Leelson grunted, "By my manhood!"
Mitigan shook Lutha by the shoulder. "What?"
She couldn't tell him. She didn't know!
And normal sound came back all at once, as though a finger had been snapped.
In the window Leely sucked his fingers, murmuring, "Dananana."
He had exorcised the ghosts. He had driven them away. What right had he to do that?
They breathed deep into oxygen-starved lungs.
"Lutha!" Leelson demanded. "What is this?"
"Why ask me?" she cried. "How would I know?"
"You're his mother!" he shouted.
"Bernesohn Famber was his mother and his father," she yelled back. "Bernesohn designed him. Too bad Bernesohn isn't around to give us the operating instructions."
While babble broke out all around, she sat down and wept, feeling her face smart from the salt, feeling her nose swell and turn red, that familiar pain behind her breastbone like a swallowed stone. Obviously, Leelson hadn't told them what they'd figured out about Leely. Well, neither had she. They were both … what? Ashamed of it? Probably. How can one tell friends and acquaintances that one's great passion, one's world-shaking romance is no more than a mating dance between ephemerids, that all one's achievements count to nothing in the face of a biological destiny hoicked up by a runaway Fastigat in a makeshift laboratory on a very minor planet!
She wept while Leelson explained, as Fastigats do, unemphatically but in great detail and with all possible inferences.
It would have bored anyone. It bored Lutha. He talked so long she tired of sniveling and began wiping the wetness from her face.
"But what is he?" Jiacare Lostre demanded.
"A virus," said Leelson, without emotion. "To all intents and purposes. Morphologically, he's human, born of a normal zygote that carries a lot of something else—something Ularian. He's a hybrid. He has enough brain to get along at the level of a … "
"A chicken," Lutha said bitterly, feeling a new gush of tears. There were no chickens left, but the word remained. One of those sorts of words that did remain.
"Something like that," Leelson admitted.
"Whatever he's carrying, it gets around the Ularian immune system," Snark supplied. "I found disrupted cells in the dropped tentacles, and in the dying shaggy."
Leelson nodded heavily. "He's also carrying an agent or genetic program that promotes rapid healing in humans. It's in his saliva. Probably in his blood. Maybe he had to have that to retain human shape with all that Ularian stuff in him."
"Or it was purposeful, so people would value him," offered the ex-king. "Maybe Bernesohn was looking ahead. He would want his … virus to survive. He knew people would value something that could heal their ills." He furrowed his brow, continuing in a doubtful voice: "Of course, that would have depended upon people knowing about it."
"He prob'ly meant 'em to know," breathed Snark. "Meant 'em to know about the whole business. He sure wouldn't depend on it bein' found out like this! By accident!"
Mitigan hoisted Leely high and presented his wounded arm, still festering and red.
"Dananana," Leely caroled, giving Mitigan's arm several wet kisses.
"Me," said Snark. The wound she'd sustained during the Kachis birthing was also inflamed. Leely kissed the bite marks. Lutha had seen dogs lick wounds like that, in old nature chips. She shook her head, ashamed. She had known about Leely's healing ability the day before. She should have told Snark. And Mitigan.
Saluez noticed her pain. She took Lutha's hand, peered into her eyes. "Lutha. Lutha, sister." Her eyes filled and Lutha turned away, unable to bear her compassion. By the Great Gauphin, Lutha didn't want anyone to share her feelings. Her feelings were her own, singular, unique!
Which was bosh. They were the world's woes, as Mama Jibia used to say. No matter what the world, the woes are the same. Pain and loss. Hope dimmed. Ambition quenched. Love becoming an unfunny joke on the lovers! Body saying aye; mind saying nay; now saying can; future saying can't.
Lutha felt Leelson reaching for her, and shook him off, surprising on his face a reflection of her own. He felt miserable. She'd planned his misery, but she hadn't realized she'd be in it with him.
And why should it be so upsetting? She'd guessed the biggest part of this. What had changed since then? Nothing, except the knowledge that she was as responsible as Leelson. Leely himself was as he had always been. Only her hopes had changed. Her hopes and whatever was out there at the edge of the world. The trembler. The world shaker.
She took Leely from Snark, settling him on her hip. It was time they went back to sleep. If they could sleep.
Leely patted her face, opened his dreadful mouth, and said quite clearly, "Lutha Lutha Tallstaff Lutha sister mother love."
It was a person's voice, totally unfamiliar, not a child's voice.
Silence. Shock. Indrawn breaths.
Leelson cleared his throat, a scritch like iron dragged on stone.
Leely turned, cocked his head, said, "Leelson Leelson Famber damned Fastigat darling."
No one even breathed.
Leely said, "Saluez of the shadow. Snark love Laluzh. Mitigan Mitigan of the Asenagi." He smiled. "Exking exking of Kamir Jiacare Lostre. Leely baby Leely love Leely yourson myson."
"He's naming things," said Leelson in a hollow voice.
"Pee—peeeple," said the ex-king, awed into virtual incoherence. "People."
Lutha had been holding Leely pressed against her, but now she felt it was safer to set him down.
"Lutha Tallstaff Lutha Lutha sister mother love," he said, making a mirror likeness of her on the skin of his chest and belly. He showed her as she was, dressed in her gray-green overall.
"Why now?" cried Leelson in petulant, almost horrified surprise. "Why now!"
"He's never been out among people before," whispered Saluez. "Not since he was a baby."
It was true. From the time Leelson had left them, they'd lived almost alone. Those who came and went were seldom repeat visitors. Those who came to see Lutha often did not see Leely. Only since this trip began had Leely heard Lutha's name used by this one, that one. She recalled Leelson's outraged, "You're his mother." So now she was Lutha Tallstaff Lutha Lutha sister mother love.
"When he made the pictures back to the Rottens!" she exclaimed. "That's when he made the connection. They have color titles. We have verbal ones."
"That's a title?" Leelson bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Leelson Leelson Famber damned Fastigat darling?"
"Hush," she hissed, pointing through the tilted arch at the shag-gies floating against the stars. "Leelson, damn it, don't yell at me. It's not my fault; I didn't do it; I'm not responsible for it. Will everyone just please remember where we are and shut up."
As they did quickly enough, for they felt once more that tremble in the core of the world, heard once more, though briefly, that flattened sound.
Even Leely was silent as Lutha sat down upon her blanket, cradling the child against her. He looked thoughtful. Mitigan and Leelson whispered together, but Lutha was too drained to care what they were talking about. Joy and hopelessness and fear were all fighting for supremacy. If something had harmed Leely as he had been, she would have grieved. But, oh, to be in this danger with him changed! Now if something happened to him! Her child, her son, if anything happened to him now!
"You always said he would talk," Saluez reminded her.
Yes. She had. She had thought he would say Mommy and Daddy and the other things babies say. She had not thought he could tremble worlds with his voice.
All such thoughts were cut short. She saw Mitigan's head come up, alertly, swiveling as he listened, his hands going to his weapons belt. They all heard it then, a sound like rain, like a pouring of sand, an endless hissing. They twisted, searching for the source …
Which slid onto the sand of the cavern like a runnel of dark blood, scaled from its gaping mouth to the darkness in which its body was still hidden, serpent king, snake lord, migh
ty monster, thick through as Mitigan's body, and all around it, its children, its kindred, the small ones of its kind, striped and mottled and jewel-marked, sinuous and horrid.
"Out," cried Mitigan, something very like panic in his voice. "Out!"
They stumbled to their feet and ran, out and away, Saluez supported on either side by Lutha and Snark, Leely running beside his mother. Mitigan's voice shouted battle cries while Leelson and Jiacare urged him to run. They did run, with snakes all around them, striking from crevices, dropping from holes, slithering across their feet as they struggled on, bruising themselves on the jutting rocks, scraping themselves on the rough stones until they came out under the sky. Leelson erupted from the rock pile, dragging the ex-king behind him. He had thought to bring one of the survival packs with him, and a lamp.
"Mitigan?" cried Snark.
"Coming," said Leelson, dragging the ex-king toward us. "Here, Jiacare's been bitten!" Lutha stood stupidly, not realizing what he wanted.
"Leely," Leelson cried. "Come see the bite."
The ex-king pulled up a trouser leg, displaying puncture wounds that seeped a yellowish ichor. The flesh around the wounds was green. "I fell on it," he said. "I don't think it meant to bite … "
Leely ran to him, hugged the bitten leg, effectively tripping the ex-king, so that he fell heavily and was unable to get up. Leely kissed the bites, then hugged the ex-king once more.
"Jiacare Lostre, ex-King of Kamir," cried Leely. "Poor Jiacare!"
"Can you walk on it?" demanded Leelson, heaving Jiacare to his feet.
"If I have to." He stood up, took one experimental step, and groaned.
"Mitigan!" demanded Snark once more.
"He's either coming or he's dead," grated Leelson.
"Where are we going?" Jiacare smiled as he asked the question, a thin, fatalistic smile.
"Wherever we're allowed to go," Leelson muttered.
Mitigan appeared at the entrance to the rockfall, staggering toward the others. His face and arms were covered with bites. "Hard to kill," he muttered. "Oh, they're hard to kill."
He fell. Leely looked at his wounds, then at Leelson. "Dananana," he said, uninterested.
Leelson thrust his fingers into Leely's mouth, then rubbed the wet fingers onto Mitigan's wounds. The assassin gasped, as though in sudden agony.
"Mitigan Mitigan of the Asenagi," Leely said in a tone of disapproval. "Mitigan fought the snakes."
Where Mitigan had emerged from the rocks was now a darker shadow. They stared at it, trying to find in it the coils of a serpent, the twining shape of the snake. It wasn't a snake. Something deep inside them told them that. Snakes to flush them out, but something else to drive them.
Eyes reflected the light from the lamp Leelson carried. A wavering howl split the air.
"Wolves," Lutha breathed. "It's wolves." How many times had she seen them, recreated in story, remembered in myth? How many times?
As though answering to their name, lithe forms spewed from the rock pile. Some of them loped up the slope toward the camp, others made a line to the north. The way was open south or west, but in no other direction. They were not all wolves. Some of them were other things, shamblers, gigglers, mutterers, throat growlers.
Mitigan stumbled to his feet. He and the ex-king staggered up the slope, the rest following. As they went the bitten men gained strength. They crested the ridge, walking almost normally, then stopped. Across the narrow valley the wolves had made a line barring the way to the south. The only open way was the valley, the crescent of gravel that was the beach. They were being forced toward the sea.
"Make a stand," muttered Mitigan. "Get into one of the storm caverns and make a stand."
"No," said Leelson. "Let's just go along for the moment. See what's intended."
Lutha stared blindly into the dark. Even Leely could not live in this place without food, without shelter. What was intended was eradication. What was intended was that no one of them should return to Alliance to tell men what they knew.
CHAPTER 12
The stories of Old-earth are shared among the people of Old-earth. Even I, Saluez, can identify elephant and whale, ostrich and eagle, serpent and wolf, though they exist no longer. I know that they were and now are not, because of mankind. So, when I wakened under the stone on Perdur Alas to a terror not dreamed but real, I recognized the creatures bringing it upon us.
Snark and Lutha heaved me up, one on either side, and they supported me as we fled. Lutha seemed lost in some apocalyptic vision, concentrated on senses I did not share. Not so Snark. Nothing quenched her insatiable interest, or her avid commentary on each thing it touched.
"Old Tempter," she said as we fled down the valley toward the beach. "Old Tempter sent 'em. Wanted to be sure, he did, we knew what was coming. Righteous vengeance, that's what they're after!"
Her words rang like the gong by the House Without a Name, awaking dissonant echoes, evoking monsters! The Kachis had also been sent by the tempter. They, too, had been a cacophony of bestial noises and the gleam of fangs!
"You notice Mitigan?" Snark muttered. "Mad! That man is so rageous he's about to kindle. Sure never figured he'd get beat by snakes! High-and-mighty Asenagi, with Leely spit all that's keeping him living. Has to be hard for a proud man!"
The fact that she could notice such things while we fled for our lives cut through my panic. If Snark could keep her senses during this wildness, then so could I. I concentrated all my thought and energy on calm, on focus, on breathing slowly, moving deliberately, on noticing what was happening.
It actually helped. It took me out of myself to look at the others, imagining what they felt. Mitigan, as Snark had said, was blazingly angry. So was Leelson, though probably for a different reason. Fastigats like to make sense out of what happens, but Leelson couldn't get beyond his Firster viewpoint to make sense of this! Jiacare Lostre wore a thin smile, like a seer who knows what is happening, perhaps, or someone who thinks it doesn't matter. Lutha, of course, wasn't with us at all. She stared into the distance like one ensorcelled, an inhabitant of some other world.
We halted on the beach, hemmed in on three sides by creatures, on the other by ocean. There we gasped, waiting for what would happen next. I drew the night air deep into my lungs, amazed at the feeling of it, the scent of it! Like the air of a new world! The wind came wildly fresh, with a keening mist and a bluster of cloud.
Snark leaned close against me, supporting either me or herself. Her face was ecstatic as she murmured, "Oooh, they're lovely. Like flowing gold, snakes."
She meant it! Inexplicably, she was enraptured!
She nudged me, pointing. "And see the wolves—it's like I can see them better in the starlight than even in full sun. Look at their fur, Saluez! Soft as clouds, full and sleek. Teeth silver sharp in those laughing jaws. Eyes two smoky mirrors full of what ought to be. Oh, you can see Eden in those eyes! You can see a world stretching away, all green and misty! You can almost hear 'em, nose up, hollering the moon! They make me feel guilty, like Old Tempter meant 'em to, but they make me feel more than just that!"
Lutha came to herself abruptly. "Is this your paradise?" she gasped. "Are you finding it in the eyes of wolves?"
"Maybe so," said Snark. "Are you scared?"
"I'm past being scared," Lutha replied with a shivery giggle, half-hysterical, that built into a spate of wild laughter, quickly hushed. "Long past!"
Snark laughed with her. "Me too. This is sort of mazy, isn't it. Like a dream where you're in deadly trouble, but you go along, kind of floating, and the thing coming after you is monstrous terrible; its eyes fall on you like a horrid light; but it's righteous! You know how it's going to come out and all you can hope is you'll wake up in time or it won't hurt too much. Like that."
I saw new shapes among those surrounding us. Wolf and serpent, yes, but other creatures as well.
"Animals," I said to Lutha, under my breath. "What is it you've been muttering about animals?"
She ho
isted Leely into her arms and stared at me over his head. "For days, over and over, I've found myself thinking of animals. They pad through my brain at night; they howl in my ears and climb my flesh with sharp claws. Is it really animals, Saluez? Or is it the ultimate Ularian, pretending?"
I didn't know. It might be the big Ularian, the tempter of Breadh, but I'd have sworn the animals were real.
That interchange was all we had time for. One wolf howled, then another. Something shadowy and immense growled deep in its swollen throat; something shambling giggled; we were stalked by ramified darkness, full of eyes. They pushed us toward the sea. Crawlers and trotters came after, chunky creatures, close to the ground, others sleek and thin, each bone showing through their dappled hides, strung with muscles like taut cable. Sinuous tails whipped; eyes lit like lanterns; tongues licked at jaws with a rasping sound, as at our bones, scraping them clean!
We were not driven into the waves, but onto the path at the foot of the cliffs. The creatures behind us kept their distance, not pursuing us closely enough to make us run, only closely enough to make us move. There was no space to walk abreast as we went southward along the sea. Mitigan was first, carrying the lamp, then the ex-king, with Lutha carrying Leely after him. I came next, then Snark, then Leelson. Only the waves spoke as we went, but when we came around the first curve, we heard howls and growls and hisses from the beach behind us, a cacophonous laughter, as though someone had told a funny story. No doubt who the joke was on.
From behind me, Snark announced, "There's caves along here. Sea caverns. We're headed where you folks come out, where the shaggies come out."
"Toward the vortex entries?" Lutha asked in a far-off, toneless voice. "Does it mean to herd us into the vortex again?"
Leelson ignored her question. "Tide's going out just now," he muttered. "It won't go out forever. Do they—does it mean for us to drown?"
"Probably one or the other," said the ex-king, turning to glance at us over his shoulder. "If I were they, it, I'd want to kill us without touching us. Touching us—at least touching Leely—seems to be fatal."