Melforger (The Melforger Chronicles) (30 page)

Bolyai gave a grunt as they hit a tree root and then scowled briefly at the back of Tiponi. “This noise will make it hard for us to take up where we left off.”

“With the music thing again?”

Bolyai’s reply was cut off as he had to dodge a low hanging acacia branch that scraped over the side of the wagon.

“Well, that’s a pity,” said Raf, carefully looking up the path.

The Elder watched him for a bit. “Do your parents know?”

Raf spun around. “No!” He hesitated and bit his lip. “Nobody knows. Not even my friends. I mean, Elder, I don’t even know what I’d tell them.”

“Your parents will want to know this, trust me, boy.”

“Will they? I don’t think so,” Raf replied. “I’ve never heard anyone say anything about this sort of
thing before. Besides, then my mother’d probably make me sing
all
the time. It was bad enough she wanted me to perform in the stupid Festival.”

Bolyai frowned at him. “You don’t like music?”

“Of course I like music. I just don’t like standing up and... you know…”

“You’re afraid you’ll embarrass yourself?”

“No, that’s not it,” replied Raf. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe it is.”

“If you practice and get good enough, though, I think you will find pleasure in it. This is a gift. You have a duty to use it, don’t you see that?”

Raf looked skeptical and then reached down to get the shea butter again.

“There is so much we’ve lost over the years. So much.” Bolyai stared pensively at the wagon floor. “If I cannot help you, then we must find someone who can. There is tell of people in Miern –“

“Of melforgers?” Raf looked up in interest.

Bolyai shook his head. “That would be very unlikely. But I have heard that there are some with the talent amongst them. If we are to find someone to help you, it will be there, I feel sure.”

“In Miern?” said Raf. “I was going to sojourn there. You’re welcome to talk to my mother though, because she isn’t interested in the idea.”

“Oh, she’s probably right, boy. Don’t be mistaken, Miern is a dangerous place, -”

“Great, you sound
just
like her.”

Bolyai stared at Raf, an eyebrow raised. “I…” Even in the blazing heat, Raf could feel his cheeks glow red.

“Sorry, Elder.”

Bolyai grunted softly and then reached down to seize a stick of dried meat to chew on.

“Besides,” Raf continued, “we’ve got to fix the Forest before we can do anything else, right? My family’s stuck in there. How long till we get to this
ishranga
person?”

Tiponi leaned back from the bench and replied, “Whole day.”

“And to the escarpment?” asked Bolyai.

“Not long,” replied Tiponi.

Raf scanned ahead of them through the trees and saw nothing that stood out from the rolling plains of dry grass. “What’s this escarpment?”

Bolyai smiled. “A treat for the eyes. We’ve been climbing steadily for a while now and will soon reach the top. It’s quite something. We’ll rest there before we head down onto the plains.”

.  .  .  .  .  .  .

Raf looked up at the sound of Tiponi whistling at the ostriches. The wagon drew to a stop and with the halt in its noisy progress, a peace fell. The wind whistled softly through the grass and then a few seconds later, a few staccato blasts of chirruping came from crickets hidden in the undergrowth. Somewhere in the distance, a lone hornbill blew its shrill trumpeting call.

Getting up from the uncomfortable position he’d had to adopt with all the bouncing, Raf stretched and looked around. Behind them to the left and right was the same rolling plain of grass sprinkled with acacia trees, but in front of them was a small rise that seemed to disappear into the sky.

“Go have a look,” said Bolyai.

Raf jumped down off the wagon and, keeping a wide berth of the ostriches, stepped his way through the dry grass towards the top of the slope. As he got closer, he realized that hidden in the grass were some things that made him draw up, a crooked smile appearing on his face.

“Rocks.” He sounded the word out and his smile broadened into a wide grin. It wasn’t anything like the whetstones they used in the Forest and until you actually saw a ‘rock’, it was difficult to
imagine the textured hardness and mottled grey color of these huge natural objects. And they were just sitting here!

A soft breeze brought a moment of coolness to his burnt cheeks and he looked up to find himself facing a vista that took his breath away. Directly in front of him, for a mile perhaps, the mountain side sloped down at a sharp angle until it leveled out far below. From there, as far as the eye could see, a vast plain was laid out like a sandy brown tablecloth, scattered with lumpy hills and granite knolls, and dotted here and there with tiny acacia trees. The landscape rolled away and just kept rolling and rolling until it faded from view in the shimmering distance.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” came the quiet voice of Bolyai behind him. Raf nodded vaguely, lost for words. “Well, come on then.”

Tiponi steered the wagon towards a break in the rocks and they found themselves at the beginning of a path which set off at an angle down the mountain side. Shading his eyes, Raf following it and saw that it veered left a few hundred feet down, then right, and so on, moving like a snake between the clumps of rock all the way down to the bottom.

An awful long way to go when it’d probably be quicker just to go straight down, surely,
he mused.

As he was about to voice this opinion, he watched a small rock, dislodged from its place by one of the ostrich’s talons, tumble forwards and then pick up speed rolling down the escarpment. Bouncing high in the air, it only took a matter of seconds before it reached the bottom of the slope, where it hurtled hard into another rock. The sharp clatter of the impact was loud enough to drift all the way up to Raf. He winced and looked at Tiponi who was on foot, slowly leading the ostriches along the path.

I’m glad he knows what he’s doing.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .

It took an age, but the wagon made its way down the treacherous incline and eventually the path leveled out into a less precipitous slope and Tiponi climbed back up on the driver’s bench.

The heat had intensified more and more as they descended, and now, without the breeze that had given them some respite higher above, everything seemed to roast. Even as he looked around, the trees and grass as close as fifty yards away swayed eerily in the searing haze. It was too hot for anything else other than sitting silently on the wagon, staring out at the plain. Nobody said a word. Not even when they stopped and Tiponi found some
shuji
to dice up for water for the ostriches, squeezing the moisture into a wooden bowl which they drank in seconds.

Raf found himself rocking to the motion of the wagon, unable to sleep for the heat; his skin was dry and itched as the sun sucked every last particle of water from it. He started imagining things, seeing things, and twice sat up in shock as he thought he saw people walking next to them, only to find it was a dead tree, or a clump of grass. There finally came a time though, when he kept seeing the same odd thing again and again and finally gathered enough energy to sit up.

“Tiponi.” The iMahli, seemingly unaffected by the heat, turned and looked at him. “What’s wrong with those trees? The acacias?” Raf pointed at a fairly large specimen they were travelling past.

Tiponi looked over at it. “Wrong with it?”

“Yeah, there’s that weird bump thing on it, see?” About half way up the trunk of the acacia, there was a round, knobbly shape about the same size as a large pumpkin.

Bolyai added in a hoarse voice, “Looks like a beehive from all the holes covering it.” He squinted up at Tiponi. “I didn’t think there were bees this far into the plains.”

“But you can see leaves sticking out of the top of it,” cut in Raf. “It’s a plant, isn’t it?”

“These things you find often in my land,” said Tiponi. “It grows from a seed left by birds.”

“Like banyans?” asked Bolyai.

Tiponi shrugged. “I don’t know those. But inside that plant is full of ants.”

“Ants inside the plant?” asked Raf. “You mean they’ve eaten into it?”

Tiponi tilted his head at Raf suspiciously and then seeing no sign that he was joking, heaved on the reins and pulled the wagon to a stop.

“It is not for eating. They live inside. Like you in your trees.”

Raf frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You live in your trees, in your space. The ants live in these plants, in their space.”

“Do they eat the plant to make their space?“

“They do not.”

“So the plant is like that already? Inside, I mean? With space for the ants to live?”

Tiponi nodded and gestured with his fingers. “Small holes everywhere. These ants, they protect the plant; it gives them a house.”

“You’re saying it’s natural? But how? How can it possibly grow like that?”

Tiponi shrugged.

Bolyai gave Raf a scornful look. “The same way our
Ancients
did, boy. Use your brain.”

Raf squinted curiously at the plant and then pushed himself off the wagon to the ground. He made his way up to the tree and scrutinized the plant up close; there were indeed hundreds of tiny ant-sized holes covering the surface of the plant.

“Where are the ants, Tiponi?”

The iMahli tied the ostriches to a small branch, and joined them at the tree. “Inside,” he said, and rapped the plant with the back of his knuckles.

Nothing happened. Tiponi beat the plant hard with a fist.

“Maybe they’re asleep in this heat?” suggested Bolyai.

Tiponi shook his head. “They always protect the plant. Strange.” He peered at the holes closely and then spotted the leaves. “Ah,” he muttered. “Dead.”

They saw that the leaves that sprouted from the top end of the plant were shriveled and yellow.

“Can I cut it open? To see the inside?” asked Raf.

Tiponi nodded, so Raf used his knife and dug it deep into the side of the plant, pivoting it in one smooth slice downwards. Then he levered it sideways with a yank to break off the outside half.

All three of them suddenly stepped backwards as a sharp rotten smell filled their noses. Tiponi hissed while Bolyai and Raf looked on, horrified at what they saw.

“That’s the smell, Elder,” said Raf quietly, wafting his hand in front of his nose. “This has the tree disease. It must have.”

“It
can’t
,” muttered Bolyai. He stared around the vicinity, taking in the few trees nearby. “It’s too dry and hot – and too far – to have caught it from anything in the Forest.”

Nobody said anything. Tiponi took one last grim look and then walked back to the wagon. For the next hour they travelled quickly, covering a lot of ground, stopping only a few times to dig up
shuji.
They also checked a few other ant-plants, but all of them were dead and rotten.

The escarpment disappeared into the hazy horizon behind them and the land turned into a rolling sea of rocky hills and desolate valleys. The grass and acacias became scarcer, replaced by sandy dunes and occasional patches of small thorny shrubs.

The sun was almost touching the horizon on its descent and Raf could feel the temperature plummeting when Tiponi finally pulled the ostriches to a stop and stood up, stretching his neck and arms.

“Are we there?”

Tiponi shook his head. “First we eat, then I take you. It is close now.”

“Where is it, though? I can’t see anything.”

“Only if you know where to look, you will find it. I will take you, but you must never tell its place to anyone. You must promise me this.”

Raf joined Bolyai in offering assurances they would never tell anyone. Then he scanned their location. The only thing that looked remotely capable of concealing a hiding place was a small rocky knoll half a mile ahead of them.

“Is that it? Is the
ishranga
up there?” Tiponi looked up, saw where he was looking, and nodded before climbing down off the wagon. “Really?” Raf was disappointed.

Seems a bit of a stupid place to hide. I mean, on top of a small hill in this flat place?
Pretty easy to spot. So much for it being well-protected. And it must be tiny up there!

H
idden in the dim dusk light, he watched his quarry packing up the small fire they had lit. Edokko lifted himself nimbly off the ground and crept back around the small ridge to where the others were waiting.

A tall, clean-shaven man looked up from cleaning his knife. “Well?” The short iMahli nodded and the man snorted. “That’s good news for you, little chief. It means I don’t have to punish you for losing him the first time round.”