The Legend of Broken (32 page)

The steps come nearer and faster: evidently the creature—moving at something between a walk and a run—has no fear of the scent of humankind. The old man faces away from the cave door, thinking, in his agonized resignation, that he will not even turn. Rather, he will offer up the back of his neck, the most vulnerable part of his spine, to be crushed in the jaws of what most probably—given its lack of stealth, indeed its behaving as if it already owned the den—is a brown bear of Broken, the same beast whose rampant image figured prominently on the crest of that kingdom’s founder, Oxmontrot, as it has since done on that of his royal descendants. The animal will have recently woken from the long winter sleep, and is doubtless emboldened by the hunger that comes with burning away all the stored sustenance in its body. Such a creature will be more than capable of crushing the frail bones of the old man …

But then he hears it: a heavy yet hushed trill of the throat. And when he does, he recognizes the peculiarity of the step: each leg moving independently as they trot. Only two creatures, the old man knows, possess such coordination of movement: cats, both great and small, and horses. Thus, it must be his companion
†
returning unexpectedly, he dares hope for a moment …

His head lifts without his consciously willing it, and his agonized face turns toward the sunlight; then, instantly, his expression changes completely, as the newcomer enters into view …

On its way into the cave is the most dreaded animal in all the Wood, a Davon panther. Nor is this
any
panther, but the one known for many years as a legend throughout Broken, not only for the unusual lust it possesses for the blood of certain men, but for the extraordinary beauty of its coat: fur that should, at best, be a gold akin to ripe wheat, is almost a ghostly white, and where the slightly darker striping and spotting should be, there are only the faintest traces of those markings,
†
rendered in a shade that nearly matches the beautiful but mysterious jewelry that the old man was fond of crafting for the God-King Izairn’s daughter: an alloy of pure gold, silver, and nickel, all readily available in the mountains along Broken’s frontiers. A mature female, and one with the scars to prove her age and experience, the panther is fearless, that much is evident from her quick step and lack of concern with the smell of human flesh and waste that she must have detected long before reaching the cave. The massive paws (for she is at least ten years of age, as well as over five hundred pounds in weight, some nine feet in length, and half that in height, when measured at the lowest point of the long, dipping spine
‡
) make a sound too careless for the hunt, however: they pad along the forest floor before the cave regally, the great and noble head never turning to remark upon the old man’s extraordinary garden, or his forge, or any other detail of this miraculous habitation. The large ears, which come to unusually pointed tufts, are turned purposefully forward; and yet, although the tongue is out and panting, there is no bloodlust in the extraordinary brilliance of the light green eyes, eyes that mirror the shade of the newest leaves on the youngest trees surrounding the camp …

The old man holds his breath, his eyes filling with tears; but these are not the tears of a man about to leave this world—they are those of a man who has found salvation where he thought there could be none.

“Stasi!”
he manages to say, in cracks and cries. “But—you were …”

But she was not, in fact, so far away, after all. And, now that she is close, the white panther pays the old man’s voice no heed; instead, she trots into the cave as quickly as she approached it, and, standing with her head over his prostrate body, glances about, noting his disordered table and the scattered pieces of his walking apparatus as if she comprehends their meaning. And, indeed, in her eyes, as she looks down at him, is a gaze that could be interpreted—if one had the talent to see it, as the old man does—as embodying both concern and admonishment.

“I know it, Stasi, I know it,” the old man groans in contrition, wincing still with the cutting waves of pain. “But for now—”

He need not finish his sentence. With loving compassion, the panther lowers her head to rub her nose and muzzle gently against his nose and face,
††
and then places her neck over his arms, extending her forelegs, so that her shoulders and chest also descend. This allows the old man to reach up and lock his arms around her graceful yet enormously powerful neck, which she then twists, with equal ease and agility, in such a way that he can, as effortlessly as his throbbing scars will allow, pull himself atop her shoulders, with each of his thighs resting between her shoulders and ribs. The panther then lifts the hundred or so pounds of mortal flesh with which the priests of Kafra left the old man, so long ago, exerting no more effort than if she were rising unencumbered; and, although the movements cause the old man some additional pains, his relief is sufficient to make these slight.

He reaches up, running one hand down the top of her impressive head to her moist, brick-red nose, the lone spot of deep color on her body: apart, that is, from the black lines that outline the remarkably tinted eyes, deepening their effect in such a way that they might have been applied with cosmetic paint by one of the women of the old man’s homeland on the Northeastern Sea.
†
Then the panther, consolingly, moves her face to greet the hand, and to allow his fingernails to scratch lightly, first at the long crest of the nose, then across the brow atop those strangely exotic eyes, and finally to the crown of her proud head. With tears, not of further anguish, but of the very deepest joy and relief streaming freely and silently down his face, the old man places his mouth by one of her enormous ears.

“The stream, Stasi,” he murmurs, although he need not; she has known since entering the cave that this is to be their destination. As she turns to go, she immediately slows her former quick pace to an easy, rhythmic gait, one that she knows the old man has always found soothing: her shoulders ripple, her spine undulates just perceptibly, and her chest rises and falls with her heavy panting. Most of all, she continues the throaty purr that she long ago determined to be of such entrancing comfort to the old man, never more so than when he is in distress and astride her, where he can put one ear to the back of her neck and listen to the steady vibration.

And in this manner is the great sorcerer Caliphestros once again brought back from the brink of despair and death by the legendary white panther of Davon Wood. They are the two most infamous beings of their generation, to the people of Broken, the stuff of more than mere parents’ warnings to unruly children, or of those children’s nightmares; for their existence, especially together, strikes fear into the very royal and sacred clique of the Kafran kingdom. Yet one would be hard-put to find greater tenderness and compassion among any two creatures in the kingdom of the golden god, or, indeed, anywhere on this Earth, than exists between the seemingly very different—yet, in their hearts, not at all dissimilar—enemies of the realm of the Tall …

The panther had been relentlessly hunted by men of Broken even before she rescued the old man from the inexplicable evil to which she had watched his own kind subject him. The panther hunt more generally had, for generations, been the definitive rite of passage into manhood for eldest sons from such Broken families as possessed the wealth and position (to say nothing of the additional male offspring) to allow them the leisure, the horses, and the servants to engage in so vicious, dangerous, and foolhardy a blood sport. And, because exceptional purity and uniformity in the coloration of panthers was believed by Broken hunters as well as by the Bane to imply great mystical powers (despite the teachings of Kafran priests that such was a mischievous remnant of pagan beliefs), a high value was from the first placed on this uniquely hued female. But when it became clear that no human would likely ever prove brave or clever enough to track and kill her, an only slightly diminished value had been placed upon the heads and hides of the four golden cubs she soon mothered.

The family had never been tracked: the unspoken truth among those who survived the encounter that terrible day was that a Broken hunting party, led by the son of the kingdom’s then-Merchant Lord himself, had stumbled upon the young cats at play, under their mother’s watchful eye, in an open dale too close to the Cat’s Paw. The hunters quickly found themselves faced with a far more desperate struggle than they would have expected from one female and four juvenile panthers: the white mother had been able to kill several of the humans, before being wounded herself by a spear that pierced her thigh and glanced off the bone beneath. Thus slowed, she had been forced to watch and lunge desperately, as three of her brave children had been killed, one after another. The body of her eldest male had been taken off toward the city atop the mountain, along with her surviving daughter, who was painfully herded, terrified, into an iron cage; and then all the intruders and their captives disappeared, off toward that mountain, the walls and lights atop which the white panther now often studies, of a night, in a seeming attempt to try to comprehend what those distant, glittering movements may signify …

Since that fateful battle, sightings of the white panther by hunters of Broken have been few; and she has made certain that fewer still of those brash pursuers have returned to the mountain of lights, and that none have tracked her to her high cave-den. In this way, she has kept secret the location of the sanctuary to which she brought the damaged old man, and in which she has helped him to recover, just as he has warmed her winters, preserved her kills, and healed the wounds of her hunts. And so the old man’s name for her—Stasi,
Anastasiya
, “She of the Resurrection”—is apt in its description of her, and of their life together.

If this tale of dual tragedy and redemption should stir disbelief
†
in any who read it, they may comfort themselves that they are not alone: for, on the very day in question, when the white panther he calls Stasi carries the suffering Caliphestros once again to the cold stream near their cave to soothe him, two observing eyes—hard, tough eyes that have watched from the safety of a tall ash—also widen with incredulity. They are the eyes of a man who, if the white panther had the time, she would gladly dispatch: for she detected his stink, despite the aromas of the old man’s herb garden (newly revived by spring), as well as the “hidden” observer’s attempts to disguise his own scent, well before she reached the clearing outside the cave. Although the intruder is clearly of the small tribe in Davon Wood (who have always respected her), the panther liked and yet likes nothing about the blended stenches of fear and filth, as well as the stolen scents of other creatures, that mark him. Yes, she would steal upon and finish him, had she not another mission of mercy to perform for long-suffering Caliphestros …

High in that ash tree, meanwhile, the man who creates that scent of fear knows full well that the panther would indeed kill him, had she the chance; and he waits a long while, after the beast and her strange rider have disappeared, before he even thinks of returning to the forest floor. He continues to wait, in truth, until long after they vanish, letting the unnatural pair put as much of the Wood between themselves and his solitary form (which has never felt so small) as possible, before he silently makes his way down the ash trunk, and lightly drops to the ground.

Heldo-Bah stands gazing toward the trees and undergrowth through which the panther and the sorcerer Caliphestros have disappeared: for “sorcerer” he
must
be, thinks the forager, if he not only survived the
Halap-stahla
, but lives with the most dangerous animal in the Wood! Only after several moments have passed without Heldo-Bah’s wide, amazed eyes catching any further movement does he dare even murmur, in his sourest tone:

“Perfection …”
But Heldo-Bah’s sarcasm lacks its usual conviction. “Most supreme perfection!” he tries again; and then (although he knows he could offer that beast nothing approaching a fight) he clutches his gutting blade at the ready as he dashes back east, toward the camp that he made with Keera and her brother a few hours earlier.

“Let that fool Veloc explain
this
to me!” Heldo-Bah says aloud, when he deems such volume safe. “The sorcerer lives—but with the most feared panther in Davon Wood, a creature that most think a phantasm! Oh, this has been
well
worth three days’ run—we can’t even approach him, with that monster in his thrall!”

More astounded and merely senseless expressions of bewilderment at the ongoing perversity of his life echo about Heldo-Bah, as he runs—and yet his last statement was nothing if not true:

Although he does not yet know it, the strange vision he has witnessed has been more than worth his own and his friends’ desperate dash through Davon Wood over the last several days and nights …

It is my hope that you, among all my friends and colleagues, will understand why I contemplate not only publishing this tale, but associating my name with it. It is not simply that, even as I write, grievous abuses of
Opportunity
(indeed, such Opportunity as History rarely offers to any man or state twice) are being committed by a collection of destructive dreamers, self-serving knaves, and—worst of the lot!—viciously yet brilliantly manipulative men, all of whom now pose as the legitimate legislature
†
of one of our mightiest and most ancient European realms [France]; no, equally tragic are the streams of exiles of every description that are flowing out of that state in all directions. Many have come here, to Lausanne: and I can assure you that they are learning the same lesson with which the ruling and mercantile classes of Broken were confronted, and upon which you have expatiated so sagely in your
Reflections:
that wise men, when forced to take up arms against evils that masquerade as “popular” passions, must be careful also to redress such complaints as prove to represent true grievances. Failure to do so will most assuredly lend plausibility to the most absurd and violent rants of the basest scoundrels; indeed, it is by way of this last consideration that we arrive at perhaps the most perplexing philosophical question put by this tale:

How could a human society reach the relative superiority and sophistication evidenced in the great kingdom of Broken, and then, because of a stubbornly and ultimately cataclysmic unwillingness to adapt its religious and political customs to changing realities,
disappear so utterly
that a millennium would pass before the sole surviving account of its existence would again find eyes and ears capable of understanding it? We are, at this very moment, witnessing the reassertion of this timeless quandary; and while, ten centuries ago, there may have been little or no way of foretelling the horrors to which the unyielding yet flawed rites, dictums, and standards of those who held ultimate power in Broken might lead,
we,
by virtue of histories and legends such as this one, ought to know far better—and yet there is every sign that WE DO NOT!

—E
DWARD
G
IBBON
TO
E
DMUND
B
URKE,

November 3, 1790