by E. E. Knight
Welles saw the direction of Valentine's gaze. "Those little fancies are something the Lifeweavers brought across the worlds. Leave them out in the sun for an afternoon, and they'll glow like that for weeks. But don't ask me more—I only work here."
The main room of the Hall was subdivided around the edges of the room into a series of six-foot-by-six-foot platforms projecting out of the walls like shelves, all at various heights and connected by little staircases, climbing poles, and even rope ladders. A handful of figures lounged on the platforms, eating, reading, or simply sitting and looking at the new arrivals. Tapestries and sheets and rugs hung from the rafters or from the platform above provided some measure of privacy. Plates and mugs and casks were stacked at the centers of two long tables at opposite sides of the fireplace.
"You like it small and cozy or open and airy, Valentine?" Welles asked as they walked into the hall. She moved with a back-and-forth motion of her upper body that reminded Valentine of a metronome.
"Open and airy, I suppose. That's what I'm more used to."
"I'll take my usual spot," Duvalier said. "Just put him up above."
"Easy enough. These tables are the common eating area." Welles led them into the depths of the lodge. "You are free to make your own food, of course, but we usually have a morning meal and a night meal made up by the Aspirants. That's you now, Ghost-man. We have genuine toilets in the back, along with two showers and a tub, but you have to attend to the boiler. When there are a few more bodies here, we take turns with that duty so there's always enough hot water for all. There's a sauna that works whenever we got the boil up. This place is built practically on top of a mountain spring, so mere's the best drinking water you've ever had whenever you want it. We don't even have to work a pump handle. Sweet, no?"
Valentine felt the warmth of a few dying charcoal bricks as they passed the massive fire pit.
"The fireplace is more for heat than cooking, but we've had a pig roast here on occasion. The main kitchen is in back. You wouldn't be any good at making bread, would you Valentine?"
"In an emergency."
"Great, you're our new baker. These kids go bluescreen whenever they try to bake anything but flatbread. Ryu has the rooms above the kitchen, and he doesn't take to visitors, so stay away from the back staircase. Questions so far?"
"Just as long as you don't have him in the kitchen at all hours," Duvalier grumbled. "We've got a lot of work to do if he's going to be ready to come out with me in a couple months. When can we see Ryu?"
"You know that's not up to me. Okay, here we are. Your usual spot, Smoke, and the Ghost will be in the attic."
Duvalier had a small space beneath Valentine's platform and its stairs. Valentine noticed she already had curtains up, blinds made from some kind of wicker. She dropped her pack under the stairs and sat on a footlocker to unlace her boots. He looked up at his own platform directly above, bare and featureless.
"I can find you a futon if you want, Valentine," Welles offered.
He didn't relish spending too many nights in his ever-ready hammock. "Thank you, I'd appreciate that."
"I'll let Ryu know you've arrived," she said, and rocked her way back to the doors at the rear of the Hall.
As he placed his possessions on the platform, connected by a stairway to the main floor and by a little walkway to still another platform, it occurred to him that his whole life amounted to two little heaps of gear: his carbine and the new sword, a pack containing a few tools and utensils, pans, and spare clothes, and one moldy-smelling nylon hammock. He had a locker back at Regiment with some heavy clothing, books, and odds and ends that he would have to write to somebody about.
"Hey, Duvalier," he called.
"Yes?" she answered from below, like a fellow camper in the bottom bunk.
"Where am I?"
"Southern Command calls it Buffalo River Lodge, Newton County. We call it Ryu's Hall. You confused about something?"
"What are we going to be doing here?"
"Didn't you listen? You're going to bake bread. That and learn how to kill Kurians."
* * *
Ryu himself woke Valentine the next morning. The nearly windowless hall slumbered in darkness, lit only by the red glow in the fire pit.
The Lifeweaver chose to appear as an ordinary man, with a hooked nose and a regal bearing that made Valentine instantly think of Pharaoh from illustrations in the Padre's storybook Bible. He wore a simple black loinclom and sandals.
"I am glad of this opportunity to meet you, David," he said as Valentine sat up, a little startled. "Would you share the sunrise with me?"
"Yes, just give me a moment," he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The futon didn't look like much, but it was bone-deep comfortable. He slept heavy in the hours before dawn, but duty seemed to require him to awaken then more often than not.
Ryu turned and slowly walked down the stairs. Not sure whether that was a yes or a no, Valentine hurriedly pulled on his pants and followed. The Lifeweaver led him, with slow, graceful steps, almost floating back through the kitchens and spring-cave. They stooped into a rocky passage cut into the side of the mountain. They walked, and at times climbed, in silence through the shoulder-wide tunnel. They arrived at a wooden ladder, and Valentine smelled outside air.
"This is my private entrance. The ladder ends at a little fissure in the mountain."
Sure enough, the predawn quasi-light came faintly down the tunnel. The Lifeweaver began to climb the ladder, and Valentine followed. They emerged in the trees on the north side of the rounded-off mountain with birdsong all around them.
"It will be a fine morning. My spot for dawn-keeping is up the hill."
Valentine followed him up the slope, eventually coming out at a pile of boulders. Ryu sat down on the cold stone without even wincing, and Valentine joined him on the broad slab of rock. To the east, the green-carpeted mountains of the Ozarks bent away to the southeast. The high, scattered stratus clouds were turning from pink to orange as the unseen sun began to touch them.
Ryu said, "It will be a morning of rare color."
"What should I call you, sir?" Valentine asked. Amu, the Lifeweaver who'd been in charge of the Wolves, had acted like an old man who enjoyed teasing his grandchildren with riddles, and spoke as though he knew Valentine his whole life. Rho, the Lifeweaver who'd trained his father, he'd known only a few hours before he died. Ryu seemed cold and detached compared with the other two.
Valentine shivered in the chill morning air. The rock they sat on leached his body heat, but that was not the reason for the shudder. Ryu looked solid enough—he brushed aside small branches and flattened grass with his feet—but the Lifeweaver had no presence. Valentine thought it like having a conversation with an unusually lifelike portrait.
"Just Ryu. In our Old World, we had long and complex names describing our family, profession, planet of origin, and planet of residence. My brother and I were young then, born when the old Interworld Tree was still intact, and the rift with the researchers of Kur just beginning. We are old now, but not what we consider ancient. I mention my brother because my first duty to you is to thank you for getting him free. The torments and humiliation he suffered at the hands of the fiends ... I had no idea until you brought him out of there. His death was free of grief. He went in peace, among friends."
Valentine couldn't find the proper words, so he resorted to a quiet yes.
They sat side by side, staring off into the warm palette of the coming sun.
"You have questions for us. You have an inquisitive mind."
"Sometimes I sense the Reapers. They say there are others like me, but I've never met one. Is that something Amu did? When I was invoked as a Wolf, one of the men said that I'd been 'turned all the way up.'"
"Some bodies are more ready for the change than others; the genes are there to do more. Your family had an aptitude, I understand. But as to this sense—I cannot say."
"'I cannot say' isn't the same as 'I do not know.'"
"In the earlier war, before you wrote your histories, we tried a great many modifications to humans. Some we shouldn't have. Vestiges of those live on. It could be that."
Ryu let that sink in a moment before he continued. "Another possibility is that you could be a genetic wild card, a leap in natural selection brought on by the new stresses on your species. If I knew for certain, I would tell you."
Valentine felt like a bug under a light. The Lifeweavers were strange sort of leaders. They didn't inspire the Hunters to die for them, for all that they helped in their own secretive way. They just happened to be on the same side of a war—a very old one, in the case of the Lifeweavers. "You use us," Valentine said, and then thought that the fact had sounded like an accusation.
"Yes, we do. Do you know why? When we fell under the first onslaught of the Kur, we were in panic. We had no aptitude for fighting. We needed a weapon, something flexible and powerful, a species we could both use to attack with and hide amongst. A sword and a shield all in one. Your race fit the bill, as you say. In a span of nine planets, you were the material that best answered our need: cunning, savage, aggressive, and organized. You are a unique race. The deadliest hunter in the world is a tiger, but put five of them together and they still hunt no better than a single tiger. A beehive is a miracle of organization, but three beehives cannot cooperate. Army ants make warfare, plan campaigns, and make slaves of their captives, but do all this on group instinct and could never work together with an ant from a different queen. In microcosm, that is what we found on the worlds we explored: individual greatness or collective ability, but never both. You humans, you are tigers alone and army ants together, able to switch from one to the other with ease. You're the greatest warrior species we have ever encountered."
"Considering all that, the Kurians beat us pretty handily."
"They had surprise on their side. Had we known they were coming, we might have been able to warn you in time. Unlike Kur, we had no friends in your various governments; we did not wish to reveal ourselves to you. Perhaps it was a mistake, but we felt your society needed a chance to develop on its own. We had no idea Kur could organize such an effort, had bred such a variety of what you call Grogs, or that so many of your so-called leaders were willing to sell their species for some iteration of thirty pieces of silver. Ah, here is the dawn. Let us enjoy it."
The sun tinted the clouds above and trees below, renewing the world in its warmth. Its welcome touch restored him; Valentine felt ready for whatever challenge Ryu might put in his path.
They sat together in silence. When the shining orb separated from the horizon, Ryu turned and sat facing Valentine.
Valentine tried to pierce the psychic disguise, to see the J real shape of the Lifeweaver beneath—a grotesque mixture of octopus and bat—through sheer force of will, but Ryu did not change.
"David, you've proved yourself as a Wolf. It may not seem that way to you right now, but we mink well of you. Amu's Wolves succeed through hearing and smell, speed and endurance. My Cats are different. They depend on stealth and surprise, and a certain amount of pure daring that we cannot give but only encourage. To become a Cat, your body will undergo some difficult changes, and there is a risk. Perhaps you remember a Wolf or two who could not adapt."
"Yes," Valentine said, remembering a cabin mate who had thrown himself off a cliff in the confusion brought about by the Wolf invocation. After Val's own invocation, the tiniest noise and movement made him jump, before he learned to soften his new senses. It was too much for some.
"It is a hard, lonely life, often without even the comradeship of your fellow soldiers. You lived once in the Kurian Zone. Are you willing to go back? Perhaps to disappear, nameless and unavenged? Every year there are Cats who do not return."
"Ryu, I've heard enough stories about the Cats to know all this. The only time I ever knew I'd made a difference was when I got Molly and her family out. If there's any way I can help the people in the lost lands ... I'll take the risk."
"Good words. But are they enough? Is there another reason? A personal one? Forget about your father, your fellow men and women, the Carlson family, or the graceful Alessa. Forget all that's happened with your old captain. You don't have to prove anything to us. Are you going to do this because you want to?"
Valentine sat back a little, perplexed. "Ryu, if that's the case, you should count me out. My desires are at the bottom of my list of why I'd like to do this. Of course, I agree with her about what we need to hunt."
"Forget about the Twisted Cross for now. I want to know what's in you."
So do I. "It's because of my parents, and for my people, that I want to do this. You talk about what an amazing species we are, like we're some kind of work in progress. We're a species that's either headed for extinction or permanent branding as livestock. Whatever potential you saw in us is going to waste as long as the Kurians are here.
"Sir, given my druthers, I'd like a house with a lot of books in the woods on a lake where I could fish in peace. I volunteered for this life, and I've sought responsibility because somebody has to, or there's not going to be a future for any of us. So if you're looking for a samurai mentality, dedicated to its own perfection in deadly self-annihilation, it's not me."
"Nothing more? David, do you like to kill?"
Valentine's heart stopped for a moment, then restarted with a thud that bounced off his ribs. How far into his mind could Ryu see?
"The old Cat took your tongue?"
"I can't—," Valentine said.
"David, how did you feel when you knifed that sentry on the bridge, when you killed that policeman in Wisconsin, the one who disparaged you as an 'Injun.' What did you feel when you strangled that man in the Zoo?"
"How—?"
"Hows take too long. What was in your soul?"
"Guilt, but—"
Ryu waited.
"I felt guilty."
"Guilty because you chose one path over another, leading to their deaths? Or guilty because you reveled in it?"
Valentine shrank away. Ryu suddenly frightened him; he wasn't sure he wanted this conversation to continue. But he had to answer, and no answer would do but the truth.
"I don't know. I don't know myself well enough."
Ryu nodded. 'Then leave it at that. I like to know what is in my Cats' hearts. Once you've learned what's in you, I hope you'll share it with me someday. Very well, you'll have this opportunity to aid your people in their crisis. And perhaps one day learn why David Valentine feels guilty."
"Then I'm in?"
"You are in."
The ceremony could hardly have been simpler. Valentine was brought to a warm little room in the back of the Hall, escorted by Duvalier. He wore only a towel wrapped around his waist. "It's a waste to wear clothes for the Change," she said as butterflies began to beat their wings on the inside of his stomach.
It resembled a wedding in a way. Ryu entered, wearing a heavy robe with more cryptic designs woven into the lapels and cuffs of the garments. He had Valentine stand next to Duvalier.
"Alessa, are you ready to take on the responsibility of training this one?"
She nodded. "I am."
Ryu turned to Valentine. "David, are you ready to take on the responsibility of joining our ranks?"
Valentine nodded. "I am."
"May the bond between you meet with success."
The Lifeweaver emptied a small vial into a plain ceramic bowl of water and swirled it in his palm like brandy in a snifter.
"Drink this, and become a Cat," Ryu intoned.
Valentine drank it, as tasteless as water.
Ryu handed Duvalier a small knife. "Now share your blood."
With a quick slash, she opened a small cut across her right palm, then took Valentine's left hand and did the same. They then clasped hands tightly. Valentine felt the sticky warmth pressed between their palms.
Ryu looked at Duvalier. "Explain to your bloodshare what is coming."
"David, the ne
xt few days are going to be a little difficult. Within a few hours, you're going to feel jumpy. I had trouble breathing, and it made me very panicky. Most people get very dizzy; people who've been on boats say it's like seasickness. Your heart will beat very fast. There's no real physical pain, but a whole new part of your body that you didn't know was there is going to be waking up. We'll keep you in this room for a couple days, safe and warm. Relax and ride it out. Try not to tear your hair out or gouge yourself."
Valentine stiffened. He'd been awkward and twitchy after his first invocation, but hadn't felt the desire for self-mutilation.
She continued: "If you have to bite something, we've got a leather-wrapped plastic tube in there for you; gnawing at the wood's no good, you'll just wreck your teeth. After the second day, I just did jumping jacks till I collapsed; then it was done. Maybe that will work for you, too."
Ryu shook his head. "David, she's making it sound worse than it is. If it helps to have a goal, keep this in mind. The first test of a Cat is how silently one goes through the Change. And you're lucky; the Wolves who've come into our caste adapt quickly. There will be someone outside the door at all times. We'll be keeping an eye on you."
The Lifeweaver clasped Valentine's blood-smeared hand between his palms in a gesture that was half-handshake and half-bow. Duvalier gave Valentine a tight hug, then showed him the old white scar across her left palm.
"You'll be fine. See you in three days."
They shut and locked the door to the little room. It reminded him of a sauna, right down to the little glass window in the rough cedar door. A single slatted bench was the extent of the furnishings, and a drain hole in the center of the wood-paneled room evidently served as the sanitary facility. There was a water spigot fixed into the wall, and Valentine gave it an experimental turn. Cold springwater cascaded onto the floor.
They left him the hunk of leather and plastic, like a dog's chew toy. He did not feel uncomfortable, at least not yet. He spread the towel on the unyielding boards of the bench and stretched out. The light shining into the little room illuminated one edge of the bench, and Valentine recognized human teeth marks.