The Blood Jaguar

by Michael H. Payne

  What seemed like natural light poured in through a cloudy glass dome high in the ceiling, cushions filling the room, a long table piled with fruit and grain dishes. "Please, help yourselves," the Ramon said. "You may also sleep here, if you wish. A washroom is located directly across the hall. This evening, once you have rested, I shall call for you, for I am thinking we have much to discuss."

  Bobcat nodded. "You bet we do."

  Fisher bowed to the Ramon. "Thank you, sir. We look forward to your insights."

  "Indeed," Skink added. "To take counsel from the Ramon of Kazirazif is a great honor, despite the circumstances that bring us all together."

  Bobcat had already shucked his pack, moved over to the table, grabbed a peach and was sucking it down when he saw the Ramon staring at him again. Uh-oh. "Uhh, yeah, sure. Thanks for everything. We'll, uhh, we'll see you later."

  The meerkat blinked. "Yes. Yes, we shall. As I say, I shall call on you this evening." His brow still wrinkled, the Ramon turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Bobcat swallowed the rest of the peach. "Why does everybody keep staring at me? I mean, it's not like they don't get bobcats through here all the time."

  "No," Fisher said, coming over and picking up an apple. "But I'll bet most of them are a bit more polite to one of the foremost spiritual leaders on this continent."

  "What? He said we could eat, didn't he?" Bobcat shook his head. "I don't know; this whole place just makes me twitch. I wouldn't be surprised if that guy came creeping in here later on with a knife."

  "Bobcat!" Skink had scurried onto the table. "How could you possibly consider the Ramon capable of such an act?"

  Bobcat shrugged, and Fisher rolled her eyes. "Don't you worry, Bobcat. I'm sure the three of us can handle one old meerkat. Besides, he's the only guy I can think of who can maybe tell us what we're supposed to do next." She stretched out on a cushion. "We might as well hang around, see what he has to say."

  "Yeah, yeah, okay." Bobcat rubbed his eyes, his stomach still growling. It wasn't food he needed--he knew that--but he doubted this Ramon guy kept any catnip tucked away anywhere. Bobcat stuffed a few more peaches down his gullet, just for good measure, then collapsed back onto the cushions.

  Whether he actually stayed awake, or fell asleep and dreamed he was lying there awake, he couldn't tell. Either way, it wasn't very restful, his back all tight and his paws all itchy, and he almost thanked Fisher when she started shaking his shoulder.

  He rolled over, saw her and Skink already up. In the doorway stood a young meerkat wringing her paws. "There is no hurry," she said, her voice a high quiver. "The Ramon asks you to please take whatever time you need."

  Fisher snapped her claws in Bobcat's face. "Nevertheless, let's get it together, shall we? Skink and I have already washed up. The bathroom's across the hall."

  Bobcat grunted and stumbled past the little meerkat. The bathroom was pretty fancy: clean sand, lilac water in the wash-basin, towels that smelled softly of lemon. Bobcat took his time, got all the grit out of his fur, gave himself a good licking, and came out to find the others standing in the hall. "Much better," he said.

  Fisher blew out a breath. "With your permission, then, we'll be off to see our host. Is that agreeable?"

  Bobcat waved a paw. "Perfectly. Lead on; lead on."

  The little meerkat bowed, turned, and started up the corridor, Skink perched on Fisher's back again, so Bobcat slipped into his usual place at the rear. Down a couple hallways they went, more turtle lanterns flickering, then up several darkened flights of stairs, through another corridor, light and muttering voices trickling through holes in the ceiling, then up some more stairs. When the little meerkat opened one final door at the top of the last stairway, Bobcat wasn't all that surprised to find that they were walking out onto a roof.

  Evening was just coming on, lights starting to sparkle up from the city below. The little meerkat gestured to the right, and Bobcat turned to see a table at the other end of the roof, various dishes set out and the Ramon seated in a blocky chair at the table's head.

  He didn't seem to notice them, his eyes focused out over the lights of the city, but the young meerkat cleared her throat. "Sir? Your guests, sir."

  The Ramon turned then. "Ah, yes, of course. Please, join me for supper."

  "Of course," Fisher said, Skink adding, "We would be honored, sir," and the young meerkat led them across the roof, indicating two large mats where Bobcat and Fisher could settle and a mat on the table itself for Skink. Bobcat sat where the young meerkat told him to, at the opposite end of the table from the Ramon, he noticed, Skink and Fisher both on the same side since the table was pushed right up against the stone railing at the edge of the roof.

  Their plates were already filled; some sort of nut stew, it smelled like. The young meerkat poured dark liquid into glasses before each of them, a splash for Bobcat and Fisher, a drop for Skink, and four drops for the Ramon, then bowed and left through the door onto the stairwell. The Ramon picked up his glass, said something in a high, rolling language Bobcat was sure he'd never heard before, then set the glass down, picked up a fork, and began to eat.

  Fisher and Skink, Bobcat saw, did the same, picking up their glasses, then setting them down before starting in on dinner, so he shrugged and did likewise. Night came on, stars popping in overhead, the quiet sounds of the city drifting up from the streets. The others ate in silence, not peppering the Ramon with questions, so, again, Bobcat followed their lead. These two had had more dealings with folks like this; maybe they knew what they were doing.

  They didn't touch their glasses again, so Bobcat left it sitting there and cleaned his plate, the stuff nice and spicy with just a little crunch to it. He was wondering what might be for dessert when the Ramon picked up his glass, sat back, took a sip, and let out a sigh. "It has been a bad month," he said. "All the signs spoke to me of the Blood Jaguar's prowling, but I, I would not believe it to be so." He took another sip. "Now, however, I must face facts. You are here, and the Plague Year is thus at my very doorstep." He shook his head. "And even earlier than the timetables had indicated."

  Both Fisher and Skink had picked up their glasses, but at this they each stopped, Skink snapping his head over to stare at Fisher. "Timetables?" she asked. "You'll pardon me, Ramon, but...how can there be timetables for...for something like this?"

  The Ramon looked over his glass at them. "Why, from the old accounts. The Ramons who preceded me long ago established the pattern. The last few thousand years have seen a decrease in the time between plagues, it is true, but even that change has been regular, incremental, following this pattern."

  Skink's eyes were wide. "Last few...thousand years?"

  "Yes, but now our figuring seems to have been in error. One hundred and fifteen years it has been since the last Plague Year. Our schedule gave us another eleven years. I had been hoping," and here his already-quiet voice dropped, "that I would be dead and my successor in place, but who are we mere mortals to hope against Curial planning?"

  Both Skink and Fisher were blinking at the Ramon. Bobcat waited, but when neither one asked what seemed the obvious question, he cleared his throat. "Excuse me, sir, but if you Ramons can predict these Plague Years, well, why don't you, I mean, why haven't you done anything about them?"

  The Ramon stopped in the middle of his sip. "Oh, but, sir. Surely that is your job."

  Bobcat stared across the table. "My job? What do you mean 'my job'? Who says it's my job?"

  "Why, all the old accounts." The Ramon set down his glass. "They are very clear that it is the bobcat who has come to stop the Plague Year."

  Now it was Bobcat's turn to blink at the meerkat, but Fisher spoke up: "Sir, you keep mentioning these old accounts, but we've been able to find almost no information about these Plague Years, and a matter of such importance...I mean, sir, I've been a shaman now for almost fifteen years, digging up just about everything from just about everywhere, and I've never heard of any secret acc
ounts kept by the Ramons here." She turned to where Skink sat. "Skink, you?"

  The lizard was shaking his head. "The Ramons are fabled for their knowledge of the arcane and esoteric, but to say that records exist, as you just did, sir, dating back a few thousand years... I have never even dreamed of such."

  The Ramon looked from one to the other and then to Bobcat, his brow wrinkling again. "I do not understand. It is embodied in the very story of how the world began."

  Fisher was absolutely still. "Uhh, which story would that be, sir? The one told by the reptiles, the one told by the otters, the one told by--"

  "No, no, no!" Ramon Sooli sat forward, his eyebrows alive. "The story, the one story of how the world began, the basic story of all accounts, of all that we do here! You tell me you do not know this?!"

  "Uhh, well, I, uhh..." Fisher licked her lips. "I know the current theories: the gathering of the protostar, the accretion disk forming around it, the--"

  "No, no, no!" the Ramon cried out again, whapping a paw against the table. "I don't speak of how the world began! I speak of the story of how the world began, two very different things! Can you be telling me that you do not know?!"

  Bobcat saw Fisher glance down at Skink. The lizard shook his head.

  "Ah," Fisher said slowly. "Well, I guess we don't know it, then."

  The Ramon brought his paws to his mouth, and Bobcat could see that they were shaking. "Can this be?" his lilting voice came. "Then how can you hope to see...?" A twitch passed over his face, and he brought his paws down to the table, his head bowed. "Very well," he said after a moment. His head came back up, and he crooked a claw at them each in turn. "Attend me now, all you three."

  He settled back into his chair and began: "Many thousands of generations ago, the folk lived in the skies. But they longed to feel the solid ground beneath their paws again, so they gathered together and decided to build a new earth.

  "For the work to get done in a reasonable fashion, it was decided that from each type of folk, two would be elected, a male and a female, a Lord and a Lady, to serve in the Curia, the body that would decide the parameters for this earth. The Lord and Lady elected from each type of folk came together with all the other Lords and Ladies so elected, and the Curia was formed. The Curia scoured and scrounged, gathered the air and the dirt and the rocks and the water, set the land-to-sea ratios and the nitrogen content of the atmosphere, solved all the technical problems, and faster than you would think, the new earth was finished.

  "The folk then left the skies and settled on the new earth, and it was the beginning of the Beforetime.

  "The Curia, however, remained in session above in the skies to get the new earth up and running. And the physical laws for the new earth were passed in this fashion: the Lords and Ladies of the folk who lived in the deserts came together to decide how the deserts should be, while those of the forest folk set the rules for the forests, the river folk and the mountain folk and the plains folk all working on those parts of the new earth where their kin lived. The leaders of the committees would then present their recommendations to the Curia, and the members as a whole would vote.

  "The leadership of these committees, and of the Curia itself, rotated, each Lord and Lady serving as chairfolk for a set amount of time, then surrendering the leadership to the next pair on the list. And so it went, laws getting passed and limits being set, with always the master plan in view: that the new earth would one day be completed, its chemistry self-sustaining and its geology running smoothly so that the Curia might disband and its members join their own kinfolk down upon the earth.

  "This master plan, however, had not been passed unanimously. There were those in the Curia who enjoyed the power of their position, the Curial Privilege that they were imbued with, and chief among these were the Lord Jaguar and the Lady Jaguar. They argued constantly against the dissolution of the Curia once the final rules were set in place, argued long and persuasively, trading favors and gathering support, looking forward to the time when they would assume leadership of the Curia and could put the question to a vote. And momentum grew for the idea, grew and grew until, in all likelihood, the motion would have passed. Had it not been for one problem.

  "For the Lord Jaguar was convinced things would go much more efficiently if he were solely in charge of the Curia on a permanent basis, and the Lady Jaguar was convinced that she was the perfect one to permanently wield sole power. The thought of sharing the leadership even with each other was unbearable, so as they worked together to build support to pass their motion to keep the Curia in session for all time, they also each worked separately to build support for his or her bid to take over as single permanent leader of the Curia.

  "They were very clever and very determined, and by the time their turn arrived to lead the Curia, three distinct parties had formed: those who backed the Lord Jaguar, those who backed the Lady Jaguar, and those who backed the original plan voted on at the beginning. This third group, by far the smallest, grew smaller with every meeting chaired by the Lord Jaguar and the Lady Jaguar, until only twelve in the whole Curia stood committed to that original plan.

  "And these twelve sought to steer a middle course as debate in the Curial chamber dissolved into partisan bickering, the bickering into heated arguments, the arguments into sporadic violence, and the violence, finally, into civil war, the Lord Jaguar leading his followers against the forces of the Lady Jaguar.

  "Battles raged through the skies, on the earth, and even in the sea, members of the Curia who had sat beside one another in deciding the laws for the new earth now tearing at each other's throats. Armies had even been raised among the earthly folk, drawn to the Lord Jaguar or the Lady Jaguar with promises of Curial Privilege shared, and death and destruction reigned over all.

  "Until at last, as had to happen, the Lord Jaguar and the Lady Jaguar met in battle, just there," and the Ramon lifted a claw; Bobcat followed it upward and saw that the meerkat was pointing to the polestar, "at the very top of the sky. And those that remained alive of their partisans ceased fighting to stand on the battlefields and stare at the contest high above. On and on it raged, so fierce that not even the sun in its course could move them, the sky unable to turn, all time stopping to witness this last terrible battle.

  "On and on they roared and raged, teeth tearing, claws rending, until the Lady Jaguar, torn and bleeding as she was, managed to close her jaws around the torn and bleeding throat of the Lord Jaguar. Her teeth clenched tighter and tighter, and with one mad burst of strength, the Lady Jaguar tore the Lord Jaguar's head from his body.

  "Yet that did not end it. The Lady Jaguar did not stop until she had ripped the Lord Jaguar's body to shreds, scattering the pieces far and wide over the sky. You can still see bits of him even now, streaking through the stars at times of a night. His head, the Lady Jaguar devoured, howling her triumph, her teeth crushing the skull and her throat closing over the still-screaming face of the Lord Jaguar. His right eye, though, it is said, popped free and remains shining there at the top of the sky, all other stars circling around it.

  "Only then was the Lady Jaguar sated, her furor spent; only then, the blood and bile flowing thick from her, did she fall from the sky, all the way down from the very top of the sky, fall fast and shrieking down, down to the earth, down to the very Savannah that had been her domain, fall down and slam unconscious into that land of grass, strike with a crash that shook the sky and the earth and even the sea. And there she lay, broken, bleeding, battered, but not dead, no, not dead. The Lady Jaguar lived, and slowly her Curial body began to heal itself.

  "Then at last the sun could rise, hot tears falling from its face at the slaughter. Those Curials who had fought on one side or the other and had survived looked around at the shattered sky, the beaten earth, and the blood-soaked sea, looked around, struck dumb by what they saw and more by what they remembered themselves doing, and they ran and hid, as far as they could, as deep as they could, as quietly as ever they possibly could.

 
; "The Twelve, however, those twelve who had taken no side in the terrible contest, stood in mourning, too numbed to weep at the carnage, until at last they met in the vast empty Curial chamber, and they agreed on what they had to do.

  "The Twelve scoured the sky, the earth, and even the sea, and they hunted up every Curial still alive, dragged them out of hiding, no matter how far or how deep or how quietly each had run, and hauled them all back to the Curial chamber, all except for the Lady Jaguar whose body lay motionless and healing down on the Savannah.

  "All eyes were downcast as the Twelve took the floor, the Lord Lion and the Lady Lioness, the Lord Tiger and the Lady Tigress, the Lord Leopard and the Lady Leopardess, the Lord Kit Fox and the Lady Squirrel, the Lord Armadillo and the Lady Raven, the Lord Eft and the Lady Dolphin, and in the name of the Twelve, the Lord Kit Fox and the Lady Squirrel pronounced their judgment upon the whole Curia:

  "'As of this day, the Curia is disbanded. The world will continue to function under the laws already passed, and all members of the Curia who took part in the battle, for either the Lord Jaguar or the Lady Jaguar, will be stripped of all Curial Privilege, will be sent down to the world, and will live the rest of their lives among their earthly folk.'

  "And so it was done. The Twelve took the Curial Privilege from each member of the Curia, took it into themselves, and used it to place the former Curials down upon the earth, each in the proper area and among the proper folk. The Twelve then left the chamber, sealed it behind them so that no power in the sky or on the earth or even in the sea could ever possibly open it again, turned away, and descended to the Savannah where the Lady Jaguar lay motionless and healing.