“I would think that any dog that can herd lightning could handle even a large flock of sheep on one leg.”
“Tut! Lightning is fast; sheep are tricky and, when they want to be, deliberately deceptive. As a herdsman yourself, you should know that.”
“I spend most of my time with cattle. Cattle are not tricky.”
“No, you are right. Cattle are quite predictable.”
“And while we are talking,” Ehomba suggested, “I would be very interested to know how it is that you came to be able to talk.”
Roileé shook her head and began licking the damp backs of her paws. “Many animals can talk. They just choose not to do so in the presence of humans, who think it a unique faculty of their own. Your striking feline companion talks. He does not want to, though. It is a curse to him.”
“A curse?”
“Yes. All he wants to do is kill, and eat, and sleep, and make love, and lie in the sun in a quiet place. That is why he keeps his talking brief. It is not because he is rude; only impatient with an ability he would just as soon not have.”
“You assume much in a very short time.”
“I assume nothing, Etjole Ehomba. I know.”
“Even a dog that can speak does not know everything.”
“That is true.” The long muzzle bobbed in a canine nod. “But I know a great deal. More than most dogs. You see, I am a witch.”
“Ah, now I understand.” Ehomba nodded solemnly. “You are a woman who was, through some hex or misfortune, been turned into a dog.”
“No, you do not understand. It is nothing like that. I was born a dog, I have always been a dog, and I will die a dog. I have never been, nor would I ever want to be, human. Some dogs do nothing all their lives but proffer companionship. Others work. I am a sheepdog. But I am also a witch, taught by witches when I was a puppy.” She nodded in the direction of the bedroom door. “For many years I have kept company with Lamidy. I could have done worse. He is a kind and understanding man who knows what I am and is untroubled by the knowledge. It is good for a dog to have a human around. Good for the soul, and to have someone to change a water dish.”
“Well, witch Roileé, it is good to know you.”
“And I you.” Limpid, intelligent dog eyes met his. “You are an unusual man, Etjole Ehomba.”
The tall southerner shrugged. “Just a simple herdsman.”
“Herdsman perhaps. Simple, I am not so sure. Where are you bound?”
He told her, as he had told people before her, and when he was through she was whimpering querulously.
“It all sounds very noble and self-sacrificing.”
“Not at all,” he argued. “It is what any virtuous man would do.”
“You impute to your fellow humans a greater dignity than they deserve. I like you, Etjole Ehomba. I would help you if I could, but I am bound by the oath that binds together dog and man to remain here with my Lamidy.”
“Maybe you can help anyway.” Ehomba considered whether he wanted to make the request. And, more significantly, whether he wanted it fulfilled. In the end, he decided that knowledge of a woeful kind was an improvement over no knowledge at all. All enlightenment was good. Or at least, so claimed Asab and the other people of importance. “Can you tell me what lies ahead for my friends and me? We know little of the lands that await us.”
The dog exhaled sharply. “Why should I know anything about that?”
“I did not say that you did,” the herdsman replied quietly. On the other side of the cat-a-mountain, Simna made gargling pig noises in his sleep. Behind Ehomba, the withering fire continued to cast warmth from its bones. “I asked if you could find out.”
Canine eyes searched his fine, honest face. “You are an interesting man, Etjole Ehomba. I can herd the lightning, but I think maybe you could shear it.”
He smiled. “Even if such a thing were possible, which it is not, what would one do with clippings from the lightning?”
“I don’t know. Feed it to a machine, perhaps.” Coming to a decision, she rose, stretched her front feet out before her and thrust her hips high in the air, yawned, and beckoned for him to follow.
She stopped in the cozy room’s farthest corner, facing a two-foot-high handmade wooden box with a forward-slanting lid. On the front of the lid someone had used a large-bladed knife to engrave a pair of crossed bones with a dog heart above and singular paw print below. “Open it.”
For the barest instant, Ehomba hesitated. His mother and father and aunts and uncles and the elders of the village had often told the children stories of warlocks and witches, of sorcerers and sorceresses who could turn themselves into eagles, or frogs, into oryx or into great saber-toothed cats. He had grown up hearing tales of necromancers who could become like trees to listen silently and spy on people, and of others capable of turning themselves into barracuda to bite off the legs of unwary gatherers of shellfish. There were rumors of hermits who at night became blood-supping bats, and of scarecrowlike women who could become wind. Others were said to be able to slip out of their skins, much as one would shed a shirt or kilt. Some grew long fangs and claws and their eyes were said to be like small glowing moons of fire.
But he had never heard of a witch among the animals themselves, who had not at some time been human. He told her so.
“Do you think only humans have their conjurers and seers? Animals have their own magic, which we share but rarely with your kind. Most of it you would not understand. Some of it would not even seem like magic to you. We see things differently, hear things differently, taste and smell and feel things differently. Why should our alchemy also not be different?” Eyes the color of molten amber stared back up at him. “If you want my help, Etjole Ehomba, you must open the box.”
Still he hesitated. A backward glance showed that his companions slept on. There was no sign of movement from the direction of the cottage’s single bedroom. “Does Coubert know?”
“Of course he knows.” Her muzzle brushed the back of his hand, her wet nose momentarily damp against his dry skin. “No one can live with a witch and not know what she is. Human or dog, cat or mouse, we are all the same. Some things you cannot hide forever even from the ones you love.”
“And he has no magic powers of his own?”
“None whatsoever,” she assured him. “But he is good to me. I have clean water every day, and I do not have to kill my own food.” For the barest instant, her eyes blazed with something that ran deeper than dogness. “We are comfortable here, the two of us, and if a right woman or strong husky were to come along, neither of us would resent the other’s pairing. We complement one another in too many ways.” She gestured with her black nose. “The box.”
His long, strong fingers continued to hover over the lid. “What is in it?”
“Dog magic.”
Lifting the cover and resting it back against the wall, he peered inside. No crystal globe or golden tuning fork greeted his gaze. No bottles of powdered arcanity or pin-pierced dolls stared back up at him. There was not much at all in the bin, and what there was would not have intrigued a disgruntled thief for more than a second.
Some old bones, more than a little rancid and well chewed; a long strip of thick old leather, also heavily gnawed; a ball of solid rubber from which most of the color and design had long since been eroded; a stick of some highly polished pale yellow wood covered with bite marks; and a few pieces of aromatic root tugged from a reluctant earth comprised the bin’s entire contents.
“My treasures,” murmured Roileé. “Take them out and lay them before the fire.”
Ehomba did so, taking a seat on the hearth when he had finished. As he looked on, the dog witch used her paws to align them in a particular way: bones here, stick crossed there, ball in position, leather strip curled just so, roots positioned properly to frame them all. With her nose, she nudged and pushed, making final adjustments. When all was in readiness, she lay down on her belly, tilted back her head, and began to moan and whimper softly. Neithe
r Simna nor Ahlitah moved in their sleep, but from outside the cottage there came distant answering howls as wolves and other canids found their slumber disturbed. Ehomba felt something stir deep inside him, emotions primal and hoary, that spoke fervently of the ancient link between dog and man.
Roileé’s soft whimpering and moaning was not constant, but varied in ways he had never before heard from a dog. It was not language as he knew it, but something more basic and yet within its own special parameters equally complex. It bespoke wisdom denied to men, the intimate knowings of creatures that moved on four legs instead of two. It reeked of smells he could never know, and an acuity of hearing beyond the human pale. With these skills and senses other knowings were possible, and Roileé was a master of all these.
Within the incandescent depths of the fire something snapped, sending a glowing ember flying. It arced over the hearth to land amid the pile of gatherings. A tiny puff of smoke rose where it had settled among the leather and bones. The puff expanded, became a cloud obscuring the bright eyes of the old sheepdog, and then Ehomba too found himself engulfed.
He had always been a fast runner, but now he seemed to flow effortlessly over the ground as fast as a low-flying eagle. Trees and rocks and bushes and flowers flew past him, the flowers at shoulder level, the trees immense impossible towers that seemed to support the sky. Every sense was heightened to a degree he would not have thought possible, so that distant sights and smells and sounds threatened to overwhelm his brain’s ability to process them.
A subtle but distinct odor caused him to swerve to his left. Immediately, the musk sharpened, and seconds later a covey of startled quail exploded from the bush in which they had been hiding. He snapped at them, more out of an instinct to play than a desire to kill, for he was not hungry. Advancing on a small stream, he slaked his slight thirst, and was amazed by the distinctiveness of each swallow, at the chill of the water against his throat and the discrete flavors discernible within something seemingly as bland as the water itself.
A distant rumble caused him to lift his head from the stream, water trickling from his muzzle. Turning in the direction of the sound, ears pricked, he listened intently for a moment. When the rumble came again, he trotted eagerly in its direction, ears erect and alert, nose held high.
As he neared the source of the sound, a new smell filled his incredibly sensitive nostrils. It was acrid and distinct and he knew without having to think that he had smelled it before. But so intent was he on tracking the sound that he put off giving a name to it.
A dark shape, sleek and muscular, materialized from a thick copse of brush nearby. Startled by the unexpected appearance, he bristled and bared his teeth. Recognition quickly allayed any concern. Though far larger and stronger, the shape was familiar. Astonished at the incongruity, both parties stared at one another for a long moment. Then they turned together and, without speaking a word between them, sped off side by side, tracking the source of the sound.
It appeared so abruptly neither of them had a chance to change course, or retreat. Looming over the trees before them, it advanced like soup rising to a fast boil. Devoid of color and nasty of countenance, it swamped the trees, turning bark to black and presenting death as a shower of green needles. Ehomba and his companion turned and tried to flee, but it was too late. The dire emptiness swallowed them both. Most of the sharpened senses he had become heir to vanished: the keen sight, the splendid hearing, the acute taste. Only smell remained, and was rapidly overwhelmed. The acrid, dry, lifeless stink of the eromakadi filled his nostrils, seared his throat, and threatened to inundate his lungs, causing them to swell until they burst....
He blinked, and coughed, but not loudly or harshly. He was back in the main room of the cottage. A few flames still leaped hesitantly from the pile of glowing clinkers that was all that remained of the once blazing fire. In his chair, Simna ibn Sind slept the sleep of spirituous stupefaction. But the litah no longer stretched across the floor from wall to wall. He had curled himself into a tight ball of black fur and was twitching and moaning in his sleep.
“It will pass.”
Looking down, Ehomba saw that the sheepdog was watching the larger animal. Turning her head, her warm brown eyes met his. “The big cat was in your dream. Sometimes that will happen. Dreams are like smoke. If there happens to be more than one in the same sleep space, sometimes they will merge and flow together. I don’t think that was the kind of dream the cat is used to, but when he wakes he may well not remember any of it.” The witch eyes stared. “You remember, though.”
“Yes, I remember,” the herdsman admitted. “But I do not know what it means.”
“You asked me if I could help you see what lies ahead of you. I did as you asked. I was with you and you with me, watching, perceiving, trying to understand.” Rising and walking forward, she lifted a paw and placed it on his bare thigh.
“You are doomed to unremitting misery, your quest to failure, the rest of your life to cold emptiness. Unless you end this now. Go home, back to your village and back to your family. Before it is too late. Before you die.” Her paw slipped off his leg.
Ehomba looked away, feeling the warmth of the fire against his back, and considered the dog’s words. They were words he had heard before, in a town far, far to the south, from someone else. Another female, but not a dog. Another seeress, but one who walked on two legs instead of four. They were very different, Roileé and Rael, and yet they had spoken to him the same words. It was not encouraging.
“I cannot go back. Not until I have fulfilled a dying man’s promise. I took that upon myself willingly, and no matter how many prophets and diviners repeat to me the same death mantra, I will follow this through to its end.”
“From what I just saw and felt, its end will be your end.” This pronouncement she delivered in a matter-of-fact manner and without emotion.
“That remains to be seen. It is your interpretation, and that of one other. Events will convince me, not divinations.”
“I can only do what you asked me to do.”
He smiled gently. “I know, and I thank you for that.” Automatically, he reached out and patted her on the head. If he had thought about it he might not have done so, but he need not have worried. Instead of upbraiding him for his temerity, she moved nearer and pressed her muzzle and head against his comforting palm.
“There are some things,” she explained, “for which even witchcraft cannot substitute. A kind and comforting hand is one.”
“I understand.” Sitting there on the hearth, he continued to pet her. “There are many times since I left the village that I could have used such a touch myself.”
“You are a good man, Etjole Ehomba.” Her head pushed insistently against his soothing palm and she panted easily in the reflected heat of the fire. “The world is a poorer place whenever a good man dies.”
“Or a good dog,” he added graciously.
“Or a good dog.”
“Do not worry. I have no intention of dying.”
“Then do not disregard what I have just told you. Try to overcome it. Make me out to be a liar.”
He grinned. “I will do my best. Now, tell me something I can use. What lies to the north of here, below these mountains? Coubert spoke of many small kingdoms.”
“He spoke accurately.” She turned her head up to him but did not move away from his hand. “Lamidy is a learned man, but there are many in the towns and cities to the north who could put his erudition to shame. Not all of them are kind and decent,” she warned the herdsman. “You may have to match wits with more than one. I have looked inside your mind, but only a little. I don’t know if you’re up to it.”
“I will manage.” He spoke reassuringly if not with complete confidence. “I have always managed. Learning does not frighten me.”
“That’s good. What of your companions?”
Ehomba eyed his sleeping fellow travelers. “The litah is smarter than anyone thinks but prefers not to show it. No one will expect anythi
ng more scholarly from a big cat than a roar or loud meow anyway. As for Simna ibn Sind, his smarts are of a kind not to be found in books and scrolls, and a valuable complement to my own poor insight in such areas.”
The she-dog sniffed. “I don’t know if that will be enough to get you safely through places like Melespra or Phan. When you are uncertain, look to the night sky, to the left of the moon. There is a certain star there that may help to guide you safely through moments of uncertainty.”
“What star is that?”
“The dog star, of course,” she told him. “It is there if you need it, for serious travelers to follow. That is all I can do for you.”
Ehomba nodded appreciatively. “It will have to be enough.” Rising, he yawned sleepily. “The dream was as tiring as it was interesting. I think I had better get some rest, or tomorrow my friends will lecture me endlessly on my neglect. You must be tired, too.”
The witch dog stretched first her front end, then her rear, and also yawned, her tongue quivering with the effort. “Yes. Magic is always exhausting.”
“As must be herding lightning,” he reminded her as he sought somehow to compact his lanky frame enough for the couch to accommodate it.
“No.” Head snuggled up against tail, she curled up in front of the fire. “That was fun.”
* * * *
In the morning Coubert made breakfast for them, providing eggs and lamb chops and bread, along with a complete haunch of mutton for the grudgingly grateful Ahlitah. When Ehomba protested at this largesse, the sheepherder only smiled.
“I have plenty of food. It must be something in these mountains. The air, or the water, or the forage, but my sheep do better than anyone else’s. They grow fatter, and produce thicker wool, and drop more lambs.”
“You are fortunate,” Ehomba told him even as he glanced in the direction of a certain dog. But Roileé did not react, busy gnawing methodically on a scrungy femur.