Their commander scanned the nearby woods. What he saw there, or failed to see, made him wince. He scratched his scalp. ‘We’re here to try to bring as many as we can back into the fold. Remember that.’
‘What of Skinner?’ Gwynn asked.
‘We’ll see.’
Cole threw down his ruined gear and took up his two sheathed swords, which he swung together over a shoulder. ‘Fine. Now what?’ he asked.
K’azz scratched a cheek. ‘We’re on our own. Rutana made that plain. I suggest we find some shelter, or make it.’
Gwynn nodded, stroking his beard. ‘Very good. Let’s have a look round.’
Their commander started walking and they fell in behind. Shimmer chose to take the rear. She’d had no idea what awaited them of course, but this certainly was not what she’d expected. Where was the great sprawling urban centre? The great structures? Not even truncated ruins poked up here or there through the trees. What of the towers of gold? The pavement of gems? All figments of the imagination of the few survivors who managed to escape Ardata’s green abyss?
At least the jungle floor was clear. Trees stood as isolated emergents towering far into the sky. Their bases were as large round as huts, while their root systems sprawled across the surface like veins and arteries. They came to a broad open field bordered by tall trees. K’azz led them out on to it. The ground was beaten hard here, tufted by grass. It appeared to be a long concourse of some sort, extending further than many marshalling fields laid end to end. At its far edge lay a heap of dressed granite blocks that might have once formed a raised course but were now heaved and jumbled. K’azz paused before these. Among them lay tarnished bronze bowls and the remains of countless clay pots and cups, so many they formed heaps of their own. Faded flags and scarves draped the stones while drawings were scrawled over every open surface: the squares and circles of ritual protections. Over everything lay a dusting of flower petals all in iridescent blues, pinks and crimsons. Forests of incense sticks stood jammed into cracks and in the dirt. Smoke still curled from some.
Shimmer exchanged a look with everyone at that.
Turgal had salvaged one belt to wear over his padded, sweat-stained gambeson. His sword in its mildewed rotting sheath hung from it. He eased the blade free with his thumb. Shimmer wore her whipsword at her back.
After silently regarding the offerings for a time, K’azz led them aside and they re-entered the cathedral-like aisles of the trees. At length they came to a cluster of abandoned collapsed huts consisting of nothing more than bamboo poles and dried palm fronds.
So much for the legendary Jakal Viharn, shining city in the jungle, Shimmer reflected. Hovels where worshippers squatted in the dirt. Travellers who had survived such privation to reach here must have been driven mad by the discovery. All that suffering for naught! No wonder the exaggerations and reported marvels.
K’azz took hold of a pole and straightened it. He picked up a length of root used as lashing and began retying it. Amatt and Cole exchanged a look then went off into the woods, perhaps seeking fresh leaves or bamboo stalks. Gwynn and Lor-sinn followed. Turgal remained, a hand at his weapon.
Shimmer let out a long even breath, set her hands on her hips. The sun now glared down hot on the top of her head. Sweat ran down her neck and arms. ‘And what do we eat?’ she wearily asked K’azz while he rebuilt the hut.
‘There is much to eat here in Viharn,’ answered a voice from behind her.
Turgal cursed, spinning, his sword scraping free. Shimmer merely turned, one brow rising. She flinched at what she saw: it was a woman, but her shape was grotesque. Illness or disease had twisted and deformed half her body. One side of her face and skull was covered in coarse knobbled flesh. One arm hung swollen to three or four times the girth of the other. Its flesh was coarse and rough, as were her legs. As clothes she wore a plain pale wrap of some sort of woven plant fibre. ‘One merely has to know where to look,’ she continued, unabashed by their reactions.
K’azz lowered Turgal’s raised blade. ‘We are grateful for your advice,’ he said.
‘You are welcome.’ She seemed to study Shimmer very closely with her one good eye – the other was clouded white. Then she turned her attention to K’azz. ‘Why are you here?’
‘We are here to see Ardata.’
‘All seekers are welcome.’
‘Thank you. Where is she? We do not see her.’
‘She is here. Just because you do not see her does not mean she is not here.’
‘Wonderful,’ Turgal muttered and slammed his sword home.
‘We would like to meet her,’ K’azz continued.
‘That is entirely up to you.’
Shimmer blew out a breath and turned a quizzical look on K’azz. He raised his brows. ‘I … see. My thanks.’
The woman bowed and walked off. Her gait was agonizingly slow and awkward as she swung her deformed legs. Her swollen club feet dragged through the dirt.
‘How did she sneak up on us?’ Turgal wondered aloud, watching her go.
Shimmer moved to bring her head close to K’azz. She found she was unable to take her gaze from the retreating form. ‘Is that the disease that kills all feeling in the flesh?’ she asked, her voice low.
K’azz’s eyes also followed the woman as she went. It seemed to Shimmer that the figure projected a quiet dignity. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is no disease. She was born that way. Caught halfway into a transformation from human into something else.’
‘Something else?’
He shrugged to say he knew not what. ‘She must have in her heritage the touch of a shapechanger. This is how it manifested itself.’
A shudder of horror took Shimmer. Gods! No wonder the old dread of shapechangers. Yet what an awful fate. And not of her choosing! Sympathy for the woman touched her. She’d probably been driven out of her community. Denounced as evil or corrupting simply because of her appearance. Cruelty and ignorance, it seemed, lay everywhere.
Turgal stood quietly for a time, arms crossed, watching K’azz struggle with assembling the bamboo poles. Finally, letting go an impatient curse, he joined him. ‘Start with the short pieces.’
‘I was thinking more of a lean-to.’
‘And when it rains? You’ll want a platform.’
‘Ah! No wonder. I see.’
Shaking her head, Shimmer left them to argue the niceties of hut construction. She walked among the immense grey-barked trees. She went without fear; after going to such trouble to bring them here, it seemed to her that Ardata would hardly allow them to be torn to pieces. Her wandering took her deep into the jungle. Something of the manicured nature of the land struck her. It was so flat – cultivated at one time, probably. Perhaps rice paddies. Yet these trees … so evenly spaced. Cultivated as well? A food source? Or some other resource?
Circling one giant emergent trunk, its base a series of arches taller than her, she suddenly came face to face with Rutana. The woman held her habitual scowl. She peered past Shimmer to make certain they were alone.
‘As you can see – there’s nothing here,’ she said.
Shimmer held her arms loose, ready to act. ‘There was. Once. I think.’
‘Perhaps. Long ago. But not now. You should go.’
‘I know. You don’t want us here.’
‘You mock but you have come for nothing. There is nothing here.’
‘I was just assured that there is.’
The woman advanced upon her. The forest of amulets about her neck rattled and swayed as she swung a leg over a root. An inhuman intensity shone in her eyes. ‘Do you think you are special?’ she hissed.
‘No.’
‘She won’t come to you.’
‘I was told that was up to me.’
Rutana snorted her scorn. ‘They wait. They pray. But she does not come. She cares nothing for their desires. Their demands.’
Shimmer was slowly backing away. ‘What does she care for?’
The woman pressed a fist to her bony
chest. ‘Strength! Power!’
‘Was that why she came to Skinner?’
A cruel smile now crept up the witch’s lips and she chuffed a harsh laugh. ‘No, fool. Your Vow.’
‘What of the Vow?’
‘Ask your commander. You are all of you doomed. I would almost pity you if I did not loathe you so.’
‘Doomed? How?’
Rutana waved an arm as if casting her away. ‘Ask K’azz. Not me.’ She turned her back and walked off.
Shimmer stood still for some time. Leaves fell from on high. Birds whistled and shrieked far above. Distantly, like an echo of thunder, the roar of a hunting cat reverberated through the clearing. In that suspended moment she thought she’d come close to an answer – a hint of what the woman meant. But then it was gone in the wind brushing through the canopy and the rasping of the dead leaves as they swirled about her sandals.
She walked on, distracted. She hardly noticed her surroundings as she grasped after the hint that had touched her thoughts. After a time something blocked her way. Blinking, she became aware that she stood at the lip of a broad sheet of water. It was a reservoir wider than a city block. It ran north as long as a city’s main concourse. Lily pads dotted its glass-smooth surface. The sun was almost set now, the day having passed unnoticed. The shadows had gathered a deep mauve and edged closer. As she watched, entranced, the sun’s slanting amber rays lit upon the perfectly still surface of the artificial lake and the sheet seemed to erupt into molten gold that rippled and blazed with its own internal fires.
It suddenly struck her vision as an immense causeway paved in sheets of gold. And sparks flashed here and there as tiny waves from insects alighting, or fish feeding, gently rippled the surface. The gems, perhaps, glimmering and beckoning.
She stood utterly still for the time it took the setting sun’s rays to edge their way across the surface. When they slipped away, they disappeared all at once as if snuffed out. The reservoir’s west border was perfectly aligned for the effect.
She took a deep breath – had she even breathed the entire time? She felt so calm. All her worries struck her as trivial, completely unimportant. What mattered any of it in the face of such an immensity of time and space? She felt as if she could remain here for an eternity contemplating such questions. Perhaps, she reflected, the sensation derived from the satisfaction of having solved at least one of the mysteries of Jakal Viharn, city of gold.
* * *
It took some time, but eventually Pon-lor had to admit that he’d lost the trail of the yakshaka, Hanu. He’d backtracked a number of times searching for sign. Now the light was fading and the marks of his own passage helped obscure any certainty he might have felt regarding the trail. As night gathered he gave it up as worthless. He’d try again in the morning. The question, then, was what to do for the night.
Night in Himatan. Alone. Not a promising prospect. He’d got through last night by climbing a tree and tying himself in. Even so, he’d hardly slept. Large night hunters prowled all through the hours, chasing other things. Sudden bursts of calls or screeching announced close escapes, or panicked last struggles. His training might allow him to forgo sleep for some time, but there was no dire need to delve into that yet.
Off to one side the ground rose. He headed in that direction. Here he found a hillock of sloping talus and broken stone topped by a steeper rising cliff riddled in caves, now mostly choked by the accumulated detritus of centuries. Mature trees crowned the rise, gripping it in gnarled fists of roots. Underfoot hard talus shifted, grating, and he bent down to select one of the fragments. He brushed it off: it was flat and slightly curved. It was not stone. It was earthen pottery.
Startled by this he staggered slightly, backwards, to peer up and down along the slope, a good two man-heights above the surrounding plain. Great ancients! A garbage heap the size of a village! No, the remains of a village. Generation after generation squatting in the same spot, dropping their litter and tamping it into the ground. Simply astounding. And now, the slow work of the ages conspired to wipe from the surface even these last vestiges of humanity’s presence.
He crouched down before the largest cave. It actually had the look of an animal burrow but he could not be sure. He brought out a cloth bag containing the bulbs and fruit he’d collected through the day. One by one he inspected his finds. Some he rejected, not certain they conformed to Thet-mun’s descriptions of safe foods. The rest he replaced in the bag then brushed the dirt from his hands. Now for a fire. Humanity’s best defence against the chills and the horrors of the night. Yet was it not also humanity’s challenge, as well? The unmistakable brazen shout to the night: come and get me? Something to consider into the long hours.
He went to collect firewood. Once he’d assembled a pile great enough to last the night he set to priming the fire. Not a skill high on the Thaumaturg curriculum. Dry tinder he clumped together, along with a strip of cloth torn from the edge of his robes. Now for the application of his true training: the focusing of power on to one tiny point, thereby agitating the particles of the field of Aether that pervaded all creation. This in turn should bring into being … he turned all his mental energy upon the task, easing out his breath in a long soft hiss, his hands hovering just above the tinder … a spark.
A tendril of smoke climbed into the air. He blew, lightly, teasing the tiny ember to life. It caught and soon he had a proper fire blazing. And just in time, as thunder crashed overhead and the night’s rain came pattering down upon him. He used larger branches to push the fire in towards the shallow cave’s mouth. Here he sat under the cover of the curved wall of pressed litter, cross-legged, his back to the dirt, the fire just before him. Vines hung about him, running now with the rain. The petals of a clinging orchid brushed his hair like the lightest of kisses.
He pushed a bulb on to a stick and extended it over the fire.
Tomorrow. He mustn’t lose the trail. She must come to see reason tomorrow. How many days did she think she could just wander blindly about? It was ridiculous. Worse, it was the petulance of a child who would not admit she was wrong.
After he ate, he eased himself into the position of recuperation, hands on his lap, fingertips touching to channel his energy, and closed his eyes.
Late in the night, a huge hunting cat approached. It lay on its stomach hidden among the cover at the bottom of the hillock. Through slit eyes Pon-lor watched the flames reflected in its luminous pupils. After a time a noise sounded from the night: a crash as of wood breaking. The cat chuffed a cough and eased itself to its feet. Long curved fangs caught the light as it turned and glided away.
The crash was followed by another, and another, each closer. Soon an even more massive beast came lumbering up on to the slope of the hillock. It walked on two legs but was barely humanoid. Colossal, it was, with tough plated skin the hue of ash. Its legs were thick trunks ending in great splayed feet. Its head was a hairless stump. Two tiny eyes no larger than pinheads regarded him from atop a mouth that sported broken and misaligned jutting teeth.
‘Who are you,’ it boomed, ‘to light a fire here in the depths of Himatan?’
Wisdom of the ancients, what was this thing? One of the Night-Queen’s monstrosities, of course. But beast, man, or other? Was it, as his teachers insisted in the Thaumaturg Academy, the degenerate offspring of centuries of indiscriminate miscegenation – or, perhaps, as he was beginning to suspect, the product of a lineage of survivors adapted and attuned to this region’s peculiar demands?
‘Someone who would dare to do so,’ Pon-lor shouted down. ‘Think you on that.’
In what Pon-lor took as a hideous attempt at a grin, the creature’s lips drew back even further from its forest of jutting teeth. It waved him down with a trunk-like arm. ‘I believe you are a poor lost fellow. Come here and let us discuss this. You can even bring your bright licking friend.’
‘The rules of the jungle dictate that I decline your kind invitation. Especially when we have not been introduced.’
‘Good for you. I am Pon-lor, master of flesh.’
The monster frowned as if bemused. ‘Master of flesh? Ah, I see you are one of those invaders. Come down and I will show you the way, little lost magus.’
‘Thank you but I am quite comfortable here. Do not trouble yourself.’
‘No? You will not descend? This is not a difficulty. I will come up.’ He raised a sledge-like foot and jammed it into the slope. He grabbed hold of a nearby tree but in a groaning crash the entire thing tore out of the ground. He angrily threw aside the trunk, began kicking his next foothold.
Unease took hold of Pon-lor’s chest but he strove to keep his voice level. He focused his concentration upon the creature. ‘How can you climb when you are so short of breath?’ he called.
Anmathana paused, reared his bullet-head. ‘What’s that? Short of breath? I am not—’ He pressed a spatulate hand to his chest, frowned.
‘Your lungs are full of tiny globes, my friend,’ Pon-lor said. ‘These distil the life-essence from the air when you inhale. But they cannot do so when they are full of fluid.’
The giant coughed, his eyes rolling wildly. ‘What—’ he managed, gurgling and choking. He clutched at his throat.
‘Retreat and you will breathe again!’
Glaring impotent rage, Anmathana took one step backwards.
‘Very good. Keep going.’
He took another step, fell to one knee, his chest working. Pon-lor eased his concentration. The creature drew a ragged hoarse breath. He raised his blunt head. ‘I will crush you for this,’ he gasped.
‘It is foolish to be angry with some one or thing for merely defending itself.’
Anmathana waved a snarling dismissal, turned and stamped off into the jungle. Pon-lor heard the diminishing reports of fists smashing like battering rams into trees as it went.
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