But as the rustling settled in, it seemed to roll around his ears, to buzz and chime with other tones than those that he had heard before: dry and whistling, something seemed to whisper there beneath the thrum. "Yes," it murmured, "yes," it tolled, "yes," it rumbled, deep and low, a voice that somehow drifted in behind the chant and touched his ears from places Bobcat couldn't see. Except...he could, or thought he could, the sound so solid, it took shape, began to stir and raise its head, a reptile curving in the chant but huge, beyond it, colored gray, its eyes aspark like dawn's first touch upon the billowed clouds of morning.
Then the sun burst into Bobcat's eyes, and the lizards let out a whoop that sent him stumbling back. His paws didn't end up where he thought they'd be, though, and he fell onto his tail with a thud. "Brains and eggs!" he shouted.
Slowly his eyes cleared, and he saw the courtyard emptying, lizards going off in groups and chattering in that weird, rustling language of theirs. Fisher and Skink sat chattering, too, with one of the lizards wearing a big red collar, but Fisher turned at Bobcat's shout and sighed. "Problem?" she asked.
"Yes!" Bobcat got to his paws. "You! You're the problem! You and all these weird things you keep dumping on me!"
The lizard with the collar scuttled over, the black fronds chiming above her head. "Please," she whispered with a voice like an evening breeze, "there is no cause to argue. Some things you have seen, they have disturbed you?"
"Disturbed me?" Bobcat laughed. "Yeah, I think it'd be safe to call giant flaming Death Goddesses sorta disturbing."
"That one. She is indeed." The lizard raised a claw. "But the one you have seen here this morning?"
Bobcat stopped and thought a minute. "Well, no. I mean, it wasn't... It didn't... I didn't really see anything. It was more like...like I heard a sound underneath the chanting, and I looked over to the other side of the kiva there, and..." He waved a paw at the creek rushing past the dome to the River. "And I saw the sound. Not what was making it, but the sound itself." Bobcat shook his head quickly. "But that's crazy."
Skink had come up next to the other lizard. "No, Bobcat. It was the voice of the Lord Eft. He speaks with shapes, shapes which the chant brings forth."
The other lizard raised a front leg, her collar clattering. "You are touched all three with the sounds he shapes, the shapes bespoken long ago. Here the story starts again, yours the telling, yours the living, yours the claws and pads that pace it." She touched Bobcat's knee, then rested her claws on Skink's upraised leg and Fisher's upturned paw. "I have done all I know to do," she said quietly. "Go now. The Lord Eft's blessing is upon you."
Skink and Fisher held their pose, each with one paw suspended; Bobcat looked from one to the other, then turned back to see the lizard scurrying away up the side of the kiva, her neckpiece giving one final rustle before she disappeared down into the hole at the top of the dome.
"Well," Fisher breathed out a moment later, "let's go. I packed everything I think we'll need." She looked down at Skink. "You ready?"
"I can hardly say I am," Skink replied, "but there are some things we cannot change. Shall I ride upon your back?"
Fisher nodded, and the lizard clambered up to settle on her neck above her backpack.
Bobcat watched them, his mind slightly numb. "Wait a minute," he said, a little surprised at how calm he sounded. "You're telling me that I just saw one of the Curials, aren't you? That I'm walking off into a world of storybook characters, is that it?"
"Yeah," Fisher said. "That a problem for you?"
Skink raised a claw. "Fisher, please. We must remember Bobcat's lack of proper schooling." The lizard turned to him and smiled. "I will be more than happy to explain, Bobcat."
Fisher sighed. "Fine; go right ahead. But can we get going before you start orating?"
"Of course," Skink said. "Where are we headed?"
"West," Fisher replied, waving a paw toward the River. "Down to the Meerkat Road, then west."
Bobcat looked in the direction she was pointing. All he saw were trees. "Why? What's over there?"
"Can we just get moving?"
"Certainly," Skink said. "We can talk as we go. If you will lead the way, Fisher?" He looked over at Bobcat. "Bobcat? Shall we?"
"What? I don't even get to say good-bye to anyone?"
Fisher gave a snort and began to pad down the slope. Bobcat looked south toward the Brackens, toward where Garson would just be starting her rounds, assigning duties to her field hands, maybe even wondering why he hadn't shown up for dinner last night.
Oh, well, at least all this would give him a good, weird story to tell her when he got back. He breathed a silent good-bye in her direction, blew out a breath, shrugged his pack into a more comfortable position, and followed Fisher.
Chapter Three: At the Crossroad
"Now lemme see if I've got this straight," Bobcat said, leaping in before Skink could start up again.
It had been hours since they'd left the kiva, Ottersgate long ago disappearing behind the wooded hills that the Meerkat Road wound through on its way west from town. Bobcat had been surprised when they'd hit the pavement to feel that same stirring in his middle that had kept him on the roads for years before he'd settled in Ottersgate and had all at once found himself looking forward to the trip, wherever they were going...
Except that Skink had been talking the whole time, rambling on and on, subjects pouring out of him, defining long words Bobcat didn't know with other long words Bobcat didn't know. Fisher hadn't been any help at all, not giving so much as a snort during Skink's whole monologue, and Bobcat was sure he didn't understand any more now than he had when Skink had started. He had to interrupt, though; he couldn't take listening to the lizard for one more minute. "So you're telling me that the Twelve Curials are real, actual folk--"
"Not folk, Bobcat; you see, their Curial Privilege--"
"Yeah, okay, so they're gods or whatever. But you're saying that they really do wander around and do things like in the stories, right?"
"Well, on the most basic level, yes."
Bobcat blinked at him. "Wow."
At that, Fisher did snort and stopped so suddenly that Bobcat nearly ran into her. "'Wow'? Is that it? You've just heard one of the most thorough and scholarly discussions of the aspects of the Curial powers that I've ever come across, and all you can say is 'wow'?"
Bobcat shrugged. "Well, I meant it."
She watched him for a moment. "You didn't understand word one of that, did you?"
"Not really, no." Bobcat managed to get a hind leg around his backpack to scratch at an ear.
Skink's gray head appeared over Fisher's shoulder. "Bobcat! You should have stopped me! I would have happily given you more complete definitions if you--"
"No, no, no!" Bobcat held up his paws. "That's okay! Really! I've got enough to chew on right now, thank you very much. I mean, if the Twelve are real, and if the Blood Jaguar is real..." He stopped, Skink giving a little cry, and he could only blink as the lizard made some quick motions with a front foot, his eyes clenched shut. "We're in some kinda trouble here, aren't we?" Bobcat finished after a minute.
Fisher gave him a sideways grin. "I take it all back. You do understand."
Before Bobcat could reply, a loud cry echoed from the road ahead of them. He looked past Fisher and saw, cresting the next hill, the lead wagon of a freight caravan, the otters in harness belting out a haulers' tune in roughly parallel harmonies while the straw boss up topside let the verses fly in a baritone rumble that rang through the trees.
Bobcat heard the straw boss give a shout, and a whoop burst from the hauling otters. They leaped up onto their beams, the wagon seeming to hang at the peak of the hill, until, with many a creak and holler, it began rumbling down into the valley, another wagon appearing at the crest behind it, its crew breaking off their song and leaping up in the same way.
"Uhh," Bobcat said, watching the first wagon speed down the slope into the little valley before them, "this might not be the be
st place to stand...."
The others seemed to agree, and they scurried to the shade of the oaks alongside the road. The first wagon, Bobcat saw, its load of otters clinging to every part of it, had reached the bottom and was halfway up the next slope when the straw boss gave three quick shouts, and down the haulers tumbled. Paws flashed on pavement, and the wagon sailed past, the straw boss waving his hat as he started up the song again.
Bobcat looked back into the little valley and saw two more wagons racing down the slope, a third topping the hill. "Brains and eggs. This's an eastern caravan day, isn't it? And of course we hafta be heading west."
Fisher shrugged. "It's time for a break anyway. Sling that pack off, Bobcat; we might as well eat something."
So Bobcat wriggled out from under his backpack, and the three settled down beneath the oaks with some of Fisher's trail mix to watch the otter caravan stream by. Bobcat gnawed some dried berries and took a swig from his canteen before asking, "So, do we have a plan here, or are we just stumbling around?"
Fisher was leaning back against her own pack. "A valid question." She recorked her canteen and began rummaging through one of her pack's side pockets. "I've got some ideas and a few things that might be of interest, specially to you, Skink, what with all you were saying earlier about the Syzygy of Material Concepts."
"Indeed?" The lizard scuttled over. "I have always been fascinated by the subject. Chiard's work on conceptualization ratios opened whole new doors--"
Bobcat was beginning to wish he'd brought a whistle. "Wait a minute; let's not start all that again."
Skink looked down. "I am sorry, Bobcat. I often become carried away."
By this time, Fisher had pulled a familiar red-bound book from her pack. "Maybe we can talk about it later, Skink, when the kids are in bed."
The lizard looked confused. Bobcat opened his mouth to complain, his sides itching, but Fisher had already started. "Anyway, I went through my library last night, trying to find anything that might help us out here, and there was basically nothing. The only book on the Plague Year I could find any reference to at all was my great-great-grandfather's, the one I showed you yesterday; it's in my pack here somewhere. It seems to be the only book on the subject."
Skink raised a front foot. "Forgive me for interrupting, Fisher, but what about Salamander of Churfos Kiva? His account is the one I read while in school."
"Yeah, but Salamander wrote in the 1680s, sixty years after the Plague Year, and he basically admits that since he was something like two years old in 1623, he had to get most of his facts from other sources. The only written source he mentions, though, is Great-great-granddad's book. You'd almost think no other scholar lived through the plague, but we know that's not true. It's just that nobody else wrote anything. Kinda weird, I thought."
"Yeah," Bobcat offered, "unless maybe this Plague Year wasn't really as bad as he made it out to be."
The look Fisher gave him was dark and cold, but she went on without answering. "Granddad calls it A Journal of the Plague Year, but it really deals with what he found as he went from place to place just after the thing had run its course, so even this book isn't really about the Plague Year itself. And nowhere does he mention either Skink's grandma or whoever the bobcat was that went with them."
"Wait a minute," Bobcat said again. "What's this about a bobcat?"
Fisher closed her eyes and leaned back onto her pack. "Okay," she said after a minute, "I'm only gonna do this once, so if you don't get it now, you're eggs outta luck; got it?"
Bobcat blinked at her. "What? What're you--"
"In 1622 or maybe early 1623, Skink's grandma lost her luck."
"And that's another thing," Bobcat began.
"Shut up and listen. Around the same time, some local bobcat had an awful experience: got himself kicked into the Brackens by a giant flaming cat monster or something like that. Sound familiar?"
Bobcat stopped chewing. "Wait a minute--"
"Just listen. Skink's grandma and this bobcat both went to see my great-great-grandfather, who was the local fisher back then, and what they did after that, I don't really know. But somehow they found out that the Plague Year was coming, and from what Skink's grandma said, it sounds like the three of them set out to stop it.
"Well, whatever they did, it didn't work, and the Plague Year came. We know that Skink's grandma came back to Ottersgate afterward and basically retired from adventuring for a while, and my great-great granddad traveled around and wrote this book." Her eyes took on a faraway look. "It's something I didn't notice the last time I went through it, but in every line you can read just how...how responsible he felt. He died about six years after finishing it." She shook herself and looked back at them. "And the bobcat, whoever he or she was, we don't hear anything at all about."
Skink rustled in the leaves. "'A failure that leads to death.' That's what Grandmother said. And she told us the beginning in the hope that we could change the ending."
Bobcat looked from one to the other. "So...now, now wait a minute--"
"So that's it," Fisher said, settling back onto her pack. "It's happening again, see? Only it's us this time. Now, can I get on with what I was saying?"
"But how do you know--"
Fisher was rubbing her eyes. "It's all there, Bobcat, all of it in what Skink's grandma said. There was a skink, a fisher, and a bobcat involved in this 'worst thing in the world' quest last time, and here we all are again. Now, if I can get to the plan?"
Bobcat decided he probably shouldn't ask any of the other questions that kept poking at him, so he just waved a paw for her to continue. Maybe things would get clearer, but he sort of doubted it.
"So anyway," Fisher went on, "since Double 'G' Granddad was the only one who wrote about the Plague Year, I read the whole thing last night, hoping I could pull out some clues even though he didn't seem to wanna talk about it any more'n Skink's grandma did. And the only thing I found was in the part where he's talking about Kazirazif, the city of the meerkats in the western desert. See, he gives these overviews of the cities and folk in an area before he gets to talking about the effects of the plague there, and his overview of Kazirazif is pretty much the same as the overviews he gives for Beaverpool and Lai Tuan and Cayottle and the rest.
"But in the Kazirazif overview, he gets into some detail about the Ramons, the spiritual advisers to the caliphs there. He tells some of the stories he heard while in Kazirazif and winds up by saying that the Ramons display a greater understanding of the darker aspects of the Curial powers than any other folks he's met. You with me so far?"
Bobcat wasn't sure he was, but he saw Skink nod, so he figured he'd better keep his mouth shut till Fisher finished. Fisher gave him a sideways look, then continued.
"Well, the phrase 'aspects of the Curial powers' struck me. See," and she held up the book she had in her paws, "that's the title of this book, Great-Great-Granddad's second and last. In this one, he devotes a chapter to each of the Twelve Curials, talks about the rites associated with each, their spheres of influence, stuff like that.
"What makes the book so interesting to us, though, aside from Granddad's ideas on Material Concepts," she shot another glance at Bobcat, "is that the book actually has thirteen chapters. I don't think I need to tell you who the thirteenth chapter is about, do I?"
Skink was muttering and making his little gestures again. Bobcat felt his cuts heat up; he didn't want to say the name out loud, didn't want to take the chance of making those eyes flare up. "Yeah, okay," he whispered.
Fisher had opened the book to near the end and was leafing through. "Not a whole lot about the Strangler, really. But he does say, right here at the beginning..." She turned a few more pages and poked a paw into the book. "Here: 'She of the Cold Fire is the embodiment of all that is Death and Destruction, all that is Ruin and Decay, all the darker aspects of the Curial powers.'" She looked up from the book. "Since these are the only two places he uses the phrase 'darker aspects,' I think, whether he meant to
or not, he's pointing us toward Kazirazif. That seem logical?"
Skink twitched his head to one side. "The Ramons of Kazirazif are rumored to know the certain rituals abolished long ago by the Elders on instructions from the Lord Eft himself. Your plan has a great deal of merit."
The caravan continued to rattle past, Bobcat's cuts tickling his sides. "Yeah, okay," he said, taking a pull from his canteen, "so that's where we're headed. I can follow that. But what're we really doing? I mean, fine, we go and we talk to these meerkats. Then what? If the thing I saw is the Blood Jaguar, lemme tell you, I don't think there's much we're gonna be able to do to stop her."
Fisher was giving him the cold eye again. "So we should just quit?" she asked quietly. "Just go home and wait for folks to start getting sick?" She dug into her pack and came out with the other red-bound book. "You want me to read you some more? About the bodies piled in the streets 'cause there weren't enough folk left to carry 'em to the bonfires? About the mouse kit Granddad found standing in an empty town east of Beaverpool, just standing there listing names, his parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, the entire town, all dead? Or d'you think Grandad just made it up, just wrote this book out of some twisted sense of humor?"
"C'mon, Fisher; I didn't mean--"
"So maybe we haven't got a chance." Her voice was still quiet, but every word bit into Bobcat's ears. "Maybe the Blood Jaguar's waiting for us over the next hill to tear our throats out before we even know she's there. Maybe we were dead before we started. But we got the warning, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna just sit by and let half the folks in the world die again. You can do whatever you want, Bobcat."
The last wagon in the caravan rattled past, and the haulers' chant sank away behind the hills, the ringing baritone of the straw bosses fading into the rustle of leaves in the morning breeze. Fisher slipped her books into her pack and strapped it to her back. "Let's go," she said.
The Blood Jaguar Page 5