Jaguar (18 page)

One of the men had spoken of his childhood in Nebaj, far to the south in a mountain village, where the people wore bright cloth of their own weaving. People there dedicated themselves to a spirituality that endured even the onslaught of the Jaguar’s men. The Jaguar’s men had come there to find someone who could interpret dreams, and had carted a score of villagers away. Some said they disappeared into the highland jungles, some said they were taken to the sea. Some whispered of blood sacrifice. The fact remained, none returned. According to the witness, their selection process had been particularly brutal, even for the Jaguar.

“Yes, Nebaj,” the voice spoke again, this time close to his ear. “He wakes.”

A dry, nearly soundless laugh convulsed nearby.

A pair of hands grabbed the back of his collar and dragged Rafferty across flat sandstone to position his feet over the edge of a precipice. The hands loosened the bonds at his wrists. Rafferty unkinked himself and sat upright.

“Nebaj knows the pain of the dreamworld,” the voice said. “You balance now over a very long drop. Relieve yourself, but make no other move or you will be pushed into the canyon. Make no mistake, Nebaj is practical, not merciful. Here, there is no mercy.”

Rafferty did as he was told. As his painfully distended bladder voided its stream he could not detect the sound of it striking bottom anywhere. The feeling, coupled with the blindfold and the recent journey into dreams, washed him with a sudden vertigo and he pitched forward with a cry that sounded like something from his crow. He was caught short by the rope, looped at his waist. That same pair of strong hands pulled him back. In that moment, he heard an answering call from Ruckus, somewhere high above.

“Yes, Nebaj knows the waking pains of the dreamworld,” the voice chuckled. “Our helpless ferret.”

Rafferty’s hands were trussed again, but not pulled tight to his ankles. His right hand throbbed as though all the skin had been scraped from the back of it.

The brand!
he realized.
It’s the Jaguar’s men, and I’ve got the Lazy-Eight brand.

A wind chime tinkled nearby.

No one sets up wind chimes in a travel camp,
Rafferty thought.
They’re confident that they are safe here, and they plan to stay awhile.

Those hands, neither gentle nor rough, finished with their knots and leaned him against the cool of a rock face. The indentations against his back formed a pattern, a spiral, and he knew he must be in one of the hideaways of the ancient Roam.

From sunshine to shadow,
he thought.
Feels like midday. I wonder how long I’ve . . . slept.

His head throbbed but the flashes were gone, a good sign. His stomach growled over the nausea and he knew that the ravenous hunger would hit soon—the fierce hunger that attempted to catch his body up with the two- or three-day fast that his dreams had imposed upon it.

A fragrance came to him with the faint residual of woodsmoke. The fragrance bloomed in his nostrils and thickened as the breeze died down.

Pom,
he thought,
incense of the Jaguar priesthood.

Rafferty had heard stories from the Roam of the bloodthirsty priests who cut out the hearts of their captives on crude stone altars and ate them raw. Pom was a preliminary to all their rituals and Rafferty hoped, over the pounding of his pulse in his ears, that he was indeed a ferret unworthy of such high drama.

Other fragrances twined with the Pom, herbs that Rafferty didn’t recognize. The smoke came to him in little pulses of breeze.

He’s fanning this toward me.

Rafferty heard a reassuring squawk from Ruckus, closer this time. The fanning paused, then resumed with the same hypnotic meter. Not only was his headache gone, but the nausea and hunger pangs had left him as well.

The smoke,
he thought.
Whatever’s in that smoke. . . .

His body felt very, very light. The man who fanned the smoke hummed a tune that Rafferty had never heard, a very soothing tune, one that he felt wash over his body like a wave of white light. When the wave broke, Rafferty felt no pain at all from his bonds or his hand. He felt like a dry leaf floating on a pond of warm, white light.

“It’s a trap!”

The sudden voice from the bottom of his mind clearly belonged to Afriqua Lee.

“Do not dream! The Jaguar scouts . . . !”

Rafferty altered his breathing. Where he had relaxed into great, sighing breaths he now let his chin drop to his chest and satisfied himself with the smallest, shallowest breaths he could muster. Soon the fanning came faster, and every muscle in Rafferty’s body screamed for oxygen, but he held fast.

Rafferty pressed the back of his blistered right hand against the stone behind him. He concentrated on sanding off the fresh brand, merely twitching the fewest muscles for the slightest movement. The fanning stopped. He smelled a foul breath in his nostrils as someone inspected him for sleep. Rafferty allowed his body the sighing, smoke-free breaths that it craved.

The hands snatched him by the hair and slammed him face-first into sand.

“Ah, dream-ferret, abandon this foolish resolve. It will make you buzzard dung before nightfall.”

The priest yanked off Rafferty’s blindfold, and the white highland sun stabbed at both eyes, even after he squinted them shut.

The wind chime tinkled again, and when Rafferty recovered his vision enough to focus he saw it hanging at a cave entrance behind the smoldering fire. Twisted stone carvings framed the cave. His eyes adjusted, and he saw that the chime was made of brittle white bones, dried and tempered by the sun.

One man guarded him; he saw no sign of another. That explained the bonds. Rafferty’s guard busied himself over the coals of the fire, scraping them together carefully, then covering them with a mound of sand. Rafferty knew from travels with the Roam that this fire would keep for a day or more under the sand. This conserved precious firewood. It told Rafferty that the fire would not be used again soon, probably not until dark. He didn’t know whether to be comforted by that or not.

Beside the firepit lay the branding iron with its wooden handle. It seemed such an innocent twist of metal, even elegant on the end of its delicate stem.

The hands of the priest were long and delicate as well, uncalloused, with nails that rounded their fingertips. The greatest surprise was not in his hands, but in his face.

This priest was a young man. Older than Rafferty, yes, but not nearly so old as his rasp of a voice. He wore the leggings and bright tunic of the highland Maya, with a cumbersome headdress and the thick ear decorations of mid-rank priesthood. They matched the dress of some of the carved figures. His feet were bare, their thickness and width made mockery of sandals. His face was very thin, and his clothing much too bulky to fit.

He looks like he’s starving.

He was a handsome young man with glittery brown eyes, and Rafferty knew that the women of the Roam would court him mercilessly. While he, Rafferty, was mixed-blood and therefore
gaje
, this priest was of a different kumpania but his blood belonged to the Roam. He stirred something in a pot of water while he returned Rafferty’s stare. The unmistakable aroma got his attention.

“Is that coffee?” Rafferty asked.

“It is.”

Yes, the voice was the same. No sign of another person, no tracks other than the drag marks from the cliffside only a few meters away. The camp perched on a long ledge inside a canyon. It looked very nearly inaccessible to Rafferty.

The priest used a piece of stained cloth to filter out the dregs, then set a small cup at Rafferty’s feet.

“For you. Nebaj likes coffee after a dream.”

“I can’t drink it with my hands tied,” Rafferty grumbled. “Besides, how do I know it’s coffee? You already tried to put me to sleep once.”

Nebaj shrugged, picked up the cup and sipped the top third much more delicately than Rafferty would have imagined. In his time, Nebaj had learned the courtly graces. Rafferty wondered what convolutions of fate marooned him on this ledge in the high country.

“You see, no poison. You will sleep soon enough; it is what people do. When you sleep, you will dream. That is also what people do. When you set out on your dreamway, I will follow. That is what I do.”

He reached behind Rafferty and undid the knots at his wrists, then sat facing him, sipping at his own cup. Both cups were crude red pottery, made for travel and disposal. Their only decoration was three hollow legs apiece, and inside each leg was a tiny ball that rattled when the cup was tilted and set down.

Rafferty reached for his cup and stopped, startled at the mess that the branding had made of the back of his hand. He had damaged it further himself with the scraping, but it was still just an unrecognizable mass of burn.

“Only Nebaj to hold and brand,” the priest apologized. “Your body fought though your mind was gone.”

“Why . . . why do you do this?”

“For the Jaguar. It pleases him.”

“Why doesn’t the Jaguar just brand us in our dreams and leave our bodies alone? If he’s trying to follow us there, what good does it do—?”

“It is not for you that you are branded,” Nebaj said. “It is for Nebaj.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Jaguar requires sacrifice. Nebaj must provide, out of three choices. One, follow a dreamway and mark whoever is encountered there. Two, pierce the tongue of Nebaj with a sea-ray spine and let the blood flow upon the burning Pom. Three, pierce the penis of Nebaj with an eagle-bone whistle, then blow the blood upon the burning Pom.”

“I understand your choice.”

Nebaj nodded.

“So why am I here? Why not just brand me and let me go?”

Nebaj laughed a near-silent whisper of a laugh.

“Ah, dream-ferret, you are a special find, indeed. Priests hunt their lives away for the likes of you. You have dreamed yourself into the world of the Jaguar himself. Your meeting at the crossroads—who could have known the good fortune of Nebaj!”

“You mean, all these people who are branded are branded simply for dreaming normal dreams?”

“Yes, normal. It is a means of keeping track of those we have met in dreams. Very few ever glimpse the curtain. And now you have very nearly pulled Nebaj through the curtain with you.”

He sounded proud, even awestruck. Perhaps this was a means to higher rank in the priesthood.

“But how did you recover, then get me here? Weren’t you sick, too?”

“Yes, sick. There is a penalty to be paid, but the herbs help. Fasting, too, is a help.”

“Why do you want me to dream again so soon? And why tie me up?”

Nebaj set his coffee down, then motioned to Rafferty to present his ankles. He proceeded to release him.

“Nebaj, too, must sleep,” he said. “The ropes keep you from a needless fall into the canyon. As you can see, there is no way out except up, and up cannot be gained without a rope thrown down.”

“So, there is someone else.”

“In due time.”

“What if I throw you over the edge?”

“Then the rope will never come.”

“Am I dreaming now?”

“No. You know the difference.”

Rafferty wasn’t all that sure. He heard his crow call twice again, quickly, an attempt to get his attention. It got Nebaj’s attention. When he turned and craned his neck to spot the crow, Rafferty hit him hard on the side of the neck like Uncle taught him to do.

Nebaj didn’t go down. He sprang with a backhand to Rafferty’s face and a countered with a side-kick to his belly. Rafferty took the kick to catch the ankle. He gave Nebaj a spin and kicked his supporting knee out from under him, then punched the back of the priest’s neck. Nebaj quivered and lay still.

Though the fight only took moments, Rafferty was reduced to a fit of uncontrollable trembling. He sat in the sand next to Nebaj and stripped off the priest’s soiled tunic and trousers. He trussed the priest up in one of his own ropes and saved the longest length in case company showed up.

Company did show up. Ruckus landed on an outcrop next to the wind chime and gave the bones a curious poke.

“Thanks, Ruckus. You’re pretty handy, for a crow.”

Ruckus answered with his usual mutter, then fluttered to the firepit to poke for scraps.

Rafferty finished with Nebaj and dragged him inside the cave entrance, out of sight from above. He slipped the tunic and trousers over his own, and strapped on the helmet of rank. Ruckus eyed the silver inserts that decorated the sides.

“You like silver, don’t you buddy. I’ll give you all the silver in this helmet if you help me get to the top. See this?”

Rafferty showed Ruckus the rope. He held it up and let one end fall, then held it up again and let one end fall. Ruckus watched carefully, curious as always.

Rafferty anchored one end on a ledge with a rock and coiled the rest of the rope beside it. He held out his arm, and Ruckus hopped aboard. Rafferty took him over to the coil of rope. He picked the free end up between his fingers, then let it drop free from the ledge. He re-coiled the rope, then did it again.

“Got it?”

This time, he coiled the rope and held Ruckus up to it. The crow looked at Rafferty, looked at the rope, then pulled the rope so that it fell free.

“Good boy, Ruckus. What a great crow you are. Now we hope that they left the rope topside, and that it’s still attached to something.”

Rafferty picked up a stone and stepped out from the cliff face as far as he could. He gave Ruckus a toss and when he was airborne Rafferty threw the stone to the top of the cliff with all his might. It didn’t fall back at him, so he was sure that he’d made it.

“Go on,” he motioned to Ruckus, then shook the rope at him. “Go on up there.”

The crow winged upward in a lazy spiral and disappeared above the rim. In moments a rope skittered down the rock face. It hung up just above the cave, and with considerable effort Rafferty was able to free it. He scoured the cave for all of the supplies he could find and bundled them into the priest’s net bag. When he found the obsidian knife he paused, then placed it at the priest’s bare neck. He held it there for a moment, two, and knew he could not kill him. Instead, he made a harmless cut across the throat, just enough to bleed.