The Valley of Thunder

  It was Finnbogg who stumbled upon the bones.

  The dwarf was walking on one side of the rails when he gave a cry and would have fallen, his lantern smashing on the rocks, if Guafe hadn't caught his arm and helped him to regain his balance. As it was, the lantern swung wildly, making the shadows dance like dervishes, and then they all saw what the dwarf had stumbled upon.

  All along the left side of the rails in this newest gallery, bones lay scattered from the track to the far wall. Skulls and rib cages, the bones of arms and legs. Others that were not readily recognizable—perhaps not even human. And there were some—clearly the skeletons of humanlike creatures, with hands like men, or legs and torsos, only their sizes were wrong. Most of these were too small even to have been children's. One, if it had been a part of a humanoid, then it had belonged to a giant at least eleven feet tall.

  "It's some kind of graveyard," Smythe said.

  "More a feeding ground, I would say," Guafe remarked.

  Finnbogg shuddered, and Clive could feel a shiver travel up his own spine. As Smythe moved closer, holding his lantern high to cast more light, Clive followed suit, though he couldn't shake that sense of being spied upon by hidden watchers. It was stronger now than it had ever been since they'd entered the cavern. A crawling sensation that traveled up his spine and settled at the nape of his neck, knotting his muscles.

  For a long time the party regarded the bone field, none of them speaking, each keeping his own counsel. Then, just as Guafe turned to him to make a remark, Clive held up a hand.

  "Hist!" he said softly. "What was that?"

  "I heard nothing." the cyborg began, but then his gaze traveled past Clive, his eyes widening.

  Turning himself, Clive saw that dozens of pairs of small, slitted eyes watched them from the farther side of the gallery, retinas reflecting back at the party like a fox's or cat's would in the light of their lanterns.

  Smythe pulled his pry-bar from where it had been thrust in his belt. "Now we'll see what manner of creatures haunts this place." he said.

  "Wait a moment." Clive said. He held out a hand to stop Smythe's advance. "Let's see if we can pass them by.

  Smythe hesitated, then nodded. Slowly, the party backed toward the narrow entryway that led into the next gallery, feeling their way with their feet as they went, unwilling to lift their gazes from those that were watching them from the darkness. Just as they reached the entrance, a blood-curdling shriek, like that torn from the throat of a man being disembowled, shattered the darkness.

  "Well, that's cut it." Smythe said.

  As one, the members of the party lifted their weapons and prepared to meet the creatures' attack.

  Twenty

  With the presence of the rogha. Annabelle felt as though their journey had turned into an outing. It was hard not to have fun with the good-natured ape-men around. They laughed and joked among themselves, making Lukey translate what they thought were the particularly good lines. They loved to sing, especially to the rhythm of R&B. so the songs that Annabelle taught them were all old Motown numbers and Fifties rock music with lots of doo-wops, she-bops, and the like.

  Their own music was harder for her to follow. It involved a lot of sharp clicks that were made in the back of the throat, and sounds that were like short coughs, mixed in with a rhythmical chanting. But she loved listening to it and trying to follow its odd tempos.

  By the end of the first day, she found it easy to tell the various rogha apart. Chobba had never been a problem—he hulked over the others, and there was no mistaking his toothy grin. Through variation in fur coloring at first, and then the facial features, as she grew used to them, she soon learned to keep all the rest of them straight as well.

  Ghes was smaller than the rest, with a large nose and a henna lint to his fur. He was quiet-spoken and the best singer. Ninga had black and silver streaks in his head fur. and large eyes set wide apart. A practical joker, he loved to have a good trick played on him as much as playing the trick on someone else. Tarit and Nog were the hardest to tell apart, because they were identical twins, but Tarit wore a brightly colored scarf along with his neck tore, and Nog had a shrill laugh that couldn't be mistaken for anyone else's.

  The only female among the rogha accompanying them was Yssi, with her light, tan-colored fur and soft, dark-brown eyes. Next to Chobba, she was the strongest of their little troop, and like Ghes, she was quiet-spoken, but she had a dry wit, so that when she did make a comment, all the rogha invariably broke up. She also wasn't averse to a little common tomfoolery, either.

  She was the one who, when they camped that first night, tried to get Annabelle and her party to eat from a bowl of wriggling white worms and slugs that she'd collected on the journey, insisting that they were a delicacy that shouldn't be missed, and yes, they were supposed to be eaten while still alive. That was, in fact, half the charm of them.

  Annabelle was disgusted, but since she prided herself on her willingness to try any native food, no matter where she traveled, she almost swallowed one of the squirming creatures. All that slopped her were the stifled giggles of the other rogha. who eventually let her in on the joke.

  Ninga took to calling her Ilkgar after that, which Lukey translated for her as "eater of worms."

  "Cute," she told both Ninga and Yssi. "Just remember, kids: I don't get mad. I just get even."

  The rogha hooted with appreciative laughter when Lukey translated what she'd said.

  The real dinner that night was a kind of jambalaya of vegetables, with the meat of a wading bird that Shriek had brought down just before they camped. The camp itself was well off the game trail, in a clearing on the veldt side of the path. The strip of jungle on this side of the river was so wide now that they no longer caught brief glimpses of the plains through the trees, as they had on their first day after leaving Clive's party. The undergrowth was thick off the game trail, while the trail itself was heavily overhung with drooping boughs and vines.

  The one thing Annabelle missed about the rogha village was the wind that moved through the treetops. Here, the air was still and humid again, the heat draining. Mosquitoes were a problem until Ghes pointed out the black mud that formed at the roots of a reedlike flowering plant growing in thick stands along the river bank. A thick white juice secreted from the roots of the plant made an excellent bug repellent when mixed with the mud. Although it did have a certain pungent odor that was almost, though not quite, unpleasant. it was better than constantly trying to fend off the bugs.

  The silliest thing about it. Annabelle decided, was the way that it made them all look like a motley bunch of commandos in camouflage gear.

  When they were finally ready to turn in that first night, the rogha and Lukey all swung into the trees, where they made nests for themselves, wedged in the crooks where branches thrust out from the main trunk. After the night she'd spent in the rogha village, nothing could convince Annabelle to follow suit. She, Sidi, and Shriek made their beds on the ground around the dying embers of their fire. Tomàs, however, climbed up into the lower branches of one of the trees and. after much twisting about and adjusting of his limbs, fell asleep as though he'd been born to life in the trees.

  Wasn't much different from a ship's rigging. Annabelle thought.

  It was during her watch that she heard the cough of a monkey-cat. It came from a good distance away in the jungle, but each subsequent time she heard it. it sounded closer. With her spear, she poked up into the boughs above her, where the nearest of the rogha was sleeping. Ghes stirred, then called down softly.

  Though she was trying to pick up the language, Annabelle still had a long way to go with it. But while she didn't understand what Ghes had said, she did catch the rogha's questioning tone.

  "Hear that?" she called back in very badly accented rogha. "Bad sound?"

  The monkey-cat coughed again. This time it was no farther than a few trees away.

  Ghes cocked his head. Hearing the monkey-cat, he made a low, warbling sound, like tha
t of a night bird. Instantly, the other rogha were awake. They had a hurried conference, shadowy heads bent together, then swung off in various directions.

  Annabelle blinked at their sudden disappearance. She clutched her spear, wondering if she should get the fire going again, when there came a sudden chorus of shrieks from the forest all around them, followed by an abrupt silence.

  Sidi and Shriek leapt to their feet, brandishing their own weapons. In their tree perches, Lukey and Tomàs stirred. Then, before Annabelle could explain, a long, wailing cry broke the jungle night, followed by another silence.

  "Annabelle?" Sidi asked. "What's happened? Where are the rogha?"

  "There was one of those monkey-cats coming near the camp," Annabelle started to explain, but then the rogha were back.

  They swung down from the trees, hooting with pleasure. Chobba was holding the slain monkey-cat by its tail.

  "Lookit that!" Lukey cried. He started down from his perch. "Those damn things'd tear your heart out as soon as look at you. They like to sneak up on the baby rogha an' carry 'em away."

  Annabelle slowly lowered her spear. "It's like killing a cousin," she said.

  "It's killin' a varmint, that's all," Lukey said. "They're tough little buggers—mean as sin. Guess this one wasn't expectin' us to be ready for him."

  Chobba was thumping his chest. "Big cheef, yuh!" he cried.

  The rogha pounded each other's shoulders, all of them grinning. As Yssi and Nog started to skin the animal, Annabelle looked away. She couldn't shake the feeling that the monkey-cat, like the rogha and the flying monkeys, were all related in a way. To her, what they'd done was the same as if she'd killed a chimp. Up close, the monkey-cat didn't appear much bigger than that.

  "Different customs." Sidi said front beside her.

  Annabelle nodded. "Yeah. I know. It's just, when you think of the rogha or Shriek, or even Finnbogg, you get confused as to what's an animal and what's ... a person."

  Even though they'd just eaten, the rogha built up the fire once more. When the monkey-cat was skinned and gutted, its paws and head kept aside so that the teeth and claws could be collected later, the rogha thrust a spit through the animal's torso and set to roasting it over the fire.

  "Eat heart—BE strong." Chobba told her. "Stronger, yuh?"

  "I guess." Annabelle said, regretting that she'd ever wakened anybody in the first place. Maybe she could just have shooed it away.

  "Hell." Lukey said, forcing open the monkey-cat's jaws. "Will you lookit the teeth on this bugger." He showed them to Annabelle. "It could rip your arm off without even blinkin', an' that's God's own truth."

  If the journey had seemed like an outing before, now it had gained a completely festive—if somewhat macabre, by Annabelle's reckoning—air. The rogha laughed and told jokes, and later, they feasted on the roasted cat. When Chobba offered a piece of the cooked heart to her, Annabelle shook her head, but she did try some of the meat. It was gamy, with a coarse texture, but surprisingly good. She found she couldn't eat very much, and what she had eaten left her feeling a little queasy.

  It was a long time before the camp settled down again, with only a few hours left until daybreak. The rogha told tales, which Lukey translated, and the songs went on until near dawn. They all slept late that morning, not getting back to the game trail until well after noon.

  The following days fell into a pattern of marching by day and camping by night that was broken only a few times. Once, when they were washing up at the river bank on the third morning out from the village, the rogha withdrew back into the jungle, quickly pulling Annabelle and her companions into the undergrowth with them. When Annabelle questioned them, Ninga pointed at the sky above the river. Peering through the bushes. Annabelle could just make out a small black dot floating there, its wings still, riding the air currents like a falcon.

  "Gree," Ninga explained.

  "They spot us." Lukey added, "an" there'll be hell ta

  pay."

  "I thought you said they were scavengers." Annabelle said.

  "Well, they are. Thing is, they don't mind killin' somethin' an' waitin' for it ta rot properly, an' they plain hate anybody wanderin' through their territory."

  "This is their territory?"

  "Close enough so's it don't matter."

  Another time they came across the recent scent trail of a monkey-cat. and the rogha argued about whether or not they should track the animal down. Their disagreement grew so profound that Annabelle was sure that they were going to come to blows, but as suddenly as it had started, it was over, and the rogha were laughing again as they continued on their journey.

  As they came closer to Quan. the rogha grew increasingly wary. Twice they had the party circumvent elaborate traps laid on the game trail. One was a pit with sharpened stakes at the bottom, covered with leaves and made to look like a part of the trail. The other was a series of nets, ready to fall on the unwary traveler when set off by a trip string. The second time they came upon a pit. it held the impaled body of one of the tapirlike creatures. The rogha descended into the pit and stole the body, and that night they had another feast.

  "Who is setting these traps?" Sidi asked Lukey that night. "Quanians, I guess. Me. I've never bin this far from the village. Just heard about what it's like, that's all."

  Chobba, overhearing them, nodded solemnly. "Bad place, yuh?" he said. "Plenty trouble."

  It was when they were within a day's march of the village that Annabelle spied a piece of torn cloth caught in a branch alongside the trail. It looked to be fine linen—a piece of a sleeve, torn from a shirt, with part of a frayed cuff still attached.

  "I thought you said the Quanians were ghosts." she said. "But this didn't belong to any ghost, and ghosts didn't set those traps back there, either."

  Lukey took the piece of cloth from her. "Guess this belonged to that other feller." he said.

  "What other feller? You never said anything about somebody else coming this way."

  "Didn't really think to tell you about it." Lukey replied. "It was a while ago—a couple a' weeks, maybe less? Feller came through an' we tried to stop him, but he wouldn't lake no. Said he had to get to Quan, an' wasn't nothin' goin' to stop him from gettin' there."

  "What was his name? Annabelle asked.

  She had a sneaking suspicion as to who it had been, even though the time frame was wrong. But then again, who knew how time worked in this place? When you considered the spread of centuries from which people were plucked, it made sense that time worked differently here as well.

  "His name was Folly," Lukey said. "Neville Folly."

  Annabelle remembered the chasuck, with their cries of "folly, folly." She should have remembered to ask about Clive's brother when she'd first arrived at the rogha village.

  "Do you mean Folliot?" she asked.

  Lukey nodded. "That's the name, all right. You know that feller?"

  "We've been chasing him forever, it seems."

  "Well, you can stop lookin' for him now," Lukey said. "Ain't no way he'd've survived in Quan. No way anybody can."

  "Yet, you're coming with us."

  "Well, now. I'm goin' to have me a look-see; that's all I'll swear to right now."

  Annabelle exchanged glances with others of her party, and saw the same knowledge reflected in their eyes that she knew was in her own. Clive's party was completely off track.

  "What did this feller do, anyway?" Lukey asked.

  "He's supposed to know how to get out of this place." Annabelle replied, "so you can bet that if anyone gets through Quan and its ghosts, it'll be him."

  "He knows for sure?"

  "To the best of our knowledge," Sidi said, "he's been all the way through and back once already."

  "An' now he's goin' back through a second time? Feller needs his head examined. I'm thinkin'."

  "And we'll be happy to do it for him," Annabelle said.

  She wondered if she'd ever see Clive and Finnbogg and the rest of them again. She'd ha
lf expected their trails to cross once more, but now she knew that the other party was so far off base that they might as well be on another planet. She even missed Finnbogg, for all that it was his fault that she was still stuck in this place.

  "Bad place now," Chobba called back from where he walked ahead.

  "Quan?" Annabelle asked.

  The rogha shook his head. "Big trap. Go by tree now, yuh?"

  Annabelle pushed ahead to where Chobba had stopped and looked ahead. She couldn't see anything on the trail at all.

  "What is it?" she asked, carefully poking her foot forward in the dirt.

  "No!" Chobba cried.

  But he was too late. The touch of Annabelle's foot had tripped the trap. A cord whipped out of the ground, snagging her foot. Before anyone could grab her, she was jerked off her feet and pulled high into the air. The abruptness of the trap as it whipped her into the air just about dislocated her nip joint.

  "Get me down!" she cried.

  But then, from somewhere high above them in the trees, a bell sounded to let whoever had set the trap know that it had been sprung.

  Swinging upside down, with the world swirling and spinning below her. Annabelle's fear of heights filled her with a panicking rush that left her absolutely numb.

  Twenty-one

  As the creatures charged them. Clive and his party had time to set their lanterns down and bring out their makeshift weapons, but that was all. Finnbogg raised his sledgehammer, the others their pry-bars, and then the swarm was upon them.

  The light of the lanterns cast an uneven glow on the creatures as they came at the party in a skittering wave. They were barely three feet tall, spindly limbed, and with no color to them at all, except for the red flash of their eyes. Corpse-pale flesh covered torsos and limbs. Their hair hung in greasy, pale strands, tangled and knotted like snakes. The faces were flat, features more vestigial than pronounced: flat noses, lipless slits for mouths, eyes set against the slope of their brows.