by Paula Volsky
She squinted. A magnifying glass would have helped, but her eyes were good and she was able to make out minuscule sets of parallel wavy lines, elaborate intersecting polygons, clustering dots, leaf shapes, boat shapes, stylized birds, and much more.
It was the leaf shapes that jogged her memory. Distinctively palmate, they were impossible to mistake, and now she remembered just where she had once seen them—on the ancient carven plaques decorating the hut of the head tl’gh-tiz of the Bhomiri-D’tal tribe; the same tl’gh-tiz who had once offered to accept her on a trial basis as junior wife number thirteen. She squinted harder; yes, the same symbol, beyond doubt. But how? The Bhomiri Islands rose near the center of the Bay of Zif, hundreds of miles to the west. How could the Bhomiri-D’tals share symbols with the Blessed Tribesmen of the Ygahro Territories? Coincidentally similar stylized renderings of the same plant? No. For the highly recognizable palmately compound leaves of the symbol abounded in the Forests of Oorex. She did not know the name of the shrub, but she saw it all around her, flourishing along the banks of the Ta’ahri Capillaries. No such shrub, however, graced the Bhomiri Islands. The head tl’gh-tiz had characterized the leaf as uxe hoivo-Tl’ghurhi—belonging to Paradise—and she had deemed the description purely fanciful. But now she recalled that the Bhomiri-D’tal term for Paradise translated with equal facility to “Land of the Blessed,” or “Land of the Ancestors.” She remembered also that Bhomiri-D’tal oral history included tales of the first Bhomiri ancestors sailing unimaginable distances from their homeland far beyond the rising sun.
Had some ancient party of Blessed Tribesmen sailed west from the mouth of the Ygah, following the warm fish-hospitable currents over the Nether Ocean and northwest into the Bay of Zif, there to settle upon the Bhomiri Islands? If such a connection existed and she could prove it, then she could write a book, an important book certain to attract notice. There would be speaking engagements—healthy lecture fees—a comfortable independent living, even if she failed to win the Grand Ellipse.
But she would not fail to win the Grand Ellipse.
Still, the thought of a respectable alternative—
She was hurrying along at an excited trot, her lips curved in an unconscious smile, the two darts tightly gripped in her hand. And to think, but moments earlier she had actually considered throwing such treasures away. She would preserve them at all costs now.
Returning to the main cabin, she wrapped the darts with care and stowed them at the bottom of her carpetbag. This done, she raced to the engine room.
The place was infernal. The heat was unbearable, the atmosphere all but unbreathable, and the sole occupant barely recognizable. Girays v’Alisante, ordinarily so impeccable, was sweat soaked, disheveled, and coal blackened. He had removed his shirt, a sensible move under the circumstances, but she had never seen him without it before, and now all thoughts of decorated darts and seafaring tribesmen fled her mind. She had never quite realized that his lean frame was so well muscled. She was trying hard not to stare at his bare chest, shoulders, and arms, so she anchored her eyes steadfastly on his face and felt an utter fool. She realized that she was blushing like a schoolgirl, and her discomfort deepened.
She asked if she could bring him a drink, and he assented readily. She went to the galley, filled a dented tin cup with beer, carried it back to the engine room, and watched in some wonder as he gulped it down. She had not hitherto imagined M. the Marquis capable of gulping, or indeed of anything less than perfect deportment. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and her wonder increased. She noticed that his unwontedly long hair was straggling across his wet forehead, and she curbed the impulse to brush the stray locks away from his eyes. He ought to have some sort of scarf or rag tied across his forehead to absorb the sweat. She pictured a red bandanna accenting that angular, sun-browned, dark-eyed face; added a gold earring for emphasis, and found the resulting image so incongruously piratical that she burst into laughter. When he asked her why she was laughing, she refused to tell him, but spoke instead of the Ygahri darts she had discovered stuck in the starboard railing, and of the captain’s lackadaisical reaction. She wanted to tell him of the leaf symbol and its possible significance, but the fire under the boiler demanded replenishment, and Girays was obliged to apply himself to his shovel.
She fetched him another cup of beer and a bowl of cold stew, watching bemusedly as he gulped the one and wolfed the other. When she offered once more to take a turn at shoveling coal, his instant refusal fulfilled her expectations.
“You must think me quite useless,” she accused.
“Far from it. But I couldn’t stand by watching while you break your back over the coal bin.”
“I’m not made of porcelain, Girays.”
“I’ve sometimes wondered if you aren’t made of steel, but that’s beside the point. You’re young and strong, and I freely concede that a few minutes of physical labor are unlikely to injure your health, but my own peace of mind would suffer. It is the fault of my upbringing, I suppose. Try not to take it as a personal insult, but I’m not letting go of this shovel.”
She had to laugh at that, but departed the engine room incompletely mollified. Despite his humor and diplomacy it was plain that he viewed her as useless. Or else she would always think that he did, no matter how often he denied it.…
The Blind Cripple maintained good speed throughout the day, perhaps too good for safety. Luzelle worried at the jovial abandon with which Jhiv-Huze hurled his craft through the narrow, shallow channels of the Ta’ahri Capillaries, around the treacherous sharp bends, straight through the blinding veils of leafy low-hanging boughs and vines. A single fallen tree in the water or the slightest misjudgment of a channel’s navigable curve might have proved disastrous, but the captain possessed either preternatural skill or luck. The Blind Cripple rushed through unscathed, and Luzelle’s uneasiness subsided. She might simply have relished the sensation of swift progress, but for the increasingly noticeable presence of the Blessed Tribesmen.
She caught the thin high notes of their flutes trailing through the forests around noon, and her heart jumped. Stepping to the rail, she peered off into the shadows, but saw nothing. The sound faded, and her knotted muscles relaxed; too soon, for minutes later it was back, faint and intermittent at first, then waxing in authority as the day wore on. She could neither ignore it nor make any sense of it, for there was nothing resembling a recognizable tune, a rhythm, or even a consistent pattern, but she could not stop trying to find one.
The sound broke off around midafternoon, and that was when she caught her first glimpse of the Blessed Tribesmen. A couple of compact tattooed figures lingered in the deep shade near the bank, watching in still silence as the Blind Cripple steamed by. So motionless were they, so much a part of their surroundings, although they made no effort at concealment, that she might easily have overlooked them had not a glancing ray of sunlight struck fire off the glass beads woven into their braided hair. She caught her breath and stared. They looked straight back at her, and their faces told her nothing at all. Both tribesmen carried slim tubes in their hands. Flutes? Or blowguns? In such uncertain light, impossible to judge.
The Blind Cripple sped on. The statuelike tribesmen were behind her, then they were gone. The flutes resumed, along with Luzelle’s breathing.
After that, throughout the rest of the afternoon, she glimpsed them sporadically; sometimes poised in the shadows under the trees, sometimes squatting on the flat mossy rocks along the bank, sometimes crouched in the branches overhanging the water. They offered no overt hostility. There were no taunts or flying darts, but Luzelle sensed an animosity so dark and profound that the responsive prickling of her flesh eventually drove her belowdecks, where she kept herself occupied with one of Girays’s histories for hours.
That night, as she lay in the moonless starless dark of the cabin, she did not need to wonder whether Girays slept or not. He had plunged into deep slumber the moment he reclined in his hammock. Now the sound
of his deep, regular breathing blended with the endless vocalization of the jungle and the wailing of the flutes. She expected protracted insomnia, but fell asleep almost at once.
She woke to the green dimness typical of the region. Girays’s hammock was empty. The engine was pulsing, and the Blind Cripple was already under way. The captain’s efficiency was commendable. The scent of marukiñutu must be strong in his nostrils.
She washed, ate, and returned to a scene grown too familiar. Captain on the bridge, speeding his vessel through the tortuous tunnels of the Ta’ahri Capillaries; Blessed Tribesmen slipping through the dark of the undergrowth along both banks; alien music and menace weighting the air.
Somehow it seemed worse this morning, the hostility stronger and darker. Probably her imagination, she told herself.
But today no borrowed book could hold her attention.
She visited with Girays in the engine room for a while, but found him immersed in his labors and insensitive to atmospheric inhospitality. His shirt was off again. She watched as he shoveled and for a while the play of his muscles kept her diverted, but eventually the forebodings resurfaced and she went away, more restless than ever.
Morning crawled toward noon, and she saw a party of six Blessed Tribesmen keeping pace with the boat. One of the copper-skinned figures looked familiar, and for a moment she thought she recognized the face and form of the erstwhile stoker Oonuvu, but the light was low, the tribesmen some yards distant, and she only caught a fleeting glimpse. Then the forest swallowed them and she was left to wonder.
Half an hour later the quality of the flutes changed, assuming a new urgency, and for the first time the voices of the Blessed Tribesmen could be heard, uplifted in high-pitched, wolfish yelps. Soon a strong new voice rose to challenge the Ygahri chorus. Luzelle’s eyes swung to the bridge, where Roupe Jhiv-Huze stood bellowing out the Kyrendtish national anthem. The captain’s head was thrown back, his tattooed face alight with exultation. When he had roared through the anthem twice, his aggressive baritone eclipsing the Ygahri yelps, he switched over to a Kyrendtish drinking song, and after that belted out an obscene Nidroonish jingle. Quavering, uncanny ululation answered from the forest.
Throughout the morning the Blind Cripple had traveled one of the skinniest and crookedest of the Ta’ahri Capillaries. Now she rounded the sharpest bend along that constricted channel, a tight bend defining the contour of a narrow projecting finger of forest, and Roupe Jhiv-Huze never faltered, but steered his craft full speed ahead, with fire in his eye and a loud song on his lips.
As the Blind Cripple cleared the tip of the forested spit, Luzelle saw for the first time that the channel on the far side was blocked. Three great fallen trees, their trunks marked with recent ax strokes, lay spanning the water from bank to bank. Along this makeshift bridge prowled Blessed Tribesmen armed with blowguns. Before the barrier waited the commercial steamer Water Sprite, her deck dotted with passengers.
Jhiv-Huze’s song cut off and he twisted the wheel hard, but the boat had scarcely begun to alter course before one of the natives patrolling the starboard shore—an agile young figure clearly recognizable as the former crewman Oonuvu—lifted a blowgun to his lips and launched a tiny feathered shaft. The dart flew straight and true to bury itself in the captain’s throat. Jhiv-Huze gurgled and fell. Oonuvu watched expressionlessly. The Blind Cripple rushed on toward the trapped Water Sprite, whose passengers shrieked and scattered.
Luzelle stood staring for an eternal paralyzed instant, then unfroze and sprinted for the ladder to the bridge. Instinct bade her seize the wheel, much as she might have grabbed the reins from the stricken driver of a runaway carriage. If she had stopped to think, she would have known that instinct played her false, for there could be no turning the steamboat in the time and space available. She was up the ladder in a flash, checked briefly at the top by the sight of Roupe Jhiv-Huze’s wide-open sightless gaze, and then she was running for the wheel. Before she reached it, the violent impact of the Blind Cripple’s bow ramming the Water Sprite’s port quarter threw her to her knees. She was back on her feet at once, watching in fascinated horror as some half-dozen luckless passengers slid through a gap in the Water Sprite’s shattered railing to plunge headlong into the waters of the Ta’ahri Capillaries.
Ropes and a lone life preserver flew from the deck of the packet, and three of the fallen passengers were quickly lifted to safety. The remaining three were less fortunate.
A great uneasiness seized the channel. The waters trembled, frothed, and seemed to boil. A gorgeous iridescence blanketed the surface, a wondrous changeable blend of a hundred jewel colors, radiant even in the shade of the jungle canopy. Luzelle watched and marveled, momentarily uncomprehending.
The iridescence engulfed the three men in the water, all of whom began to thrash and scream. A curious vibration rose to envelop the shrieks. The amorphous jeweled colors resolved into countless polished wings beating too fast for the eye to follow, and whirring as they moved.
Beetles, Luzelle realized. A vast swarm or school of aquatic beetles.
The bare flesh of the fallen passengers was encrusted with gleaming insect forms. The faces were obscured and unrecognizable, but Luzelle glimpsed a voluminously cut maroon shirt that she knew. A gap appeared in its owner’s polished polychrome mask and a scream emerged, to choke off abruptly as a stream of beetles flowed into the open mouth. The man in the water clawed wildly at his own face, briefly clearing an expanse of bloody flesh. The savaged features of Porb Jil Liskjil were visible for an instant before the beetles returned to their voracious work. Another moment and Jil Liskjil, his struggles already diminishing, sank out of sight beneath the water. His two fellow victims soon followed. For several minutes the water in that spot seethed and roiled, while the insectile iridescence ebbed and flowed in glowing tides, but at last the feast concluded, and the beetle horde flowed away.
Luzelle became aware that she was clinging to the useless helm. Her head swam and her stomach churned. She took a few deep breaths, and the qualm subsided. She heard a footstep behind her and turned her head to look at Girays.
“Porb Jil Liskjil,” she said dully.
“I know. I saw.”
“There were two others in the water with him. I couldn’t see them. Karsler—”
“Wasn’t there. Depend on it.”
“And Jhiv-Huze. Oonuvu shot him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. You?”
“Yes.”
“What happens now?” She looked around her. The Blind Cripple and the Water Sprite were firmly engaged and fully immobilized. Neither seemed to be taking on water, but the passengers aboard each were stranded, or perhaps imprisoned. Unlike the Blind Cripple, the Water Sprite carried a lifeboat capable of ferrying successive groups of passengers and crew to shore. But the Blessed Tribesmen with their blowguns stalked the barrier blocking the channel, dozens more patrolled the banks, and Ygahri intentions as yet remained unclear. Even now one of the officers stood at the bow of the packet, calling down in dialect to the tribesmen below, but the natives appeared deaf.
“We wait, I believe,” Girays told her. “For now, there’s nothing else.”
But they did not have to wait for long.
Presently a muttering of Ygahri voices rose from below as a sizable raft came alongside. A grappling hook caught the Blind Cripple’s railing, and four nearly naked figures swarmed up the rope and onto the main deck. The smallest and youngest of the newcomers glanced up at the bridge, and Luzelle looked into the eyes of Oonuvu. A blowgun hung on a leather thong suspended about his neck. A leather band encircling his waist supported a tiny quiver full of darts, a broad-bladed knife, and a stout short-handled ax. His companions were similarly armed.
Luzelle thought of the Khrennisov FK6 lying at the bottom of her carpetbag on the floor in the main cabin. It might just as well be lying at the bottom of the sea.
The Ygahri quartet ascended to the bridge, and Luzelle resisted the impulse to back away. Jaw clenched, she stood still. Girays, standing beside her, slid a protective arm around her shoulders. Six years earlier she might have resented the presumption, but now she welcomed the reassuring contact.
Gliding forward to the fallen captain’s side, Oonuvu stooped and plucked his dart from the corpse’s neck. He wiped the point clean, returned the dart to his quiver, and stood up. For a moment he eyed his victim without a flicker of expression, then lifted his loincloth and carefully urinated into Jhiv-Huze’s face.
Luzelle could not suppress a gasp, and Oonuvu’s eyes turned to her. He whispered in Ygahri and smiled. She felt Girays’s hand tighten on her shoulder. Lifting her chin a fraction, she met the obsidian gaze.
An incomprehensible colloquy among the four natives followed. Oonuvu jabbered insistently and his senior colleagues responded without enthusiasm. At length there was a nodding of heads suggestive of general accord, whereupon Oonuvu turned to his Vonahrish audience and gestured curtly toward the ladder. His meaning was clear. They were to descend.
Luzelle glanced at Girays. His bare shoulders sketched a shrug. The two of them climbed down to the main deck, and the Ygahris followed. One of the natives stepped to the railing, grasped the rope, swung himself over the side, and descended to the waiting raft. Oonuvu gestured. Again his meaning was clear. They were to follow.
“What do you want with us, Oonuvu?” Girays asked quietly.
No reply, no sign of comprehension.
“You understand me, I think,” Girays persisted.
Silence. Oonuvu gestured again. When the objects of his attention failed to respond, he drew a dart from his quiver and slid it into the blowgun. The two prisoners, as they now perceived themselves to be, moved reluctantly to the rail.
Luzelle looked down. The distance to the raft was not great, and the rope was knotted at regular intervals. Descent appeared neither dangerous nor difficult. And then?