“Perhaps we would understand better,” Ahlitah put in from behind him, “if you told us what this ‘whater’ is? Or was.”
Ehomba nodded agreeably. “Before I set out on this journey, the women of my village gave me several things to carry with me, to help me along the way. Old Fhastal, clever Likulu, bright-eyed Omura; even my own woman, Mirhanja, helped. It is a tradition among the Naumkib that when a warrior leaves for any length of time, the women get together to bundle useful items for him to take with him.” His gaze angled downward once more, toward the remnants of the Dunawake. “Sadly, that was my only bottle of whater.” He started down the dune, positioning his body sideways as he descended, the better to balance himself against the shifting sand.
Simna simply walked straight down, paralleling his friend and exhibiting the remarkable physical poise of which he was capable. The four-footed Ahlitah, of course, had no trouble at all with the steep slope. Not nearly as agile as his companions, Ehomba stumbled several times in the course of the descent.
“This whater,” the cat asked, “what does it do?” The maned head nodded tersely in the direction of the neatly disassociated dunes. “What did it do?”
“It was for purifying water.” Ehomba stepped over a rock that protruded from the lower dune face. “The women say that one drop of whater will make an entire basin of water fit for drinking. It purifies liquid by separating out all the dirt and scum and little bugs we cannot see from the water itself.”
A much puzzled Simna wore a deep frown. “‘Little bugs we cannot see’?”
Herdsman and cat ignored him.
“So that’s what you did to the Dunawake,” Ahlitah mused aloud. “You ‘purified’ it.”
“Into its individual parts.” They were almost down, stepping back onto the hard, unyielding, blissfully motion-free bed of the ravine where the monstrous apparition had almost had them trapped. “In this instance, the sum of the parts is much less than the whole. A man would be no less,” he added thoughtfully, “if he were similarly purified. Skeleton here, blood there, muscles in one pile, and organs in another.”
Simna’s mouth twisted. “Now there’s a pretty picture. Remind me not to go sampling the contents of any other bottles you happen to be carrying.”
“That was my only whater.” Ehomba gestured at the half-full floating pond Ahlitah continued to tow. “We had better hope we always find good water from now on, because I have nothing left with which to launder the undrinkable.”
“You did the right thing, Etjole. By Girimza, you did!” The swordsman clapped his friend reassuringly on the back. “Clean water’s no good to a corpse.”
“Hold up.” Ahlitah lifted a paw and sniffed the air. “We are still not alone here.”
Startled, Simna reached instinctively for his sword even though it had proven ineffectual against their last opponent. Then he relaxed. Relaxed, even though he was no less disconcerted.
Ehomba handled the unexpected confrontation with his usual sangfroid, smiling and nodding at the figure that now blocked their path.
“Hello, Loswee. I did not expect to see you again.”
As the Swick’s feathered mount advanced toward the travelers, a dozen other miniature mounted warriors trotted out from their place of concealment behind a pile of sand-swept rocks. Brightly tinted pennants flew from the tips of their lances, and they were clad in decorative ceremonial armor.
Leaning forward in his saddle, Loswee stared at the travelers for a long moment before sitting back and gesturing at something behind them. “For not-a-magician you seem to have not-dealt pretty well with the is-no-more Dunawake.”
“It wasn’t him,” Simna interjected sarcastically. “It was just a bottle of whater that did that.”
“Thum,” murmured the Swick fighter. “It would be pointless for me to argue with you about your true natures. The People of the Sands do not care. What matters is that the Dunawake is done and the dreadful, persistent threat of it has been removed. For this deed you will live forever in the hearts of the Swick. One last time, I salute you.”
He raised his lance as high as if he wished to pierce the sky itself. Behind him, his resplendent escort echoed the gesture. Five times they did this, each time giving forth a piercing ululation that seemed to rise up from the depths of the surrounding sand itself. Then they turned to go.
“Strange the ways of coincidence, is it not?” Ehomba watched the long tail feathers of the warriors’ mounts bob up and down as they filed back behind the rocks from where they had emerged.
“What?” A bemused Simna turned to look up at his friend. “What coincidence?”
With a sigh, the herdsman started forward, formally resuming their trek northward and using his spear for support, like a tall walking stick. “The little people wanted us to fight the Dunawake for them. We refused, and so after wining and dining us they graciously bid us on our way. They even told us the easiest way to go to reach the lands to the north. Told us even though we did not ask directions from them. Soon after leaving, we run right into the Dunawake.” Glancing over at the swordsman, he did something Simna had not seen him do very often. He laughed aloud: not only with his mouth, but with his eyes.
“Face it, my friend. We have been played the way a master musician plays his flute.”
Simna’s expression darkened. “Are you telling me, bruther ... ?”
“That we have been the victims of a Swick trick.” And the herdsman chortled afresh.
Realization landed on the swordsman like the news of an unwanted pregnancy. “Why, those miserable little, lying-lipped, arse-mouthed, flat-faced fuggers!” Raising his voice, eyes wild, Simna drew his sword and rushed toward the pile of rocks where the diminutive warriors had disappeared. “I’ll kill you all! I’ll cut off your hairy ears and feed them to the scorpions!”
With an indifferent snuffle, Ahlitah changed direction until he was pacing the long-striding Ehomba. “He doesn’t get it, does he?”
The herdsman shrugged diffidently. “Simna’s a good man. He is just a little impulsive.”
“A little too human, you mean.” The big cat sniffed derisively. The penetrating yellow eyes of a great feline predator peered into Ehomba’s face from only a foot away. Hunting, searching. “And you?”
The herdsman pursed his lips. “I do not follow you.”
“What are you, Etjole Ehomba? Are you all human? Or is this a mask you choose to wear to fool the rest of us? I am thinking that the Swick are not the only ones who are good at tricks.”
The rangy southerner smiled comfortingly as he poled the hard ground with the butt of his long spear the way a sailor would dig his paddle into water. “I am only a man, Ahlitah. I am only what you see here walking beside you.”
“I will accept that—for now.” With that, the litah moved away, the hovering pond bobbing along behind him as he put a little distance between them. Ehomba watched him with interest. For one who slept as long and often as the litah, very little escaped the big cat’s notice.
Simna ranted and raged among the rocks for only a moment or two before resigning himself to the fact that his intended quarry had fled. More than fled, they had disappeared, utterly vanished from sight. Even the footprints of their mounts had evaporated like mist in the desert air. Muttering to himself as he resheathed his sword, he rejoined his companions.
“The little buggers are fast, but I didn’t think they were that fast.” He shook an angry fist at the dunes and wadi behind them. “What I wouldn’t give for one small gray neck under my fingers!”
“Yes, they are fast.” Ahlitah’s black lower lip curled upward. “That’d make it a quick slick Swick trick, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, shut up, you imprecise venter of stinking bodily fluids!”
Still grinning in its sly cat fashion, the litah did not respond.
“They did what they felt was necessary for their survival.” Ehomba tried to mollify his companion.
“Their survival?” The swordsman jabbed a
thumb into his chest. “They didn’t give a sparrow’s fart for our survival!”
“The grand welcome they gave us, mere passing strangers. The escorts and the tours, the singing and the feasts, giving freely, even extravagantly, of their food and drink. Did you think that was all done out of impulsive friendship?”
Simna’s anger dissipated as he considered the herdsman’s words. Eventually, he nodded agreement. “Yes, you’re right, Etjole. I, of all people, should have known better. I suppose it was their size that fooled me. Who would have guessed that their appetite for treachery was as great as their ability to build structures out of sand?” With that admission the last of his fury fled as effortlessly as it had originally consumed him, and he was his old self again.
“Clever little dumplings, weren’t they? I’ll know better next time. From now on I, Simna ibn Sind, won’t accept hospitality from a mouse without first questioning its ulterior motives.”
“I understand why they did what they did.”
The swordsman glanced up at his friend. “You take their side? ‘What they did’ nearly got us killed!”
“I know. But if it was my village at stake, my family, all my friends, everyone I had ever known, I would also do whatever was necessary to save it. At such times, under such circumstances, expediency always takes precedence over honor.”
Simna drew himself up to his full height. “For a true hero, nothing takes place over honor!”
“Then you can be the hero, Simna. I want only to discharge my obligation and return as quickly as possible to my family and to my village. That is what is important to me. That is what I have built my life around. Not abstract notions of what may or may not be considered acceptable behavior among those I do not care for and do not know.” He nodded back the way they had come, back toward the silent dunes and their sand-locked, unseen mysteries. “That is how the Swick believe. I cannot condemn them for acting exactly as I would have under similar circumstances.”
The swordsman snorted. “Then you’ll never be a hero, Etjole. You’ll never ride in triumph through the streets of a great city, acknowledging the acclamation of the crowd and the eyes of pretty women. You’ll never be a noble in your own land, much less a king lording it over others.”
The lanky southerner was not in the least offended by his companion’s dismissive summation. “I have no desire to lord it over even my children, friend Simna. As for drawing the eyes of pretty women, I have never thought myself the type to do so, and would not know how to react if I did. Besides, I already have the eyes of the one woman who means anything to me. As for riding through the streets of a great city, I am content to walk, and am satisfied in place of cheers to receive the occasional ‘Good morning’ and ‘How are you?’ These things are enough for me.”
“You have no ambition, bruther,” the swordsman groused at him.
“On the contrary, my friend, my aspirations are considerable. I desire greatly to live a long and healthy life in the company of my woman, to see my children raised up strong and of kindly mien, to have always, or at least most of the time, enough to eat, to continue to be able to watch over my animals, to enjoy the company of my friends and relations, and to walk once again along the edge of the sea, listening to its song and smelling of its perfume.” His eyes glistened. “That, I think, should be enough for any man.” Slipping his free hand into a pocket, he felt of the pebble-filled cloth bag there, wondering how much of the sea-smell still clung to the shiny rock fragments.
They walked in silence for some time before a wide grin came to dominate the swordsman’s face, wiping out the indifference that had been extant there. “Hoy, now I see.” He shook his head and guffawed delightedly. “Oh, you’re good, good it is you are, Etjole Ehomba! You had me going for a while there. It’s a clever, clever magician you are, but you can’t fool me! Not Simna ibn Sind. I’ve been tested in the marketplaces of wily Harquarnastan, and gone toe-to-toe with the shrewd and shifty barkers of the Yirt-u-Yir plateau. But I’ll grant you this: You’re the subtlest and sneakiest of the lot!” He executed a joyful little pirouette, dancing out the delight of his personal revelation. Ahlitah looked on with distaste.
“‘Have enough to eat.’ ‘Walk along the edge of the sea.’ Oh surely, sorcerer, surely! As a cover it’s brilliant, as a mask unsurpassed. No one will think anything more of you, humble master of steer and sheep that you are. What a masquerade! Better than pretending to be a merchant, or storyteller, or unoffending pilgrim.” While walking backward in the direction they were headed, he executed several mock bows, making a dance of it as he repeatedly raised and lowered his head and his outstretched arms.
“I concede to you the title Wizard of the Incognito, o masterful one! Herder of goats and sovereign of infants; that shall be your designation until the treasure is ours.” Resuming his normal gait, he fell in step alongside his friend while Ahlitah padded along opposite. “You almost had me fooled, Etjole.”
“Yes,” the herdsman responded with a heartfelt sigh, “I can see that you are not a man to be easily deceived.” He focused on a lizard that was scampering into a burrow off to their left. It was blue, with bright pink stripes and a yellow-spotted head.
“Just so long as you realize that,” Simna replied importantly. “Hoy, but I’ll be glad to get out of this desert!”
“The desert, the cleanness and the dunes, is all beautiful.”
“Speak for yourself, devotee of dry nowheres.”
“Yes.”
Lifting his head, the litah let loose with a long, mournful owrooooo. It echoed back and forth among the dune slopes, escaping their sandy surroundings far faster than could they. When it was finished, the big cat eyed his human companions. “In this I side with the swordsman. I love tall grass and shady thickets, running water and lots of fat, slow animals.”
“Then why are we lingering here?” A cheerful, composed Simna looked over at the great black feline. “So this long-faced drink of dark water can set the pace? If we let him determine it, we’ll find ourselves dawdling in this accursed country until the end of time.” With that he broke into a jog, stepping easily and effortlessly out in front of the others.
Despite the burden imposed by the hovering pond he was towing, Ahlitah stretched out his remarkable cheetah-like legs and matched the man’s pace effortlessly. Ehomba watched them for a moment before extending his own stride. It would be useless to tell them that he had wanted to move faster all along, but had held himself back out of concern for their welfare. It was better this way, he knew. Healthier for Simna to have made the decision.
He did not smile at the way events had progressed. There was no particular gratification in knowing all along what was going to happen.
XXV
The Tale of the Lost Tree
THE TREE DID NOT REMEMBER MUCH OF WHAT HAD HAPPENED, or even when it had happened. It was all so very long ago. It had been nothing more than a sapling, a scrawny splinter of wood only a few feet high, with no girth to shield it from the elements, no thick layer of tough bark to protect it from marauding browsers.
Despite that, it had thrived. The soil in which it had taken root as a seed was deep and rich, the weathered kind, with ample rain and not too much snow. It had neither frozen in winter nor burned in summer. Though it lost leaves to hungry insects, this was a normal, natural part of maturing, and it compensated by putting out more leaves than any of the other saplings in its immediate vicinity. As a consequence of insect infestation, several of the others died before they could become more than mere shoots.
The tree did not. It survived, in company with several of its neighbors. In spite of the fact that they had all taken root at the same time, two of them were taller. Others were smaller.
Growth was a never-ending struggle as they all strove to gain height and diameter. Though ever-present and never ceasing, competition from others of their kind was silent, as was the nature of trees. In its fourth year one of its neighbors fell prey to hungry deer during a particularl
y long and cold winter. They stripped the bark from the young growth, leaving it naked and unprotected, and when spring next came around it was easy prey for boring beetles. Another succumbed to the benign but deadly attentions of a bear with an itch. Scratching itself against the youthful bole, it snapped it in half, leaving it broken and dying, its heartwood exposed to the callous, indifferent elements.
But this tree was lucky. Large animals left it alone, insects found others in the vicinity more to their liking, birds chose not to strip its young twigs for nest-building material. Every spring it budded fiercely, fighting to throw out new leaves and to photosynthesize sugars before they could be consumed. Every winter it lay dormant and still, hoping the migrating herds would leave it alone.
Then, just when survival and long life seemed assured, disaster struck.
It happened late in autumn and took the form not of anything with blood in its veins but of a vast and powerful storm. The terrifying weather swept up the coast of the land where the tree grew, destroying everything in its path that was unable to resist. Even some of the great old trees that formed the bulk of the forest mass where the tree lived were not immune. Unprecedented winds roared down off the slopes of the western mountains, descending like an invisible avalanche. As they fell, the winds picked up speed and volume.
Trees that had stood for a thousand years were blown over, their roots left exposed and naked to the world. Others lost dozens or even hundreds of minor branches and many major ones. The forest floor was swept clean as leaves, logs, mushrooms, insects and spiders, even small animals, were sucked up and whirled away.
The sapling held fast as long as it could, but its shallow, young roots were no match for the unparalleled violence of the storm. It found itself ripped up into the sky, where it joined the company of thousands of tons of other debris. Since the storm had struck in autumn, the tree had already shut down in anticipation of the coming winter. Sap was concentrated in its heartwood, waiting for the warmth of spring to send it coursing freely once more throughout the length and breadth of the young growth.
Carnivores of Darkness and Light: Journeys of the Catechist, Book 1 Page 25