Tall, peaked tents were set up haphazardly beside a narrow cove. Each was painted a different color and boasted a specific pattern which identified the clan of the owners. Dray animals grazed peacefully in several temporary corrals. The portles rolled in the dust or threw water on their tough hides with long flexible trunks that could reach all the way to their tails.
At least half of the tents had a cook-fire crackling outside the entrance. The odor of cooking meat was, of course, absent, but Praetor could smell rich soups and all manner of spicy vegetable dishes in various stages of preparation. The air was rich with exotic aromas.
Near the middle of the encampment stood several larger tents as well as wooden constructions whose purpose was not immediately clear. It was toward this central location that Praetor’s captors led him.
As they entered the camp’s outskirts they were surrounded by a small mob of unruly roos, all chattering and gesturing simultaneously. They pointed toward Praetor and whispered under their breath. What he overheard of their talk was not particularly reassuring.
“Yes, he’ll do… He’s perfect!… he’ll be wonderful… It’s about time…”
Wonderful? Perfect? Do for what? The roos were a rough, crude people not noted for their delicate dispositions. Just because they weren’t going to eat him didn’t mean he was going to leave this place with his skin intact.
He tried to imagine what the younger Shone Stelft would have done if he’d found himself in a similar position, but that wasn’t very inspiring because he suspected the younger Shone Stelft would never have let himself be put in such a position.
They passed between the smaller tents, then the larger. By now Praetor was so hemmed in by chattering, excited roos that he couldn’t have made a run for it even had he wished to. The crowd, with Praetor in the middle, emerged into the open area in the center of the camp. Glossy pennants snapped from the crests of long poles. Directly ahead was a raised platform.
A small bench was bolted to the top of the platform. Target practice, Praetor thought suddenly. This was some kind of circus, and they were going to use him for target practice. He tried to remember what he’d been told of roo weaponry. They favored long, light spears, which, it was reported, they could throw accurately while simultaneously leaping twelve feet into the air. Sure, that was it. They needed a target on which to test their skill, and he was the lucky bull’s-eye.
He was unable to maintain his pose of stoic indifference any longer. “What are they going to do to me, Sranul?”
“Nothing harmful, I promise you, friend Praetor. Stand easy and breathe slow.”
Sure, Praetor thought. Why not? He couldn’t do anything else. What a lot of cheery assassins he’d been captured by. They’d probably all laugh when the first spear struck his belly.
They were hustling him up the steps onto the platform. “Have a seat,” Sranul told him, gesturing toward the single bench.
Praetor hesitated. If he could make it into the water, there was a chance he could outswim them. But by now there were at least fifty adult roos between the platform and the cove. He sat, leaned back against the bench, took a deep breath, and determined not to beg no matter what they threatened to do to him.
Something was placed on his head. It was heavy but not painful. It slid down over his eyes. The cheering around him intensified. When no one moved to stop him, he reached up to shove the object back onto his forehead. Sranul stood nearby grinning down at him.
Using both hands, he examined the thing on his head with careful fingers. It wasn’t iron or even wood, and felt too flimsy to serve as an instrument of torture. It seemed to be made of woven reed. Tassels dangled from its sides, strips of brightly dyed cloth and cord attached to small bells.
“What’s this?” he asked dubiously, more confused than ever.
“Why, it’s your crown,” Sranul told him, bending low, “Your Majesty.”
Praetor gaped at him. “My what?”
“It’s our custom,” the roo explained gleefully. “Every month at carnival time we send out hunting parties to ambush some unwary traveler. We bring them back to our camp to serve as carnival king or queen. If you knew us better, you’d know that we roos will hold a carnival at the drop of a tail. This particular carnival is in celebration of the Fall Harvest. Next month it will be in celebration of the After-Fall Harvest. The month after that we salute First Winter Signs, and so forth.
“There is much competition among the clans to see who will be the first to find a new carnival ruler. The only stipulations are that it may not be a roo and must be an adult. It’s quite exciting, travelers through the veldt being scarce this time of the year. We found you and now the other clans must acknowledge our supremacy for another month.” He beamed.
“But I don’t know how to be a king,” Praetor protested. “I haven’t even had much experience at being a traveler. What am I expected to do?”
Sranul moved close, leaned over and put a paw on Praetor’s shoulder as he whispered to him. “Just stand up, smile, wave your hand and say, ‘I now declare the festivities begun!’”
Praetor hesitated briefly, then shrugged and stood. He gestured feebly with his right hand and said hoarsely, “Let the festivities begin.”
The crowd went into a frenzy. A couple of fistfights broke out near the back ranks, and there was a concerted break for the fires where food was cooking. Skins of drink appeared as if by magic.
Praetor sat down and whispered weakly to his friend. “That’s it? That’s all I have to do?”
“That’s all you have to do, besides lending us your majesterial presence for a while.”
“Hmm.” So he wasn’t going to be used for target practice. Quite the contrary, it seemed. “If I’m king, do you think I could get something to eat?”
“Well, we’ve no meat for you, but we can’t very well let our carnival ruler starve, now can we?”
A female roo who’d overheard stepped forward. “What do you want with meat? We have fruits and vegetables, all the bounty of the earth. Come with me, Your Majesty, and learn the hospitality of the clans.”
By evening Praetor was suffering not from a lack of food but from a surfeit of it, since each marsupial matron insisted he try the best of her personal cuisine. He was so stuffed he could hardly walk.
Fires lined the lakeshore, and fighting and drinking gave way to singing and dancing. The roos made music with flutes and drums, and their dancing was, to put it mildly, spectacular. Members of each clan would surround a fire and, in perfect time to the music, twist and spin eight to twelve feet above the ground. Naturally enough, they landed precisely on each downbeat.
There was much good-natured arguing over which dancers were best. None of it was abrasive, all of it high-spirited. The roos were an intensely competitive folk, quick to take exception to an imagined or real insult, quick to fight, and equally as ready to forgive.
In addition to being flashy dancers and fast talkers, they were also master brewers. It was wonderful to taste what they could manufacture from a simple root. He tried to restrict himself as much as possible to those liquids of a nonalcoholic variety.
Much later that night, when he thought no one was watching, he carefully removed his elaborate headdress and set it aside in an empty tent. If he could just find where they’d hitched Kaltar, he could sneak off quietly and be on his way. Not that his duties were anything other than pleasant, but he had a world to save.
Someone was waiting to confront him outside the tent, however.
“What’s this?” said Sranul, “abdicating already? Do you find our company so displeasing?”
“Not at all.” In spite of all his efforts to prevent it, Praetor let out a thunderous belch. “It’s just that I’m not sure I can survive any more of your honors. If I have to eat another bite, it’ll kill me for sure. I’ll explode all over your celebration.” His eyes widened as he spotted a portly figure coming toward him. The matron carried a tray piled high with pastries.
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��Quick, in here!” He grabbed Sranul’s arm and yanked him into the tent.
“What is it, what’s wrong?”
“Quiet.” Praetor peered anxiously around the tent flap, watched until the matron had vanished from sight. He let out a sigh of relief. “That one’s been after me all day to try her baking. I couldn’t take it, Sranul. I’ve seen her pastry. It looks delicious beyond belief, but if I have to eat one lousy tart, it’ll kill me for sure.”
Sranul looked sympathetic. “We can’t have that. A dead king’s no good at all.”
“When,” Praetor inquired tiredly, “does my reign end?”
“At High Moon tonight. After that you’ll be free to leave if you wish.”
“Free to leave? Sranul, I can barely walk.” He sat down hard on a fat cushion and groaned.
“Come to think of it, you do look a little green. That is not a normal human color, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“What makes you want to leave in the middle of the night anyway? It must be something more than a desperate desire to avoid our cooking. Such haste. And I see anxiety written all over your face, even if it is tinted green.” The roo looked thoughtful. “What draws you so powerfully to Shadowkeep? I’ve heard of the place, and from what I’ve heard I can’t imagine why you or anyone else would want to go there.”
Praetor told him the story. Sranul listened intently and without interrupting.
“I see,” he murmured when the human had concluded his tale. “So you are going to try and penetrate the castle labyrinth to rescue this wizard Gorwyther while battling the servants of the demon king along the way?”
“I wish everyone would quit trying to sound so encouraging,” Praetor grumbled. “I don’t need any more negative opinions.”
“I wasn’t trying to venture one.” He leaned forward eagerly. “Tell me more about this great treasure you say lies within.”
“There is no more wondrous anywhere in the world. Or so I’m told.”
“Really.” The roo examined his guest appraisingly. “You’re going to have a hard time of it, if you don’t mind my saying so. You look a bit on the frail side.”
“Perhaps I do, by your standards, but I’m pretty strong and agile for a human, and maybe even a bit quicker than you. I’m not afraid. Worried, sure, but not afraid.”
Sranul was nodding to himself. “Help. If you’re going to have any chance of succeeding in this, you’re going to need help. Sounds like a bit of a lark anyway.”
“But you just said…”
“I know what I said. But where’s the fun in anything if there’s not a little danger involved?”
Hardly daring to hope, Praetor asked, “What are you trying to say?”
“That if you don’t mind my company, I’d like to come with you. I’m one of the ten best spear-chuckers in the whole tribe and the best in my clan. I’ve no family, no immediate plans to start one, and nothing to do tomorrow except drink myself into a stupor. I can do that any carnival time. So what do you say, man? Will you have my company?”
“Gladly!” Praetor rose from the cushion and extended a hand. The roo accepted it, enveloped the man’s fingers in warm fur.
“That’s settled then.”
But Praetor wanted to be certain. “You’re not doing this because you’re drunk now, are you, or because you feel sorry for me?”
Sranul looked disgusted. “You talk like a human. I’m going for one reason only: because it’s something I want to do. But if I have to spend the whole trip listening to typically silly human guilt fantasies, then I’m going to go without you.”
Praetor had to force himself not to smile. “I’ll try to keep my emotions well hidden.”
“Good. You really shouldn’t leave until your reign is up, though. Wouldn’t be very practical if you snuck away in the dark only to have members of another clan find you and bring you back.”
“If you think it best.” Praetor rubbed his swollen stomach. “But I don’t know how much more of my subjects’ largess I can handle.”
It was much as he’d feared. The following morning the ex-carnival king was forced to endure the largest breakfast he’d ever seen. There were tasary muffins bursting with nuts, half a dozen varieties of fresh bread, more of the roos’ extraordinary pastries and several types of drink distilled from rich grains and tubers, plus the usual Brobdingnagian assortment of fresh fruit. Food swamped the tables, overflowed onto the ground where scavenging pets fought and snarled over the scraps. The roo larder was bottomless.
Praetor’s stomach, however, was not, and he finally had to call a halt regardless of whose feelings he might be hurting.
“Thank you, thank you, my friends, it’s been wonderful, but it really is time for me to go.” He staggered away from the table and prayed he could mount Kaltar without throwing up.
One of the ubiquitous matrons intercepted him. “Please, good king, just one more bite. You haven’t sampled my zuzenza yet.” She held out a ball of puff pastry white with sugar coating and bursting with candied fruit. Praetor felt himself growing weak.
He waved feebly at her. “No, I really can’t eat another thing. Take it away. Please take it away.”
Sranul stepped between them, gently admonished the disappointed baker. “Enough. We’ve done well by our king and he by us, but even roo hospitality can be overdone.”
“That’s true,” shouted several onlookers.
“We’ll be sorry to see you go,” added an elder, whose chest and shoulder fur was turning white. “You’ve been a right decent carnival king. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to capture you on your way back through the veldt. Then you can serve us again.”
Praetor put both hands to his mouth and pushed wildly away from his admirers, running frantically toward the lake. The older roo looked puzzled.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“Men are strange,” Sranul observed sagely, “and this one, I think, stranger than most. They make good carnival kings, though.”
“He doesn’t look well,” commented another onlooker.
“I’d better see if he needs help.” Sranul hopped toward the shore, where his new friend appeared to be suffering from some kind of internal spasms.
It was far from fatal, though, and as soon as a clear path had opened through the food, Praetor made a dash for his horse. Sranul bounded alongside effortlessly, content to follow the human’s lead. The roo wore a large backpack. Several others had been secured behind Kaltar’s saddle. They were bursting with foodstuffs. That, at least, would not be a problem for the travelers. One of Praetor’s foremost concerns had been alleviated. They would not have to pause along the way to work for their supper.
With the enthusiastic cheers of the clans ringing in their ears, the peculiar pair started off eastward.
“I’d always heard that being a king was a harder job than most,” Praetor commented as they pressed on through the high grass, “but I had no idea it was so fulfilling. I’m not sure I was worthy of the honor.”
“You honored us.” Sranul kept pace with Kaltar easily. In addition to his kilt he wore a quiver on his back that held a dozen javelins. Two knives were strapped to his waist, one on either side. The same belt that held them prevented the lower flaps of his leather-strip kilt from flying up into his face every time he took one of his prodigious hops.
“You’re sure you can keep up okay?” Praetor asked him.
“Keep up with you?” Sranul gave that barking laugh of his and jumped sideways instead of forward. He went right over Praetor, clearing the top of the human’s head by at least half a foot. The roo landed on the other side of Kaltar and immediately bounded back over Praetor again. He performed the feat a dozen times, without apparent strain, while Praetor fought to keep the uneasy stallion under control.
“Okay, I believe you. I wish I could jump like that.”
“Yes, and I wish I could crawl on my belly through the small places the way a human can. Each of us can do things the other cann
ot. On a long and dangerous journey, complementary company is the best kind.”
“I agree, but I’d have settled for any kind of company at all,” Praetor confessed. “I had no idea how much the loneliness was going to affect me.”
“Tell me, friend Praetor, how will we enter Shadowkeep when we arrive at its outskirts, and how will we know how to proceed once we’re inside? If it’s as big as they say it is, we might not have to worry about fighting this Dal’brad’s forces. We might be able to wander through it unnoticed.”
“I don’t think we’ll be that lucky, but there’s no harm in wishing. As for getting inside, that should be simple. It’s getting out again that seems to be hard. Once we’re in, there must be some kind of guidelines, some kind of markers that enable visitors to find their way about, that we can make use of. Actually, I hadn’t thought about it much. My first concern is to get there. One thing at a time.”
“You won’t find me arguing that philosophy. We roos live from day to day. Still, it would be nice to have someone with us who can see a little farther into the future, whose perception penetrates deeper than ours in matters demonic and mystical.” He looked thoughtful, finally stopped alongside a tall dereid bush. Praetor reined Kaltar in.
“I’ve got it!” In imitation of the human gesture, the roo tried to snap his fingers. All he produced was a whispery rushing sound. It’s hard to snap one’s fingers properly when they’re covered with fine rust-colored fur.
“Got what?”
“I know who we should have with us. One of those who possess the foresight denied to us. One not as inclined to impetuosity as a roo nor to fighting as a human. A thaladar.”
Praetor looked dubious. “Wishful thinking, Sranul. The thaladar are a proud, snobbish folk who keep to themselves and have as little as possible to do with outsiders. They keep to themselves and do not mix with the other intelligent races unless it’s for their benefit.”
“Just my point,” said Sranul eagerly. “Isn’t it obvious? This great evil you speak of, this Shadowkeep danger, threatens them just as it does humans and roos. I’d imagine they’d be more than willing to help.”
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