the faces of old, old men, the stems shivered with disease. The stench of decay permeated the hut. Instead of a woven mat, he was sitting on a heap of moldering dung from which emerged the tendrils of corrupted fungi that were ever so slowly drilling into his feet and lower legs.
As if his eyes had suddenly refocused, he saw the hut in a new light, a dark and decomposing one. The walls were not made of wood, but of some crumblin
g earthen material resembling peat. Instead of thatch, the roof was composed of the yellowed bones of long-dead animals—and other things. And their host ...
Pustules and boils covered the heretofore smooth skin while the great mane of hair was in reality a compact herd of composting worms that writhed and twisted slowly around and through the stolid skull. A palpable fetidness that oozed from every pore made the herdsman glad he had not eaten since morning, and then very little. Yet for all the quiet horror of his revealed self, Corruption exhibited no excitement at his new guest’s realization, belched no bellow of putrefying triumph. He remained quiet and courteous. Ehomba found this only natural, patience being an important component of the nature of corruption.
“What do you want from us?” he inquired of their host.
Eyes that seethed like the sewage system of a great city turned to him, and maggots spilled from cracked lips. “What your friend said: for you to rot. Don’t feel singled out or put upon. It is what I want everything to do.” Around him, the hut moaned as the molecules of which it was made slowly collapsed.
“I am afraid I do not have time for it,” Ehomba responded. “I have an obligation to fulfill and responsibilities to others.”
Cackling laughter bubbled up from noisome depths and the rankness of the room pressed close around him. On his left, Simna turned his head away from their host and gagged. He did not throw up only because he had done so earlier. Repeatedly.
“You have no choice in the matter.” Corruption was insistent. “You are rotten. All men are rotten. So is the rest of the world. It is true that I am spread thin, so it is a particular pleasure when I can give personal attention to individuals. I must say that I admire your calm. You will make a fine and entertaining guest until your tongue rots in your mouth and your lungs begin to putrefy.”
“I think not.”
Reaching back over his shoulder, Ehomba unsheathed the sky-metal blade and drew it across the tendrils that were growing into his sandals, feet, and legs. Normal steel they would have resisted, but against an edge drawn from the absolute purity of space they had no resistance. Corruption’s dull eyes were incapable of registering surprise, but they focused more intently on the tall man who now straightened atop the pile of dung.
“Hey bruther, don’t forget me!” Simna ibn Sind struggled against his own fungal bonds. Bending over, Ehomba rapidly and efficiently cut him loose. The garrulous traveler rose gratefully and removed one of a pair of swords from a single scabbard slung across his back. Corruption looked on, unperturbed.
“Right now, that’s for you, you pile of shit!” As an opprobrium to Corruption, it was not very effective, but the apoplectic Simna was too excited and angry to hazard a more effective imprecation. Bringing his sword around and down in a swift arc, he swung at their host’s head.
The blade struck the neck and stuck there. Teeth clenched, Simna tried to pull it free, to no avail. As the two men looked on, rust bled from Corruption’s neck, crawling up the flat of the fine blade like water through a straw, turning the gleaming steel a dull red-brown right up to the bone haft. Bone and metal disintegrated simultaneously.
Taken aback but still full of fight, the emancipated traveler drew his second weapon and crouched warily. “Clever it is then, but I warn you: I’m not going to rot quietly.”
“Everything rots quietly.” Corruption placed the tips of moldering, sausagelike fingers together. “Whatever you do will only put off the inevitable.”
“That is true,” observed Ehomba.
Simna turned on him quickly, eyes a little wider, stance more tense than a moment before. “Hoy, what’s that? You agree with this perversion? Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“The side of life,” Ehomba assured him, “but that does not mean I cannot see things as others see them.” He met the putrid gaze of their host without flinching. “Even Corruption.”
“You are a man of the Earth.” The thickset figure was bloating before their eyes, swelling with gas and putrescence, threatening to explode all over them. “I will miss your company.”
“And I will not miss yours.” Reaching into a pocket of his kilt, Ehomba felt of the beach pebbles there. They were not all he had brought along to remind him of home. What he wanted, he remembered, was in his other pocket.
He came out with a handful of ... dirt. Simna stared at it in disbelief. “What are you gonna do with that? Offer to plant some mushrooms? This is a helluva time to be thinking about gardening!” He clutched the handle of his blade tightly in both hands, knuckles whitening.
Eyes that had become pools of scummed-over sewer seepage focused on the handful. “Even small contributions to the state of decomposition are always welcome. But it will not buy you your freedom.”
“The Naumkib do not pay bribes.” So saying, Ehomba threw the dirt at their implacably malodorous host.
It struck where the ballooning chest had been—with no apparent effect. The crouching, poised Simna was openly contemptuous. “Well now, that was useful! What was that you were trying to do, force him to take a bath? It’s done nothing at all.”
The herdsman did not comment, just stood and watched as Corruption continued to swell. And swell, and swell, until he filled half the hut. Now it was Simna’s eyes that widened.
“I think—I think maybe we ought to get out of here and reflect on the situation from a distance, bruther.” He turned to run. Though curious, Ehomba recognized the sense of the other man’s aside and turned to join him. Within the room, the stench of rotten eggs had become overpowering.
They reached the door just as Corruption exploded, spewing every imaginable kind and variety of filth and muck in all directions. This mephitic fusillade struck them from behind as they threw themselves out the door and onto the porch. The discharge would have swallowed them up had not the wood of the porch been rotted through. It collapsed beneath their weight and they tumbled onto the heavily vegetated slope below. Decaying bushes broke under their fall, cushioning their descent. Healthy growths would have cut and torn at them. Corruption, Ehomba mused as he rolled to a halt, really did have its uses.
Simna was up and on his feet, sword in hand, with commendable speed. He stared up at the hut through the gap their bodies had made in the rotted porch. Very little was left of the building, most of the walls and all of the roof having been blown away by the explosion. What was left was encased in a coating of solid—well, corruption. Above them, nothing moved.
Breathing hard, Simna turned to look at his taller companion. Ehomba had picked himself up and was wiping distastefully at the mire with which he was covered. When he saw Simna staring at him, panting slowly and evenly, he smiled.
Simna grimaced huffily. “What in Gorath are you squinting at, traveler?”
“You are a mess.” Ehomba’s smile widened.
The other man looked down at his coat of exceptional filth. When his gaze rose again, he too was grinning. “S’truth, I am, aren’t I? And you—if you sought refuge in a pig sty, the hogs would throw you out and hold their noses while doing it!” He started to chuckle.
“I have no doubt,” Ehomba admitted.
The swordsman nodded upward. “That wasn’t dirt you threw at our late unlamented host, was it?” Eager curiosity burned in his expression. “It was some kind of magic grit, or powdered thrall. Are you a sorcerer?”
Ehomba shook his head dolefully. “I am only a herdsman, from the south.”
“Yeah, yeah, so you said. But what was that stuff?”
“Just as I explained: dirt.” Ehomba eyed the obliterated hut speculatively. “But it was clean dirt, free of corruption, from my home village. In a desert country, soil that is good enough to grow food in is revered. It is a precious thing, and looked after with care. For what is more magical than the ability to bring forth food from the bare earth?” He nodded up the slope. “I kept it with me as a remembrance of my home. It came from a small plot that my wife tended that had been many times blessed by Oura, the mother of Asab,
our chief. She is a wise woman, and skilled in the ways of the earth. I did not think its purity would suit Corruption.”
“Suit him? By Girun, it gave him a damned bellyache, it did!” Simna started upward, fighting the slippery slope with renewed energy. “Now let’s get after it.”
“Get after it?” The herdsman frowned. “Get after what?”
“Why, his treasure, of course.” Simna eyed him as if he had suddenly gone daft. “Everyone knows that wherever Corruption lingers for very long there is treasure. There are all kinds of corruption, you know. Somewhere up there should be a hoard of riches amassed from the morally corrupt, from crooked magistrates and bent politicians and backdoor guards.”
Ehomba wanted nothing to do with any treasure that had been gathered by Corruption. But as always, his curiosity tugged at him more powerfully than common sense. “I thought you were traveling in search of inner peace?”
Using broken stems and branches to pull himself up the steep slope, Simna ibn Sind smirked back at him. “Gold pieces first, my friend. Inner peace later.”
“I do not agree with your priorities,” Ehomba grumbled as he followed behind.
The shorter man leaped slightly to grab a thick root protruding from the hillside. With the agility of a gibbon, he pulled himself up and continued ascending. “You saved my life, Etjole. So I’m not going to argue with you. But I give you fair warning right now: Whatever happens, don’t ever try to get between me and treasure.”
“I have no interest in treasure,” the herdsman replied softly.
“Hoy, right, that’s what they all say.”
But as he continued to climb, the compact swordsman was less sure of himself, just as he was less than certain of his quiet-voiced companion. An odd duck for sure, he thought. The concern did not linger. There was treasure to be unearthed and he was going to find it—even if it meant digging through untold layers of exploded, accumulated foulness.
Carnivores of Darkness and Light: Journeys of the Catechist, Book 1 Page 10