“And I’m sure his party would have been safe, under your guidance and protection, Heldo-Bah,” Caliphestros mocks softly.
“Indeed he would, for they had far too little gold to—” Catching himself before the indiscretion is voiced, Heldo-Bah declares: “The point that I am attempting to make, my lord, is that he and I spoke, several times, about this idea that three divine entities can be one god, and that the one thus produced should be praised as having authority over all the evil as well as all the good in this world. ‘Yet how can this be so?’ I asked of him. ‘If your god is indeed three deities in one, and the one master of all, then his actions are either capricious, or tell us plainly that his mind remains badly cracked into warring parts.’ And the next question I asked him, I will put to you, Lord of Woodland Wisdom: how, tell me, how can one almighty creature be so unmercifully wanton as to create and spread pestilences such as the Death, on the one hand, and yet, on the other, claim credit for what enjoyments and pleasantness this life offers? The entire proposition is madness!”
Caliphestros laughs quietly again, using a small swatch of cloth to wipe perspiration from his own brow, and then pouring a small amount of water from a skin into Stasi’s upturned mouth, before drinking himself. “You Bane have a peculiarly perverse manner of arriving at the truth of things, or rather, at a kind of truth.”
“Ah! But it is truth, eh, Wizard Lord?” Heldo-Bah declares in triumph.
“Let us say that it is,” answers the old man, “and proceed to your point.”
“Assuming you have one,” Veloc chides quietly.
“I have made it already,” Heldo-Bah scoffs. “See how my genius confounds the wise man! My point is merely that the more you learn of these one-god peoples, the more absurd they become …” Shaking his head, the forager continues, “And you, old man: what god did you find to worship, who seems to have preserved you during your foolish—but doubtless noble!—pursuit of the Death, only to snatch your legs from you for your merciful troubles?”
“Heldo-Bah!” Keera finally shouts, unable to endure her friend’s endless disrespect and mockery.
“I am deeply sorry, Keera,” Heldo-Bah replies, “but, sorcerer or no, noble intentions or not, what kind of fool follows the Death about from place to place?”
Keera is red-faced with rage, and Veloc, seeing this, calls out, “Can you not simply discuss the subject, Heldo-Bah, without recourse to insults and altercations?”
“Do not concern yourself, Veloc,” Caliphestros says. “And I am honored by your indignation, Keera—but among the endless procession of ignorant assaults under which I have been trampled during my life, your friend’s is actually one of the more amusing and even interesting varieties.” Urging Stasi closer to Keera, Caliphestros continues to speak to her, but in confidence, now: “And my distraction and indulgence of both Heldo-Bah and your brother has a purpose, Keera. If what I suspect about the plague that has come to Broken as well as the Wood is indeed true, then we may catch the scent—you may catch the scent—of still more bodies among the rocks that line the Cat’s Paw, as well as along the heights above it. Animal scents, in addition to human. All things dead near this river must be examined carefully if we are to solve this terrible puzzle.”
Keera stands straighter as she walks, putting her nose into the westerly breeze. “I understand, my lord; although I cannot say that the task will prevent me from hurling a stone at Heldo-Bah’s rude, ignorant mouth.”
“You leave Heldo-Bah to me,” Caliphestros laughs quietly.
Sighing once, Keera says, “Very well, my lord,” and then turns her nose and her gaze in all directions. “We have passed the most deadly rocks, and dawn begins to make the remaining distance safer,” she judges at length.
“What in the name of Kafra’s foul face are you two scheming at?” Heldo-Bah shouts.
“Calm yourself, Heldo-Bah,” replies Caliphestros. “And begin to temper the volume of your voice—for the river is narrowing, and I hardly need tell you who is on the other side. Baster-kin’s men may be using the time they have left before their advance to search for those Bane who trussed one of their number and served him up to the wolves.”
“Calm yourself, ancient one,” Heldo-Bah says; yet he eyes the far side of the river uneasily. “Even if the Merchant Lord’s men are there, they will likely not have heard me. These chasms do strange things to sound.”
“You would stake your own life, and all of ours, on that proposition?” Caliphestros declares. “After all, Stasi and I heard the man’s shrieks, and subsequently investigated their cause; and it is entirely possible that the watch atop Broken’s walls heard it, as well. Prudence, my defiant friend, may let you keep a few more of your teeth, along with your life.”
“Yes, yes,” Heldo-Bah answers, waving the statement away. “But do not think that you can continue to avoid my principal question, by so distracting me. I would know this, finally: with all the lands you have visited, and all the great philosophers and kings you have met and advised—why, why would you choose to settle in Broken, of all places? You must have known of the evil nature of their faith—”
“In fact, I did,” Caliphestros replies, still calmly and readily. “For I first observed what is there called the ‘cult’ of Kafra in Alexandria. It had been brought hence by tribes who live along the upper reaches of the river Nilus, which is called ‘the mother of Egypt.’ I next encountered the faith in several small but wealthy border towns in Broken, during my journey there with Boniface—”
Heldo-Bah cannot help but blurt, “Ha! ‘Vat of Turds,’ ” assuming an air of complete self-satisfaction as Caliphestros continues:
“The faith and its adherents had traveled repeatedly, or so I was told, aboard the grain ships that ply the seas between Lumun-jan and Egypt. And that was what interested me, particularly, about the golden god: his path across the waters, throughout the empires to the south, and then to the northern kingdoms, followed exactly the route that had been traveled by every spread of the Death.” The old man pauses, and then glances down at the remnants of his legs. “Not unlike the rats that infest those same grain ships … Yet it had never occurred to me that such a peculiar faith could become the foundation of a state, and when I began to hear that it had, I grew fascinated. I had already intended to visit Broken in Brother Winfred’s company, to determine if the Death had struck there; and the remarkable news that the place had become not only a functioning but a powerful Kafran kingdom became simply an additional reason to make the journey.”
“I feel I should point out, my lord,” says Veloc, not without some indignation, “that any Bane schoolchild knows that Kafra came into our own part of the world when Oxmontrot and his comrades, who had traveled south to seek their fortunes in the wars of the Lumun-jani, returned home.”
A sudden, rather peculiar look of fascination enters Caliphestros’s features. “So the Bane know of Oxmontrot?”
“Why should we not?” Veloc queries, still playing the role of offended scholar. “He began the banishments of all those who could not or would not be slaves to the plan to build his great city, after all. And so he was, in one way, the father of our tribe—as the man who rapes a woman and leaves her with child is the detestable but undoubted father of that infant.”
Caliphestros is further impressed: “That is soundly argued, Veloc, and with an economy of words. I begin to wonder why your Groba should have refused to name you historian of your tribe.”
“If you’d like clarification, my lord,” Heldo-Bah interrupts, “simply ask him how many women of the Tall he’s bedded—that’s but one reason why the members of the Groba doubt him. There is also the small matter of his being often in my company—which, I think, they would ignore, save for the additional business of his refusing to copulate with the Priestess of the Moon …”
“Is all this true, Veloc?” Caliphestros asks, without either rancor or censure. “But I understood that the Priestess may choose any mate she desires from your tribe—in em
ulation, say the Kafran clergy, of their own customs—and that none dare refuse her.”
“Well, Lord Sorcerer,” Heldo-Bah declares, now holding a mockingly proud hand toward Veloc, “allow me to present the only one who ever has!”
Trying to ignore Heldo-Bah’s caustic comment, Veloc also attempts to direct the conversation elsewhere: “But how come you to know so much of our tribe, my lord?”
“I?” the old man says. “It was many years ago—a lifetime, one could say, without exaggeration. I had served the God-King Izairn long and faithfully enough to gain his trust, and he bade me undertake a study of your tribe. Together with my acolytes, I assembled an enormous store of information—a store that would subsequently become very useful during my years of exile.”
“Oh?” Heldo-Bah inquires pointedly. “And what has become of that collection? For there are more than a few in our tribe who contend that you carried out your ‘study’ by dissecting the living bodies of Bane prisoners.”
“Can you never cease your childish prattle, Heldo-Bah?” Keera says angrily. “Those were fables, made up by a few Outragers.”
“I’m simply asking, Keera,” Heldo-Bah says. “You know that I despise the Outragers even more than you, or indeed than any other Bane. I merely wish to know what truth, if any, there is in the tale.”
Caliphestros snorts in dismissal: “If you will believe such stories, Heldo-Bah, there is little point to continuing either our discussion or our actions in concert.” The old man’s features grow momentarily puzzled: “But is it true that you despise the Outragers—and that others in your tribe harbor similar sentiments?”
Keera and Veloc nod in turn, leaving it to Heldo-Bah to say: “Despise them? Why, we as good as left one for dead, not a week ago. And an important one, at that—”
“Heldo-Bah!” Keera commands. “There is no reason to reveal what we may or may not have—”
“Oh, but there is, Keera,” Caliphestros says. “If you will pardon my interrupting you. This hostility among the Bane against the Outragers was not a fact that was contained in my study of your tribe. During my years in Broken, I actually tried to rouse similar sentiment against another group of murderers turned sacred soldiers—the Personal Guard of the Merchant Lord, of whom we have just been speaking. Those posturing villains who, after my banishment, tortured and murdered my acolytes.”
Heldo-Bah’s mangled brows come together in distrust, and his filed teeth again show in the skeptical curl of his lip. “Truly, old man?”
Caliphestros takes in an excited breath, yet he hesitates: he knows that the veracity of his next words, and the greater trust that they will (with luck) breed, cannot help but be crucial to the future of the little band’s present undertaking; but as ever, secrets shared make him uneasy. “What I tell you now, I say in confidence. Fate having brought us together in a vital undertaking, I must trust in the sincerity of each of you, and must also be able to trust that you comprehend the need for constant discretion—because that undertaking will require from us all the best efforts and truest belief in one another that we can muster. And so—can you, all three, pledge me that trust and that assurance? And will you believe me if I pledge the same?”
Among the foragers, it is Veloc who nods assent first, quickly and eagerly; Heldo-Bah, not surprisingly, continues to appear uneasy, but also agrees to the compact, after only a few moments’ further consideration; but Keera, somewhat surprisingly, displays the most cautious aspect. “If that be so, my lord,” she says, “then—in the spirit of the honest alliance you would establish between us—there is yet one thing that we must tell you.”
Both Veloc and Heldo-Bah appear suddenly alarmed, as though they know exactly what Keera is referring to, and dread its announcement. Yet Caliphestros—to the surprise of all the foragers—smiles kindly; indeed, almost indulgently. “Yes. I thought there might be.”
Heldo-Bah throws his hands toward the branches of the forest ceiling. “There—you see? He reads our very thoughts—undoubted a sorcerer, just as I have always maintained!”
“Hush, Heldo-Bah!” Veloc orders; and then, to his sister, he murmurs, “So long as you are certain, Keera …”
Keera keeps her gaze on Caliphestros’s gently smiling face. “How did you know, my lord?”
“How could I not?” answers the old man. “I do not know if you realize as much, Keera, but you Bane, inscrutable as your activities may sometimes be, are not obscure, when conversing with one another. And last night, as we were packing my instruments and materials, there was one subject that all three of you seemed anxious to mention—save that every time any one of you came near to it, one of the others would give the careless speaker a boot in his backside, or the flat of your hand across his head.”
Caliphestros coaxes Stasi a few steps away from the others, and faces northeast, toward Broken: for the distant mountain and the city walls atop it have now been plainly revealed by the dawn, across the river and through gaps in the much thinner lines of trees on the riverbanks. “So,” he says, his voice scarcely audible. “She has been in the Wood again …”
The foragers move slowly closer to the spot on which stand the white panther and her rider. “She has,” Veloc says. “And you know more about this Wife of Kafra, my lord, than simply her station and rank—as we supposed you must. And, apparently, that she ventures into Davon Wood from time to time. But we must be sure—you are certain that we’re talking about the same witch?”
Caliphestros inclines his head in agreement, but keeps his eyes on the horizon. “A tall woman with coal-black hair that falls in straight, gleaming sheets, and eyes of a darker green than Stasi’s, but just as brilliant?”
“The very one,” Heldo-Bah answers, clapping his hands to the sides of his head in resignation. “Allow me to guess—she is your daughter? Or are you yourself a half-breed demon, who had your way with some mortal female—and a female of great beauty, she must have been—when you still had legs?”
To the forager’s somewhat accusatory suggestions, Caliphestros offers only a small laugh. “You are wrong in every respect, Heldo-Bah. The woman you saw is no kin to me—or no blood kin, I should perhaps say. She was—is—a princess: the daughter of the God-King I served, Izairn, and sister to that good man’s heir, Saylal.”
“That cannot—” Veloc stops before he can complete the question, allowing himself time to frame it more cautiously. “I would not have thought that possible, my lord. For the Wives of Kafra, Bane historians have long known, are the God-King’s mistresses, as well.”
“Fool, Veloc,” Heldo-Bah chastises quietly. “Did you truly think that a woman demented enough to seduce a Davon panther would pause at bedding her own brother?”
Keera alone sees that Caliphestros winces and trembles abruptly at this question. “My lord?” she asks. “Are you unwell? Shall we rest a short while, and prepare some of your medicines?”
The old man smiles faintly at the question. “No, Keera … although I thank you. But not even I have medicines to cure such foolishness and tragedy …” Again he looks up and through the trees to the northern horizon, as if he can see into the chambers of the God-King’s palace itself; and, as he indulges this seeming vision, he murmurs just one name:
“Alandra …”
Keera approaches Caliphestros and Stasi carefully; and when she is beside them, she summons the nerve to ask, “That was—is—what she is called?”
Caliphestros nods again. “It was and is, Keera. A name derived from the legends of those whom the people of Broken know as the Kreikisch, and the people of Roma, or Lumun-jan, call the Graeci. In particular, the name comes from the ancient tale of another great city that was put to siege—just as we may well be forced, if the next stages of our plan go badly, to lay siege to Broken.”
Ignoring a scoffing grunt from Heldo-Bah, Keera says, “I do not wish to reach for conclusions before we have sufficient reason, my lord, but—”
Keera grows suddenly silent, turning toward the northwest
with an expression that Veloc and Heldo-Bah know only too well: for it betrays the detection of some new danger. A gust of wind has coursed through the series of long, high gorges that comprise this portion of the valley of the Cat’s Paw, and finally made its way to the rock on which the tracker stands with Caliphestros and Stasi; and, almost immediately after turning away to the left, Keera turns back round again, to glance down and see that the white panther has also detected something on the breeze, and that her large, brick-red nostrils are flared open.
The panther’s ears slowly go down and back, down and back, until they sink beneath the crown of her head; and she is already growling in both alarm and warning, as well as opening her mouth and taking quick, steady breaths in the quietly peculiar way that cats do at such moments. Caliphestros, in a whisper, explains to Keera that, when employing certain exceptionally sensitive organs found inside their mouths, cats can actually taste scents and therefore danger: a most impressive ability that seems, to the uneducated, a sort of magic.
Yet Keera is little interested in academic matters, just at this instant: “Death!” she suddenly cries. “Perhaps not the Death, but death, all the same, and much of it. I would place it—” Her nostrils again flare, as the cat growls. “Above the point at which we emerged from the deep forest and reached the river; and it comes—” She dashes to the edge of the Wood and climbs a gnarled cherry tree, judging the increase or decrease in the power of the scent from that point. She then returns to the spot where Stasi stands with her rider, the old man knowing enough to let the tracker go about her work without interference. “From very near the river, if not from within the valley itself. Indeed, my best guess would be that it originates along the silted banks of one of the large pools that form where the river first descends. Those calmer stretches, that is, where creatures of every variety come to drink and bathe.” Her upper teeth bite at her lower lip, as her confusion and concern heighten: “For there are many varieties of death and decay, within this one stench …”