This conversation didn't do much to help Bobcat's jitters once they started back down the road. Those eyes were bright fierce points of red now, burning back behind his own. All around, the blackened silence of the night wore on, and Bobcat strained his eyes and ears for any scuffle, any little glow, any signal that whoever was out there was about to make a jump at him.
But the night went along just as it had, nothing more than vague feelings and stray scents ever reaching him. After a while, the crescent moon came wafting up, the rocky buttes and outcroppings taking the slight silver into themselves and making a few more shadows from it. The dribs of plant life spiking out of the sand seemed to shift every now and then, crackling quietly in the night, and Bobcat was glad when the sky behind them began to grow gray and the air began to stir with the approaching dawn.
Orange was just sparking at the eastern horizon, the first light of morning touching the arms of the joshua trees, when Bobcat followed Fisher and Skink around the jagged base of a tall, paw-shaped butte. Fisher was calling back, "Canyon Pienta's just up another couple of miles, seems to me, off to the right of the road," when Skink gave a sudden cry.
"Fisher! Stop!" The lizard had scurried to the top of Fisher's head and was clinging to her ears.
"Ouch! Skink, what in the--" She turned to face forward and stopped dead in her tracks.
Bobcat had already stopped; he'd seen the two things ahead in the road the same time Skink had shouted.
They were cobras, big cobras coiled in the shadow of the butte and swaying slightly in the heat of the sun's first breath across the sands. Bobcat had seen cobras before, stalking in groups along the streets of Kazirazif the times he'd been there; they always made his fur stand on end, their hissing voices, the way they managed to move without legs, and most of all, the lidless stare they turned on folks when they slithered by. That stare was settling even now on Bobcat, and their pale green eyes seemed to connect somehow with the red, fiery eyes burning already inside his head.
For a few seconds, no one spoke; then the larger cobra stretched his coils slightly forward, puffed his hood out just a bit, and said, his voice a slippery whisper, "So we are well met, we five, you, quester, brujo, and compages, we, the chosen desert-born, risen from the sands to greet you, ease your questioned steps and lead you onward toward your destined end, the end whose storied reach enfolds you, paws outstretched to soothe and comfort, warm and silken rest caressing, pleasure, rapt and all relaxing, soft and smooth her nestling stroke, soft and smooth her stroke. Tranquil calm in sleep beside her, downy, dreamless, languid sleep, soothe and comfort, warm and silken, rest caressing, all relaxing, soft and smooth her nestling stroke, so soft and smooth her stroke."
The words went humming, purring, rustling, fondling over Bobcat's ears, swaying gently through his fur, and spreading slow as sweetened syrup nuzzling at his tired mind. Eyes were everywhere around him: serpent eyes that ebbed and flowed with jaded greens and flinty grays; eyes inflamed with craft and guile, soft as hatred, hot as fear; and in between them, eyes that drooped with dust and distance, rattling somewhat in their frames. He knew these last eyes best of all, could feel them blink and almost close. For these last tired eyes were his, and soon the whispering, rushing tide would wash them over, sink them down, and push them under, deep and drowned.
But then a voice came ringing out alarm clock loud, a rhythm jarring off its track the serpents' coiling inner hum. It tickled Bobcat, made him sneeze, brushed back his ears; he raised his head, and there stood Skink, one foot outstretched:
"I pray you'll forgive me my speaking so loud, and what's more to the point here, a bit out of turn, but you see, mine's a heart made of ivy and oak, made of thorny old rose bushes long gone to seed, and it prods me at times when a thing's not quite right. So I must in all conscience point out to you both that we have not yet properly been introduced. Now, this may appear moot and perhaps even make me seem somewhat absurd in these modernish times, but I fear I must nonetheless hereby insist that before we begin what is likely to prove a protracted and obstinate course of debate, we ought to be known, each one here to the rest in the manner and custom set down by our patron, the ancient Lord Eft, may his name always sing."
Skink had by now scurried down off of Fisher and stood in the road with his eyes on the snakes. "For protocol shapes us," the lizard went on, "and all that we do. So with your permission, I'll take your lead and bend my measure to fit your own. I am Skink of Donalis Kiva, no one you should have heard of, I'm sure, but I am he. The Lord Eft follow and keep you both, and I shall speak for my colleagues here when I thank you for your kind concern. Now, whom do we have the honor of meeting, and who are you with whom I have the great good fortune of twisting tongues?"
The serpents seemed to hesitate, their careful hissing hum to falter; then at last the one who'd spoken turned to the other and breathed aloud a venomous voice like scuttling beetles. "Sister, seems it not to you that this slight creature spoke just now? I cannot think I heard aright, listening as I thought I was. Can it be that this slight creature hates itself to such extents that it would dare address us here? Can it think to use the old and dried-up name of absent Eft while here in lands where that one's name is less than dew on the morning sand? Can this be, my sister? And, if so, how can it hope to live?"
"Patience, brother," slid the words from out the other's swaying throat. "For we are here by duty bound, here to do the work assigned us, not to lose our focus getting pulled from our allotted course."
The larger cobra flared his hood, his eyes alive with pale fire; riding back upon his coils, first he fixed those eyes on Skink, then snapped them toward his sister's face. "This slight creature challenged me, my sister. That, I shan't ignore. These two mammals stand as good as dead right now; their transformation at our fangs is imminent. Just hold them here, dear sister, while I twist the tongue from this slight skink and show him in whose name is strength, is power and might before he dies."
Bobcat saw through heavy eyes the smaller cobra start to speak, her tail twisting through the sand to settle on her brother's scales. But her brother shook himself away from her and slithered left, coils stalking 'cross the pavement, eyes now fixed on Skink alone. The swaying rhythm clung to Bobcat, made his paws all thick and useless, dumped its muddy weight upon him; down around his neck it drooped, forced his nose to tap the ground. But Bobcat pried his eyelids open, kicked his brain to concentrate upon the two now circling slowly, morning shadows long and stretching off across the desert sand.
"Simpering fool," the cobra hissed, his tongue a black and flickering thing. "Introductions are in order; yes, I must agree with that. For Death herself has sent us to you, not as faceless sneak-assassins, not like creeping, puffing adders. Not for you a death by stealth, but death with honor, open, regal, struck by poisons cobra borne, the highest form my mistress owns. But name? I have none, for I am not name, but function: deed, not word. I am but the agency by which she whisks you to herself, I, your guide and guardian, the coils that bear you on to rest forever 'neath her silken paw. Call me therefore what you will, for you are prey and nothing more."
"Guardian, then," the lizard said, his circling, shuffling claws upon the pavement clicking different rhythms, tapping counterpoint across the swaying hiss the cobras sang. "Greetings I bear from him whose name is blessing to all who speak his modality, shaping their speech as we do now in languages strange and measures incontinent, serving his will in thought and deed regardless of acts performed in another's name, she whom he cast from the warmth of the sun to lie quiv'ring in shadows beyond."
"Your bones will boil!" The cobra twitched forward a bit, his tongue lashing quick through the light of the dawn. "You will burn for your mockery, quartered and diced till I serve you as soup at my mistress's table!"
"That may be so," Skink said in return, "but hers is a fire that burns without heat, and who wants a soup prepared with cold fire? My Lord is cold, but he lives for the light, lets the warmth of the sun add its
flow to his blood. Yours is a mistress that lurks in darkness, sealed in mists and clawing at shadows--"
"While yours is a master who's old and feeble, drier than bone with the life of a stone! She of the Cold Fire burns and consumes; vibrant and powerful, she conquers all!"
"All except beauty, true peace and tranquility."
"All! She is everything, glorious and bold! Hers is the triumph, the last conflagration, and we who would serve her--"
"Will die like the rest." Skink held a front foot up, suspended before him. "You who would talk of honor and duty, playing at both, but who function with neither--"
"Grasp at your straws, small, skittering beast. Your Eft here is impotent, less than a word."
"Then how much less does your mistress bear, who dares not face my Lords and Ladies?"
"Dares not face?" The cobra drew back, the gold of the sun glinting wet at his fangs. "Your death will be painful, you--"
"What, is she here? Your mistress creeps out in the bright of the sun?" These last words were different, made Bobcat's ears twitch; Skink's voice seemed to deepen and ring through the air, an air that was thickened and rolling somehow. A gray undulation appeared around Skink, a strange solid something that Bobcat recalled from a glimpse through a distance some mornings ago: a sound taking shape, rumbling out from between and behind where the wind goes when no wind is blowing, a voice that was Skink's, and yet not his at all, a voice that went billowing out like a cloak, like a storm cloud, a flash flood, a thundering rock slide, pounding and shattering down through the air with a substance that added to Skink's tiny form.
"I ask you again," this huge voice exploded, its force making Bobcat cringe back in alarm, "I who am earthly and like you a vessel in service to powers beyond and above! Speak, if you dare, in a voice of command: let your mistress confront me through you, serpentine, as my master's least whisper slips out now from me!"
The mere breathy shadow cast down by that voice had been more than enough to turn Bobcat's skin cold, but the brunt of its sounding, the weight of its lash, the vast emanation that burst forth from Skink, from over and under, around him and through, had been aimed at the cobra, had torn through his hood, had slammed full and twisting straight into his face.
And down the snake tumbled then, felled like a tree, like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut. He collapsed all atwitch, flailing madly in place, a fish speared and plopped from the stream to the bank. For a minute or more he continued to writhe, till at last he had wound himself up in a tight little bundle of tail, a pile of snake, with his head lost from view in the depths of his coils.
And all around Skink, the flickering weight, the gray looming something that leadened the air, was suddenly gone with the softness of down being wafted aloft by a stray morning breeze, with a whisk, back to spaces that weren't there at all. Skink for his part sobbed out a slight sigh and seemed to deflate before Bobcat's dry eyes. But Skink shook himself, pushed himself forward again, and faced the she-cobra ahead on the road.
She had remained standing perfectly still during all this encounter, her hood slightly spread, her neck undulating the soft rhythmic hum that held Bobcat captive, set weights to his paws. She rose on her coils, returning Skink's gaze with cold stones for eyes, pale green and unblinking. "You speak with authority," she breathed at last, a soft, gentle curling of air from her lips, "an authority I cannot hope to endure. Yet I have pledged my heart to my mistress, she whose voice has summoned me here. So know I bear you no ill will, but promised deeds are deeds fulfilled to those whose work must needs be true. En garde then, sir." And back she drew, her scales gleaming as she swayed.
Skink gave a bow. "Yes, it is said that duty to those above is a glorious, wonderful way to lead a life, and I wouldn't dream of ever disputing it. But it is also said by some that duty to self is just as important in taking responsible action and not laying blame where it does not belong."
The cobra lashed out, her hood a flash of light, and latched her teeth onto empty air. For Skink had thrown himself to the side, had skittered and slid through the sand on the road. The cobra gathered herself together, reared back again as Skink raised his voice: "The servants of Death and Destruction know nothing of duty and honor as you understand it! Duty in Death's rank serves as a mask, a cover for blind, naked hatred and fear, for feelings of vengeance, not reasonable pride in a job that is honest, straightforward and true! The servants of Death do her deeds out of pleasure, a sordid and vicious display for themselves, but, cowardly, never admit that they function for their own will and with their own reasons. 'It is my duty,' they snidely assert, when true sense of duty is just what they lack!"
The cobra held back, her swaying subdued, her hood giving forth with a slight sort of flutter. Skink raised a front foot. "What I'm telling you here is nothing you haven't yourself thought before. Your heart seeks to serve in an honorable cause, and the voice you heard calling was said to be Death's. But you have had doubts after seeing those ones who claimed to be hearing the same voice as you. For your blood flows with sterner stuff, and she who was calling you calls to you still."
"She does," came the cobra's voice, pale as her eyes. "She calls to me constantly, has called for days. I sought to ignore her, to listen to those who told me I'd found my true place in this desert." A shudder ran down to the tip of her tail. "A place among murderers, cheap toughs and cutthroats, not royal assassins, none true to the call."
"Your call is not theirs," Skink quietly said. "They lead you astray, and you know that, deep down."
"I do. I have known it, have know how my place lies farther off in lands I've not seen, lies in service to someone whose name I don't know."
"Dawn's broken." Skink turned his front foot, claws set upward. "The first light of morning for journey's first step."
The cobra looked down, and a flickering smile puffed up and was gone as her hood folded back. The tip of her tail slid forward and stroked into Skink's upturned claws, and there on the road, they danced a brief minuet, swayed a gavotte, gave a turn to the sun rising into the sky.
The cobra then bowed and stalked off through the sand where the shimmering start of the desert day's heat made the land seem to wriggle, horizons to jump. She coiled her way into it, grew indistinct and finally was lost through the glisten beyond. Her hum lingered on, though, a soft, tickling stroke, for some minutes, until like herself, it was drawn past the sands and was gone in the silence of dawn.
#
Bobcat found he could blink again, and he shook his head, trying to clear it. A groan reached him, and he looked up to see Skink collapse into the sand. He tried to move, but Fisher was faster, already at the lizard's side before Bobcat could find his paws. "Just take it easy," she was saying, pulling a bottle from her satchel and using the stopper to dab a few drops of something onto Skink's tongue. "Everything's gonna be okay."
Skink raised his head and gave a weak smile. "I think I would like to lie down for a while."
"You got right ahead. Bobcat and I'll get you to Pienta. You just sleep."
The little lizard nodded, his eyes rolled shut, and the quivering of his sides slowly relaxed. Fisher recorked her bottle, put it back in her satchel, then turned to Bobcat. "How you doing?"
Bobcat blinked at her. "Uhh, okay. I mean, I guess...."
"Take your time," she said with a tired smile. "After your first reptile tongue twister, you're liable to have a little trouble telling up from down for a while."
Bobcat could only blink some more. He gave his head a few more shakes, rubbed his nose between his paws, and bit by bit got most of the fluff out from behind his ears. "I'm not even gonna ask what that was," he said when he could. His eyes came to rest on the rolled-up cobra still lying on the pavement ahead. "Uhh, shouldn't we do something about that?"
"Hmmm? Oh, he'll be all right."
"Yeah, that's sorta what I was worried about."
Fisher gave him a look. "He'll be out for a couple days; you don't recover all that quickly fr
om the Lord Eft shoving himself down your throat. Help me with Skink, will you?"
Together, they gathered up the unconscious lizard and lashed him to Fisher's pack with some twine she pulled from a pocket. "Nothing a good ten or twelve hours of sleep won't cure," she said.
"Count me in, and quick: it's already hot out here."
"C'mon, then. We're just about to the canyon."
They left the bluff and the cobra behind to continue on through the rising morning. After a bit, they came over a rise, and there was the canyon, a jagged crack in the sand reaching back to the horizon. The road wound closer to it till the two were running side by side, the dark brown and red stone of the canyon's sides looking like layer cake to Bobcat.
The river only flowed through Canyon Pienta whenever it wanted to; Bobcat had heard stories of it suddenly crashing down on travelers camped in the shady caves along the bottom after forty or fifty years of no water for miles, the area blooming for a few weeks, then drying up again. Bobcat followed Fisher off the road and down the crumbling sides of the canyon with pricked ears--no flood rumblings, of course, but best to be safe--then turned his attention to his paws, the stupid pack trying its best to pull him over sideways.
A couple of shallow caves gaped nearby, and Fisher led the way into a fairly large one. Bobcat untied Skink, settled him into a hollow in the rock, then slung off his pack and dropped like a stone, not dreaming or coming awake until he couldn't ignore the shaking at his shoulder and Fisher's voice calling his name: "C'mon, Bobcat, the sun's almost down, we've got walking to do, and your chow's getting cold. C'mon, or I'll have Skink yell at you."
Bobcat mumbled, rolled upright, and stretched the kinks from his legs. A bowl was pushed into his paws, and he began spooning things out of it before he'd even opened his eyes. It was warm and nutty, and Bobcat had gulped the stuff down before he'd woken up enough to look over at where they'd left Skink. The lizard sat perched on the lip of his bowl, gnawing on something, staring out through the cave mouth at the gathering twilight. Bobcat looked from Skink to Fisher. "Is he okay now?"
The Blood Jaguar Page 12