“Yantek Ashkatar is even now about the very activities you have mentioned,” Veloc replied. “He has obeyed your counsel wholly, in preparing this first battle, my lord, despite the objections of the Priestess of the Moon.”
“And he is to be congratulated for that bravery,” Caliphestros judged with a nod. “For myself, I would observe the proceedings from the large rocks I took note of on our journey to Okot. You know the place of which I speak, Keera?”
“I do, my lord,” Keera replied, somewhat unnerved at the mention of the very spot where the foragers had left behind the arrogant but deadly Outrager, Welferek. “We had an—encounter near there, at the beginning of this business.”
Heldo-Bah and Veloc exchanged looks, Heldo-Bah’s merry but Veloc’s somewhat sheepish.
Caliphestros stared hard at the tracker. “And I am certain that your brother will join me, Keera, in urging, even insisting, that you join me there—you are the only parent your children possess, now, and they need you far more than does Yantek Ashkatar.”
Keera looked quickly to her brother, who only nodded sternly. “He is right, Keera,” Veloc said. “And, if it offers you any consolation, I anticipate being ordered to join the two of you, that I may be able to prepare records for a saga recounting the tale of this battle.”
“So I go alone to draw Tall blood?” Heldo-Bah said, at once proud and a little uneasy about losing his comrades. “Well—I cannot argue your reasoning, Lord of Science, and still less can I condemn yours, Keera. And, as it will no doubt infuriate that little vixen, our Priestess, I suppose I must accept even yours, Veloc. Finally, the truth is, this will be hard and bloody work, best undertaken by those who truly relish the opportunity …”
As if to confirm Heldo-Bah’s statement, a sudden, single sounding of the Bane Voice of the Moon was heard, telling all who had been laboring on the mountain ridge or anywhere else outside Okot that the time had come to gather for battle. The blast was short, for the enemy was near and growing nearer.
A certain light entered Caliphestros’s eyes, once more, and he urged Stasi to climb to the top of their temporary cave, which offered a fine view, not only of far-off Broken mountain and the city atop it, but of the Cat’s Paw in the middling distance, and Lord Baster-kin’s Plain just beyond that waterway. The three foragers scrambled to follow, fighting both the steep, slippery slope of the cave’s rock and the mounting wind, which was creating the haunting notion that there was a mareh behind every tree, inside every cave, and ready to strike from behind every rock.
So much the stranger was it, then, that when the foragers at last joined Caliphestros and Stasi, they found the old man with a look of terrible joy upon his face, and the panther snarling with enthusiasm to descend from the mountain they were perched upon, and make for the enemy that was approaching and, even more importantly, for those ever-burning lights beyond the walls of the city in the far distance.
“They are actually doing it,” Caliphestros called to the foragers when they reached him. “See there!” He pointed to the long line of torches as, in the manner of a stream of liquid, the soldiers left the safety of the Plain and began a careful crossing of the Moonlit river’s last remaining bridge. “The fools enter the Wood without pause! Baster-kin will risk the lives of what looks to be a full khotor of his own Guard in order to eclipse the power and prestige of Sentek Arnem’s Talons, and the regular army as a whole—he would secure the land and riches of the Wood for the merchants and the royal faction alone! Never has he been so foolish.”
And with that, the party began a run, first to Okot, so that Keera might briefly take leave of her children, and then to the rocks that overlooked the southern side of the Fallen Bridge (and, in the middling distance to the southeast, the Ayerzess-werten). Their dash took a number of hours, although far less, as always, than it would have taken any ordinary forest travelers at night. The length of time might have been still less, had they not paused for an unforeseen interruption; an interruption that would not so much solve the enigma of Caliphestros, to Keera, as leave old questions answered, and new ones posed …
Somewhere on the trail between Okot and their destination, the foragers, Caliphestros, and Stasi stumble upon a remarkable sight …
IT WAS, OF COURSE, the white panther who sensed the presence first, although it was not long before Keera did so, as well. When the grade of the swiftly moving group’s path began to slowly flatten, indicating that the valley of the Cat’s Paw was growing closer, Stasi stopped, so suddenly as to almost hurl her rider onto the ground before her. To Caliphestros’s repeated inquiries concerning the cause of her refusal to move forward, the panther only put her nose high in the air, searching the wind that continued to blow from the west; and, once she had determined the definite direction from which the scent she detected came, she continued forward, although not along the same direct course toward the riverbed that she had previously been following. Caliphestros turned to the tracker, who continued to run beside them.
“Keera!” he called. “Stasi will not respond to my direction—this has never happened before, without her first leaving me behind! Have you sensed anything that would make her behave so?”
A strange expression entered Keera’s features, Caliphestros noted, one to match Stasi’s behavior. “I fear I have only too good an idea of what she is about, my lord,” the tracker replied, tilting her ear rather than her nose into the same breeze that seemed to have agitated Stasi so, as she continued to match the panther’s pace. “I can just hear a male brown bear making the sounds and performing the dance of mating—yet the female scent that provokes him is strange: artificial, or, rather, carefully collected and placed, and confined to far too small an area. Along with which, the scent is accompanied by that of—”
Caliphestros had begun to nod his head, his expression darkening. “Of a human female,” he finished for the reluctant Keera. The anticipation that the old man had felt at watching a khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard receive the punishment it so richly deserved seemed to suddenly disappear. “And, I will wager, a human female you have detected before …”
Keera glanced at the old man, as concerned by his expression as by the strange mix of emotions in his voice. “Aye, lord. Just so. The Wife of Kafra—on the strange occasion of which we have told you. Save that it was a panther’s scent with which hers was mingled that night, rather than a bear’s.”
Caliphestros nodded his head. “Well, then …”
“My lord, we should avoid this, if we can,” Keera warned. “Battles between brown bears and panthers can do grievous harm to both combatants.”
“Fear not, on that account, Keera,” Caliphestros replied. “It is not the bear that draws Stasi on.”
“What is happening, you two?” Heldo-Bah said loudly, from behind. “We have strayed from the most direct path to the rocks you spoke of, Lord Caliphestros—and you know as much, Keera.”
Before further discussion could be pursued, Keera indicated silence to her fellow foragers; and it was not very much longer before the party had reached the edge of a small clearing, where the tracker indicated to her brother and Heldo-Bah that they should take their customary positions of observation in the branches of several high trees. When Veloc questioned with his eyes why they were not being joined by the white panther and her ag rider, Keera simply held up a hand, indicating patience—
And very soon, that patience on the foragers’ part was rewarded: seemingly unaware, now, of the behavior of their three traveling companions, the old man and the panther stepped onto the edge of the clearing, in the middle of which the foragers could now see a familiar yet dreaded human woman moving in a strange, seductive manner, urging on a large male brown bear, who would ordinarily have attacked her long ago:
It was the First Wife of Kafra, once again, her robe as yet clinging to that same remarkably long-legged body, and her long strands of black hair slowly moving with the western wind while her remarkable green eyes—neither so brilliant nor so beaut
iful as Stasi’s, but similar in color—held the confused bear in place, just as they had done to the male panther, on a night that now seemed, to the foragers, very long ago.
From where he sat in the treetops at the southern edge of the clearing, Heldo-Bah glanced at Keera and her brother. “The old fool is mad,” he whispered. “He should get that panther up into the trees, lest that witch see him and cry out to the forward units of the Guard.”
“Heldo-Bah, when will you make up your mind?” Veloc countered. “Is he a fool or an all-knowing sorcerer?”
“He cannot be both?” the gap-toothed Bane questioned in reply.
“Quiet!” Keera commanded, softly, but in the manner that always brought immediate compliance from her fellow foragers.
In the middle of the small clearing below, the First Wife of Kafra—sister to the God-King, the very embodiment of radiance in the Broken conception of life—had begun to slip one perfect shoulder from beneath her black gown, causing Heldo-Bah, once again, to salivate almost visibly through his filed teeth. “Oh, great Moon,” he whispered.
Caliphestros had urged the white panther to continue forward, and up onto a stout rock; then the pair stopped, although their presence had evidently been noticed already by the Wife of Kafra, despite the fact that she had not turned to face them. Her green eyes remained fixed upon the black orbs of the bear, and she said calmly:
“We had heard rumors that you might have survived the Halap-stahla, Caliphestros …” Finally she turned to face the old man, and a sudden look of disappointment—even bordering on revulsion—entered her beauteous features. “Though none of those rumors had mentioned the condition you might be in—and I confess that I was not prepared for it …” She studied him more closely. “You have … changed, haven’t you?”
Keera studied Caliphestros’s reaction carefully: she knew him well enough, by that point, to see the injury that he tried to cover with pride.
“And what condition did you imagine you might find me in, Alandra? After my treatment at the hands of your priests, and so many years in the Wood?”
The Wife of Kafra shook her head slowly. “I do not know,” she replied softly; and, although Keera looked and listened for it, she could find no real trace of remorse, only of disappointment, in either the woman’s face or her words. “But not this. Not this … You have grown old. But there is more. The evil for which you were condemned has made its way out from inside your body—your demon side is loose, truly.”
Caliphestros continued to nod. “Yes. I remember well that you had to condemn me as such an absurd creature as a ‘demon’—how else to prove the equally nonsensical notion that your brother was sibling to a god? You have always required a villain in your life, Alandra, to justify the perversions into which both you and Saylal descended. And when your father—who was in fact a good man, whatever lies the pair of you told about him—died, I suppose I was the next logical choice.”
The First Wife of Kafra nodded toward the panther. “And what of this creature? You ride the great mistress of the Wood. Is that not evidence of demonic behavior?”
“I do not ride her,” Caliphestros answers. “She offers me conveyance. Just as she offered me life, after your brother agreed to condemn me to what I am sure you all thought would be death.”
Suddenly, as if she were able to weigh the emotion of the moment, Stasi issued one short but especially angry—even lethal—snarl at both the woman and the brown bear; and the bear, though not at all pleased about doing so, made a few movements from side to side, then backed out and away from the clearing, eventually moving quickly east.
“Oh,” the Wife of Kafra said in disappointment, pulling her robe back over her bared shoulder. “That was not at all kind of your—well, what do you call this creature with whom you consort, old man?”
“Her name is not for you to know, Alandra,” Caliphestros said. “Nor will any other citizen of that foul city on the mountain ever learn it.”
Suddenly, the woman called Alandra adopted a coy, almost flirtatious manner with the legless man before and just above her. “You did not always find it so foul,” she murmured with a smile.
“And you did not always find me so,” Caliphestros replied.
“True,” Alandra agreed. “But I was only a maiden, then; and you had been my tutor. An unfair advantage for you to enjoy—when I grew old enough, I came to see the truth, and to prefer … other company.”
“I assume that by that remark you mean that you came to prefer your own brother’s bed to mine.”
In the treetops above, Veloc released a slow, near-silent oath: “Hak—the old man was once the lover of such a beauty?”
“And why not?” Heldo-Bah replied. “There are women among the Tall who have endured your touch, Veloc …”
“Silence, both of you!” Keera ordered once more. “This is, although I would not expect you to know it, a terribly delicate moment …”
In the clearing below, Stasi stepped forward again, once or twice, causing a look of uncertainty even in the supremely self-confident priestess. “But let us not alter facts,” Caliphestros continued. “I may have been your tutor, and you a maiden, when we first met—but years later, when you came to me with your desire that we become more, you were a woman. Certainly enough.” With the Broken bear’s departure, the old man felt easy enough to lean forward upon the panther’s shoulders. “And well you know it, whatever tales you may have since told to make me seem more a demon to your people than they were already inclined to believe. Yet you say that you had heard rumors of my survival, Alandra,” he continued. “I take it such came from Lord Baster-kin’s torture of my acolytes?”
The First Wife of Kafra smiled in a way that Keera found most repugnant: beautiful, but nonetheless cruel. “Only in part,” she answered. “For Baster-kin has never put his full effort behind such methods. We could not be truly sure until reports reached us of Visimar’s traveling with Sentek Arnem.”
Stepping forward herself, Alandra seemed to make a point of exposing her long, enticing legs through the slits on either side of her black gown.
“I am sad to see your tastes for intrigue and plots grown so strong and ugly,” Caliphestros replied. “Unlike the rest of you.”
“Ah, scorn once more,” Alandra said, shaking her head. “I can remember a time when my intrigues did not trouble you so. When I stole away from my rooms, that we might lie together in your high chambers in the palace.”
And again, Keera thought, she could see an expression of deep injury hidden beneath the old man’s stern efforts to affect disdain. “Was it all deception even then, Alandra? Did you deceive me with talk and acts of love?”
“Mmm,” Alandra noised, with the first hint of something other than maliciousness beneath her outward manner. “Perhaps not. But that time was so long ago—who can honestly remember?” Seeming to rouse herself from some not unpleasant memory, Alandra continued: “And what does it matter, any longer? You are the enemy of our kingdom, and of my brother—a shadow, as I say, of what you once were. And so, with that, I will leave you to your new mate …” She turned to depart, but her every movement was suddenly arrested by a stern note of authority in Caliphestros’s voice:
“Alandra!” The First Wife paused, almost against her own will, but did not turn fully back about. “It is not I who consort or mate with the beasts of the Wood, my girl—although I understand that you cannot make the same assertion. And the heavens only know what your brother amuses himself with, these days. But let that be. Take only this message to Saylal—”
“Do you mean,” the First Wife asked, feigning indignation, “to the God-King of our realm, brother to Kafra, the Supreme Deity?”
Caliphestros shrugged, seeming to have suddenly gained the upper hand in the exchange, and to have realized as much. “Call him what you like. To me he is simply Saylal—the frightened, malicious little boy who was taught by priests to lust after his own sister. But whatever the name: tell him that his armies enter Davon
Wood at their certain peril, and probable doom. A doom that will be demonstrated tonight …” And, as if he had foreseen the moment, Caliphestros looked to the north, as did Alandra, when the sound of a Broken battle horn was heard sounding an alarm. “And tell him,” Caliphestros said, smiling now, “that I alone have solved the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone.”
The First Wife of Kafra turned to the old man suddenly, fury now plain in her face. “That riddle is a myth.”
“Oh, it is no myth,” Caliphestros said, still smiling, his injury and tentativeness now seemingly erased, and his mastery over the conversation unquestionable. “And its solution will mean the shattering of Broken’s impregnability. And so, go, now, by whatever route it is you use to return to the city—for your return will not be possible very much longer. Therefore get back to your life of cruelty, bestiality, and incest, and continue to believe that it is a faith. And remember only this—” The old man raised an accusatory finger. “My age and my decrepitude were inevitable—as are your own. A fact that you shall discover, soon enough. Indeed, now that the Moon rises higher, I perceive that you may have begun to discover it already.” Alandra’s hands suddenly reached for her face, as her eyes searched the skin of her arms and the exposed parts of her legs. “Go, Alandra. In the name of what we once shared, I shall not hand you to the Bane Outragers, despite the advantage their tribe should gain from your capture—although I doubt that you would show me the same courtesy, were our positions reversed. Go on, then!”
And, with no more cleverness or cruelty to offer, with nothing at all remaining, save a look of simple fear, the First Wife of Kafra turned and moved swiftly out of the small clearing toward the south, glancing back only once, with what seemed to Keera, now, an expression of not only resentment, but, perhaps, regret, as well.
As soon as she had disappeared, the three foragers quickly leapt down from their high perches to tree limb after tree limb, until they were upon the woodland floor once again. Each was plainly full of questions; although Keera and Veloc could see that the encounter had drained Caliphestros—despite his final posture of defiance and anger—of too much energy to allow any possibility of immediate reply, and so brother and sister were silent. Heldo-Bah, of course, exhibited no such delicacy, and no such manners: