Fossil Hunter

  Babnol’s tail swished slightly. “Your words are tempting,” she said at last.

  “Then stay! Stay here. Stay with me.”

  There was a long, long moment between them. The sun slid behind a silvery cloud.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I have to do what I think is right.” She turned and walked away.

  Toroca kept her in his sight until she was lost among the folds of the landscape.

  For the first time in his life, he felt the urge to go out and hunt.

  Chapter 35

  Capital City

  Afsan lay on the grass outside of the palace, the sun warming his back. Next to him lay Gork, its thick tail touching Afsan’s own. Afsan tried to conjure up a picture of the grounds, but it had been so long. Grass: green, of course. And the sun, brilliant white. The sky, mauve, most likely, and cloudless, judging by how warm the sun felt. Daytime moons? Surely. This was noon on the 590th day of this kiloday. He calculated. The Big One would be high in the sky and waxing. Swift Runner would be much lower and almost full.

  Still, it had been so long since he had seen any of these things. The picture still came when he willed it, but how true the colors were, how accurate the details, he could no longer say.

  Sound was more real, as was smell, and touch. He could hear the buzzing of insects—a small swarm above his head, larger chirpers over in that direction, the smell of pollens, of grass shorn by domesticated plant-eaters that had been tethered near here. And the hard ground beneath his belly, the roughness of the grass blades, a pebble under his thigh, not exactly comfortable, but not irritating enough to warrant changing his position.

  And now the ground vibrating slightly. Someone walking toward him. Afsan lifted his head.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Dybo.”

  “Dybo.” Afsan relaxed again, letting his long jaw rest against the ground. “Your step is lighter than it used to be.”

  “Yes,” said the Emperor, who, judging by the way his voice had changed location, was crouching a few paces to Afsan’s right.

  “How do you feel?” asked Afsan.

  “To my considerable surprise,” said Dybo, “I feel better than I’ve ever felt before. But I’ll tell you: when all this is over, I shall eat an entire hornface as a reward.” Dybo paused. “That is, of course, if I win.”

  Afsan’s tail was sticking up in the air. He flicked it absently to disperse insects. “Think positively, my friend. And, by all means, keep thinking of that hornface, if it motivates you.”

  There was quiet between them. The comfortable quiet of two old friends, a quiet that neither felt a need to fill. The bugs in the distance continued to chirp.

  “Afsan?”

  “Yes, Dybo?”

  “How do you assess me, compared to Rodlox?”

  Afsan reached over to Gork, and slid his hand soothingly over the beast’s leathery hide. “I have never seen Rodlox.”

  “No, of course not. But you must have an opinion.”

  Gork’s hide had warmed mightily in the sunlight. If the lizard had been alone, Afsan was sure it would have shuttled into the shade, but Gork was always reluctant to leave its master. Afsan pushed himself up onto his feet and followed the slight swelling of the ground caused by distended roots in toward the trunk of a nearby tree. Gork padded along next to him, hissing contentedly. The shade was cool. “Rodlox is loud and belligerent,” Afsan said at last.

  “And I am not,” said Dybo, as if it were a failing to not be those things.

  “You are peaceful and, well, pleasant.”

  “He’s stronger than me, Afsan. Even after all of this training, sure he’s still stronger.”

  Gork nuzzled against Afsan’s legs. “Physically, yes.”

  “And, Afsan, I have lived in awe of your intellect since we first met. I know I’m not the brightest person in the world.”

  Afsan said nothing.

  “If I’m not the strongest, and I’m not the brightest, then perhaps Rodlox is right. Perhaps I should not be the leader.”

  “There is something else to consider.”

  “What else can there be, besides intellectual and physical prowess?”

  “There’s goodness, Dybo. There’s moral rectitude. There’s doing the right thing when the wrong thing would be easier. Those are your strengths, Dybo. And those, more than anything else, are what a good ruler needs.”

  Dybo was silent for a time. “Thank you,” he said, and then: “But those traits sound flimsy against muscle and brains. Do I really have a hope of winning against the blackdeath?”

  “If there’s a god in heaven, you’ll win.”

  Dybo answered wistfully. “Coming from the person who took God out of the heavens, that does little to comfort me.”

  Afsan’s expression was carefully blank.

  The blackdeath had been held captive for many dekadays now. Its pen was a giant area just north of the arena, hastily walled off by fences of stone. Indeed, the pen itself was bigger than the actual arena. The blackdeath had tried to scale the stone walls, but could not, and, although it occasionally still tried—perhaps having forgotten its previous attempts—it had mostly settled into its life of captivity.

  At the south end, the pen’s walls connected with the pointed apex of the walls to the diamond-shaped arena. Through a gate in the arena wall, a shovelmouth was driven into the pen every ten days or so, to provide food for the blackdeath.

  Dybo often watched the blackdeath. Ladders had been built up to the top of the stone wall, and Dybo sat for great lengths of time on the edge, his feet dangling down the inside of the wall, his tail dangling off the outside. He observed that the blackdeath only seemed happy when it was stalking and killing the shovelmouths.

  It was a horrendous beast even here, even caged, but it had a beauty and a nobility about it. Dybo’s observation perch was upwind of the creature, and so long as he sat still, it paid him no attention. Next to him on the wall’s upper surface lay a small satchel containing books, papers, and writing leathers.

  Dybo was surprised to hear the sound of flexing wood made by someone coming up the ladder he’d leaned against the outer wall. He swiveled his head around and saw that Rodlox was ascending. Dybo got up and walked along the wall’s top edge—it was barely wide enough for that—until he was about five paces from the top of the ladder.

  Rodlox reached the top and instead of walking five paces in the opposite direction, thereby putting the traditional territorial buffer between himself and Dybo, he simply sat directly down. Everything about the governor of Edz’toolar bespoke challenge.

  The movement on the top of the wall caught the blackdeath’s eye. It let out a thunderous roar. Dybo took some pleasure in noting that, just for an instant, Rodlox’s fingerclaws danced out into the light of day in response. He was not as fearless as he liked to appear. Dybo was a gifted mimic—in his younger days, he’d been known for his humorous impressions of the voices of the palace staff. He thought about copying the blackdeath’s roar to see again the sight of Rodlox frightened, but prudence got the better of him. Instead, he simply said nothing.

  “You spend much time up here, looking at that beast,” said Rodlox. “It must be frightening for you, to see the creature that will cause your death.”

  Dybo’s tone was lackadaisical. “Whatever you say, Rodlox.” He went back to looking at the dumb brute. The other dumb brute, that is.

  Suddenly Rodlox was pointing at Dybo’s right hand. “What happened to you?”

  Dybo lifted his arm. Two of his fingers were missing. “This, you mean?”

  Rodlox’s teeth clicked together nastily. “Does the Emperor stuff his face so quickly that even his own fingers get chomped off?”

  There was an ancient gesture that Dybo thought briefly about making, but this hand lacked the key digit needed for it. “No, Rodlox, nothing like that. I lost these fingers while practicing.”

  Rodlox apparently didn’t really care about Dybo’s injury
; the digits, after all, would grow back soon enough anyway. He looked down at the blackdeath, slowly pacing the length of its pen. “I can beat that creature with one arm tied behind my back,” Rodlox said defiantly.

  Dybo’s expression was inscrutable as he also looked down at the caged beast. “I can do better than that,” he said at last.

  Chapter 36

  Fra’toolar

  At last, the Dasheter set sail again, traveling along the southern coast of Capital province, past the shore of Kev’toolar, and finally across the Bay of Vatasor, to the windy, rocky coast of Fra’toolar, where it deposited Toroca and his team back at the same beach it had picked them up from all those days ago.

  Toroca was pleased to be back at work. Pack Derrilo was now well established in the buildings overlooking part of the cliff face, and the Pack members seemed pleased to have once again visitors from Capital City—especially since Toroca had brought along many fine wares from the Capital as gifts for Jodor and her people.

  As soon as they were settled in, Toroca ordered a major excavation, hoping to find another one of the strange blue artifacts. His team worked every daylight moment just below the chalk seam of the Bookmark layer, the bottommost rock stratum containing fossils, but nothing turned up. Toroca began to fear the strange thing he’d found was a one-of-a-kind fluke. Finally, frustrated, he ordered the use of explosives, the kind of blackpowder used to clear out rocks when building roads. It seemed a safe move: Toroca was pretty sure that even such blasts wouldn’t damage artifacts built of the blue material, although, of course, he had to move far enough along the cliff face that the explosion wouldn’t put at risk the buildings that Pack Derrilo was occupying.

  Blasting was always dangerous; road builders lost many people in accidents with explosives—either blown up by mounds of powder that went off prematurely or buried under rock slides caused by the explosions. Indeed, it was not uncommon to see a road worker with one or both hands in the process of regeneration, stubby yellow fingers sprouting from a tiny palm.

  Delplas was the team’s explosives expert. She poured black-powder into six funnels made of paper, each of which had a fuse of twine sticking out of its apex, and stuck them in cracks just below the Bookmark layer. Delplas’s hands were her originals; they showed none of the mottling or discoloration associated with parts regenerated in adulthood. This inspired some degree of confidence, but the pheromones wafting on the wind made clear how nervous everyone was.

  Six of the seven team members would have to act as fuse lighters. Toroca, of course, was going to be one of those. It wouldn’t do to order others to perform a task he was reluctant to undertake himself.

  From his vantage point, some hundred and thirty paces up the cliff face, he could see two of the other fuse lighters. But three more were hidden amongst the rocks. The only way to do it was to shout off a countdown.

  “Five,” yelled Delplas.

  Toroca fumbled with the wooden match.

  “Four.”

  He stuck the match against a rock. It didn’t take.

  “Three.”

  He tried again and this time it spluttered to life.

  “Two.”

  The wind was stronger than he’d thought. It blew out the match. He scrambled for another—

  “One.”

  —struck it, shielded the flame, and—

  “Zero.”

  —touched it to the fuse, which began to burn with an acrid smell. He watched long enough to be sure the fuse wouldn’t blow out, then, as fast as he could, scrambled down the steep rock face, climbing ropes providing handholds where the rock itself would not. Once on level ground, he ran, tipping forward, his thick tail flying out behind, his back parallel to the dirt. To his left, two others were likewise running with all their strength; to his right, three more. Toroca was counting in his head; the fuse should burn for twenty more beats.

  Delplas had used a lot of powder; they’d have to run as fast as they—

  Toroca tripped, his toeclaws having caught in a small crevice in the ground. His body slammed into the hard, cracked dirt, his chest riblets pressing in.

  Dazed, he tried to make it to his feet, then realized there was no time.

  He rolled on his side, looked back. Delplas was the only one behind him still, but now by only a body-length or two. Her face was a mask of concern.

  And then the powder ignited, like thunder, each cone exploding at almost, but not quite, the same instant. The face of the cliff seemed to shatter, like an eggshell, then hang, suspended for a half a beat, and then, and then, and then—

  —tumbling and falling down, thousands of slabs of gray shale, a massive cloud of dust blowing off to the west, a hail of pebbles raining out of the sky, even this far away—

  —wingfingers startled into flight—

  —and to Toroca’s shock, a previously unseen herd of wild runningbeasts stampeding away from the cliff’s base.

  Toroca brushed himself off and got to his feet. Delplas, mouth open in a loose grin, held up both hands, her badge of office, intact.

  The dust cloud was incredible, and the stench of blackpowder filled the air. When it finally cleared, Toroca’s jaw dropped wide open.

  Half the embankment had been reduced to rubble. Protruding from what was left of the cliff face was a vast rounded structure, the size of a very large building, made of the enigmatic blue material.

  Chapter 37

  Capital City

  Out on the street, Afsan couldn’t see the crowd, but he knew it was there nonetheless. He could smell it, smell the pheromones of every single one of the passersby. How many? He couldn’t say. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands. The pheromones weren’t just the normal bodily scents, either. He was used to the occasional stuff of a female in heat, or a female about to lay eggs, or an individual of either sex primed for the hunt, or the unmistakable signal of one torpid after a large meal.

  But these pheromones were different.

  Fear.

  Claustrophobia.

  A sense of being trapped.

  They washed over him, chemical waves. And he—even he, scholar’s scholar, the palace’s foremost intellectual—was not immune to their effects.

  The tips of his fingers tingled, his claws itching in their sheaths, eager to pop out into the light of day. Whether those around him were showing the same restraint as he, keeping their claws hidden, he had no way to tell.

  With each step, he felt his torso tipping forward, as if into the horizontal posture of territorial challenge. He pulled himself right again and again, but the tipping was becoming more and more pronounced.

  Muscles in his throat were contracted, held rigidly under conscious control. His dewlap felt as though it was ready, at any moment, to balloon up into a great ruby ball.

  And there was a strange sensation, a working of muscles, inside his head. It finally came to him—his eyes would have been darting left and right, nervous, scanning…if he’d had any eyes, that is.

  He knew he should get out of there, get away from the crowded streets, get back out into the countryside, to Rockscape, perhaps, where the steady breeze from off the water would blow fresh air onto him, air free of pheromones, free of tension.

  The clicking of toeclaws on the paving stones was like hail: a constant rat-a-tat, an unending barrage. How many feet? How many Quintaglios? How big a crowd?

  He tried to calm himself, to think soothing thoughts. He thought about the stars, the beautiful stars…the stars he had intended to devote his life to studying, until he’d lost his sight. Afsan shook his head, clearing his mind. Try again. He thought about Dybo, his oldest friend, his greatest supporter…who had allowed his blinding. No. He thought about Novato, lovely Novato, brilliant inventor of the far-seer, and that one magical time when their bodies had come together, that glorious night that led to the existence of his children, Haldan and Galpook, Kelboon and Toroca, Drawtood and Yabool, Dynax and little Helbark, who had succumbed early on to illness. Wonderful children, br
illiant children, so many children, children everywhere, underfoot…

  Afsan found his body tipping far forward again. He forced it erect, forced his tail to touch the ground—

  —and someone stepped on it—

  —and that was it—

  Afsan felt the change in his body, felt instinct rising up, taking hold.

  He swung around, his torso coming forward as he did so, his tail lifting, his body bobbing up and down, up and down, the challenge upon him, dagamant seizing him.

  They had called him The One in his youth, the greatest hunter since the Original Five. Even blind, even in a fury, even getting on to middle age, he still had the moves, still had the timing. He could hear the breathing of the one nearest him, short, sharp intakes, as if that person, too, was fighting to retain self-control. It was a male, Afsan knew at once, the pheromone unmistakable.

  “Good Afsan,” said the voice, trying to sound soothing but the tone curdled by fear. It was a voice he recognized, a person he knew. Pod-Oro, aide to…to…Afsan’s mind was fogging, his intellect ebbing…to governor Rodlox of Edz’toolar…

  So much the better.

  Afsan lunged forward, arms outstretched. His hands connected. A shoulder beneath his left, a haunch under his right. Oro was completely horizontal himself, in a pose of challenge. His head would be right about—

  Afsan felt his own skin tearing, Oro’s claws slicing through his upper arm. It didn’t matter; the pain didn’t really register. All that mattered now was the kill—

  As long as he was in partial physical contact with Oro, as long as he could feel a limb or a bit of his torso, Afsan could extrapolate where the other’s vulnerable parts would be.

  The One.

  Afsan’s torso shot forward and down, bringing his head in low, jaws agape.

  The crunch of neck bones.

  Teeth popping from their sockets.

  And the taste of blood, hot and surging…

  Oro didn’t even scream as he died. His body just fell to the stone roadway with a dull thud.