They did not speak for some time afterwards. While crossing the last few miles to the edge of the forest, detouring once to avoid a herd of giant bison, they looked back twice. The raven was still following them but was much lower.
“Definitely an Eye of the Lord,” Kickaha said.
She said, “I know,” laughed, and then said, “I’ve got to quit saying that.”
They entered the shade of the thousand-foot-high sequoialike trees. The forest floor was thick with dead leaves. That was strange, since there was no change of season on this planet. But when he saw a few leaves flutter down from the trees, he realized that it shed old leaves and replaced them with new ones. A few other plants on Alofmethbin did that.
The undergrowth was sparse, though here and there thorny bushes forced the two to go around them. Many small, blue-eyed creatures that looked like furry and wingless owls watched them from the safety of the brambles.
Monkeys, birds, and flying and gliding mammals screamed, hooted, and chittered in the branches. But in the immediate area of the humans, silence fell, only to be broken after they had passed.
Once, a weasel the size of a Rocky Mountain lion looked around the side of a treetrunk at them but did not charge them. The two humans knew that a predator was there before the weasel revealed itself. The clamor in the area ahead of them had ceased.
Kickaha and Anana had already strung their bows. There was no predicting what dangerous man or beast dwelt in this twilit but noisy place. They had also loosened the straps of their knife scabbards.
They had gone a mile when they came to a clearing about sixty feet wide. This had been made by two sequoias, which had fallen together. That had been a long time ago, judging by the rottenness of the wood. Kickaha looked up in time to see the raven just before it settled down on a branch halfway down a tree next to the open ground. The big leaves of a parasitic plant hid it then.
“Okay,” Kickaha muttered. “No doubt of it now. It’s ahead of us but may not know it is. It may be waiting for us to come by here since we were walking in a more or less straight line. I don’t know how it’s kept its eye on us so far.”
Since the raven was the size of a bald eagle, it could not flit from branch to branch.
“Maybe it knows where we’re going,” Kickaha said.
“How could that be? We don’t know ourselves where we’re going except in a general direction. And the woods are thick here. It couldn’t have followed us. Oh, I see! It followed the silences falling around us.”
They withdrew a few feet into the shade. Then he whispered, “Let’s watch from here.”
Presently, just as he had expected, he saw the big, black bird spiral down and land on a branch projecting from one of the fallen and decaying behemoths. Then it glided to the ground, its wings half-outspread, and walked toward them. Kickaha thought that it had come to the ground to find out where they were. It would hide and listen for the two humans.
But it could, at the moment, neither see them nor, in the still air, smell them. Kickaha and Anana were lucky that they had spotted it before it saw them.
Kickaha placed a finger to his lips, then whispered very softly in Anana’s ear.
“It can see like a hawk and hear almost as well as a dog. Let’s move on. We won’t be quiet. It can follow us until we’re ready to catch it.”
“If it’s sent by a Lord, that might mean that a Lord is in Wolff’s palace.”
“If there is, we’ll be lucky to elude the traps there.”
“Lots of ifs.”
Kickaha pointed a finger at the huge, black bird and then touched his lips. Deliberately, he stepped on a dry branch. The loud crack made the raven whirl around and waddle swiftly to a hiding place behind a low-growing bush on the side of the clearing across from the two. No doubt, after they had passed it, it would return to the clearing and use it as a runway so it could take to the air again. But if it saw that the humans were walking slowly, it might just follow them on foot. Ravens, however, did not like to walk far.
Thinking that it had located them without being detected, it would be as smug as a raven could be. In this universe, as on most, smugness often caused a tumble into the dust.
“We must take it alive,” Kickaha said.
“I know.”
“For God’s sake!” he said in English. Then, seeing her smile slightly, he knew that she was just having fun with him.
They crossed the clearing slowly, looking left and right and, now and then, behind them. If they did not behave cautiously, the raven would know that they were pretending carelessness to deceive an observer.
Nor did they swing wide of the bush. Silently, they passed within a few feet of it. Kickaha looked at the bush but could not see the bird. Now, if he were so inclined, would be the time for him to break suddenly into a run. Anana would do so a half-second behind him, but she would head for the side of the bush opposite the one he would be racing for. The raven would flee, but it would not have time to take to its wings nor to hide again.
Anana said nothing. She was waiting to see what Kickaha would do. He walked on by the bush and into the forest. He did not have to tell her that they were going to pretend they were not aware of the bird. Let the raven follow them. Eventually, they would find out why it was stalking them.
And then he almost halted. He grunted.
Anana noticed the break in stride and heard his suppressed exclamation. Instead of looking around and thus notifying whatever had startled him that she was aware of its presence, she looked straight ahead. She said quietly, “What is it?”
“I wish I knew,” he said. “I saw … off to the right … just a flash … a something like a man but not human. Not quite, anyway. Maybe my mind’s playing tricks. But he, if it was male, looked like he was human. He was very big and very hairy for a human being. Only …”
She waited several seconds, then said, “Well?”
“His face, I don’t know. It was not quite human. There was something, uh, bearlike about it. I’ve been all over this planet and have never seen nor heard of anything like it. On the other hand, this planet has more land area than Earth. So, I just never knew anybody who knew about it.”
She looked to the left, then to the right.
“I see nothing.”
He half stepped out from behind a tree, then stepped back. “Angle casually over toward the tree.”
She went in the direction he had indicated by bending his head. She must have noticed that the arboreal animals in the branches five hundred feet above her had fallen silent. But, like him, she must have thought that it was their approach that had caused this.
They went approximately a hundred feet before he spoke.
“The one just ahead.”
It was one of the gigantic sequoialike plants. Its bark was as shiny as if thousands of pieces of mica were embedded in it.
“I hope there’s only one of him,” he said.
He fitted his bow with an arrow and started to go around on the left side of the enormous trunk. She headed toward the right side. Anybody still on the back side of the tree would be caught between them.
When they came around the trunk, they saw only each other. Though the thing Kickaha had glimpsed did not look as if it had claws, he looked upwards along the bole. No creature clung to it, and not even a squirrel could have gotten to the branches this fast. Anana had stepped back so she could see more of the other side of the trunk. The tree was so huge, however, that a section of it was invisible to both of them. After telling Anana to stay where she was but keep looking upward, he ran around the tree. At the same time, he kept his gaze on the upper reaches of the bole. But he saw no living creature.
When he returned to Anana, he said, “It was too heavy to climb up the trunk even if it’d had claws a foot long. I had to make sure, though.”
She pointed at the thick piles of dead leaves on the ground. He was already looking at them. They were scattered in so many directions that he could not tell if the creature h
ad been coming to or going from the tree.
He sniffed. There was a faint musky odor in the still air.
“I smell it, too,” she said. “Maybe we should capture the raven. It might know what the thing is. In fact, it could be working for it.”
She paused, then said, “Or it could be working for the raven.”
“Why don’t we wait a while before we grab the bird?”
They pushed on at a faster pace. Now and then, they looked behind them but saw neither the bird nor the bear-thing. After a few minutes, they smelled a whiff of woodsmoke. Silently, they walked toward the odor, guided by its increasing strength. They waded through a narrow creek to the other side. When they heard voices, they slowed their pace and made sure they did not step on dry sticks. The voices became louder. They were women’s, and it seemed to Kickaha that he heard only two speakers. He made a few signs to Anana, who crept away to circle around the place. She would be his unseen backup if he got into trouble. Or vice versa.
He got down on the ground and wriggled forward very slowly to keep from rustling the dead leaves. He stopped when he was behind a thick bush between two massive treetrunks. He peered through the lower part of the bush and saw a small clearing. In its center was a small fire with a small iron pot suspended by its handle from a horizontal wooden stick set between two forked wooden uprights. Kickaha smelled boiling meat.
A blonde who was beautiful despite her disarrayed hair and dirtied face stood near the fire. She was speaking Thoan. Crouching down on the other side of the fire was a red-haired woman. She was as good-looking as the blonde and equally disheveled and dirty.
Both wore ankle-length robes reminding Kickaha of illustrations of the type of dress worn by ancient Greek females. The material was thin, clinging, and far from opaque. At one time, the robes had been white, but brambles and thorns clung to them, and dirt and blood smeared them.
On the far side of the clearing were two knapsacks and a pile of Thoan blankets, paper-thin but very heat-keeping. Three light axes, three heavy knives, and three beamers, which looked like pistols with bulbs on the muzzles, were on top of the blankets.
A butchered fawn was lying on the far side of the clearing. No flies buzzed around it; the planet Alofmethbin lacked flies. But crawling and scavenging insects were beginning to swarm on the carcass.
Kickaha shook his head. The women were not very cautious, hence not very bright, if they had not kept the weapons close at hand. Or, perhaps, this was a trap.
He turned and looked behind him and up into the tree branches but neither saw nor heard anything to alarm him. Of course, the raven could be hidden among the leaves overhead. After he had turned around toward the women, he lay for a while watching and listening.
Though the two looked to be no more than twenty-five, they had to be thousands of years old. They spoke in the same archaic Thoan Anana fell into sometimes when she was excited. Except for a few words and phrases, Kickaha understood it.
The blonde said, “We can’t survive long in this horrible place. We must find a gate.”
“You’ve said that a thousand times, Eleth,” the auburn-haired woman said. “I’m getting sick of hearing it.”
“And I’m sick of hearing nothing practical from you, Ona,” the blonde snarled. “Why don’t you figure a way out for us, suggest just how we can find a gate?”
Ona said, “And I’m about to vomit from your childish bickering and screaming.”
“So, throw up,” Eleth said. “At least you’d be doing something instead of sitting on your ass and whining. And vomiting certainly wouldn’t make this place stink more than it does even if your puke stinks more than anybody else’s.”
Ona got up and looked into the pot. “It seems to be done, but I still don’t know how to cook.”
“Who does?” Eleth said. “That’s slave work. Why should we know anything about it?”
‘For Shambarimem’s sake!” Ona said, and she shook her head so violently that her long auburn hair swirled like a cloak around her shoulders. “Can’t we do anything but talk about things that don’t matter? A fine pair of sisters we are. Lords one day, and the next, we’re no better than slaves.”
“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about putting on weight,” Eleth said, and she grinned.
The redhead looked hard at her.
“I’m trying be as light-hearted as possible,” Eleth said. “We have to keep our spirits up or they’ll be so heavy they’ll sink down to our toes and ooze out onto the ground. And we’ll die or become leblabbiys. We’ll get eaten by some beast or, worse, be captured and raped by leblabbiys and spend the next hundred years or more as wives of some stupid, ignorant, dirty, smelly, snot-wiping-on-their-hands, wife-beating savages. They’ll be our Lords.”
“You really know how to make me feel good,” Ona said. “I’d kill myself before I’d submit to a leblabbiy.”
“It wouldn’t be hopeless. We could escape and find a gate and then find Red Orc and get revenge by killing him. After some suitable tortures, of course. I’m thinking about eating Red Orc’s balls just as he ate his father’s. Well cooked, though, and with a suitable garnish, not eaten raw as Red Orc did.”
“Speaking of cannibalism,” Ona said, “we may have to resort to that before we find a way out of this mess. Now, who should be the eaters and who the eaten?”
“Stop that!”
But both burst out laughing.
Kickaha knew the Lords well enough to doubt that Ona was jesting. If they did starve, one of them would kill and eat her companion.
He listened several minutes to their bickering but did not learn much. The only thing he knew for sure was that their predicament was caused by Red Orc and that they had escaped from him with the few possessions in the clearing.
The two women fell silent while they were looking into the pot. By now, they were getting ready to dip out deer stew with rough spoons made of bark.
Suddenly, Anana stepped out from the bushes into the clearing. She held her bow and an arrow at the ready.
“Hail, iron-hearted daughters of Urizen and Ahania!” she called. “Your cousin Anana greets you in peace! What brings you here?”
5
The two women shrieked and jumped as if they had stepped on biting ants. The redhead, however, flashed out of her paralysis and darted toward the beamers near the edge of the clearing. After a few steps, she halted, then walked slowly back to Eleth. She had realized that she could not get to the weapons before Anana’s arrow drove through her.
“Ona the Baker!” Anana called to the redhead. “You were always the quickest witted, the coolest, and the most dangerous in physical combat. But how could you be so stupid as to leave your arms out of reach?”
Ona scowled and said, “I am very tired.”
Anana addressed the blonde. “Eleth the Grinder, also known as Eleth the Worrier! You were the planner, the thinker, and so in many ways the most dangerous!”
The blonde was not so pale now. She smiled, and she bowed. “Not as dangerous as you, Anana the Bright, Anana the Hunter!”
Anana said, “Ona, you and your sisters, Eleth the Grinder, and Uveth the Kneader, now dead, were known as the kind-hearted daughters of Ahania. Now you are called iron-hearted! But you have always been the kindliest and sweetest of the three!”
“That was long ago, Anana,” Ona said.
“Your father, Urizen the Cold, changed you three from kittens to ravening tigers,” Anana said. “Your hatred for him is well known.”
She paused, then said, “Do you know that he is dead?”
Eleth said stonily, “We had heard that he was. But we were not sure that it was true.”
Ona said, “Nor are we sure now. That you say our father is dead does not make it true. But, if your news is true, we’re glad.”
“Except that we would be sad that we were not the ones who killed him,” Eleth said.
During this talking, Kickaha had been moving stealthily around the clearing to make sure
that no one else was watching the scene. Though he looked for the raven and the bearish creature, he did not see them. Nor was there any sign of anyone lying in ambush.
When the two women saw him step into the clearing, they started only slightly. Evidently, they had suspected that Anana was not alone. Eleth said, “Who is this, Anana?”
“Surely you have heard of Kickaha? Kickaha the Trickster, the killer of so many Lords, the man who slew the last of the Black Bellers? You have also heard of ancient Shambarimen’s prophecy that a leblabbiy will destroy the Lords. Some say that Kickaha is the man of whom Shambarimen prophesied.”
Eleth bit her lower lip. “Yes, we have heard of the leblabbiy who has been so lucky so far. We have also heard that he is your lover.”
“He is a leblabbiy,” Anana said cheerily, “and he is such a lover as you should wish you had.”
“Thanks,” Kickaha said, and he grinned broadly.
“You killed our father?” Eleth said to Kickaha. Her tone indicated that she did not believe Anana.
“No,” Kickaha said. “I wish I had. But it was Jadawin, the Lord also known as Wolff, who killed him.”
“You saw Jadawin kill him?”
“No. But Jadawin told me that he did, and Jadawin does not lie. Not, at least, to me.”
Anana herded the sisters to the end of the clearing most distant from the pile of weapons. Then she ordered them to sit down. She did not frisk them. Their filmy robes made it evident that they were not carrying concealed weapons.
“We’re starving,” Eleth said. “We were just about to eat the soup. Such as it is.”
Kickaha looked inside the pot. “Nothing but meat. Very unhealthy. Why didn’t you put some vegetables in?”
“We don’t know what plants are good to eat and what’re poisonous,” Eleth said.
“But all Thoan, male or female, are given survival courses,” he said. “You should know that …”
Ona said, “We don’t know this planet.”
“You can get up now and eat,” Anana said. “By suppertime, we’ll have much better food for you. If, that is, we stay with you. That depends upon how open and truthful you are with us. Now, I heard enough while you were talking to believe that Red Orc is responsible for your being here. Tell me …”
The World of Tiers, Volume 2 Page 73