Monsters filled the forest. Twice Demane tore away at a dead run and Captain paced him, half a step behind. Twice again, he held them both flat to the ground, while through the jungle nearby some colossus passed unseen, the earth and trees quaking with fourfooted booms, and they lying under the thickets, with breath held, or scarcely breathing.
Only one of them could perceive the wizard cat’s wake. Only one of them could track the sign under leafy darkness, through mist and rain, and see them safely past every peril. And so no talk, no conflict, entered into who would boldly lead, who meekly follow. The trail took them as much from glade to glade as between worlds. Aunty would have been proud. Demane learned miracles she’d never taught, and learned them on his feet, at speed.
. . . breathing in the minutely floating odorants left by the jukiere’s passage. Molecules mixed on his tongue with secretions of the pineal gland—which, in the Wildeeps, was no longer a rare ichor to eke out in meager drops. Here, his third eye abundantly replenished itself. The wonders he could work! Demane spat. The hot expectoration seethed onto the path ahead, and the way to the next world opened. An effluvious gate . . .
Even in deepest shadow of the understorey Demane was aware when infinities of scent suddenly vanished away, and myriad new odors bloomed over the space of a single step. Families of flora would regress to emergent infancy or advance to atrophied old age. Brethrens of beasts disappeared, and came back anew in strange variants. Nothing remained the same over distances, except the wizard’s vagrant trail. As the worlds changed, so did the times—by leaps of innumerate years: millennia of millennia, if such numbers existed.
. . . careful! There—a toad, beetle-small and searingly green as pond scum, crept on the path ahead. It so reeked of murderous fumes that Demane, though all but unpoisonable, had no wish to touch it. For another man to brush the tiny creature even glancingly would kill him on the spot. With the butt of his spear, Demane gouged the dirt and slung the virid speck, mud-engulfed, off the path where Captain’s foot (half naked in a sandal) would step a moment after his own . . .
. . . and the broadleaf canopy sealed above them. Though late morning, it was midnight on the forest floor—light in plenty, of course, for the eyes of a child of Tower TSIMTSOA. All this while, and from world to world, Captain had dogged Demane’s heels with the same lightly treading mimicry of a shadow. Now, he shook his hand loose; for just ahead the black-on-black brocade of the jungle shredded, with the tatters admitting sunlight. The captain went to this expanse of dappled foliage and, like some man parched with thirst ducking his face into a pool of water, thrust his head through the leaves to take some sun. According to the spoor, the jukiere had also stopped here not so long ago. Demane stepped up to the prospect beside Captain.
They stood atop a forested bluff, which commanded a view of valley, river running through, and surrounding ridges. At their feet the abrupt slope dropped off into depthless tangles of weed that overgrew the valley from end to end. This world or time was far ancestral to their own, Demane judged. Infusing the scent-drenched air was not one whiff of plant or animal known to him. Across the lush weedfields, in the middle distance, flowed a sludgy river. Sheersided crags, facelike, closed the valley in: the cliffs as smooth as cheeks, the dark bosky heights suggesting hair. One sight held both men captive. Sized so as to beggar comparison, some great vast beast extended its sinuous neck from the muddy waters of the river. If not the whole, could a much smaller part of its body be likened, then? The head was elephantine, and swept up to tree height in order to chew, and then down, to snatch immense tracts of greenery from the riverbank. And the beast’s head was minute beside the forehaunches which rose tremendously above the water’s surface.
“Something’s strange, D.” Captain murmured so softly he must have guessed the range of Demane’s hearing. “Have you seen how the forest keeps changing . . . ?” He took a step almost into full sunlight.
“Yeah—” The breeze shifted: charged with carnivorous reptile. Demane lunged, seized the captain, and drew him back under good cover.
“Tiger? Nearby?” He asked almost without sound. But Demane fiercely shook his head, and covered the captain’s mouth. He lifted his little finger to point down toward the river.
The leviathan fed. Hard by, some new prodigy erupted from the depths of weeds. This, by teeth and claws, was no eater of plants! From subtle creeping the monster launched upwards into the air. That leap could not have spanned half a league, surely, however far it seemed—some great distance, though: powered by hugely muscled legs many times the size of its short withered arms. Off the shore of the river there was a muddy island. . . . Ah, no: that was the weed-eater’s back! There, the other landed, claws furrowing through flesh; the fanged jaws snapped down for a mouthful that could have champed a rhino in two. An unspeakable live butchery commenced.
Here, it would help to have seen the Assumption of the Towers. Such a cataclysm! Tongues of fire licked the clouds; eruptions of steam such as the gods in bright ascent saw blot the sphere below them; tsunami, worldwide; and the isle itself dissolving as does a clump of wet sand, held in a child’s cupped palm which she then ducks, open, under the froth of an incoming wave. Or it would help to know as much of shock and awe as those farflung few, survivors of the long night of dragons, when the Assassin of Cities, Rain of Fire, Lightstorm, Death from Above, Utter Ruin, and Torrent of Thunderbolts brought low the empire of Daluça, capital and colonies, burning and blasting the flower of mortal civilization. But without a cheek or brow brushed by edgefeathers of the archangel’s wings, while you stood a witness to somesuch enormity and from so near, what hope of understanding what they felt?
This is what they saw:
The excavations of the carnivore sent up blasts like storm surge against a rocky headland. Oceanic and salty: though these waters were scarlet blood. Honks of the leviathan cracked back from the cliffs of the valley, echoing, and the outflow of its gore purpled the brown river. The breeze ripened, coating Demane’s tongue and filling his nose with odor and savor of snake’s blood, snake’s meat. He could hardly make out the captain’s mélange of earthling and stardust, though in his very arms. From roosts in the basalt visages—from eyes and nostrils—shadows of greatwinged manikins launched into the upper void.
The sky was cloudless and the river without fog, but throughout the valley a misty pall floated in the middle of the air. Those huge birds wheeled down from the cliff faces, down through suspended vapor, down into the lower clarity. There, they took shape as feathered crocodiles. Half the monstrous flock was bigger and more gaudily colored than the other. One by one the raptors, sized like little men, alighted on the bountiful carcass. Soon dozens of them sawed away with barbed bills. The flux of the river foamed pink and white around the behemoth as submerged scavengers began to feed.
Lord of them all, the twolegged dragon glutted itself, and lesser monsters scattered whereverfrom it wished to bite. Even the rocs, scaly titans, and river sharks couldn’t strip the meat off that mountain in the time the two of them stood watching; still, substructures of skeleton, like support beams of a palace under construction, began to come into view.
The primordial awe ebbed from Demane first. His hand still lightly cupped the captain’s mouth. When he slid it away Captain turned vague, astonished eyes on him. They were the last shade of brown before black, color of coffee, and just now neither grim nor sad but wonderstruck. He was all soft-side-up for a change. And unplucked there on his mouth were kisses like lowhanging fruit, ripe and deeply pink. But the beloved too has extraordinary senses; he scents importunity. “The tiger,” Captain murmured and, blinking himself fully alert, spoke a word chilling even to the hottest lover: “Cumalo.”
Demane turned back to the depths of the forest. “Well, come on with you, then.”
• • • •
A season ago, Demane walked in low spirits through the market of Philipiya. On that afternoon, rather than pass by, he stopped at the mercenaries’ post. There
was a man crying as usual: “Warriors! Brave men! Wealth!” Beside the crier stood another man, who smelled richly of extraterrestrial heritage. Demane went over. The one who cried put questions to him; Demane answered, his eyes on the other all the while, addressing him. Alumnus of many wars by the beads round his neck, and speechless in a black robe, black headscarf, there was no reason to believe the man other than mute—not deaf, though, for he attended Demane’s answers closely. Then they sparred for a brief bout. Demane spoke. “You staying over in a travelers’ barracks? They kind of nasty, ain’t they? You ought to come with me.” However this man answered, Demane knew his life was about to change. “I got good rooms in the amir’s palace. What’s your name, anyway?”
The man dismissed the crier with a glance. And then for the first time Demane heard Captain’s voice:
“I’m Isa of Sea-john, Demane. But if you come with the caravan, you must call me Captain.”
Wait, now: hush, Demane thought to himself. He’s bitterly ashamed of his voice. So you’d better not say, ‘Your talk is like a song. I never heard anything so beautiful in my life!’ “Where’s Sea-john at, Captain?”
“It’s the borough where foreigners live, down in Great Olorum. Call me Isa when it’s just us.”
“I don’t know that place, Olorum, either.” Demane said. They were crossing out of the market. The crowd among the vegetable stands convulsed, women with baskets fleeing toward the wharves: the late fishermen were coming in. Demane caught the captain’s hand and even when the jostling rush had passed kept hold of it.
“Look, Isa, I don’t get how you all do it here,” he said, “but I want to . . . love you. Understand me?”
The captain looked sideways at him and did not quite smile. But the handclasp lost neutrality and became erotic, a sign of something sure. For this man, Demane decided—on the spot, at that moment—he would stick it out, cross continents, do whatever love required. Captain said, “I understand you just fine.” The sublime low throb of his whisper!
Day after next, midmorning, he departed Philipiya with the caravan of Master Suresh l’Merqerim—without a word of goodbye to either the amir, or that harried ruler’s spoiled son. Menials know all that happens in a palace, however. And so two marble-swabbers, some laundresses, and a run-fetch boy were able to variously report having seen him leave in the company of an Olorumi mercenary, quite thin, unusually tall. And though Demane left behind emptied room, abandoning not one fine rich robe, nor the smallest gaud his patron had given him, the reports of all these menials coincided: as he’d shown up, so did he leave—in the altogether, and carrying just that same ratty little bag.
• • • •
Demane waited until he drew a breath smacking of carrion, and then said, “Let me see the point of your spear.” Captain presented his spear. Demane pulled the shaft lower and pricked a finger on the tip, smearing his blood so that it glazed the spearleaf entirely.
“Demane . . . ?” the captain sang low.
“With the magis’ greatwork, any knife, spear, rock or whatever can hurt a creature spinning on the Towers’ left while you’re on the Road. But off-Road, you need, uh . . . a sorcerer’s blessing. As long as you can see me, or me you, that spear’s good against the jukiere. All right?”
Captain nodded. And soon thereafter, in his nostrils too the reek of putrescence began to bloom and burn. A dull buzzing roar began to rise: countless thousands of flies, still at some distance. The captain’s face assumed its severest aspect, braced against a stench that could be little short of emetic for him.
Demane whispered, “If you need some help standing the smell . . .”
Manfully—foolishly—Captain shook his head.
A clearing. Flies frenzied in the air. The sun shone down upon a massive stump, truncated by lightning-strike about ten feet above their heads. The cataclysmic fall of this adolescent redwood had smashed a long glade through the jungle. The gap in the canopy admitted light by which all the boneyard’s horrors could be seen: several dozen bodies, human and swine.
Some butcher had not judged them different meats. For with intimate promiscuity cadaver of man and carcass of pig lay strewn together, in every attitude and condition of death. A few freshkill, some fallen to bones. Most bodies in intermediate states: well and thoroughly dead—liquescent, bloated, purpling—and yet quick with life too, such were the worms, the seething coverlet of flies. Disjointed limbs were littered round about; and everywhere underfoot, clots of errant pork, strange gobbets, ribbons of flesh. Bad as these sights were, for Captain the smell could only be worse. Breathe by mouth if he liked, but the gases of decomposition would be stinking to point of savor. Every breath over his tongue would taste of vile broth.
Cravenly, Demane invoked arts to which Captain had no recourse. He kept raw emotion at bay, his sensibilities more nearly animal than a man’s.
As Aunty had once with him, he murmured and gestured: “. . . see how the wizard’s two-times picky? Us or pigs: nothing else. Ah, look at that one there. The way the jukiere take only two or three good bites? It won’t fill up on just one body, they always waste. It is a [mainstay of entropic necromancy] . . . part of their bad juju . . .”
And there was Cumalo. The cat had kicked sticks, leaves, dirt over the body. Out from under this mess extended their brother’s legs and sandaled feet. Demane and the captain approached. A half-dozen crows saucily dawdled, gouging out last bits, cawing complaints at them, before at last taking to wing and scattering down to other feasts. With the butt of his spear Demane knocked aside the shoddy cairn. Facedown, Cumalo lay atop swatches of his clawed-apart robe. The rigid fingers of one hand clenched about some final treasure, which Demane crouched to recover: a knucklebone die. Iridescent flies resettled along the white and red-gummed exposure of his pelvis and femur bones. The back of the body, apart from the mauled shoulder, and the neck, lolling askew—“You see, Captain? They kill by choking”—remained whole. Demane swung the butt of his spear toward bushes a few long strides away, under which were heaped the ropes and bags of their brother’s entrails, pulled out whither the taint couldn’t turn the meat faster. Demane paused doubtfully. Did he belabor? Was he speaking with strange dispassion? Both of these? He peeked sidelong.
Captain sweated copiously. His face was drawn taut, immobile but for his upper lip quivering in a nauseated sneer. Abruptly he staggered back, bowed forcibly: retching forth a mouthful of water, and then heaving dryly several times. There was no reckless courage in this world—no hardihood, no manful strength, no mad feats on fields of battle—that would keep down the gorge in the boneyard of a jukiere. Demane allowed bitter citrus attar to flood his mouth. He pulled the captain upright and forced a deep strange kiss. The agile mollusc of his tongue lapped over and under Captain’s, and then around and up into either nostril. Once let go, Captain sucked in a long breath and rubbed at his nose, while the tart potency stunned his sense of taste and smell. He grunted—hornlike, tuneful—and nodded ungracious thanks.
The men this side of the continent didn’t like their weakness watched, so Demane turned away, studying the ground. He wandered, and hunkered down next to prints lately pressed into bloody muck. The noisome airs and flies’ whining roar blunted the fine acuity of his nose and ears; but sight had all its sharpness. Something was bothering him about the sign, these prints; what? When Demane next glanced over, Captain had found the remains of the merchant Iuliano. Demane looked down again, trying to grasp what eluded him. Jukiere tracks, no doubt about that: the spread and shape of toes, the forefoot polydactyl where the claws didn’t retract . . . And this was sure enough the boneyard of a jukiere, all the waste of half eaten bodies, and yet, something—
A dry stick cracked, nearby.
“Here it come!” Demane shouted.
The great cat roared, just out of sight in the trees. Closer to the noise, Captain bolted toward it, spear in hand. Demane had followed only three steps when the jukiere broke cover and streaked across his path, crashing wes
tward into the brush, though the captain had gone north. “West, Captain, west!” Demane shouted, while turning to give chase.
His attention narrowed to matters of pursuit. The great cat surged around the trunks of trees, plunged through black densities of brush. Demane held his best sprint without tiring; but faster over the short distance, the jukiere kept easily ahead. The ground began to grade upwards, and there Demane found himself gaining with every step. He burst into sunlight where the slope cleared to treelessness between thickets. Only a short lunge away up the embankment, the tiger whirled at bay. It leapt back downwards.
Male. The bearded ruff, those thickly gnarled foreshoulders. Downcurved tusks a full foot long—
Demane moved with instinctual speed. Planting his spear’s butt against the ground, he leveled its point toward the cat, and braced for impact. The shaft jarred deeply into leaf-rot. Demane ducked from scrabbling claws, yanking with all his might. Impaled, the jukiere vaulted overhead and on down the embankment. The spear tore loose from his grasp, he himself somersaulting downward one time, before arresting his descent with a snatched handhold of rank vine.
Only in movement could the jukiere be seen. When still, the creature’s brindled coat merged with the jungle’s greenish light and shadow. The fur of its flanks and back was mature evergreen, dark-stippled as if muddy. Its fur hung thick and longer along throat and underbelly, new-grass-color, white with age at the fringes. The spear had broken the joint of the great cat’s left foreshoulder, and there was lodged. The cat stepped its right forepaw and great weight onto the shaft, but the wood held, unbending. Not would it ever break, so long as Demane lived. Batting at the shaft, the jukiere worried at it until the spear fell free.
Demane kicked against slick crushed greenery and mud. His hand clutching at vines, his feet gaining purchase neither to move upwards nor to stand. Wind rose at his back, blowing to the jukiere and past him came a windborne power spinning counter to his own, TSIMTSOA. The hot air became foul with maneater’s funk, with bowels torn bloodily open; the wind rang with such cries as quarry gives when caught, when eaten alive: the squeals and screams, a rare decipherable word, help. As the jukiere pulled strength from the Wildeeps, this shrieking miasma whipped about it. The red hole in the tiger’s shoulder ceased to bleed, and fleshed over, and the nude flesh furred. That fourth paw came down gingerly. The cat put confident weight on it.
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