The Blood Jaguar

by Michael H. Payne

  Then they rounded a corner, and he saw where they all were. A market square lay before them, Keffiyah Square he realized, the great fountain at its center unforgettable from all the times its water had been the only drink he could afford. Beside the fountain now, though, a large bonfire was burning, and around the bonfire had gathered folks of all sort, meerkats and falcons, jackals and squirrels, serpents of every type, their voices a mishmash of sound over the fires' crackling. More folks were entering from the larger street mouths, coming into the square, groups forming and re-forming in the light of the bonfire.

  Bobcat nudged Fisher and gestured to one of the street ends on the other side of the fire. "If we're where I think we are, that should be the Darb Mojambwe. We can take it east till we hit Hishafir Square, then cut over a couple blocks and meet the Coati Road. I think."

  She turned, flashed that jarring otter grin at him again. "Well, nothing like wandering the streets of a strange city in the middle of the night, I always say. Makes a body glad to be alive." And she sauntered out into the square, her rolling gait making Bobcat wonder if she might actually have otter blood in her somehow.

  He stepped out then, wove through the crowds, his eyes on the street end. Snatches of conversation reached him, things like "...demons in the caliph's palace...," and, "...woke up screaming, could almost still smell the blood...," and, "...it was just that Granddad wouldn't stop crying, said it was the end of the world...." Bobcat picked up his pace and kept himself focused on Fisher's dark cloak in the crowd ahead.

  He got to the street and kept going, entering the traffic of folks out on the Darb. Here lamps burned, the cafes open, pushcarts moving up and down the street, but Bobcat didn't hear any laughing, no music washing out from the pubs. The folks at their sidewalk tables talked in low voices, the scent of fear coming to Bobcat's nose under the stink of burning kerosene. And every cart, he noticed, seemed to be selling charms or totems--no snack wagons or drink merchants, no clothiers or hat dealers.

  Down the blocks they went, Fisher staying a few paces ahead, until the buildings on either side pulled away, and Hishafir Square opened in front of him, more bonfires burning, more crowds gathered. Fisher had stopped, so Bobcat moved up beside her. "There's a side street across the square," he muttered, "and it winds right down to the Coati Road." He shook himself, his sides itching under his cloak, the fear scent making his fur bristle. "Did you hear what folks're--"

  "Yeah," she said, her voice suddenly her own again. "Real cheerful stuff." Then the otter lilt was back, and she slid forward, calling out, "Let's just get going, shall we?"

  He wove through the crowds, trying to ignore everything around him, but... Two raccoons clutched their baggage, one assuring the other, "If we can just get out of town, we'll be all right." Among a few dozen meerkats, their jaws set, one was saying, "And if the caliph thinks he can keep us from knowing what's going on, then I say we go visit him tonight and take some good, hefty clubs with us." A fox, stinking of liquor, stumbled past, stopped, turned around, laughing, "Hey, yo, bone merchant! Looks like you're gonna be in the business here, don't it?" Bobcat almost sprinted the last few yards to the side street, Fisher a few steps faster.

  This street lay as dark and deserted as the first they'd used, starlight making the way just bright enough; Bobcat let out a sigh of relief, his paws shaking with each step. It wound for a while, then ended at a larger street, lamps lit every few yards but also nearly deserted, only a few figures scurrying along. "This way," Bobcat said, starting down the street. "We shouldn't be far from the gate." He looked over his shoulder. "Weird. I mean, I heard folks talking about leaving the city, but there's no one here."

  "Not weird." Fisher's walk still rolled a little, but her voice was practically her regular one. "After all, this road leads south."

  "So?"

  "So south is the Savannah. No one with a brain wants to be heading into the Strangler's territory right now."

  That sent a shiver through Bobcat's whiskers, and he let the conversation drop. A few minutes later, torches appeared ahead, and Bobcat could make out the tower of the Basharah gate. As they got closer, he recognized the Raj Tevirye standing with two other meerkats, and he shook himself, getting his head cloth to droop down a bit more over his face. He walked past quickly, thought he saw Tevirye's head turn... but she didn't call out, and he padded one paw after the other out through the gate, past the lieutenant and the other three guards, and onto the road again.

  #

  The night swallowed up the lights of the city, the sand dunes dark and quiet ahead, but the faces stayed: Ramon Sooli and his wrinkled brow, Raj Tevirye and the shake of her head when she'd left them that morning, all the wide eyes Bobcat had passed on the streets, the quivering voices, the bristling fur. The Ramon's story stirred through it all, and he realized with a shock, almost tripping, that all those folks back there, whether they knew it or not, were counting on him to stop this Plague Year, to defeat the Blood Jaguar, to save them all from her plan.

  And so, he supposed, were Fisher and Skink. And Lorn and Rat and Shemka Harr, wherever she was.

  And, gods, even Garson.

  And he had no idea what he was supposed to do or how he was supposed to do it.

  Bobcat didn't feel much like talking, so it suited him just fine when Fisher kept going through the flats outside the walls of Kazirazif and on into the dunes, down the Coati Road, and passed the milestone without stopping. Lightning flickered at the horizon to his left, thunder rumbling in Bobcat's ears, a whiff of rain on the breeze. Great. Knowing his luck, they'd end up trudging through the night in the rain, heading he didn't know where to do he didn't know what.

  But the lightning kept its distance and the night wore on, Bobcat's thoughts making his paws heavier and heavier till he heard Fisher heave a sigh. "All right, let's take a rest. Skink's probably half-throttled by now." She padded off the road into the sand, stretched, and settled herself down between two dunes.

  Something moved at her shoulder, and Bobcat got there in time to see Skink's head pop out. "Actually, Fisher," the lizard said, "I'm doing quite well."

  "Glad to hear it. Watch out a minute." She heaved her pack off, Skink ducking out of its way, and dug around till she pulled out some trail mix. Bobcat sat down beside her, slung off his own pack, found a little bag of something nutty, and started gnawing on it. The silence went on, broken only by an occasional roll of thunder thudding in the distance, till Bobcat couldn't stand it anymore. "So. What now?"

  Fisher arched an eyebrow, her face still powdered but not an echo of otter anywhere in it. "Well, as I understand it, you're the one who's supposed to know."

  Her voice was entirely hers now, too, and it made Bobcat's sides start itching. "And what's that s'posed to mean? You think I've been holding out on you?"

  She looked away. "I don't know what to think anymore."

  Skink rustled down into the sand, raised a claw. "Now, Fisher. We both know that Bobcat is as concerned about our success in this matter as we are."

  Fisher barked a laugh. "Do we?"

  "Hey!" Bobcat glared at her. "What, you think I want this Plague Year? My dreams never told me I was s'posed to be in charge here! How was I s'posed to know if--"

  "You? Not know?" She fished a chunk of something out of her bag, took a bite of it. "I am surprised."

  "Fisher, please." Skink had scurried up onto her pack. "We are all tired, and our visit to Kazirazif has thrown an entirely new light on our mission, a light none of us could have suspected. We must work with what we have been given." He twitched his head over to Bobcat. "Now, Bobcat, perhaps you have had some dreams of the sort the Ramon mentioned, dreams that made no sense to you when you had them because you had yet to understand the nature of Curial Manifestation. I have read of cases where True Dreams sent by the Lady Raven were not recognized as such until months later. Could this be the case here?"

  Bobcat rubbed his chin. "Well, lemme think...."

  "Oh, gods." Fisher spat s
omething into the sand. "You might as well ask a rock."

  "Hey!" Bobcat felt his hackles rise.

  "I mean, c'mon, Skink; this's Bobcat we're talking about here." She tossed her head. "Any True Dream that might've visited him would have to get through his catnip cloud, and I doubt even the Lady Raven could penetrate that."

  The catnip urge rumbled up from his belly, those eyes simmering in his head, Fisher's voice grating over the cuts on his sides, and before Bobcat even realized what he was doing, just wanting to wipe that smirk from her whiskers, he had lashed out with a front paw and bashed Fisher in the face.

  She jerked back, her stunned look gone almost instantly, her lips curling back. "Why, you goddamned little...," she growled, and then she was leaping at him, her claws out, Bobcat jumping up to meet her; he'd taken all he was gonna take from her.

  He tried getting his paws up to slash her as she came, but she was too quick, struck him straight in the chest and knocked him over backward. He heard cloth tear, felt her weight pressing him down, and kicked out with his hind legs, trying to rake her stomach. She was still moving over him, though, and all he ended up with was his paws tangled in her robes. But her dark fur stretched before his eyes, and he bared his teeth, ready to snap, when a huge light burst at the sky, thunder crashing at his ears. He blinked, and water swept cold and roaring over him, dashing him sideways.

  Flash flood, he knew immediately, had seen more than one rip down across the desert after thunderstorms in the mountains. He tried to stop his tumbling, to get his head up, to breathe, but he was still tangled in Fisher's cloak, his paws bound in the cloth. Things slammed into him, mud filling his eyes and ears, every gasp giving him half a mouthful of water, the force of the flood knocking him from side to side. He couldn't tell if Fisher was still with him, couldn't tell which way was up, and he flailed through the raging torrent till he thought his chest would burst and his legs grew too tired to keep up their thrashing.

  Just as they were giving up, though, the rush around him began to calm, the constrictions of the cloak seeming to melt away, his paws brushing ground for the first time in long minutes. He pushed off from it with as much strength as he could muster, felt his nose break the surface, managed to suck in a few coughing breaths. The flood was slowing, the water growing shallower, letting him stand this time with his head above the surface. He stumbled forward till his knees gave out, but by then the flow was a mere trickle, letting him drag himself up onto dry land.

  He was alive, he could tell, because everything hurt so much, and he panted and heaved up water for he couldn't tell how long until the tightness crept from his chest. It took a while longer for his breathing to slow and his muscles to stop feeling like jelly, but then he raised his head, opened his eyes, and had to gasp.

  A wide, crescent-shaped cove met his eyes, the darkened sea lapping at the sand that curved away in both directions, cliffs towering up behind. His hind legs still lay in wetness, the stream seeming to flow around him, along the left side of the knob of sand he had dragged himself onto, and into a large pool below him, its water trickling in rivulets down the beach to the lagoon. A cold light flooded the whole scene, and Bobcat looked up to see the moon, huge and full, hanging overhead.

  Which was odd, since the moon had been waning all week.

  Everything stood out so clearly beneath that moon, too, the contrasts so sharp, that Bobcat shivered, the stark and shining silver and black of the place seeming somehow unreal.

  A dark speck swung past the face of the moon then, moving quickly, across the moon and gone before Bobcat could more than notice it. He stared upward, and it swung past again, larger this time, seemed to be spiraling down through the sky, growing bigger each time it passed the moon's face, until Bobcat realized it was some sort of bird. A few more passes, and the wedge of its tail and the jagged feathers of its wings told him it was a raven.

  It just kept getting larger, circling downward, and he could make out a dark sheen glowing from its feathers. Larger and larger and larger it came on, Bobcat's hackles rising, till it filled the whole sky, swooping past him and out over the cove, its wings seeming to brush the cliffs. He heard a gasp from his right, turned to see Fisher sprawled there, staring upward, Skink clinging to her head. "Oh," Skink breathed. "The Lady Raven."

  Bobcat looked back, fur prickling, at the raven wheeling above the water. She glided down, stroked the surface with her wings, and Bobcat caught his breath as a slender, silvery shape sprang up over her and knifed back into the sea. "The Lady Dolphin," he heard Skink say, but he'd sort of guessed that himself already.

  The Lady Raven was still coasting, the gleaming figure of the Lady Dolphin again leaping up. But this time, the Lady Raven rolled, and the two flashed through a series of impossible spins and swirls, moonlight and darkness dancing through the water and over the whole sky, their music the splash of the waves and the stroke of night's wind on the sand. Again and again they circled and spun, up and around until Bobcat saw that they were headed straight for him, straight for the beach. But they were coming so fast, twirling so wildly, he flinched, expecting them to crash into the shore.

  At the last second, though, they each gave one last flip, the Lady Dolphin sliding up the rivulets to settle into the pool below the knob of sand, her fins, tail, and bottlenose raised, while the Lady Raven somersaulted over her to land without a sound beside the pool, her wings spread, her head thrown back, her eyes closed.

  They held that pose for a heartbeat, Bobcat afraid to breathe; then the Lady Dolphin yelled, "Wa-hoo!" and rolled over, slapping her fins in the pool and kicking her tail. The Lady Raven was laughing by this time, too, had fallen over onto her back, her wings draped over her chest. "Oh, sister!" the Lady Dolphin got out after a moment. "You never could do that last double reverse, could you?" She bent her tail and splashed water up over the Lady Raven.

  "Hey!" the Lady Raven cried, brushing a wingful of sand into the pool. "You're the one who comes out of your turn too high, sister."

  "Oh, I like that! The bird's complaining about the fish flying too high!"

  "I see. Suddenly you're a fish?"

  The Lady Dolphin kicked out some more water. "You get technical on me, sis, and, oh, I'll give you such a pinch!"

  Their laughter, gentle in Bobcat's ears, made him think of the crystal chimes he'd heard while wandering among the temple rows of Lai Tuan, all pure tones and clearer than any voice had a right to be. He pressed himself lower against the sand and hoped they wouldn't notice him.

  But the Lady Dolphin's eyes had already darted over, and she waved a fin. "But then it's been so long since we've had an audience, sister o' mine, I'm surprised you didn't pass right out from stage fright."

  A smile somehow curled the corners of the Lady Raven's beak, and she turned toward him, too. "Well, at least it's stopped them fighting."

  "Excuse me?" The Lady Dolphin scooped water up with her tail and let it run down her back. "My flood did that. And quite nicely, too, I might add."

  The Lady Raven rolled her eyes. "I shall apologize for my sister, since she certainly won't." She raised a wing and beckoned. "Please, the three of you, come down and sit."

  A movement to Bobcat's right made him look, but Fisher was already gone, the crunch, crunch, crunch of her paws in the sand passing behind him and to his left until he saw her wading across the little stream. She stopped, bowed to the Ladies, Skink bowing from his perch on Fisher's back; then the lizard scuttled down, and they both settled beside the pool in front of the Lady Raven.

  Bobcat didn't move, didn't want to move, the pounding of his heart shaking him all the way to the tip of his tail. Yet their laughter was so wonderful, their voices so smooth, cool as evening's touch in his fur, sweet as springwater on his tongue, that when he glanced up, saw the Lady Raven still beckoning, her dark eyes still shining, he couldn't deny her, couldn't keep himself from rising on quivering paws, creeping down through the stream, and inching up beside Fisher.

  Both the L
adies were looking at him now, and Bobcat could only stare back, completely unsure how he was seeing them. The Lady Raven seemed to be huge, vast, the spread of her wings covering the whole night sky, the stars just glimmers reflecting from her feathers, but she was also right here, right in front of him, not that much bigger than he was, in fact. And the Lady Dolphin, lolling in her pool, seemed to flow in place, water entering her, becoming her, then turning back to simple water again as it washed down into the sea.

  The Lady Raven spread her wings, and the awful beauty of the whole sky seeming to unfold almost made him break and run. "Welcome," she said. "I hope we weren't too rough on you. Have you calmed down a bit?"

  Bobcat heard Fisher sigh, saw her nod.

  "Good." The Lady Dolphin rolled over in her pool. "Though if it were up to me, I'd just start this whole thing over. I can't remember a group being this much trouble. Of course, if I were in charge, I'd make sure some otters were involved, maybe replace all three of you. No offense, but otters are just a lot more interesting to watch than most other folk." She puffed through her blowhole. "That otter stuff you were doing back in town, shaman, now that was fun." And her smile spread so sweet and broad along her snout, Bobcat couldn't help grinning back.

  He heard Fisher breathe out a little laugh. "Thanks. I've been working on it."

  "Oh, it shows, believe me."

  The Lady Raven was tapping her wings in the sand, glancing sideways at the Lady Dolphin. "Finished?" she asked.

  The Lady Dolphin waved a fin. "Oh, please, do go on."

  "Thank you." She cleared her throat. "As I said, we're sorry about all the water--"

  "I'm not," the Lady Dolphin muttered.

  The Lady Raven cleared her throat again. "I repeat, we are sorry, but, well, we couldn't just let you tear each other to bits, could we?"

  "Yeah." Fisher dug at the sand, then looked back up. "If I might ask, though, have you been watching over us long?"