The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  Vdhitz made an almost-Human Spsom version of a shrug, and sheathed his knife, followed by Shchifr. Clellendol coiled his rope, and said, half under his breath, “Does anyone imagine that we have much choice, here?” There was no answer, but the rest reluctantly got to their feet. He continued, “These are dangerous, as you see . . . but I prefer these and the unknown west to those who came from the east.”

  The one who had motioned did not understand Clellendol’s words, but he seemed to comprehend the motion of the group easily enough. Without further word, he nodded, and turned back to the west, moving along an almost-invisible path with effortless, graceful motion. His compatriots stood aside to let the group pass. And one by one, they followed the gaunt newcomer down the rocks, and onto a rolling plain spreading before them into the west, seemingly without limit.

  5

  “It is not enough to dip the Magus in the Styx; he must be thrown in and left to sink or swim.”

  —A.C.

  NOW IT WAS getting on into the afternoon; Meure awoke with a sudden jerk of his head. He was sitting in the shade cast by an eccentric, two-wheeled wagon which was apparently pulled by two of what appeared to be very large and very stupid men. The others were still about him nearby, in similar positions; Halander was curled protectively about Ingraine Deffy, more under the wagon, in the shade. It was warmish. The rest were nearby, and Audiart was closer to the front of the wagon, half in the sunlight, the orange cast to the sunlight coppering her hair. She was awake, staring out into empty prairies, her face expressionless, her thoughts manifestly elsewhere.

  Meure shaded his eyes against the brightness of the sky, which was a deeper blue than seemed natural to him; deeper blue, but also curiously opaque, instead of transparent like an evening sky might have been on Tancred. . . . It was only then that he began to understand that he was now in a different circumstance, truly on a new world, in a new world, a different universe. In the ship, they could pretend that they had retained the old with them, but without it, things were different.

  The land rolled away to the distances, covered with a wiry, bluish vegetation that suggested grass, but wasn’t. Here and there, small, meaningless features broke the open spaces; a dwarfed and stunted tree, a rockpile. Clouds drifted across the sky, the kind he had always associated with summer and fair weather; well-defined puffs, whose edges were as solid in appearance as the land beneath. Many were darkish along their lower edges, and one, far to the north, seemed to be trailing a veil of rain, which trailed out into nothing high above the ground.

  One of the tall creatures they had accompanied was visible far to the rear of the wagon, squatting motionless and impassive in the sunlight, its hood completely shadowing its face. Meure thought it was not the girl he had seen in the morning, although he could not say precisely how he thought he knew this. He could not see the creature’s face, nor its eyes, but he was sure it was watching them. Where was Flerdistar? He looked about in apprehension: where were the two Spsom? The furry slave?

  Meure stood up awkwardly, stiff in all his joints from the hard ground, and the wheel he had been leaning on. If the guard cared, he evidenced no sign. Meure looked about; some distance to the front of the wagon, a frail sunshade had been erected, slung between poles driven into the ground at outward-leaning angles. Perhaps the spears he had seen the tall ones carrying. There were the rest; he could make them out clearly, and some others he had not seen before, different from the tall hunters. If he listened carefully, he could make out the distant hum of their voices, although of the hum he made no words. But the tone of their voices reassured him; they were neither hasty nor angry. Each seemed to speak in turn, carefully and slowly.

  For an instant, the idea of escape crossed his mind; of just walking away, then perhaps running. . . . He did not know where he would run to, and he was certain that he would not get very far, should the hunters decide to follow him. Meure remembered how the people with the cleft upper lips seemed to fear even one of the hunters; perhaps this was justified by past experiences. He decided that he did not wish to test how tight were their invisible bonds.

  He glanced toward the tent, and saw that the meeting seemed to be breaking up, casually enough; the tall hunters withdrew to confer among themselves. Meure could make out the angular shapes of the two Spsom, still engaged with a group of three of the tall ones, apparently communicating mostly through sign language. One of the hunters handed Shchifr his spear, which the Spsom captain hefted experimentally, then demonstrated his style of throwing it. The hunters seemed to think the style as odd as the alien shape of their visitor, but they could find no fault with Shchifr’s accuracy, for he had hit the little bush he had aimed for exactly, the spear now standing, rigidly vibrating, driven into the wood. After a moment, more sign language ensued, which seemed to be an earnest discussion about hunting, or some similar activity. Meure had not known the Spsom hunted; indeed, he could think of very little that he did know about them, of themselves.

  Flerdistar and Clellendol returned to the wagon, accompanied by one of the hunters, and two of the strangers, one stocky and beefy-faced, the other thin and rather stern in appearance, bearing a shock of disorderly iron-gray hair; both were dressed in well-worn garments resembling undecorated bathrobes—simple wraparounds with a cloth sash to hold the front closed, which fell to the knee. Both wore what seemed to be crude, but serviceable stockings and heavy sandals. Unlike the hunters, neither seemed to be a figure of fear or awe, although judging by the expressions and gestures of the hunters, and the Ler young people, they were certainly figures of respect, men of influence, at least locally.

  Flerdistar excused herself from the group and joined those waiting at the wagon. She saw they were indeed attentive, so she began at once, “For the moment, we can relax somewhat, if any of you are inclined to harbor morbid thoughts. We are in no immediate danger from these, so long as none of us makes a rash move, such as an escape attempt. These people are nomads who call themselves the Haydar. The best I can tell, they are one of the original Klesh stocks, and their folklore is extensive and elaborate. They have maintained their way of life with little change since the beginning here; with them alone I should spend the remainder of my life. But that is neither here nor there. They bear us no hostility, but as nomads, they cannot keep us, and only the Spsom are capable of joining the hunt with them, so we will . . . not remain here.”

  Audiart asked, “Where are we?”

  “On Monsalvat, on the continent Kepture, as we suspected. We are in a portion of Kepture, somewhat to the west and south, which is called Ombur. North and east is another land called Incana. It is there that we will go, I think. The names do not refer to countries, or governmental organizations, or anything like that. Time is long, here, and the various lands have collected names through the years. We await now the return of the girl from the hunt; she is, in effect, the Shaman of this particular group. She is the one who memorizes the epics of the Haydar and reads the omens. The leader of this band wishes to remove us from this area, but he must allow her to cast the omen and ratify his decision.”

  Flerdistar paused, then began again, “They seem amazed that we do not fear them. Even explained as simple ignorance, they still regard us as people of extreme self-control. By all means, do nothing to suggest otherwise. That way lies safety. And you may be sorely tempted to break, for these are an abrupt people who make hard decisions.”

  She continued, “These other two belong to a class of wandering intermediaries, whose function it apparently is to communicate between groups who detest one another. The general rule is that they may not be harmed, robbed, detained or made hostage except in very specific circumstances, upon which I would not now care to speculate.

  “The speech here was Singlespeech at one time, but with the change-fulness of Humans, it has undergone much development. I urge you to learn it as fast as you can assimilate it. There are also many other variants, which I would class as cult jargon, tribal lore-speech, and functional la
nguages. Most of the people here will be fluent in at least three or four basic patterns appropriate to their station, and the intermediaries will of course be conversant in more.”

  Meure ventured, “Are there cities, towns? Or is the whole planet wild?”

  “There are . . . cities, although when we see one, I think we will not call it so. Places where men gather. Communities, places of safety, of defense. No land is under the control of any one ruler, but is divided many ways. There are no borders here, no frontiers, no lines of demarcation, no customs-collectors. Things change on Monsalvat, which by the way, they call ‘Aceldama.’ They know the name ‘Monsalvat,’ but they prefer the other.” She sighed deeply. “We have, indeed, much to learn, much to take with us.”

  Halander added, “If we survive to greet the Ilini Visk, a year from now.”

  Flerdistar looked away, and said, “We have to learn that, too; and it may be a hard lesson. Be perceptive. And flexible. It will be as hard on you as on us! Never have I met so much diversity suggested in their speech: each tribe here is as different from another as we are from the Spsom, and they know even more aberrant groups in lands farther away. But for the present, be as comfortable as possible. Rest. Events will permutate tonight, and we will see . . .”

  Meure was not thinking anything specific, just listening to Flerdistar, but a sudden flash idea flickered across his mind, so rapidly he almost missed it; even so, having caught the fugitive thread, he struggled with it for a time to put it into speakable order.

  “Liy Flerdistar, do you have any idea what we can do until the Ilini Visk comes for us?”

  He knew as he said it that he had made it too general, too comprehensible. Thus she had missed it. What he wanted to say, his mind was screaming, and which he did not dare speak aloud for fear of alarming the hunters, was more. It was, if the sample we see before us is accurate, there is not place for us here. Here, on Monsalvat-Aceldama,—whichever it was, there are the various tribes, none of which we resemble, who heartily despise one another at the best, and eat one another at worst. Or perhaps that is not the worst. At any rate, we must survive. To survive, we must find matching tribes, and be scattered to the four winds. Rescue! The terrifying thing was that Flerdistar, now the ostensible leader of the group, did not even see that there was a problem. She was totally wrapped in what she was reading in these people.

  She answered casually, “In the land Incana is an historic strongpoint. We must get off these empty plains. Empty lands on Monsalvat are lands in contention. For the moment, we have powerful protectors, and we must contrive to keep them until we can reach a place of greater security. One step at a time.”

  Meure nodded, then looked away from her. It was reasonable enough, on the surface. Problem: get out of Ombur. Solution: get these natives to take them to another place. Then we figure where to go from there. Meure could not imagine it: He looked out again over the empty plains, the rolls, the bareness, the sky. He couldn’t bring himself to say he liked it, but he was sure he wanted to live, and he understood something about Monsalvat immediately, without being told it: that whatever any of them did here, in this place and time, it would initiate consequences immediately. He knew nothing of what lay west and south; he feared the rabbit-faced people of the East. Wrong, wrong, to go north, into this Incana. And even as he became sure of the wrongness of it, he knew that they would go there.

  Flerdistar gathered them all together, save the Spsom, and the little creature who had been a Spsom slave, and commended them to the care of a third member of the negotiators, a misshapen, troll-like man with enormous arms and a broad, evil grin, who appeared from the rear portion of the wagon at a motion from the gray-haired man, bearing a basket loaded with flat biscuits and slivers of some cured meat, which he began passing out, naming each item as he passed it. This was to be their instructor. Meure turned his attention to the newcomer, began to listen with growing interest. He did not care so much for the mission of the Ler, who had hired them, nor the concerns of the Spsom, who had flown and lost the ship. Here was survival. Meure saw in this troll, not a freak, but a halfbreed, or even misbreed, who had survived. He would be worth listening to.

  Now the day was softening into twilight; at first the shadows had lengthened, but as they grew longer, they softened and merged. Meure had been, for a reason obscure to himself, avoiding the direct light of the star-pair Bitirme. Somehow, he didn’t want to see the close binary. Now he thought he could, with a head full of Aceldaman lore, as much as he could digest. He reflected on that, too. Of them all, he seemed to pay the closest attention to the manservant, Benne. The rest, Audiart, Halander, Ingraine, all seemed repulsed by the troll-like figure and crude mannerisms, but Meure had sat and listened and repeated the strange words, many with disturbing hints of the familiar in them, and listened closely to the meaning of what Benne was teaching them. Eunuch and misbred he might be, but there was a fine, honed mind behind that lowering forehead, and many years of survival behind him. More, he was a natural teacher, starting with the immediate and practical and expanding spirally into steadily more complex ideas. Meure knew his new vocabulary was insufficient, that his grasp of the structure of the language was equal now only to the most primitive needs, but he had a little base he could now expand himself. The others?

  Meure stood, stretched deeply in the cooling air, and stepped out, away from the wagon, more properly, he thought, into the environment of Monsalvat itself. The Haydar watching them turned its head to observe him, briefly, then turned back to its original position.

  Far off in the west, Bitirme was sinking into veils of high cirrus clouds, spreading its orange-tinted light across a violet sky. The star now appeared to be distinctly ovoid. Before him ranged the seemingly endless plains of Ombur, rolling gently away into the uttermost west. The plains were still and quiet, supernaturally so; Meure could hear tiny sounds he would not normally be aware of. He thought he could hear the grass that was not grass growing. The strange men who had been hitched to the clumsy wagon had been sitting awkwardly, still in the traces of the wagon, but now they were beginning to stir, to make little grunting noises to one another. They were the most curious of all he had seen so far: giants in stature, with heavy-boned, gross features, pale waxy skin, stringy, limp blond hair, and expressions of blankness on their homely faces. Sumpters, Benne had called them, enumerating various creatures native to this part of Kepture, or domesticated here. Odd, that: Benne had not referred to them as a tribe, but had listed them with the animals. But then he had not included the rabbit-faced people, the Lagostomes, in his list of Humans, either.

  Meure looked about, more widely—Flerdistar and Clellendol and the two intermediaries, and the Ler elders were still holding an earnest converse behind the wagon, while over by the sunshade, Spsom, Vzyekhr, and Haydar were carefully taking down the covering which had shaded them in the day. Audiart and the other two were still by the wagon.

  Far off, from the southeast, he heard a series of howls, first one alone, then that echoed by an irregular chorus. The Haydar remaining in the vicinity of the wagon immediately stopped what they were doing and turned their heads to listen to the howls. Meure could hear no words in the far-off faint sounds, but he could hear a difference from the chilling call he had heard the girl use this morning. Whatever information the howls carried, it seemed to please the Haydar hunters, for they returned to their task with seeming enjoyment, their dour watchfulness changing into an odd joyousness. Some gathered, and produced firemaking tools from their voluminous robes, and began kindling a fire. On this they laid longish chunks of some dark substance. Meure searched the horizon in the direction of the howls, but he saw nothing. The darkness was falling fast, now. Bitirme was below the horizon.

  He looked to the sky in the east, sensing some movement there, he thought. The first stars were beginning to shine there. But he saw nothing. All was quiet. The distant howling stopped. Now he turned back to the wagon and started toward it, to rejoin the others. There was s
omething he had to tell Audiart, something she seemed to need, although it was obvious to him that she was older and more experienced than he.

  It was still evening quiet, each sound magnified; in this quiet he heard a rushing noise high up, faint, rhythmic. Looking up, he caught sight of a group of the odd two-winged creatures he had seen this morning: about ten or so, in cruise configuration, with forward wings partially folded, heading westward. A sudden fear crossed him; but when he looked back down to the Haydars, they seemed unconcerned, looking up, then returning to the matter at hand, as if they had expected them. Eratzenasters, Benne had called them. Meure looked back. The eratzenasters were slowing, descending, and one of the larger ones seemed to be carrying something on its dorsal surface. The light was uncertain now, and he couldn’t be sure.

  The creatures expanded their forward wings now, and continued to descend, turning southerly, and then circling back, approaching the ground reluctantly, steepening their angle of attack, the lead wings beginning to flap at the air in anticipation of a stall. The smaller ones were now close to the ground, and settled onto it with an awkward motion, part fall, part glide, part stall. They seemed to kill their forward motion by running along the ground on unseen limbs beneath the stiff wings. The larger ones took longer, made more shallow approaches, landed with more skill. The largest one landed most delicately, as if it did not wish to dislodge that which was aboard it. The payload moved, sat upright, legs straddling the narrow midsection of the eratzenaster. There was no mistaking who it was: it was the girl who had hunted the Lagostomes, still as nude as she had been when she had begun the hunt.