And all the clear arguments that he’d just heard issue from Karthenor’s lips suddenly collapsed in on themselves. This woman they had murdered played the lute. This woman had played the lute, and for all Thomas knew, she might have been the greatest composer who had ever lived.
Karthenor had abused her, treating her worse than Thomas had ever treated any whore who might give it to him cheap, standing against the wall in some waterfront fishing village.
If Karthenor had really believed what he said about understanding the proper use of mankind, he would have found better use for this woman. The truth was that he took from her only what he wanted.
Thomas felt surprised at himself. For one moment, he had almost been deceived into believing that he and Karthenor shared an insight, belonged to some great fraternity of “Those who matter.” It was an alluring lie. As Thomas tested the instrument, plucking the lute strings so the clear notes reverberated over the room, Karthenor amended his commandment, “Sing for me tonight, Thomas. Sing songs that are sweet, so the child will sleep well. Sing the most beautiful tune you know, and sing it better than you ever have before.”
So Thomas sang the ballad of Tara Gwynn, a love song for the first girl he’d ever loved, the one he loved the best. She’d died giving birth to his child. It was a piece he’d been working on in secret for many years, and he’d hoped that when he’d honed its rough edges, it would gain him some notoriety. It was to be his masterwork.
But as he sang, he did not sing for his lost love. Instead, he sang for the woman who lay dead at his feet. He sang of his loss for her, so that tears filled his eyes.
Perhaps it was not the most beautiful piece in Thomas’s repertoire, though it was close, but it was the one he felt most deeply now. It shamed him to the core of his soul that on this night, of all nights, as the colored moons of Tremonthin crept out over the pine trees, shining through the windows of the cabin like ornamental lanterns, and the owls hooted in the spring woods, and Thomas had just killed a woman—it shamed him that the Guide made Thomas obey Karthenor’s order.
He sang the sweetest song he knew, and he sang it more hauntingly than he ever had sung it before, better even than he believed he could have sung it.
Then he vowed never to sing it again. So what if his masterwork went unappreciated? This shall be my sacrifice, he told himself, to atone for my conceit.
For his part, Karthenor seemed to enjoy the ballad. It was hard to tell. The Lord of Aberlains wore his golden mask of Fale that glowed dimly, somehow baffling the eye in this darkness. Still, his face seemed unlined by care. The child in his arms slept peacefully. He and his men sat on couches or on the floor, and as the fire crackled in the fireplace, the firelight twisting among the logs, they stared away, enrapt by the power of Thomas’s voice.
When Thomas finished his song, Karthenor ordered another, and another, until Thomas found himself singing long into the night.
When Karthenor was ready for sleep, he bent near Thomas’s ear and whispered, “Well done, my friend. For this night’s work, I give you a gift. I promise that when this work is done, when the accounts are settled and your niece has paid her dues, that one thing will l grant you: though my dronon masters slaughter a whole world, one man will be left standing. I grant you your life.”
Thomas did not answer. His Guide would not let him respond.
Chapter 9
That night, as Orick slept with one arm resting over Tallea’s neck, his paw planted firmly on her snout, he dreamed a dream that would change his life.
He dreamed that he was riding a florafeem, sitting under a yellow silk pavilion as bright as the sun. The florafeem’s whole body thundered as it hurtled through the air. It soared through dark skies like blue velvet. Stars and worlds swung through the wide heavens.
Orick stared at the passing worlds in awe, then looked around in the bright starlight at the back of the florafeem.
Earlier in the day, he’d been surprised at the creature. Just as a whale will have multitudes of barnacles making their home on its back, the florafeem served as home to many small creatures—grasping gray plants that looked like anemones, black wriggling beasts that at first appeared to be some dark running liquid but which were more like worms. Another form of life might have been some purple fuzzy hairs that sprouted from the florafeem’s back, or it Orick looked about on the florafeem, hoping to find something to his tastes, but there were no platters of food sitting about. Instead, Orick studied the florafeem’s back, and all about him, in the dark grassy fuzz, he saw strange shapes: graceful birds on wide tan-and-green wings whipped past him, and. Orick realized that these must be Qualeewoohs, though he’d never seen a live one before.
Tiny people were also making their way through this furry jungle, slicing at hairs with machetes. Tallea was there, a tiny bear wandering over a wilderness of alien skin, between a herd of crablike creatures. Then there were dronon, Orick saw. Thousands of dronon in the distance, crawling over the furze like black mantises, their mouthfingers clicking over voice drums as they spoke.
Orick saw nothing to eat, yet his stomach was in knots. “Where did you put the food?” Orick asked the dove.
“Why it’s right in front of your nose, you doltish bear,” the dove said. “Just kill something furry and swallow it down quick. It’s just like eating squirrels. They might wiggle on the way down, but they taste fine.”
Orick stared at the tiny people, at the ratlike aliens, at the cruel dronon, at Qualeewoohs and other things that wriggled like worms through the jungle of hair. Orick could tell these were sentient creatures all—there was too much wisdom in their eyes. But it wasn’t their sentience that made the thought of eating them turn Orick’s stomach. It was their repulsiveness. There was something dark and evil here. “Well, I’m not so hungry as all that,” he grumbled.
“I-uh—it wouldn’t be proper to eat those dirty beggars.”
“Why ‘dirty beggars’?” the dove cried. “Look you, I washed them myself just last week. You’re not so much cleaner than them. You eat worms, don’t you? And slugs and snails and dead things you find by the roadside? These are no more dirty than that. Be a good bear. Go ahead, eat one of ’em!”
Orick peered forward into the hairs of the florafeem. A little crablike thing scuttled away with knowing glances, but a languid girl Orick had known back on Tihrglas stood at the edge of a small, clearing in the fuzz. She held a bottle of ale in one hand, and was staggering about drunkenly. “Eat me, Orick!” she called with a giggle. “What ‘arm can a little soot do ya? Wheeeeee!” She tumbled drunk on her butt into a puddle of mud.
Indeed, as Orick took a closer look, he saw that all the creatures wandering the florafeem’s back were sooty, stained, ruined; There were lewd women caked with rotting food. Smelly old men with greasy hair. And the dronon.
Orick could smell the biting tang of their stomach acids. Chewing one would be like eating a nest of ants in one bite.
Orick felt his stomach turn at the sight. The smell alone made him want to retch.
“Clean them, did you?” Orick complained to the dove. “I’ve never seen such a stinking conglomeration of ambulatory refuse. You could boil them in rainwater, and never get the first layer of muck off. I’ve seen hog’s snot cleaner than that!
“Come, my friend,” the dove cajoled. Orick looked up.
The dove blazed like a green sun. “No matter if they’re filthy. Pick up one of the slimy things and swallow. You can even hold your nose as you do! Chase it down with whiskey afterward, and you’ll hardly rue the bad taste!”
At the dove’s words, some little people came from the woods at Orick’s feet. One dirty little man turned as backwards and farted at the poor bear while others laughed. and made rude noises. Qualeewoohs stuck out their foul purple tongues and rolled their orange eyes.
Orick’s stomach was in knots, he felt so famished. He felt light-headed. Still, he couldn’t abide the thought of eating one of those stinking aliens. “Look, you,” Oric
k said, “it’s not me that will be eating one of those malodorous pieces of animated offal. If you think I’m that hungry; you’ve got another think coming!”
“Ali, Orick,” the fiery dove whispered, “what a thick head you’ve got. How can you say these poor brutes are dirty? What God has cleansed, how can you call, it unclean?”
Orick looked back up to the dove, and suddenly the whole currant bush burst into flames. The flames were more than warm, they were a comfort, a blessing. They burned Orick to the core.
He woke gasping and looked about. Tallea slept beside him, and the hoverlamps above glowed dimly, still drifting up near the roof, so much like moons.
Orick lay wondering at his dream, filled with awe. The warmth he’d felt in his heart remained, the burning.
Always before when Orick had imagined entering the priesthood, he’d thought he would perhaps live in a quiet monastery, devoting his days to quiet contemplation of God’s word. Now, though, he suddenly understood how mistaken he had been, understood why he’d never felt that his personal desire to enter God’s service was quite the right thing to do. For months now he’d waited for God’s spirit to confirm to him that his offering was acceptable.
But now a thrill ran through Orick, and he gazed up at the arching window, staring out at the stars: All of those worlds, all filled with heathens both human and alien.
Orick’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude for the sudden realization that flowed into him. God had a glorious calling for Orick, more glorious than Orick could have ever conceived. It was a calling that would require all the labors of his heart, all the days of his life: Missionary to the Cosmos.
Chapter 10
All the past night, the bright star guttered, like a white flame in the sky, outshining the moon and all other stars. Cooharah stared from his roost through the night, measuring the diameter of Brightstar against the width of Ruin’s single small moon with its three bulges. It would have been difficult to roost on such a bright night. The stars themselves seemed dim under the dome of heaven. But Cooharah was not awake without cause. His was a quest that night, an attempt to discover direction from the stars.
Late in the night, near dawn, the path of the moon finally crossed the path of the distant bright star, and Cooharah saw the blazing white corona around the moon where light from the star leaked beyond the horizon of the moon. Cooharah let out a trill of triumph that split the air and reverberated off the rocks below his aerie, blasted over the tangled jungles below. Then he sang softly an ancient Qualeewooh teachsong,
“Bright star flies larger than the moon hurry the day, the hot drenching day. The bone years lie broken, forgotten, like fragments of shell amid our nests.”
Cooharah leapt from the circle of stones where he roosted, and for a while he floated out over the valleys below. A rich tangle of purplish, bush lay far below him, and in the half-light he saw steam seeping up through the vegetation from the warm waters beneath.
A mistwife broke through the tangle, raising her long white tentacles a hundred meters into the air. From high above, the tentacles were beautiful, almost luminous things, waving in the breeze, tenderly probing the upper limbs of trees. But down in the tangle they would be deadly to anything that slept. The mistwife’s strangling grip would pluck razor-fanged slogs from the trees as easily as Cooharah plucked boring weevils from his feathers when preening.
Indeed, as Cooharah wheeled lower over the tangle, he could hear the whistling cries of a hive of sfuz as they scurried over their webs from tree to tree, seeking escape.
Their cries chilled Cooharah, for their whistles of terror were no different from their whistles of hunting, and all Qualeewoohs feared the sfuz. Crafty creatures, deadly hunters with their webs and snares and their quiet stalking. In a few moments, once Cooharah had circled his aerie a few times and was certain that no sfuz were climbing the treacherous cliffs, Cooharah winged his way to his clog; then dived, flapping his wings twice as he neared the opening, then dropping down to grasp the stone lip of his home with his heavy claws.
The cave was dark inside, but Cooharah could smell the warm spicy scent of decaying trammitroon leaves. Beneath it he detected the rich scent of his mate, Aaw, asleep in her nest. Her soft breathing resonated from the stone walls.
Cooharah tenderly went to his love and tapped her forehead, between her eyes, three times with his lower jaw.
It was a gesture of love that he’d never permitted himself to perform before, in all his long life. Aaw’s eyes snapped open, and Cooharah could see them, large in the darkness, a pale salmon in color. She stared at him in surprise.
He tapped her forehead again. “Open, open,” he trilled the ancient words of ritual. “Two become one.”
If Aaw had not been so surprised, she might have lowered her head and nipped the spirit mask on both Cooharah’s cheeks, playing her part in the ancient ritual.
“Are you certain to the fourth degree?” she trilled instead. “The land lies wasted. The dew trees are drying, and we have only rocks to eat.”
It was true. Both Qualeewoohs were starving. The ancient Take where their ancestors had hunted above the tangle was now dry, and the Qualeewoohs’ prey, the skogs, were dying. There might be food aplenty in the tangles out over Ruin’s shallow seas, but such food was impossible to reach—for the skogs that fed in the tangle above the ocean were so far from safe roosting sites that Cooharah and Aaw dared not hunt them.
“The bone years come to an end,” Cooharah said.
“Brightstar flies large. Soon, storms will wash all hunger from the heavens.”
Aaw stared at him in disbelief, then looked out the oval opening of their cloo. She could see Brightstar flying large, as large as the moon—something her people had waited generations to see. Aaw admitted, “The star is large, but do we dare bring a chick into the world?”
“We are old,” Cooharah warbled. “Our feathers grow brittle. If we do not choose now to become one, we must choose to become empty, like the wind.”
Aaw did not fear her extinction. Such was the curse of being born in the driest of the bone years. For ten generations her people had chosen to decrease their numbers. Aaw had never dared hope she would lay a fertilized egg of her own. But oh, how she yearned for it. With the drying of Stone Lake, and with her increased age, it had seemed that the chance would never come.
But now Cooharah solemnly stepped forward and tapped her forehead with his jaw again, three times. “Open, open, Two become one.”
Tenderly she reached up and nipped the feathers at his cheek, just beneath his spirit mask, in ritual preening. Cooharah danced forward, snaking his long neck up beside hers.
She shook her tail feathers, pretending to lay an egg, and together the two Qualeewoohs began the long dance of life, enacting their hatchings, their years of learning, their hunts in the sky, their choosing of one another as eternal companions: As the dance continued through the long night, unfamiliar hormones flowed into Aaw, making her dizzy, and she felt as if she floated through the room, until at last, just before dawn, she reached up and tapped Cooharah between the eyes with her own chin, saying, “Open, open, I am open.
Thirty years ago, Cooharah and Aaw had chosen one another for mates. Now, in the failing years of their lives, after decades of starvation and struggle, for the first time they consummated their love.
Later, her mate would carve the pictographs that commemorated this day into her spirit mask, then they would fly to the north, to far lands she’d only heard of in story, to look for a safe nesting ground beyond the drylands. But for now, she collapsed in easy joy.
Chapter 11
On the morning of his first full day of freedom, Zeus sat naked atop the east citadel of Felph’s palace, watching Herm swoop and dive out over the east nature preserve.
Zeus sat naked because he was free to do so, his butt resting somewhat uncomfortably on the cold stone of a crenel, his elbows propped on the merlons at either side. His feet hung dangerously out over the cit
adel wall, a sloping drop of some three hundred meters.
The morning wind had a bite to it, but the dawn sun shining full on the matted hairs of his chest ameliorated the cold somewhat. Still, the only part of his body that felt truly warm was his head beneath his dark wavy hair.
Zeus could not stop laughing. He knew he sounded maniacal. Perhaps it was the glory of the day, or the lightness he felt with his Guide removed. Though the slim silver Guide had weighed only l80 grams, he now wondered how he had survived all these years, bowing beneath that onerous burden. So he laughed, and considered leaping from the height. Immediately, Herm tried to twist his wings, pull out of the palace walls to his death.
Why not? He was free. He could do anything, think anything.
Out over the garden preserve, Herm gave a whoop of delight, and hovered at the apex of his flight, a slender white spear in his right hand. His pinions flashed in the morning light, the undersides of his wings showing silver, then Herm dived, his wing tips back almost vertical, the spear thrusting down in both hands.
Zeus followed the line of attack to see why Herm rejoiced: a flock of skogs rose from the tangle below, a wedge of dark, compact creatures, flying so fast on their short wings they almost looked like cannonballs rather than something alive. Their vicious curling tusks seemed only to be smears of white.
It was a dangerous game Herm played. If he dived too soon, he would be hurled into their midst, and the skogs would flay him with their tusks. If he dived too slowly, he would end up behind the skogs, missing his prey. Only a perfectly timed thrust would win him a skog, and even then he would have to adjust to the added weight on his spear, try to avoid crashing headlong into the tangled limbs below.
Zeus howled in delight.
Herm flashed down toward the dark purple trees, intent on his prey. The skogs saw him, wheeled right. With twitch of a wing tip, Herm corrected his course. Distances were deceiving. At first, Zeus imagined these were small skogs; but as Herm neared, Zeus realized they were full-sized—each large enough to make a fine meal for three days. Only now did Zeus see how swift was Herm’s dive.
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