The Scarlet Cavern

by Michael Dalton

  Another bolt came flying toward me, and I ducked back. The bolt flashed past me into the dirt and forest humus of the cliffside. This time the tip didn’t break, and it rolled back onto the rock next to me.

  I picked it up. The shaft and the feathers were some kind of dense plastic, but instead of a point, the head was a small glass bulb filled with dark liquid.

  I tossed it aside and pondered what to do. Ayarala might be up now and would surely be wondering where I was. I didn’t want her stumbling into this. I peeked back around quickly. The females with crossbows were watching for me, and another bolt shot out, smacking into the rock wall. Again, I was too far away to get hit by the splash of liquid, but that was clearly their intent.

  After two tours in Iraq, I’d been shot at more than enough times for my taste. I didn’t like it any better now than I did then, even if they were using what looked like non-lethal ammunition. I needed to get out of this trap, but I also needed a strategy.

  It seemed to take about a half-second for their shots to get across the canyon. And that gave me an idea.

  I crouched down, waiting a few seconds to be sure both of them could have reloaded. Then I leapt forward, stopped short, and jumped backwards. Just as I ducked back, two bolts smacked into the rock, right where I would have been had I kept running.

  Now I took off for real, running around the overhang and back into the trees. Whatever those women were or wanted, the canyon was too steep and deep for them to get across easily. I turned around when I was safely back in the woods. I could just barely see them across the canyon. The leader was yelling again and pointing uphill. A moment later, they moved off.

  I ran back to our campsite and found Ayarala sitting by the tent. The look on her face was matched with a wave of relief at my reappearance.

  “Where did you go?”

  I explained what I’d been doing and what had happened. Her face darkened.

  “A linyang hunting party!” she exclaimed. “What are they doing so far into the mountains?”

  “Hunting me, it seemed like.”

  “They likely had no idea what you were. You are . . . somewhat intimidating, Will.”

  I described the arrows to her and tried to explain the smell they had given off on impact. She didn’t seem to understand rose, but she got the point.

  “What do you think those were?”

  “That is interesting. It sounds like kiralabar.” A flower of some sort. “When concentrated into a liquid, it causes sleep. I have some in my kit. It is useful when there is great pain to counteract. But used as they did, they may have meant to knock you unconscious.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know what they would be doing up here.”

  ◆◆◆

  We broke camp quickly and continued downhill. Whatever that hunting party had been up to, we were heading away from the canyon they still had to cross if they were pursuing us. After about an hour, I began to relax.

  I followed Ayarala through the forest, watching her tight, athletic body in front of me and remembering all the things I’d done to it the previous night. It didn’t even feel like I’d gone three times. I could have done it again then and there, and I knew she would happily let me. But this wasn’t the time, so I did my best to ignore it.

  I distracted myself by trying to process all the information she’d given me about her world. There was a lot that I still didn’t get, but the framework was becoming clear. Taitalan society seemed like a strange mix of pre-industrial combined with technology more advanced than Earth’s. A lot of the latter seemed to center around crystals. There was surely more there I needed to learn.

  The social elements still made little sense. The male-female ratio and their customs around mating seemed tailor-made for extinction, unless they lived a hell of a lot longer than humans did.

  “Ayarala, how old are you? Do your people keep track of that?”

  She looked over her shoulder at me.

  “I have completed my eleventh talon.”

  That made her about twenty-two, by Earth reckoning, assuming that meant anything. But she’d mentioned how living past forty talons, or eighty years, was something notable. Which suggested their lifespans were comparable to humans.

  “What of you, Will of Hawthorne, my handsome makalang with the giant penis?”

  I laughed.

  “By your measurement, I guess I have completed my eighteenth talon.”

  “You are much younger than my first tsulygoi.”

  “How old was he? How long do Taitalan males live?”

  She stopped for a moment to climb over a fallen tree, then waited for me follow her.

  “I believe my first tsulygoi was at least sixty talons, perhaps eighty or more. I know that only because of the wives he had when I first came to him. One was a daughter of Kumala, and she spoke of there being another when she was claimed.”

  “You said the females leave when they have a child.”

  “She had never conceived. Old tsulygoi rarely mate. He mated with me only once, after he claimed me, and honestly even that surprised me. Younger males usually mate more often and produce many children, but there are no young males left now. Almost all of them are very old. So few children are born.”

  That would explain some of it. But even if the males lived twice as long, that still hardly seemed to make up for the difficulties in reproduction. There had to be something important I was missing here.

  Then we got to the makalang stuff. Ayarala told me everyone viewed it as myth, but myths often had roots in some truth. That the makalang was described in near-human terms seemed significant to me. If I’d stumbled through that cave, could someone else have come through at some other time? Maybe several someones? And if they had, could that have helped create the legend?

  And if people were occasionally stumbling through from one direction, maybe there was a way to go the other direction too. Earth certainly had its share of legends about beings that resembled Ayarala. So there was at least that possibility. I had to go after it. I would figure out what to do about Ayarala when the time came.

  ◆◆◆

  After hiking for several hours, we emerged into a small clearing, and I saw the tsulygoi’s house.

  It was old, maybe really old. The architecture and design were alien to my eyes, but still attractive and deliberate – it hadn’t been thrown up purely for shelter.

  At first glance, it resembled a blooming rose, lying face up on the ground. It was solid, built from stone or some kind of ceramic. The upper areas, what would have been the tips of the rose petals, were faced in crystal plates that glittered in the sunlight. Below, curving and twisting around the sides, were long tinted windows like veins of color running through the petals.

  It had clearly been built long ago. The patina of age and rain colored the stone, and the trees and plant life that had grown up around the house were mature, even decrepit in places. Many of the windows were faded and discolored. A narrow wooden door sat in the center of the base of the rose.

  To one side of the house was a neatly arranged garden where a variety of plants grew, and various colored things – fruits and vegetables of some sort, I assumed – hung from vines and stalks. But it looked well-tended, and a moment later the gardener stepped into view.

  A dark-haired girl about Ayarala’s size moved through the rows inspecting the plants and picking off dead bits of this and that. But she was too far away for me to see much detail about her.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “You must challenge the tsulygoi and take his wives.”

  I saw Richard’s face again.

  “How about . . . we see if I can talk them into helping us. If that doesn’t work, then maybe we’ll try something else.”

  Ayarala looked at me, then nodded.

  “As you wish, my tsulygoi. I should go first. If you just appear at their door . . .”

  That made sense.

  So I stayed back in the
trees as she walked up to the house. She called out something to the dark-haired girl. It was the same language she’d been speaking all this time, but now I no longer understood her.

  Just as I hadn’t understood her at first, when I spotted her in the cliffside. So there was a range limit to this connection we had. I needed to remember that.

  The dark-haired girl noticed her and stepped forward. They spoke for about a minute. Then the girl went into the house, her dark hair suddenly flashing green in the sunlight, and closed the door behind her. Ayarala waited.

  After another minute or so, the girl returned and said something to Ayarala, who turned and walked in my direction.

  “They will see us,” she said when she’d gotten closer. I stepped out to join her, and we walked to the house where the girl waited in the doorway.

  When I got up to the door, I realized a couple of things. First, the girl’s dark hair was definitely green. Deep, intense, emerald green. And like Ayarala’s gold, it was no dye. Her hair was like tendrils of green glass.

  The other thing I realized was that she was a snake.

  Well, not entirely. She was human in form, two arms, two legs, and a head. But her skin was tan and dusted here and there with patches of greenish-yellow scales, on her arms, around her neck and chest, and her legs. Her eyes were yellow and serpentine, with vertical pupils. And behind her twisted a three-foot-long, scaly green tail that resembled a ball python.

  And yet for all that, she was strikingly beautiful. She had a body not unlike Ayarala’s, smooth and muscular, though she was a bit taller and her breasts were larger. She wore a filmy, lacy wrap that did little to conceal her curves.

  The snake-girl regarded me with unconcealed amazement. Then she spoke, and I understood her as well as Ayarala.

  “I am Kisarat, of the talalong and iXa’aliq, who is my tsulygoi. I have not mated.”

  She had fangs too. Not long ones, but there they were.

  I responded to her, repeating much of what I’d told Ayarala the previous day.

  “I am Will, of the Hawthorne. I have mated. I have two . . . offspring.”

  “My tsulygoi will see you.”

  She led us into the house. The interior was much the same as the exterior, aging stone decorated here and there with crystal tiles and panels. It was a single room open all the way around the circumference of the rose, with an ornate ceramic staircase in the center, leading upwards to another level. There was lighting – the room was lit by crystals in the ceiling, which glowed with a soft white luminescence.

  Around the room were clusters of furniture that seemed to signify the functions of the different areas – sitting, dining, a low desk with piles of papers and small box-like objects on it. Not everything had an obvious purpose to my eyes.

  Off to the right was what looked like a brick oven in the center of the likely kitchen. Everything seemed old but in decent condition, though the design was alien, all asymmetrical curves and sparkling colors. Crystals and crystalline materials abounded. My mind tried to place it into some kind of context with Earth history and failed. The workmanship was impressive, but much of it seemed handmade. Yet the crystalline elements, clearly grown and fashioned like Ayarala’s knife, spoke to technology beyond what I was familiar with.

  Then I saw the house’s owner, and I promptly forgot all the impressive things I’d just been looking at, including his wife.

  Chapter 6

  I’m not sure what I had been envisioning as a Taitalan male, but it definitely wasn’t this.

  Before me stood a hairless three-foot tall humanoid with the general build of an eight-year-old boy. His droopy, wrinkled skin was cornflower blue, and faded tattoos covered his body. But despite the build of a human child, he had the withered face of a hundred-year-old man. His aged, rheumy eyes were dead white with beady black pupils.

  Also, he was completely naked.

  And I now truly understood Ayarala’s difficulties with me, because I could see his penis. I had been generous in imagining it as a cigarette. In truth, it dangled between his legs like a dead earthworm.

  The thought of Ayarala having sex with something like this twisted my stomach.

  “Makalang,” the tsulygoi croaked.

  Whatever I thought of Ayarala’s stories, it was time to roll with this.

  “Yes.”

  “You have come to claim my wife?”

  “No. I merely need your help.”

  I could understand him, as I did Ayarala and Kisarat, but unlike the girls, I could not get an emotional read on him. Not that I necessarily wanted to know what was going on in that head.

  “You had two, when I came and you rejected me,” Ayarala said. “Where is the other?”

  iXa’aliq let out an angry grumble, but it was Kisarat who answered.

  “Narilora abandoned us. She would wait no longer to mate.”

  “You have not mated either,” Ayarala responded.

  “I am more patient than she.”

  iXa’aliq was staring at Ayarala.

  “I can see you like them young, as I do. But this one was used. I prefer them fresh.”

  I gritted my teeth against my reaction. He liked them “fresh,” but never did anything with them. Okay.

  He looked back at me.

  “What do you want, if not my wife?”

  “I need to know more about the makalang legend. Where do they come from? Where do they go? She tells me you may know.”

  His wrinkled forehead, if it were possible, wrinkled even further.

  “You do not know yourself?”

  “I arrived here only yesterday. I need to know more about . . . my place in this world.”

  I realized I might be giving up an advantage by confessing how little I knew. But I didn’t know what else to do. This male seemed barely worth my notice; I could probably break him over my knee if I needed to.

  Though, a voice in the back of my head said, small doesn’t necessarily mean harmless. Age and guile, youth and skill, and all that. He hadn’t existed this long by being stupid.

  iXa’aliq grunted and motioned to Kisarat. “She would know. She obsesses over such things, to the detriment of her service to me.”

  “I am sorry, my tsulygoi,” Kisarat said instantly. “Please lead me.”

  “Set a table, one for . . . special guests, then let us talk.”

  Something passed between them, and I felt a flash of concern from Kisarat. But iXa’aliq walked over to one of the tables off to the right. There were chairs around it, one sized for him, like a child’s high chair, the others larger, presumably for his wives.

  Ayarala and I followed him over and sat down. iXa’aliq ignored us, watching Kisarat working in the kitchen. She was there for a minute or two, then brought over a tray with glasses and a bottle, and a bowl of some kind of fruit from her garden.

  As she sat down with us, I felt her continuing amazement and fascination with me, though now it was tinged with concern.

  “You seem intrigued with me,” I said to her, “but not terribly surprised or frightened.”

  “That is because I have long believed the legend of the makalang is true. And now I know it is.”

  I noticed Ayarala’s eyes widening at her. Kisarat noticed it as well.

  “Yes, I am one of those females. But not without reason. It is because I have studied the histories of the last one.”

  My heart skipped a beat. Was I right about the cave?

  “The last one?”

  “It is part of the stories,” Ayarala interjected. “Many talons ago, one supposedly appeared in Phan-garad, the city in the lowlands I mentioned, where my mother mated. But the evidence for it is weak and somewhat silly.”

  “Have you read it, this evidence?” Kisarat asked.

  “No.”

  “I have. And it is not weak. There are consistent, contemporaneous reports.”

  “From so long ago.”

  “Nearly three kumala-talons, that is true. And none of the primary s
ources survive. But the accounts are remarkably consistent.”

  She looked back at me. I could still sense the concern flowing through her like acid, but if I wasn’t misreading her, she was getting turned on sitting here with us.

  “The accounts describe something exactly like you. A pale-skinned male, larger than even the largest female. Handsome beyond measure. Much hair on his head and body. And . . .” Her eyes dropped to my groin, then flicked over to Ayarala. “Is he – ?”

  “He is. Very much so.”

  I struggled to control my reaction, which was not helped by the flush of arousal I felt from Kisarat.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “He took a number of wives and went into the wilderness. Some of the wives returned with children. How long he lived, what more might have happened, the accounts do not say. But some of his children remained in Phan-garad. Some believe a tsulygoi there is his descendant.”

  “aJia’jara,” iXa’aliq said. “He has claimed this for many talons. But it is all lies. He makes these claims only to exaggerate his importance and attract more wives. Bah!”

  What Kisarat said staggered me. This man, if it actually was a human man, had been inter-fertile with the females of Taitala. That was stretching this idea to the breaking point. How in the world could a human have fathered children with an alien race?

  Maybe I was in a coma. Because that idea was preposterous. Impossible.

  But at least it was a lead to follow.

  “This tsulygoi, he lives in Phan-garad?” I asked Kisarat.

  “Yes.”

  “How far is it?”

  “It would depend on how you go. The train from the village takes half a day. To walk, it would be a trip of perhaps a sampar. I have not been there in a few talons.”

  “You are from Phan-garad?”

  “Yes.”

  I now felt palpable arousal flowing out of her as she talked to me, but again there was an undercurrent of worry and fear. Not of me – something else.

  “How did you end up here?”