He sniffed. There was a faint musky odor in the still air.
“I smell it, too,” she said. “Maybe we should capture the raven. It might know what the thing is. In fact, it could be working for it.”
She paused, then said, “Or it could be working for the raven.”
“Why don’t we wait a while before we grab the bird?”
They pushed on at a faster pace. Now and then, they looked behind them but saw neither the bird nor the bear-thing. After a few minutes, they smelled a whiff of wood smoke. Silently, they walked toward the odor, guided by its increasing strength. They waded through a narrow creek to the other side. When they heard voices, they slowed their pace and made sure they did not step on dry sticks. The voices became louder. They were women’s, and it seemed to Kickaha that he heard only two speakers. He made a few signs to Anana, who crept away to circle around the place. She would be his unseen backup if he got into trouble. Or vice versa.
He got down on the ground and wriggled forward very slowly to keep from rustling the dead leaves. He stopped when he was behind a thick bush between two massive tree trunks. He peered through the lower part of the bush and saw a small clearing. In its center was a small fire with a small iron pot suspended by its handle from a horizontal wooden stick set between two forked wooden uprights. Kickaha smelled boiling meat.
A blonde who was beautiful despite her disarrayed hair and dirtied face stood near the fire. She was speaking Thoan. Crouching down on the other side of the fire was a red-haired woman. She was as good-looking as the blonde and equally disheveled and dirty.
Both wore ankle-length robes reminding Kickaha of illustrations of the type of dress worn by ancient Greek females. The material was thin, clinging, and far from opaque. At one time, the robes had been white, but brambles and thorns clung to them, and dirt and blood smeared them.
On the far side of the clearing were two knapsacks and a pile of Thoan blankets, paper-thin but very heat-keeping. Three light axes, three heavy knives, and three beamers, which looked like pistols with bulbs on the muzzles, were on top of the blankets.
A butchered fawn was lying on the far side of the clearing. No flies buzzed around it; the planet Alofmethbin lacked flies. But crawling and scavenging insects were beginning to swarm on the carcass.
Kickaha shook his head. The women were not very cautious, hence not very bright, if they had not kept the weapons close at hand. Or, perhaps this was a trap.
He turned and looked behind him and up into the tree branches, but neither saw nor heard anything to alarm him. Of course, the raven could be hidden among the leaves overhead. After he had turned around toward the women, he lay for a while watching and listening.
Though the two looked to be no more than twenty-five, they had to be thousands of years old. They spoke in the same archaic Thoan that Anana fell into sometimes when she was excited. Except for a few words and phrases, Kickaha understood it.
The blonde said, “We can’t survive long in this horrible place. We must find a gate.”
“You’ve said that a thousand times, Eleth,” the auburn-haired woman said. “I’m getting sick of hearing it.”
“And I’m sick of hearing nothing practical from you, Ona,” the blonde snarled. “Why don’t you figure a way out for us, suggest just how we can find a gate?”
Ona said, “And I’m about to vomit from your childish bickering and screaming.”
“So, throw up,” Eleth said. “At least you’d be doing something instead of sitting on your ass and whining. And vomiting certainly wouldn’t make this place stink more than it does, even if your puke stinks more than anybody else’s.”
Ona got up and looked into the pot. “It seems to be done, but I still don’t know how to cook.”
“Who does?” Eleth said. “That’s slave work. Why should we know anything about it?”
“For Shambarimen’s sake!” Ona said, and she shook her head so violently that her long auburn hair swirled like a cloak around her shoulders. “Can’t we do anything but talk about things that don’t matter? A fine pair of sisters we are. Lords one day, and the next, we’re no better than slaves.”
“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about putting on weight,” Eleth said, and she grinned.
The redhead looked hard at her.
“I’m trying to be as lighthearted as possible,” Eleth said. “We have to keep our spirits up or they’ll be so heavy they’ll sink down to our toes and ooze out onto the ground. And we’ll die or become leblabbiys. We’ll get eaten by some beast or, worse, be captured and raped by leblabbiys and spend the next hundred years or more as wives of some stupid, ignorant, dirty, smelly, snot-wiping-on-their-hands, wife-beating savages. They’ll be our Lords.”
“You really know how to make me feel good,” Ona said. “I’d kill myself before I’d submit to a leblabbiy.”
“It wouldn’t be hopeless. We could escape and find a gate and then find Red Orc and get revenge by killing him. After some suitable tortures, of course. I’m thinking about eating Red Orc’s balls just as he ate his father’s. Well-cooked, though, and with a suitable garnish, not eaten raw as Red Orc did.”
“Speaking of cannibalism,” Ona said, “we may have to resort to that before we find a way out of this mess. Now, who should be the eaters and who the eaten?”
“Stop that!”
But both burst out laughing.
Kickaha knew the Lords well enough to doubt that Ona was jesting. If they did starve, one of them would kill and eat her companion.
He listened several minutes to their bickering but did not learn much. The only thing he knew for sure was that their predicament was caused by Red Orc and that they had escaped from him with the few possessions in the clearing.
The two women fell silent while they were looking into the pot. By now, they were getting ready to dip out deer stew with rough spoons made of bark.
Suddenly, Anana stepped out from the bushes into the clearing. She held her bow and an arrow at the ready.
“Hail, iron-hearted daughters of Urizen and Ahania!” she called. “Your cousin Anana greets you in peace! What brings you here?”
5
THE TWO WOMEN SHRIEKED AND JUMPED AS IF THEY HAD stepped on biting ants. The redhead, however, flashed out of her paralysis and darted toward the beamers near the edge of the clearing. After a few steps, she halted, then walked slowly back to Eleth. She had realized that she could not get to the weapons before Anana’s arrow drove through her.
“Ona the Baker!” Anana called to the redhead. “You were always the quickest witted, the coolest, and the most dangerous in physical combat. But how could you be so stupid as to leave your arms out of reach?”
Ona scowled and said, “I am very tired.”
Anana addressed the blonde. “Eleth the Grinder, also known as Eleth the Worrier! You were the planner, the thinker, and so in many ways the most dangerous!”
The blonde was not so pale now. She smiled, and she bowed. “Not as dangerous as you, Anana the Bright, Anana the Hunter!”
Anana said, “Ona, you and your sisters, Eleth the Grinder, and Uveth the Kneader, now dead, were known as the kind-hearted daughters of Ahania. Now you are called iron-hearted! But you have always been the kindliest and sweetest of the three!”
“That was long ago, Anana,” Ona said.
“Your father, Urizen the Cold, changed you three from kittens to ravening tigers,” Anana said. “Your hatred for him is well known.”
She paused, then said, “Do you know that he is dead?”
Eleth said stonily, “We had heard that he was. But we were not sure that it was true.”
Ona said, “Nor are we sure now. That you say our father is dead does not make it true. But if your news is true, we’re glad.”
“Except that we would be sad that we were not the ones who killed him,” Eleth said.
During this talking, Kickaha had been moving stealthily around the clearing to make sure that no one else was watching th
e scene. Though he looked for the raven and the bearish creature, he did not see them. Nor was there any sign of anyone lying in ambush.
When the two women saw him step into the clearing, they started only slightly. Evidently, they had suspected that Anana was not alone. Eleth said, “Who is this, Anana?”
“Surely you have heard of Kickaha? Kickaha the Trickster, the killer of so many Lords, the man who slew the last of the Black Bellers? You have also heard of ancient Shambarimen’s prophecy that a leblabbiy will destroy the Lords. Some say that Kickaha is the man of whom Shambarimen prophesied.”
Eleth bit her lower lip. “Yes, we have heard of the leblabbiy who has been so lucky so far. We have also heard that he is your lover.”
“He is a leblabbiy,” Anana said cheerily, “and he is such a lover as you should wish you had.”
“Thanks,” Kickaha said, and he grinned broadly.
“You killed our father?” Eleth said to Kickaha. Her tone indicated that she did not believe Anana.
“No,” Kickaha said. “I wish I had. But it was Jadawin, the Lord also known as Wolff, who killed him.”
“You saw Jadawin kill him?”
“No. But Jadawin told me that he did, and Jadawin does not lie. Not, at least, to me.”
Anana herded the sisters to the end of the clearing most distant from the pile of weapons. Then she ordered them to sit down. She did not frisk them. Their filmy robes made it evident that they were not carrying concealed weapons.
“We’re starving,” Eleth said. “We were just about to eat the soup. Such as it is.”
Kickaha looked inside the pot. “Nothing but meat. Very unhealthy. Why didn’t you put some vegetables in?”
“We don’t know what plants are good to eat and what’re poisonous,” Eleth said.
“But all Thoan, male or female, are given survival courses,” he said. “You should know that …
Ona said, “We don’t know this planet.
“You can get up now and eat,” Anana said. “By suppertime, we’ll have much better food for you. If, that is, we stay with you. That depends upon how open and truthful you are with us. Now, I heard enough while you were talking to believe that Red Orc is responsible for your being here. Tell me-“
“Red Orc!” Eleth said viciously, and she spat on the ground. “There’s a man who needs killing!”
“After suitable torture,” Ona said. “He killed Uveth years ago and came close recently to killing us. It’s because of him that we’re stranded in this wretched wilderness.”
Anana let them rave and rant for a while about what they would do to Orc when they captured him. Then she said, “Tell us just how you came to be here.”
They stood by the pot, and Eleth was the first to speak. Ona ate while her sister talked, then Ona talked while Eleth ate. After fleeing Red Orc, not for the first time, they had managed to “take over” Nitharm, the universe in which they had taken refuge. “Take over” was a euphemism for slaying the Lord of Nitharm and his family. Since there were no male Thoan in that world, they had taken leblabbiys for lovers. This practice was acceptable by Thoan standards because their lovers were their slaves, not their equals, and were often replaced by others.
They had been happy there, they said. The only thing lacking to make their happiness complete was that they had not yet been able to find and kill their father. Then Red Orc had somehow evaded the traps they had set at the two gates into their world. He had taken them by surprise despite their security systems.
At this point in the story, Eleth had interrupted Ona.
“I told them many times that we should just close all gates and stay there forever. That would have kept any Lord from invading our world.”
“Yes, you fearful, trembling, sniveling little bitch!” Ona had said. “And just how then would we be able to go to other worlds and make sure that our father was dead!”
“Don’t call me names, assface!” Eleth fired back.
The rest of the story was longer than Kickaha wished to hear. But he and Anana let them ramble on since they might reveal something about themselves that could later be used against them.
Red Orc would have killed them if they had not happened to be very close to a gate to another world. They had been able to grab some weapons before they fled. After passing through a circuit of gates, they had come out on this level of the World of Tiers. Since then, they had been trying to survive while searching for another gate. This, they hoped, would not take them to another world but to the palace on top of the topmost monolith of the World of Tiers. There, they knew, was the structure that had been Jadawin’s, then Vannax’s, and, once again, Jadawin’s stronghold. They had heard that no Lord now lived there. Thus, they planned to become the new Lords.
Their story could be true, but if so, it certainly showed them as inept. Kickaha did not believe that they really were, though he knew that Red Orc was ingenious enough to defeat even the most competent.
Anana said, “Then you’ll be willing to join us in the fight against Red Orc?”
They agreed enthusiastically.
“What good will they be to us?” Kickaha said loudly. “We don’t need them! In fact, they’ll be a big liability!”
“You are wrong,” Ona said. “You need information, and we know many things about Red Orc that you don’t.”
Anana, who was aware of what Kickaha was doing, spoke. “That’s right, Kickaha. They must know about gates and his activities and strongholds we don’t know. Isn’t that right, daughters of Urizen?”
They spoke as one. “That is correct.”
“Very well,” he said. “We’re a band, and I’m the leader. What I order must be obeyed immediately and without question. If, that is, the situation calls for action at once. If it’s not pressing, I’m open to suggestions.”
Eleth, the blonde, looked hard at Anana. “He’s a leblabbiy.”
Anana shrugged and said, “He and I spun a flat stone marked on one side up into the air, and he called out the right side that fell uppermost on the ground. We had agreed beforehand that the one who did this would be the leader. In times of emergency, he is not to be questioned or disobeyed.
“As for his being a leblabbiy, what of it? He’s a better man than any Thoan I’ve ever met. You two should try to get over your absurd opinion of leblabbiys as inherently inferior to the Lords. It’s nonsense! Dangerous nonsense because it makes Lords underestimate them. By the time the Lord gets killed, he finds out how wrong he was. About-Kickaha, anyway.”
Eleth and Ona said nothing, but their expressions showed disbelief.
“You’ll learn the hard way,” Anana said.
The sisters protested when Anana took their beamers. “How can we protect ourselves?”
“You’ll be given them when we think you’re one-hundred-percent trustworthy,” he said. “Meantime, you can carry your axes, spears, and bows. We’ll camp here tonight. Come morning, we start that way.”
He pointed west.
“Why that way?” Eleth said. “Are you sure that’s the right direction? What if-“
“I have my reasons,” Kickaha said, interrupting her. “You’ll know why when we get there.”
They would be heading toward a gate on this level that would transmit them to the palace. It would take them days to get there, and perhaps days to find the gate after they got there. The area in which it was placed was immense, and he was not sure of its exact location. By the time the party reached it, he and Anana would know if the two women could be trusted. Or the sisters would be dead. Possibly he and Anana would have been slain by them, though he much doubted that.
That night, around a small fire, they all lay down to sleep. The sisters had eaten well, or at least much better than they had been eating. Kickaha had foraged in the woods and brought back various edible plants. He had also shot a large monkey, which had been roasted on a spit.
The sisters had washed their robes in the nearby creek and scrubbed off their body dirt, though they compl
ained about the coldness of the water. The robes quickly dried on sticks thrust into the ground near the fire. When time for bedding-down came, Kickaha took the first watch. The sisters slept near the fire in their thin but warm blankets. Anana, wrapped in her blanket, her head pillowed on her knapsack, lay close to the edge of the clearing. Kickaha stationed himself for a while on the opposite side of the clearing. After a while, he stepped into the forest and prowled around the clearing. He carried two beamers in his belt and another in his hand.
He looked out for big predators, of which one could be that huge, hairy creature he had glimpsed. He also kept an eye on the sisters. If they were going to attack their captors, they might try tonight. However, none of them stirred during his and Anana’s watches.
In the morning, when Urizen’s daughters wanted to leave the campsite together to empty their bowels in the forest, he insisted that they go one at a time. It was impossible to watch all of them at the same time unless they all went together. But he wanted them alone out among the trees. If a confederate was hanging out around there, he, she, or it might make contact with one of the two. Kickaha watched each of them, but he was hidden behind bushes.
No one approached Eleth while she was in the forest. While Ona was squatting, a raven waddled out from behind a big tree. No, not a raven, Kickaha thought. It’s the raven, the one who’s been following us. He watched as the big bird silently came from behind Ona and stood in front of her. She did not look surprised.
They spoke to each other briefly and in low tones. Kickaha was too far away to make out the words. He did not need to do so. A conspiracy was flourishing. But who besides the sisters and the raven was involved?
After the bird had gone back into the woods and Ona started back to camp, Kickaha followed the raven. The bird led him for less than a mile before it came to a clearing large enough for it to wing away. Kickaha plunged into the woods then to gather more plants and to catch several large insects that he knew were delicious eating. He got a perverse pleasure out of insisting that the sisters eat them.