The Blood Jaguar

by Michael H. Payne

  Skink gave a dry chuckle. "There is often a feeling of loss associated with the Lord Eft withdrawing himself from such intimate contact. To have been so full, and now to be so..." The lizard sighed, turned to Bobcat, coughed another laugh. "I have read of it, but I had never dreamed that I would experience it. I have been...truly honored."

  "But you're all right now?"

  "I am, yes, and I thank you for asking, Bobcat."

  "Hey, no problem." Bobcat grinned at him, then turned to Fisher. "So what's the plan for tonight?"

  Fisher shrugged, swallowed her spoonful of stew. "Same thing as last night unless you've got a better idea. We walk. By morning we'll be at Fekadh, and we can set up camp by the oasis there."

  Bobcat rubbed his chin. "We'll be kinda out in the open, won't we? I mean, if we're gonna have every cutthroat in the area out after us, shoudn't we--"

  "Nah." Fisher poured a little water into her bowl, swished it around, and drank it. "I don't think we'll have much to worry about if we keep away from folks."

  "You don't?"

  "Nah."

  "No more cobras sneaking up on us or anything? You really think she'll give up that easily?"

  "She?" Fisher was taking the stove apart. "Who?"

  Bobcat sighed. "The Blood Jaguar. Remember her?"

  Skink immediately began muttering, tracing those same little patterns in the air with his foreclaws. Bobcat stared at him. "And why does he keep doing that? She's gonna pop in here just 'cause I mention her name?"

  Fisher half closed her eyes. "She might. And that's exactly my point."

  "Point?" Bobcat blinked. "What point?"

  "The Strangler. She's Death incarnate, remember?"

  "Hey, I'm the one who saw her: I'm not about to forget."

  "Well, there you have it."

  Bobcat blinked at her. "What? What do I have?"

  She sighed. "Why would Death incarnate hire assassins?"

  That stopped Bobcat, but only for a moment. "But those cobras, they said they worked for her, didn't they? Didn't you say something about death cults last night? Maybe she's got all her followers out looking for us!"

  Skink raised a claw. "Well, actually, Bobcat, nothing in the literature indicates that She of the Cold Fire has anything but contempt for the cults that have sprung up around her. I've even read speculation that she reserves special places of torment for them in the Shroud Islands."

  "Torment?" Bobcat had to grin. "I can't imagine that helps recruitment much. But how can you be sure no one--?"

  Fisher set down the last bits of stove pipe and tapped her forehead. "Think about it. Anyone with half a brain could've figured out where we spent today, but nobody came to kill us." She shrugged. "Not that that proves anything. The Strangler might just be saving us for herself."

  Bobcat saw Skink shudder where he sat. "Fisher," the lizard said, "you have quite a talent for gruesome thoughts. I feel I must point out, however, that I have never seen an example in the literature of such behavior on the part of the Cold Fire. She acts alone, indirectly, and from the shadows."

  "Usually, I'd agree." Fisher leaned against her pack. "But everybody's been acting so strange lately. I mean, we have the Lord Eft manifesting himself twice in the same week: he barely shows up for his own Grand Festival every year, and when he does, it's only to the Hierophant. And look at the Lord Kit Fox, hardly pulling any of his stupid little tricks, just waltzing down and giving us information that's so far turned out to be pretty much correct. And, c'mon: Bobcat here's actually seen the Strangler and lived to tell about it. I've never even heard of that happening." She shook her head. "There's definitely something screwy going on."

  "I had not considered that." Skink scuttled down from the lip of his bowl. "It is as if their roles are somehow reversing, those Curials who are normally shrouded in silence and twilight coming forward, while those who are ever the most active in our sphere remain in the background. Consider: the Lord Tiger, who brings himself every day into the legal quandaries of earthly folk, has not flicked so much as a whisker. Nor has the Lady Squirrel, whose life blood is the redress of wrongs against the downtrodden." Skink twitched his head into a different position. "If this is indeed the case, I fear there is little we can count on with complete security."

  Bobcat blew out a breath. "Brains and eggs."

  Fisher laughed. "You said it. You wanna load up the stove here?"

  So Fisher and Skink washed the bowls, and Bobcat settled the jars and pipes into his backpack. His throat was dry and his fur all prickly, an old, familiar tickling in the back of his head, jabbing all the harder in the guttering flame of the Blood Jaguar's eyes; he hadn't had so much as a quarter roll of catnip in nearly a week now.

  Sweat broke out between the pads of his paws just thinking about it. It wasn't bad enough he was stumbling around in the one place he hated more than anything getting zapped by mythical monsters and almost killed twice in as many days. But to have to go through it all without even a whiff of catnip, just a couple leaves to grind between his paws and bury his nose in...

  Well, maybe he could pick some up in Kazirazif. Just a taste or two, that's all he would need, just enough to calm him down and get rid of this knot behind his ears. He could almost feel that first, sweet tingle, and a shudder curled down his back. Yeah, he'd get some when they got to town.

  Skink was climbing up onto Fisher's shoulders, Bobcat wriggled into his pack, and they stepped from the cave out into the arroyo. Up the sides of the canyon they climbed, paws set carefully into the crumbling rock, until they reached the rim and hauled themselves onto the desert sands again. The sun had already set behind the mountains poking up at the distant horizon, and a warm and breezy twilight was spreading over the plain. Fisher led the way to the road, and they set off southwestward once again.

  #

  This night went by slow and quiet, exactly what Bobcat needed. Nothing blew up or burst into flames, no eerie rustlings in the scrub grass, the joshua trees and cacti didn't turn into monsters or anything; Bobcat just walked along behind Fisher and Skink, all nice and relaxed. He could almost forget where they were going and what they were doing, except when he heard scattered phrases from the conversation ahead. Not that he understood them, but some stuck in his mind like popcorn between his teeth: "Curial recognition," and "The cyclical nature of reality," things he remembered from Skink's long speech the morning they had started out.

  Bobcat slowed his pace a bit. Maybe with some more distance, he wouldn't hear so much. Sure, he couldn't really deny this Curial stuff any more, but the world had gotten along without him knowing about it for this long, so why upset things? A little catnip, a few bets on the water polo matches, an occasional evening with Garson: that's all he needed in his life. Of that, he was sure.

  But those eyes popped sparks in his head, reminded him that somewhere, some giant, flaming cat monster had decided otherwise, and so here he was, stumbling through the middle of the night in the desert. Bobcat ground his teeth and aimed a few choice phrases at those eyes, sputtering their cold fire behind his own. This was all her fault, this Blood Jaguar and her Plague Year. Bobcat hoped he would have a chance to yell at her before she killed him.

  The stars danced on above, spinning around the polestar to Bobcat's right and behind him. The jags of the mountains got steadily higher as the night went on, their black teeth rising from the western horizon: the Dyhari, a sight he hadn't seen in years, Kazirazif nestled where they rolled out into the southern desert and the Savannah beyond. Bobcat glanced southward then, and thought again of Shemka Harr.

  He had never visited the Savannah, had barely thought of it or the old lioness until recently, and he wondered what had happened to her. The last time he had seen her, the winter melting away outside their cave, the days growing warmer and longer, had been another sharp blue morning in early spring. Bobcat had woken to her calling him outside, and he had gone out to see her standing on their ledge. She had smiled at him, kissed him on the forehead,
thanked him for his visit, and had begun strolling away down the valley.

  He remembered clearly the panic that had stabbed through his chest, remembered running after her and asking where she was going, when she would be back, if he could go with her. She had just smiled over her shoulder, had said, "I'll think of you." And Bobcat had stood and watched her disappear among the rocks. He left the cave himself not long after.

  There was so much pain in the memory, Bobcat almost winced. No wonder he had pushed that whole winter from his thoughts for so many years. How could she have just left him like that, just turned her back and walked away? Hadn't he meant anything to her?

  The old resentment squatted in his mind, but it was so dry and dusty, Bobcat just sneezed it away. If he hadn't spent that winter with her, he knew, he wouldn't have survived the next winter or the winter after that. She had taught him to read and write almost without him realizing it, had showed him how to greet folks on the road, how to think on the run, how to listen and ask questions, pretty much all the things that he liked about himself. She would have had her reasons for leaving, and whatever they were, Bobcat figured he could live with them. Maybe he could look her up somehow, ask around Kazirazif when they got there.

  And so the night wound on between the buttes and the mesas. The hours after midnight crept past, and the sky to Bobcat's left began to pearl with the shimmer of dawn. More joshua trees hunched themselves over the ground here, streams of purple and yellow blossoms peering out from around them. The first, clear spark of sun showed against the palm trees ahead, and as Bobcat crested a slight rise behind Fisher and Skink, the white walls of Fekadh stood out before him.

  It was almost like a splash of color, the sheer white of the adobe huts, after the yellows and browns of the desert. Sharp in the silence before morning had quite arrived, Fekadh glowed, its single street bending off the main road and leading down into the valley beyond, made green by the waters of the oasis. No one seemed to be stirring yet, and that suited Bobcat just fine. He remembered that the oasis was farther along, up the road a bit from the town itself, and that would be handy, too. The fewer folks they actually had to deal with, the better he would feel about it.

  They followed the road past the white-washed buildings, up the slope and around the bend from the town, the sand now alive with vines and flowers, till they came upon the grassy bank of the oasis, a shady pond bubbling up and trickling its way down into the Fekadh valley. Fisher led the way off the road, over the rocks around the oasis, and into a grotto of ferns that sloped down toward the pool.

  "We shouldn't bother anyone camping out back here," she said, Skink scrambling down from her shoulders so she could undo her pack. "Most everyone who comes through here stays in town anyway."

  Bobcat nodded and started unpacking the stove. "The last time I was here, I managed to arrive right in the middle of some big festival honoring the Lady Dolphin for giving them the oasis or something. Pretty good food, I thought."

  "Yeah," Fisher said, pulling a smaller satchel from her pack. "In fact, you get the stove together, and I'll gather up a few of the local legumes to put in the stew."

  So Bobcat concentrated on the stove while Skink scurried down to the pond and back for the water to fill the cooking pot. Bobcat pulled a few packages from Fisher's pack and got the water bubbling before Fisher returned, her satchel filled with roots and leaves. These she washed off, cut up, and mixed in with everything else for a spicy breakfast that made Bobcat's eyes water as he spooned out a third helping. Then they cleaned up the dishes and settled back into the shade of the ferns to sleep through the heat of the day.

  The dreams that shouldered through Bobcat's sleep were even more unclear than usual: folks he thought he knew but was sure he'd never seen before, snatches of garbled music, smells and sounds that didn't go together, like sweet honeysuckle and the chattering of teeth. Things did happen in these dreams, but he didn't pay that much attention and couldn't remember them when he woke up late that afternoon.

  Something was splashing behind him, and he rolled over to see Fisher wringing a cloth out into the largest pot. She shook the water from her fur and gave him a grin. "I thought I'd clean up some before we got to town."

  Bobcat yawned and sat up. "I could use a little of that myself. Too bad they don't let you paddle around the oasis."

  "Impractical," Skink piped in from where he perched atop some small, spiny plant. "Since this water must serve all functions here, I imagine that the local authorities wish to keep the spring itself as clean as possible."

  Another yawn stretched through Bobcat's whiskers. "You can say that again. They'll cut your paws off if they catch you swimming up here. Not pretty."

  Fisher dipped the cloth in and tossed it to Bobcat. "Get washed, then, if you want to. We better get started early tonight if we wanna make the Basharah gate before dawn. The Lord Kit Fox was pretty specific about that, and I'd rather go with our clues than just stumble around."

  The water felt good trickling through his fur, and Bobcat rubbed the cloth up, around, and over his ears, the dust from the past six days loosening and dripping to the ground. He dabbed a little at his cuts, pretty much healed but still tight whenever he bent back to lick his flanks, and thought dark thoughts about the Blood Jaguar again. But the smell of Skink's coffee was too sweet for him to dwell on such things, and he moved over beside the stove, Fisher beginning to tip the stuff from the pot into their cups. A pan had already taken the pot's place on the stove, and its spicy sizzle made Bobcat's stomach growl.

  Fisher dished the stuff out, and they ate in silence for a while. Then Skink looked up from his bowl. "I have been meaning to ask the two of you about Kazirazif. Having never been farther from home than Beaverpool, I am curious as to what sort of city we are now approaching."

  Bobcat had a mouthful, but Fisher was just swallowing. "It's, uhh, well, it's...different." She gestured with her spoon. "It's one of the oldest cities on the continent, and you can pretty much tell. See, Beaverpool was built by beavers, all of a piece and with a master plan, but Kazirazif more sort of just happened, folks coming outta the desert and settling at the foot of the Dyhari mountains wherever any water found its way out of the rocks. So instead of a Bailey Common or a Beaverpool Municipal Center with the town spread out around it, you've got about fifty old neighborhoods all twining around each other.

  "Then the Raj Canar came along, built a wall around the whole thing, and proclaimed himself the first Caliph of Kazirazif." Fisher shrugged. "That's the history, but other than that, all I can say is you've gotta see it to believe it."

  "That's what I'd say, too," Bobcat put in as soon as he could. "Meerkat Town's an accident all set to happen, but it's like it already has and no one's noticed yet. I dunno, but there's something about the place that made me wanna run for cover whenever I was walking down one of those twisty little streets, like someone was watching me or something. Nice catnip, though."

  Fisher gave him a look. "You're not thinking of getting yourself all twisted up on us, are you?"

  Bobcat didn't bother to keep his ears up. "Hey, maybe you can keep your whiskers on your own snout, you think? I don't go nosing around in your bottles and stuff, do I?"

  Skink rustled from his perch. "Now, please, you two--"

  "No, no," Fisher said, taking another spoonful from her bowl and looking through her eyebrows at Bobcat. "He's right. What he does to himself is his own business. Of course, as it is his own business, he can use his own cash to pay for it. That's only fair, I would think."

  "Damn straight," Bobcat muttered, drinking down the rest of his stew. It wasn't until he set the bowl back down that he realized that he didn't have anything of his own with him. "Hey, hey, wait a minute! All this stuff is yours! You wouldn't let me go home, wouldn't let me stop or anything! How'm I s'posed to buy catnip if I don't...if I don't..."

  Fisher cleared her throat and turned to dip some water from the pot into her bowl. "Kinda late to think of that now, I'd say."


  "You set me up." Bobcat glared at her. "Right from the start, you set me up...."

  "Let's just say I like to keep my bases covered." She crooked a claw at him. "We've each been included in this little excursion for a reason. Now, I have no idea why the Strangler picked you as the bobcat for our turn at the story, but that's what she did, and our best chance for finding out, our best chance for living through this thing, our best chance for stopping the Plague Year, everything depends on us staying alert and being ready for whatever comes. You know that, Bobcat, and you know that catnip'll make you everything but that. Once we get through this, you can stone yourself under for a week; I don't care. But not now. You get me?"

  A cold shiver twitched all the way down Bobcat's back, the stew in his stomach suddenly sour. "Then let's get this over with." he grumbled at last. "I'll get the stove apart."

  Skink unfroze from the lip of his bowl and scuttled down to finish the last of his stew, Fisher dipping her scouring pad into the pot of oasis water, Bobcat wrenching the stove apart and clattering the jars. It all kept coming back to the Blood Jaguar and her stinking Plague Year and his paws were starting to hurt and his sides kept itching and the dust had turned to mud in his fur and, gods, he missed Garson and he didn't even have enough money for a lousy quarter roll of catnip and he hated it, absolutely hated it, that Fisher was always right about everything!

  Finally he got the stove packed away and struggled his load onto his shoulders. Fisher and Skink took the lead, and they clambered out of the grotto, over the rocks, and away down the road toward Kazirazif.

  Chapter Seven: Kazirazif

  Through another night they walked, the sun settling big and red behind the mountains to Bobcat's right and sucking all the blue from the sky. Long, glowing clouds stretched in from the west, their sharp pink fading to gray, thickening and taking hold overhead. Then even the gray was lost, and solid night flowed down over them.