The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (6 page)

“Aw, the brother was just being friendly, that’s all.” Demane shrugged off the arm. “Hey, Cumalo, listen.
We
came all the way across the continent, didn’t we? A jukiere could too.”

“You’ve been out here—what, two or three years? Brother, I came when I was
fifteen
, and I’ve been traveling ever since. In twenty years I never once saw or heard tale of any jukiere. It just doesn’t seem too likely to me.”

More than simians hate the serpent, stormbird and jukiere nursed ancient enmity. “Well,” Demane said, “I’m going to let the captain know about it.” In soul or flesh, some spark of primal fire seemed to take light in him. “Better to get off flat feet, and get out the knives,
before
the fight.”—words Captain liked to say.

When youthful friends meet once more in vast old age, often they are astonished by the changes. But, of course, it wasn’t age that Cumalo saw come suddenly over Demane’s face. It was more weird than that, a far richer change. Somewhat wider-eyed than usual, Cumalo said, “Do what you think best, man. But you’d better
hope
it’s no jook-toothed tiger roaming the Wildeeps.”

“Why me? All of us had better hope . . . Hey! I just thought of something.” A mystery came clear in Demane’s mind. “The captain has some plainsman’s blood, I think. His nose is like that brother Kaffalah’s. And isn’t he sort of red-complected and brown all at once . . . ?”

“If you say so.” The look of alarm passed; Cumalo smiled. This was familiar ground, the enamored bending the conversation back again to his amour. “I don’t see it, myself.”

Teef thrust his head between theirs, slinging his arms across their shoulders. “You two cut out all that
ooga-ooga-bug-bug
over here.” Which one worse: armpits or breath? Surely, the latter; but the unwashed inferno of his crotch and ass stank worst of all. “Y’all talk so a nigga could
understand
!”

T-Jawn, Barkeem, and the rest were with him. “Gotta jump, Cumalo,” said a brother. “The dogs is done, and they setting up to put the cocks on next. You had said you wanted to lay a couple coins on the knife-birds. You coming?”

Cumalo looked at Demane. “You oughta come too. Might win you a little something.”

“I’m good. Y’all go ahead.” Demane got out from under the reeking arm. “I’ma go see about a bath over by Mother of Waters.” He backed farther from the propinquities of funk. “Some brothers here might could stand one too.”

“There go the Sorcerer.” Teef shook his head, grinning that wrecked-tooth grin. “Always up in some damn water tryna
warsh
. Man, one day you gonna turn around, catch cold, and wake up dead behind all that water!”

Demane had tried to explain, in the caravan’s early days, how the auspices of hygiene could ward off many infectious daemons. He’d wasted no end of breath laying out the basics of sanitary rites to the brothers. But all that dropped science had mostly bounced off their hard heads. A few kept clean, and the rest, well . . . “That ain’t really how it work, Teef, but never mind,” Demane said. “I catch up with y’all later.”

Disputing groundbirds versus flyers, rash wagers versus acceptable odds, the brothers betook their stink and themselves up a northwest-running alley.

First, let it be understood that divinities crave tender companionship no less than we mortals do; thus enlightened, we may now begin to examine what form this tender companion of theirs ideally assumes: meet for the passions of a god, delightful to the heart and sensoria divine . . .

from
Appendix H (Extinctions and Reemergent Taxa:
type, philomel
) of “Résumé of Ashëan Hyperphenotypes”; vol. 6,
The Olorumi Grimoire

He bathed in the Mother of Waters. Returning up the Mainway to the Station, he went this time into the warren of corrals and stables and warehouses, southside. Demane asked of a passerby, “Master Suresh l’Merqerim?” and found that name known. He had no problems following the directions.

Floor-to-ceiling shutters of the gallery above were folded back, and there, upstairs, the merchants reclined at a feast. On deep pillows, Master Suresh and his peers; on their knees, bowing again and again, servitors filled cups no sooner than they were drained. From mountainously heaped platters, merchants pinched up fingerfuls of rice ornate with cinnamon and cashews, charred yet tender bits of cabrito, rock salt and smashed garlic, dried apricots all moist and plump and soft again, onions turned to caramel . . . Such were Demane’s powers of scent and taste that he too partook of the meal, in every way except satisfaction. One of the merchants, if not Suresh himself, would now and again peer down from the gallery, on those busting their asses below, and find some cause to scream abuse.

Under the feast, workmen and the captain unpacked the camels’ luggage, packed the burros’ bags, rushed goods upstairs to be stored in one of three warehouses above the stables, and rushed down yet other goods to be squared away into the outgoing panniers. Captain hustled at his tasks as if his life depended on it. Taking perch on the corral’s fence, Demane sat and watched. For a quarter of every night the captain lay as one dead, and the world’s ending might not wake him. Otherwise, there were no idle moments for him. He ran on foot through the white-hot desert, though everyone else rode upon camels. He drilled himself at arms, or drilled the brothers. If he saw you working and the labors sufficed for two, he lent a hand; otherwise you got nudged aside. The man wore you out just looking at him.

Captain had changed his robe. He hardly smelled of himself, mostly of the aquifer minerals and endemica of Mother of Waters. Though never truly needing it, he’d gone to bathe as well. Ashëan idioviruses kept the captain’s breath sweet, wounds sterile, and body odor, at worst, a musk that was sometimes a bit more peppery than usual. Had Faedou only obeyed, and allowed Captain to spit into that great gaping hole in his leg, as Demane had begged, then the wound wouldn’t be festering, but healed nearly whole by now. “Good juju,” however, had proved a poor translation for “panaceaic endosymbionts.”

The work done, Captain gathered with the drudges around a water barrel, awaiting his turn to dip the ladle. Motion caught his eye: Demane jumping down from the fence. Captain handed off the ladle and started across the paddock.
Nothing’s
better than your lover smiling to see you.

A shout fell on them from the sky.

“Skipping out, is it? This is how much your promises are worth? No more than a pig-raper’s, set to watch the sty!” Master Suresh l’Merqerim leaned over the upstairs balustrade. “Who then will I get to—?”

Snarling, Captain spun and seized a barrel beside that from which the drudges drank. Was it empty? For he wrenched the barrel off the ground, and above his head, so easily. No—
half full:
weighing more than himself. Water cascaded from the open side as the barrel came up high and lateral—more splashing forth as it burst to staves and splinters against the side of the stable.

“
Do you mind, Suresh? I’m coming right back
.
” A brass quartet blasting ensemble might make such tuneful thunder.

Burros shied and neighed; the drudges, too. Everyone stared in astonishment, and none more so than Demane. Captain’s anger was the cold kind,
never
hot.

Master Suresh l’Merqerim, mockingly, ducked as if dodging a wildly swung fist, and then left the balustrade to return to his feast.

Captain crossed to Demane. “Let’s walk around here for a little bit.” His whole organism exhaled the scents and signs of misery, of fury. “I don’t have much time.”

Demane nodded to the north. “Over by the Mainway?”

They vaulted the fence, went up the nearest alley.

“I should tell you something,” the captain said. “I need to.”

“Go ’head.”

Demane glanced aside in time to see the familiar thing happening on Captain’s face, his usual change of mind. Tensely parted, his lips were relaxing now. Whatever bold intimacy he had for one instant meant to confide would go unsaid after all, lost to habits of private endurance. Indeed as they walked, Captain said nothing at all. He picked at the edges of his headscarf, though of course no hair showed. The sun at zenith would have lit this alley all the way down to the dry packed dust. Now well after noon, oblique brightness crowned the captain’s head, everything lower in shadow. Demane began to speak himself, telling of the encounter with the merchant, and what he suspected of the jukiere.

“A jook-toothed tiger, huh?” Captain, tiredly smiling, shook his head. “Trust you to come at me with a story like that.”

The cool dismissal stabbed right into the heart of any sense that they endured this ordeal together, as one. Did the captain have no confidence in Demane’s expertise, did all the faith flow only one way? It hurt in the belly and chest to be brushed off so. Demane couldn’t have guessed his own expression.

“A good thing you’re always watching out. I’ll say something to Suresh.” Captain draped an arm across Demane’s shoulders. “But if you think he’ll change his plans on my say-so, you must have fallen and bumped your head.” As the captain’s hands could no more roughen with callus than they could scar, and bled every day, his thumb-pad and forefinger (playing with Demane’s ear) were absurdly soft. “It’ll just be the two of us looking out, as usual.”

“Yeah.” Demane swallowed and blinked. “All right.” There’d never been anyone who could knife him so with a momentary word, and then speak the wound away in the very next moment. If all those little boyhood heartbreaks had been supposed to make him ready for this, Demane wasn’t.

They’d nearly reached the sunwashed crowds ahead, when—seizing all Mother of Water’s attention—the civil gong clashed to wake the dead. Men bawled in unison: “Clear the Mainway! Clear the Mainway!” The alley was too narrow to admit either beasts or carts, but a stampede of pedestrians came running up its straits. Demane, smashed against the adobe of some stables, caught the captain, who was thrown bodily against him. An ugly moment, you would have thought, all the screaming and frenzied panic. But Demane had by now learned to recognize cover for a clinch, a pretext to grab two handfuls of ass. He stole that grope, the quick kiss collusive.

A drubbing ovation of horses at full gallop shook the earth. One thousand heads—and theirs, too—leaned out on the emptied Mainway. Twenty-five cavalrymen rode past, and onward through the Station-gates. The mounted fo-so, lances at the ready, ranged out along the east-west trail. Next, from the big western piazza, there came five men on foot. They were hunched over and terrified. Dogs—hacked-up carcasses—had been tied to them.

“Cheaters,” said the captain. “They put poisoned collars on their fighting dogs.” Packed into the alley were other refugees off the Mainway, and the eldest of a mother with more children than arms wriggled nearer: to hear the captain’s song, and see what he glossed. “Or they fixed the odds, or else threw some match. Something like that.”

Thicknecked mastiffs bibbed the men in front, forepaws of the dogs wired at the men’s napes, muzzles slobbering cold gore onto chins and chests. On top of rooves, at windows, and from the mouths of streets and alleys, Mother of Waters jeered.

The men ran up the Mainway. Hecklers flung offal, chucked stones.

“Anyone who makes the one-league waymark goes free.” As in battle, Captain wore a look of bleak detachment. “No one ever makes it that far.” To Demane’s senses, the captain’s mood seemed mostly enrapt attention, a little mixed with grief.

One of the indicted passed their alley—
booking
. His scentwake entirely fearsweat and adrenaline, this frontrunner doubled his distance from the rest every few steps.

Two others, neck and neck, lagged hindmost. One, a fat man, the other, thin but very old, staggered and lurched more than they ran.

Now a lone horseman emerged from the western piazza.

Captain murmured: “Fanged-drone.”

Demane glanced at him. Above his beard, Captain brushed two fingertips down his own left cheek, scarless and smooth. (Though often wounded, he
had
no scars.) Demane looked back: the horseman’s left-cheek insignia bore two stingers. Unlike the other calvarymen, he did not wield a lance, but viper of supple rawhide. Moaning like wind through arroyos, the serpent lashed the air about the horseman, in sinuous accord with his whirling arm. Spurred, his stallion surged forward. Mother of Waters cheered. Making no soft sound—
shrieking
—the snake unfurled to outpace sound itself for twenty feet. The viper kissed the runner midmost.

Bit
him, rather: with a thunderclap.

“No, pop.” Captain’s forearms crossed Demane’s chest like iron bars. “Stay with me.” Captain reeled him back against long bones, hard scrawn. “You can’t help them.”

Demane, not even realizing, had moved to succor the stricken man.

The viper’s bite had knocked Middle-Man to his knees. His scream was keening and breathless, nearly silent. His robe was split and gaping open—the shirt beneath as well, and living flesh, too. He reached one hand around his waist, the other over his shoulder, as if to catch some small swift thing nestling at his back. Just behind the man stricken, Fat-Man stumbled in astonished terror. He flopped belly down onto his passenger dog. Air currents moved such that Demane knew when Fat-Man’s bladder voided. The wallowing man didn’t and couldn’t rise, flailing with the heavy stiff dog and swells of his own rolling suet, treading the hem of his robe. “Aw, that nigga
there
?” muttered some fellow-of-the-alley. “Bout to get
kilt
.”

Captain sang low. “There’s no reason to watch, Demane.”

Yes, but how to look away?

The horseman pulled up short. (Breeze blowing northwesterly still: Fat-Man’s bowels let go.) The one bitten clambered sobbing to his feet, a generous fillet peeling raw off his back, and struggled off after the old man who was passing the gates. Three times the viper bit the wallowing man. The first bite chunked out pudding from a wide thigh, laying white femur bare in grisly depths. There were screams, pleas, groveling. The next and deadly bite enwrapped Fat-Man’s neck, hungrily gnawing through chins and jowls: crushing vertebrae with a splosive pop. So why then a third bite? Was it done to assure the crowd of a death, to show the body jolting up from the dust, only to fall again, still and silent? Was it done as a droll offering to the great demon, the antiurge,
tsoa
, that which incites human hearts to senseless evils? Yes.

Up
reared the stallion! And how it
shone
, the breastplate of the rider! Nor with any lack of eloquence did the viper speak its single syllable, spoken in the very tongue of thunder. And the many hundreds who watched, what of them? Mother of Waters
roared
!

Demane had known noise in nature: he’d heard Mt. Bittersmoke erupt, heard white glaciers calving blue children; he’d stood once knee deep in mud beside his master, on the naked seabed, while she broke a hundred-foot whitewave of returning ocean, her pure will
¹
slowing the apocalyptic waters—
such
noise!—but never before had Demane heard a thousand mortal voices compounding at full cry to deafen like some act of God.

Past the gates the cavalry could be seen distancing. With nimble pageantry, the corridor of lances raveled and rewove down the trail, hemming in the four runners still making dust.

Onward road the horseman and his viper!

Mother of Waters returned to business. Astride beasts, in vehicles, on foot, the crowd flooded the Mainway from tributary streets and alleys. Demane crouched down by the mouth of the alley, his back to a wall. A dizzying mix of the longing for home with the horrors of abroad made it impossible to keep his feet. “It’s
ugly
here, Isa,” Demane said, hanging his head between his knees. “How can you stand it?” Through the thickness of his hair, rooting fingers found his scalp, the soft pads kneading. When Captain spoke so softly, and in this timbre, his speech was about as parsable as birdsong, more warble than words. Demane took comfort in the tone and intention, making no effort to decipher what was said. He resolved right then to go back to the green hills, just the moment after this man agreed to come too.

“This will be that Demon’s work!” Master Suresh—jocund, rotund—came up the alleyway. “Taken by drink, is it?” The caravanmaster wagged a finger at Demane, who was crouched in the attitude of one inebriated. “They are
sots
, young man,” scolded the master, “who would suckle Old Nick’s bitchy teats so much, so early in the day!” To the captain: “About time, isn’t it? Oh yes, indeed: so let’s gitty up, Cap’n!” Master Suresh swept by them in his silks.

Demane made himself stand (the hand in his hair long since whipped away).

“See you tomorrow, all right?” The captain offered a counterfeit smile. “Keep the brothers out of trouble for me.” Nerves and shame were embittering his wonted scent, as if, against honest instincts, Captain were trying to pull over a con—say, to sell twice, to different men, some singular treasure.

Demane looked from the captain to Master Suresh, who was stepping onto the Mainway. Not a comely man, nor kind, either; he was fabulously rich, though, and dressed in the bright-dyed shit of worms. Demane’s guts sickened, on fire. He turned back to Captain, making the same face men betrayed in love have always made.

“
No
,” Captain whispered. “Don’t even think it.” Somehow, this denial was true, for Demane could spot even dissembling and misdirection. “It’s like I told you before.”
Until you there’s been nobody, all my years on the road
.
And how old was the captain, anyway? About thirty, to the eyes and senses; but . . . the blood-of-heaven ran very pure in him, as it had in Aunty. Although millenarian, she too had smelled confusingly ageless, “about thirty.”