Stasi soon steps to the left, moving onto the more solid ground at the edge of Davon Wood; and there she paces uneasily to and fro, her eyes searching the northwest forest and sky, both of which are still gripped by darkness sufficient to allow her imagination full sway. Caliphestros strokes her neck and urges her to be calm, but with little success: “It was in just such a spot,” explains the old man to the others, “that Stasi and her cubs were first spied by the party of Broken hunters and drivers that gave them chase deeper into the Wood.”
Keera studies the white panther’s motions and the expressions of her face and voice for a few more moments, and finally says, “It seems that Stasi returns to that terrible time even now—as if she senses that those who carried out the attack upon her family are also responsible for the death she now detects; and she desires another chance to settle—”
Stasi suddenly releases her resonant, hauntingly high-toned cry of alarm. She then rushes a little deeper into the forest proper, to a nearby cluster of thick roseberry bushes that grow out of a patch of particularly soft Earth that is covered by a thick layer of moss. Here, she gracefully but deliberately dips her left foreleg and side, causing Caliphestros to lose his balance atop her and, clutching his twin bags and his bundled crutches, to roll into the patch of almost harmless bushes and, soon, into the thick moss at their base. Then, briefly glancing back to see that the old man has survived without mishap, Stasi dashes away, keeping just within the line of the forest’s edge, where the ground is easier to grip, and soon disappearing into the northwesterly wilderness.
“Stasi!” Caliphestros cries, before he has even gotten himself into a sitting position. As the foragers rush to assist him, he continues to shout in fear, “Stasi, do not be rash—you must wait for our help!”
{vi:}
“MY LORD!” Keera says, leaping into the enveloping bushes, finding a path through the more widely spaced branches at the base of the thicket, and thus a way to the old man’s side, as quickly as we might, by now, have grown to expect of these Bane. “Are you injured?” Keera says, when she reaches him.
Caliphestros grinds his teeth hard, already grabbing at a small deerskin pouch that hangs round his neck. “No—not injured, Keera,” he says, groaning. “It is nothing more than the old pain …” This statement bleeds into another groan and more teeth-gnashing: “Nor is it anything less. May the true deities who watch over this world damn the golden god and his priests to such eternal fire as is forever mine!”
“Hak! Be careful, now,” Heldo-Bah laughingly scolds, as he cuts his way through the berry bush branches. “You’ve spent too much time in our company already, Lord of Wisdom—blaspheming like some cheap Daurawah whore, you shock me!”
“But what happened, my lord?” Veloc asks, his mind, like Heldo-Bah’s, fully capable of carrying on a conversation while slashing away at the strong bush expertly enough to avoid the painful cuts that the larger thorns can inflict.
“As I have told you, Veloc, Stasi’s actions and purposes are her own,” the struggling Caliphestros replies sharply, taking three pressed balls of what Keera can tell, simply by their scent, are powerful combinations of herbaceous medicines out of his pouch, then quickly putting them into his mouth and chewing them, seemingly oblivious to what the tracker surmises must be their terribly bitter taste. “Although I cannot pretend that both my pride and other, pettier feelings of my heart do not suffer when these things happen …” Already having revealed far more about this moment than he would have liked, even in friendly company, Caliphestros abruptly ceases such talk and calls out: “Heldo-Bah! I assume you have some quantity of potent drink on your person?”
Much of Heldo-Bah’s humorous view of this latest event has been driven out of his mind and manner by sudden and close scrutiny of the terrible scars on the old man’s thighs: he responds to this inquiry by reaching inside his tunic and producing what appears to be a fairly small wineskin, made of kid hide and lined with the stomach of the same animal. “You assume rightly, my lord, and you are welcome to as much of it as you need …”
Caliphestros nods, takes a deep draught from the skin, and hastens to draw air. “By whatever gods be true!” he soon gasps, staring at Heldo-Bah with stunned features, “What is that?”
Heldo-Bah grins and lets the old man take another pull at the skin; then he indulges in one, himself, and even he must work to keep it down. “That is the one civilized thing to come north with the dark barbarians southeast of the Tombs,” he says, sucking in his own cooling gasp of air. “Plum brandy, or so they claim it to be. Slivevetz, they call it.”
“Brandy?” Caliphestros echoes in disbelief. “It cannot be. An incendiary used by their armies, perhaps—I would almost believe it to be napthes, save that I know from my own studies that those tribes are too ignorant to distill such.”
Heldo-Bah laughs once, and heartily, as if he has just seen the first evidence he can truly comprehend that Caliphestros is indeed a man, as Heldo-Bah understands the word: a person who, whatever his present diminished state, once savored the visceral joys of life. “Yes, I thought the same, my lord, when first I tasted it,” the Bane calls in delight. “Save that it does not rob one of life. Rather the opposite!”
Keera has taken the small but weighty bags from Caliphestros’s shoulders and set them aside, after which she helps the old man to sit fully up. Caliphestros looks off in the direction of the forest undergrowth through which Stasi disappeared.
“Should we not hurry, my lord, to aid Stasi?” Keera asks. “If you are able, of course.”
“We shall,” answers the old man, getting his crutches on. “But we need not move too quickly. Stasi will attack only if she finds living humans at the site of whatever death has taken place upriver—and the chances of discovering such life, be it animal or human are, if I am correct about what is taking place, small. And that is fortunate—for it is the dead who hold the clearest answers to our questions …” The old man, gaining strength, glances about. “Yet we must consider that our purposes now seem to lead in two opposing directions.”
“These strange deaths upriver,” Keera says with a nod, “and the soldier at the Fallen Bridge.”
“Indeed, Keera,” Caliphestros replies. “Thus we must, for the moment, split our band into sensible pieces. I propose that you and I follow Stasi; Veloc, you go with Heldo-Bah and keep watch over the body downriver, taking every care not to be observed until our return, when we may conduct a more thorough investigation.”
“It shall be done as you say, my lord,” Veloc replies, again anxious to please the old man. “You may rely upon it, and upon us.”
“And,” Heldo-Bah adds eagerly, “as yours will be the longer journey—” Without anyone having ordered it, he fetches up Caliphestros’s two bags from the midst of the roseberry bush. “Permit me to assume these burdens for you, Lord Caliphestros.” Moaning when he lifts the bags onto his shoulders, he removes one and hands it to Veloc. “Who would have ever thought that the day would come when we would be draughting books about the Wood, as if they were blocks of gold or iron ore …”
“I very much doubt that anyone would believe it,” Caliphestros says quickly, anxious to get under way. “Come here, now, both of you.” Heldo-Bah and Veloc obey, and stand quite still as Caliphestros retrieves a few small objects from his bags, and then hands these apparently precious items to Keera, who places them in her own shoulder sack. “Remember this,” the old man says, indicating his bags to Veloc and Heldo-Bah. “These books, as well as the instruments you carry, are in fact of far greater importance to our finding the source of the illness, and whether it is indeed a plan set in motion by those who rule Broken, than any of the goods you usually carry. Be careful with them, especially at those moments when you display, as you so frequently do, little concern for your own necks. And so—on your way!”
“If my senses are true,” Keera adds, “we can be no more than an hour or two from the deaths Stasi detected. Cover your ground quickly, Veloc, f
or we should not be far behind.”
Veloc and Heldo-Bah sling their larger foraging bags atop their free shoulders. “We shall meet again ere noontime,” Heldo-Bah calls as he departs, “at the Fallen Bridge!”
Having watched the two Bane men depart, Keera and Caliphestros soon set off on their own, less certain journey, Keera walking beside the hobbling old man and carefully following the trail that Stasi has evidently made no effort to hide—indeed, that she must have deliberately tried to mark, so much is the path at variance with the very great stealth that Davon panthers ordinarily exhibit. When Keera considers this fact in combination with Caliphestros’s strange lack of surprise or meaningful reaction to Stasi’s departure, as well as to his having been left rather unceremoniously to the mercies of forest moss and a berry bush, she feels that she is safe in asking:
“My lord—Caliphestros—I am curious: what causes these sudden departures by the great panther?”
Caliphestros smiles. “Yes—you looked as though you might be puzzling that out.” He sighs once, any lingering pain in his legs now being very effectively shrouded by the medicines he has consumed. “Stasi has what I would term an instinct for unnatural death. But often, when that admittedly facile explanation seems inadequate, I have followed her to the various streams in our part of the Wood, where we happen upon agèd or mortally wounded creatures who have come to the water to die, and I ask of myself, again and again—why has she come here? In virtually every instance, during these investigations, Stasi has approached the dead and the dying with neither alarm nor killing in her thoughts, but as if to determine why they have met or are meeting their ends. I began to see that it is chiefly death inflicted by man that fascinates her. When Stasi—in my presence as well as, I suspect, alone—comes across an eagle, a hawk, or even a raven, that has been pierced by an arrow but is still alive, she neither finishes nor consumes it; not immediately or, in most cases, at all. The same is even more true if she encounters some creature who shares her world of the forest floor: instead of throttling it and consuming its flesh, she will nose about the injurious arrow, seeking the scent—or so I have always thought—of whatever human loosed it.”
Putting his own nose into the air, Caliphestros stops short. “Hak!—the stench of death grows more pungent with nearly every step. It must be particularly oppressive, for one with senses as powerful as your own.”
Keera nods. “Yes, lord. I did not wish to interrupt, but—we cannot be far off, now …”
The rest of their short progress through the Wood is made in silence, for the heightened stench soon makes it necessary to use their mouths only for breathing, after they have blocked their noses. This small task they achieve when Keera harvests the redolent sap of a nearby pine tree, and compresses it into bits small enough to fit into their nostrils.
“So much death …” Keera murmurs, anxiously moving ahead of Caliphestros when the path that Stasi has already taken approaches the banks of the Cat’s Paw.
“Indeed, Keera,” Caliphestros calls after her. “Yet why and how—these become even more important questions.” Pulling himself toward the sound of the river, eyes ever on the increasingly dangerous ground, the old man arrives at the silty shore of a broad and relatively calm pool in the river, fed at its far end by a single high waterfall. A thick mist obscures the pool’s surface, at various spots, and an enormous rock formation serves as its easternmost bank, a narrow but deep channel of escape having been cut into the middle of it by countless powerful spring floods. Keera stands atop this formation, taking in whatever surrounds her with apparent horror.
“Keera?” Caliphestros says, as he moves toward the base of the rocky mass, which obscures his view of all save the nearest banks of the pool. “What is it?”
Her voice is eerily—indeed, deathly—calm: “Stasi was right about the scent of men … but wrong in her concern that they were a threat to us …”
Caliphestros comes closer, and soon sees that the tracker is not alone atop the stone rise:
“Stasi!” he calls, at which the great cat bounds down to him. To make amends for her sudden departure, she takes a moment to rub her brow, muzzle, and nose into the old man’s lowered face and his side, in what she evidently considers gentle affection, which is still nearly enough to topple him from his crutches; and, when certain that he is both amenable and ready, she lowers her neck and shoulders in the usual manner, allowing Caliphestros to get off his walking contrivances and back astride her shoulders. Though happy to see him, the panther is also in a clear state of agitation, and is evidently anxious that her companion see the object of her unrest as quickly as possible.
“All right,” Caliphestros says, as Stasi bounds back up and onto the stone embankment upon which Keera stands. “We can discuss the manner of your departure later. Now, what is it that caused you to—”
But by now, rider and mount are atop Keera’s enormous rock, and Caliphestros is able to see the scene in and around the broad pool that spreads out before them. The sound of the fall at the water’s far end is muted, in reality by distance and the last of the morning mist—but for a moment it seems that the terrible scenes that line the pool’s northern and eastern banks have themselves caused the falling water to quiet its roar, out of solemn respect: respect for the dead, and respect for the irretrievably dying …
{vii:}
CALIPHESTROS HAS WITNESSED most of the varieties of brutality which either Man or Nature can display—but he is now forced to admit woefully that he has scarcely ever beheld such unnatural carnage as that which stretches away before him. All stages of death and decay, afflicting nearly every kind of woodland and lowland creature, are represented; and, while there are flutters of movement among several groups of untamed grazing animals, these are greatly outnumbered by the scores of the dead. It is a supremely lamentable and pitiable sight, made worse when one or another of the throng’s still-living members—who lie, almost uniformly, on their sides, their ribs revealed so clearly and painfully that it seems they must soon burst through their hides—twitch and occasionally start, trying but inevitably failing to get back to their feet. The dead, meanwhile, are only less horrific for their being, mercifully, finished with life: some lie with abdomens burst open, some with but a little rotted meat clinging to their skeletons, and some with those same skeletons bleached to an almost pure white, but all in the same position, with their necks and heads extended toward the bank of the pool, as if they had expected to find salvation or at least comfort in the cold waters, but were cruelly disappointed. Yet there are other, even more surprising varieties of dead beasts at this place, too: hunters of the wood and the plains, including wolves, and even a young panther, have also come to the cooling waters, seeking relief from whatever it is that sickened and then slew them. There is cause for pity in this, too, for the wolves have brought their young with them, in an attempt to save at least those future members of their indomitable breed; yet those smaller hunters also lie dead and dying, their whimpering providing the most lamentable and strange sound in the small world that Death has built here, over what must have been many days and weeks.
“Look, my lord,” Keera says at length, scarce able to contain her sorrow, but suddenly intrigued by one collection of carcasses and half-dead beasts that surround a small, shaded inlet, a cove of sorts, at the very northernmost point of the pool’s long bank. “Can it be …?”
“Aye, Keera,” Caliphestros whispers, urging Stasi forward on the great mass of stone that provides their vantage point. “Shag cattle—strays, and almost certainly Lord Baster-kin’s own.”
“It is as if …,” Keera speaks softly, and tears have by now moistened her face; and so she sets her jaw and says no more.
But Caliphestros knows her well enough, by now, to finish her thought: “It is as if every sort of creature has been assembled to die in this one place; and finally, in that death, they have become neither hunters nor hunted, but only fellows in their suffering, fellows who are soon, together, to trav
el to and reside forever in the next existence …”
Keera nods silently. “Yes, my lord—and have you noticed one thing more?” Caliphestros makes no reply, and so she continues: “All creatures of this portion of the Earth are here …” Keera lifts a hand to indicate an ash stand in the northeasternmost corner of the pool. “Even our own …”
Caliphestros requires a moment to make sense of the dappled, early morning scene toward which Keera has directed his gaze; but soon he sees that a human body hangs amid the ash trunks, strapped by its arms between a pair of the trees, and missing the lower portions of its legs: a victim, plainly, of the Halap-stahla.
“Armor,” Keera says, as if unable to quite believe it. “He wears the armor of Broken. And very fine armor it is …”
“And, therefore, warrants further inspection by us,” Caliphestros answers with a nod, his manner suddenly fretful. “But be careful, Keera—you must touch neither the body, nor any of the other carnage, here, no matter how great your pity and sympathy. It is enough that we even walk through this scene—for the very air may be full of pestilence, for all we know or can tell …” Glancing at the water that flows through the stone channel beneath them, which is some eight feet across and again as deep, Caliphestros judges, “Stasi can leap to the other side, with my scant weight on her back. I can then send her for you—”