The Blood Jaguar

by Michael H. Payne

  The light clicked off, and Bobcat felt himself hoisted from the ground. "And try not to crush them this time, you moron!" the voice continued. "You know how His Majesty enjoys visitors! Take them away, and I'll get this thing set back up. There may be more of them out here."

  Bobcat was jostled over sideways, which at least got Fisher out of his face, and then with a thunder of hoofs, they were off, swinging wildly, the net digging into Bobcat's cut-up sides. The thick scent of buffalo was everywhere, pressing even tighter than the ropes, and it was all Bobcat could do to keep himself breathing. On and on it went, rolling, bouncing, squeezing, till Bobcat just gave up and let himself pass out.

  How long he stayed out, he didn't know, but when he opened his eyes next, daylight streamed into them. Clenching his eyes shut again, he heard voices: deep and gruff, definitely the voices of buffalos. "His Majesty's in the Great Hall," one voice was saying. "He's expecting you." The rolling returned, slower this time, the clatter of their captors' hoofs softer, echoing slightly.

  #

  Bobcat drifted in and out till something hard slapped up against him. A floor, he realized, squinting at it. They'd been dumped in a pile somewhere. A voice rang out: "Cut them loose that I might see what you have brought me."

  The constriction around him eased with a snap, and Bobcat flopped to the floor, his legs tingling and unable to hold him. A grumbling voice from above said, "We caught them trying to sneak past the border gate, Your Majesty."

  "Indeed?" came the first voice. "We shall see what they have to say for themselves."

  After a minute, Bobcat's legs began feeling solid again, so he rose to see what was what. Light flickered all around, bouncing at odd angles, like he was underwater. But it was just the way the torchlight reflected off the golden sashes the buffalo along the walls wore, the tips of their horns also flashing with bronze points. Everything else in the room seemed to be brown, wooden panels interlocking over the floor and walls, the ceiling carved with arcs and waves that made strange shadows dance in the torchlight. These shadows seemed to draw Bobcat's eye over his shoulder, to beckon him to turn around, so he turned to see the other side of the room.

  Bright as a lightning flash shone the throne of the Bison King, all blues and greens in the browns and golds around it; Bobcat almost staggered back. The king himself rested on a cushion the color of the sky after a summer shower, a mantle of fresh woven grasses draped over his back. His crown glowed silver-white in the torchlight, amethysts and emeralds gleaming between his horns. He looked down from his throne with large dark eyes, and a smile pulled at his beard. "Well, well. A bobcat, a fisher, and a skink. One hears many interesting stories about such folk traveling together. Perhaps we shall see if they contain any truth."

  Bobcat saw that Fisher and Skink had gotten up and were now standing next to him. Fisher took a step forward and bowed. "Your Majesty, please forgive our means of entry. We were in haste and--"

  The Bison King raised a hoof. "Please, my dear. Excuses are unnecessary and tiresome. You are here before me now, and that is all, under the Rules of the Road, that need concern us. So let us commence."

  He lifted his head then and bellowed, his voice ringing through the Great Hall. "You will come before me one by one and present me with information, theories, stories, concepts: knowledge, that most ephemeral of commodities, the only truly ennobling element of our life upon this earth! All knowledge is welcome here, but that which serves me now can serve me in no greater measure! So give me not that which I already possess, for it would make you of no use to me or to the world. And what is of no use to me or to the world will be destroyed as all useless items should be. So speak!"

  At that, the Bison King settled back onto his cushion and held out a hoof to Skink. "Good reptile, step before me."

  Bobcat glanced at Skink, the little lizard still as a stone, his sides scarcely fluttering but his eyes wheeling and spinning. After a few seconds, though, he snapped to life and bowed with a flourish. "Your Majesty," his voice squeaked into the silence of the hall, "I bring before you an item, an item of deep interest and concern to my own heart." Skink unslung his satchel and pulled his pebble from it. "It is an item to which a mystery is attached, Your Majesty."

  The Bison King crashed his front hoofs together. Two buffalo appeared and unfolded a table from the floor in front of him. "Please, good reptile, climb up that I may see more clearly that which you bring before me."

  Skink put the pebble back into his satchel, scurried up the table leg, and settled down at the very nose of the Bison King. "Your Majesty," he said, holding the pebble aloft again, "this was my luck."

  "The luck of a skink." The Bison King nodded his shaggy head. "I have read of it. But I take it you use the past tense for a reason."

  "Just so, Your Majesty. For if Your Majesty will look closely, Your Majesty will see that my luck is no longer here."

  "Indeed?" The Bison King brought an eye, nearly the size of Skink's whole body, to bear on the pebble. "That would truly be curious, if it were indeed so."

  Skink's head twitched back a bit. "Your Majesty?"

  The Bison King waved a front hoof. "I merely point out that one small pebble looks much like another. I do not impute any duplicity to you, friend Skink, for your luck has certainly deserted you if you have come before me with nothing more than a pebble. But I put it to you that someone has taken your luck, pebble and all, and has left this luckless pebble in its stead. Does this clear up your mystery?"

  Skink stared at the Bison King, then down at the pebble, turning it over and over in his claws. His eyes went wide then, and his mouth dropped open. "This...this...this pebble, it has a lump here where mine did not, and this part is too rough, and...and...and I am a fool." The lizard looked back up at the Bison King. "Your Majesty is correct."

  "I rather thought I was." The Bison King clashed his hoofs together again, and the pair of buffalo appeared at his side. "Skink, you are sentenced to death, said sentence to be carried out at my convenience. You are to be held in custody here until I have dealt with your companions on the chance that neither of them has any more to offer me than you had. Do you understand the sentence?"

  Skink didn't move for some seconds, only his neck twitching slightly. But at last he stirred and said in a tiny voice, "Yes, Your Majesty." He climbed down from the tabletop, and a group of buffalo moved to surround him.

  Bobcat stood, waiting for Fisher to do something, for the Lord Kit Fox to appear overhead, for lizards with those red collars and black rustling fronds to burst through the doors at the back of the hall, for a shout to go up from someone swooping down to rescue them. But Fisher just bowed her head and seemed to cower against the wooden floor--nothing flashed into being beside them; the silence of the place was not at all broken by the cries of angry reptiles.

  Bobcat didn't know what to think. Weren't they on a mission here? Weren't they supposed to save the world? It wasn't supposed to end like this, was it?

  Six buffalo stood in a ring, their heads inward and their eyes fixed on Skink, crouched motionless on the floor between them. The Bison King then turned and gestured with a hoof. "Good bobcat, step before me."

  "Your...Your Majesty?" Bobcat blinked for a minute. What was he supposed to do? Show this buffalo something he hadn't seen before? Yeah, right; that seemed real likely. He glanced around wildly. Maybe he could make a break for it, run for the doors, slip out between the guards' legs before they stomped on him, get out and away from this place before--

  But a picture jumped into his mind then, a picture of himself, younger but still seated on a floor in front of another someone who was so much bigger than him: not the Bison King, but the old lioness, Shemka Harr. The paneled wooden walls of the room became for an instant the gray stone of their cave, and the shaggy brown fur of the Bison King was suddenly her tawny coat. And she was giving him a challenge, a challenge she had given him before, a challenge to a game they had played many times that winter, a challenge to...
/>   "A riddle game," Bobcat said aloud.

  "A riddle game?" The Bison King cocked his head. "Do you propose a riddle game, good bobcat?"

  Bobcat blinked once or twice, then gave a rough sort of bow. "Uhh, yeah, I mean, yes, Your Majesty."

  "A true riddle game? In the old tradition?"

  "Well, yes, Your Majesty." And Bobcat realized that he almost knew what he was talking about. "By the Par Fang Rules, unless Your Majesty prefers one of the variations."

  "No, no, the Par Fang Rules are fine." A smile twitched over the Bison King's face. "I have not participated in a riddle game since my days at the Cayottle Academy. Few in my kingdom," and the king cast his eyes over the buffalo standing guard, "possess even a modicum of wit, and none seems able to comprehend the least level of riddle combat." He turned back to Bobcat. "Sir, I do indeed look forward to this."

  Bobcat gave another bow. "Your Majesty is too kind."

  "Please, step forward so I may hear you better. On the table, if you would." Bobcat rose, jumped up onto the table, and the Bison King said, "Since I am here the challenger, the first couplet will fall to you."

  The rules for Par Fang riddle games were poking back into Bobcat's head: riddles asked in related pairs, each pair building somehow on the last. He sat down, cleared his throat, bowed once more to the Bison King, raised his right front paw to show he was ready to begin, then spoke the first riddle that came to him: "'Steps the stately, measured tread in fits and stops, stretches, breaks. Starts so slow, then off it's sped, but never varies, always straight.'"

  "Well spoken." The Bison King had slid forward on his cushion, his hoofs resting on a silver bar in front of his throne. "Your intonation, your rhythm, all most admirable, most admirable. The answer is, of course, 'Time,' but I haven't heard the riddle so well delivered in more years than I would care to mention." The king gave him a quick smile.

  Bobcat swallowed against the lump in his throat and lowered his right paw. He knew there were six or seven riddles that were couplets for that one, but he could only remember one all the way through. Raising his left paw, he recited: "'Twisting her head, his body outstretched, her head his body, his body their foot. Sweet and gentle to start, turbulent rushing ahead--'"

  "'Ending at last in a great wash of sweat,'" the Bison King finished. "Pray forgive me, but I was overcome with the spirit of the game. I knew the moment I laid eyes upon you that you were a classicist, and you have not disappointed me. I have never heard the 'Time and the River Flowing' couplet delivered with such aplomb, one might almost say virtuosity." The Bison King inclined his huge head slightly toward Bobcat. "A well-played opening move."

  Bobcat lowered his left paw and sat waiting. Shemka Harr had tried to teach him the various strategies for these situations, and he thought maybe he could remember some of the classic couplets, but it had been--what?--twenty years?

  Sweat gathered on the pads of Bobcat's paws as the Bison King raised his right front hoof and recited: "'Bundle balls that pierce the shuddering sky, rest your pinioned paws, pray, not on me. Yours is the throne of delight, scented and padded so bright 'gainst your prickling, venomous bite.'"

  The words kicking up memories up between Bobcat's ears, he was sure Shemka Harr had told him this one. He could hear himself asking her what pinioned meant, and she had said it had to do with the feathery look of the fur on their legs, the fur on the legs of...

  "Bees!" Bobcat blurted out. "It's bees!"

  "Well done," the Bison King said with a grin. He lowered his right hoof and raised the left. "'Leap forward now, you champion of the light! Darkness falls away, the cold of night dispelled! Melt you the hearts and souls of all, the crimson orb its sad descent reversing! Wake, oh, wake; the tilted time is past, and all erupt and shimmer in your sight!'"

  Bobcat's sides had begun to itch again. He wanted to say "The Sun Arising," but that didn't seem right somehow. He didn't think he'd actually heard this one before, and then and there, sitting before the blue and glowing throne of the Bison King, Bobcat drew a complete blank. He tried to remember the riddles that went with "Bees," but nothing kept coming to him. The Bison King was starting to tap his right hoof, and the click, click, click echoed through the hall and set Bobcat's whiskers twitching.

  After another minute, the Bison King cleared his throat. "I'm afraid I must call time, good bobcat. Have you an answer for me?"

  The throbbing in Bobcat's sides had moved to his head. "The, uhh, 'The Sun Arising?'"

  The Bison King did not lower his left hoof. "Ah, my friend, I fear you fell into my trap. The riddle is, in fact, 'The Springtime Rising.'"

  Bobcat said nothing, couldn't look up from the tabletop. He ran his tongue over his upper lip.

  "Well played, though, my friend," the Bison King said, his voice quiet. "I am almost tempted to make it two out of three; you have no idea how much I've longed for someone to riddle with." He blew out a breath. "But no, that would not do. Precedents can be dangerous things, and I have no desire to get myself caught up in the various legal battles that would arise. Bobcat, you are sentenced to death, said sentence to be carried out at my convenience." He paused again. "I am sorry."

  "Yeah," Bobcat muttered. "Me, too."

  More buffalo appeared at the Bison King's side, and they shuffled Bobcat down from the table over into the circle where Skink was crouched, his eyes clenched shut, little rustling whispers rising up from him. Bobcat let himself be pushed into the space there and settled down to peer out between their legs. They were going to kill him here in a couple minutes, trample him to death and bury whatever was left somewhere out here on the prairie.

  The thought came to him easily, he could almost think he was dreaming, but he ached so much, he knew he had to be awake. He was going to get stomped pure and simple, and no one back home, not Lorn or Rat or Garson or anyone else, would know what had happened to him. Not that they would probably much care, except maybe Garson.

  He hadn't even said good-bye to her, and for some reason, that made him feel worse than anything else. The others he could leave without too many regrets, but to never see Garson again, never hear her voice, never tell her how much she meant to him, well, he just was not going to let that happen.

  It sort of surprised him, the intensity of this feeling, but just thinking of her perked his whiskers up, set him looking around the throne room, trying to think of some way to get out of this.

  And what Bobcat thought then made his ears rise and a grin cross his face. He looked out through the buffalo leg cage and saw the Bison King gesture with a hoof. "Good fisher, step before me."

  Yeah. The guy still had to deal with Fisher.

  Fisher sat in the same position, crouched on the floor where they'd been dumped. But at the sound of her name, she seemed to unclench, a bright smile flashing through her whiskers. "Your Majesty," she said, and she padded forward to settle at the foot of the Bison King's throne. "I propose nothing so grand as my friend Bobcat, nor anything as complex as my friend Skink's problem. I propose to demonstrate a simple, mathematical principle." And Fisher bowed.

  The Bison King arched an eyebrow. "Then perhaps you wish simply to join your friends now, for I am familiar with mathematics from set theory through differential calculus and beyond. I fear there is little you could show me."

  "I am aware of that, Your Majesty, but, please, bear with me for a moment, and I will happily explain. You are, no doubt, acquainted with the concepts of the integer, the group of positive and negative numbers, and the additive inverse?"

  "Most certainly. All very basic, I assure you."

  Fisher gave another smile. "The idea of negative numbers has never disturbed Your Majesty?"

  "Disturbed?" The Bison King's brow wrinkled. "Why should negative numbers disturb me?"

  "Does it not set you to wondering, Your Majesty, how you can add something to something else and end up with nothing?"

  The Bison King chuckled. "The additive inverse is but a mathematical convenience; it has no p
hysical reality."

  Fisher raised a paw. "Your Majesty is certain of this?"

  That made the Bison King stop for a moment. He cocked his head. "Are you proposing that it does?"

  "With Your Majesty's permission." Fisher bowed again.

  "Well, now." The Bison King's eyes lit up, and he waved a hoof at Fisher. "Please proceed, by all means."

  "Your Majesty is too kind." Fisher shot Bobcat a look that sparkled in the torchlight. "I shall need your table, Your Majesty, and a plate with three apples on it."

  The Bison King crashed his hoofs together. After a moment, a buffalo stepped forward, a silver plate with three red apples balanced across her back. The buffalo let the plate slide to the table as Fisher jumped up onto it and bowed once more to the king.

  "Your Majesty, I show you three apples." She patted each apple with a paw. "Three red apples on a plate. Now, three minus one," and she took one apple from the plate and placed it on the table beside her, "equals two." She patted the two apples still on the plate. "Is this not so, Your Majesty?"

  "Most certainly," the Bison King replied.

  "And two minus one," she took the second apple, placed it beside the other on the table, "equals one." She patted the apple left on the plate. "Nor should it surprise anyone that one minus one," and she took the last apple from the plate, set it down on the table next to the other two, "equals zero." She tapped the empty plate. "Your Majesty agrees?"

  "Quite; there are no apples left on the plate."

  Fisher raised a paw. "But, Your Majesty, is it not also true that zero minus one," and here Fisher reached down onto the empty plate and came away with an apple in her claws, an apple as big and red as the others on the table, "equals negative one?" And Fisher placed this other apple on the table beside the first three.

  Bobcat stared through the legs of the buffalo around him. The apple had just appeared in her paw, as easily as if she'd taken it from the plate.

  The Bison King sat forward, his shaggy brow wrinkling.

  "And in the same way," Fisher went on, "negative one minus positive one," and she reached down and took another big, red apple from the empty plate, "equals negative two." And this apple joined the others on the table beside Fisher.