The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (12 page)

Captain nodded. And soon thereafter, in his nostrils too the reek of putrescence began to bloom and burn. A dull buzzing roar began to rise: countless thousands of flies, still at some distance. The captain’s face assumed its severest aspect, braced against a stench that could be little short of emetic for him.

Demane whispered, “If you need some help standing the smell . . .”

Manfully—foolishly—Captain shook his head.

A clearing. Flies frenzied in the air. The sun shone down upon a massive stump, truncated by lightning-strike about ten feet above their heads. The cataclysmic fall of this adolescent redwood had smashed a long glade through the jungle. The gap in the canopy admitted light by which all the boneyard’s horrors could be seen: several dozen bodies, human and swine.

Some butcher had not judged them different meats. For with intimate promiscuity cadaver of man and carcass of pig lay strewn together, in every attitude and condition of death. A few freshkill, some fallen to bones. Most bodies in intermediate states: well and thoroughly dead—liquescent, bloated, purpling—and yet quick with life too, such were the worms, the seething coverlet of flies. Disjointed limbs were littered round about; and everywhere underfoot, clots of errant pork, strange gobbets, ribbons of flesh. Bad as these sights were, for Captain the smell could only be worse. Breathe by mouth if he liked, but the gases of decomposition would be stinking to point of savor. Every breath over his tongue would taste of vile broth.

Cravenly, Demane invoked arts to which Captain had no recourse. He kept raw emotion at bay, his sensibilities more nearly animal than a man’s.

As Aunty had once with him, he murmured and gestured: “ . . . see how the wizard’s two-times picky? Us or pigs: nothing else. Ah, look at that one there. The way the jukiere take only two or three good bites? It won’t fill up on just one body, they
always
waste. It is a [mainstay of entropic necromancy] . . . part of their bad juju . . .”

And there was Cumalo. The cat had kicked sticks, leaves, dirt over the body. Out from under this mess extended their brother’s legs and sandaled feet. Demane and the captain approached. A half-dozen crows saucily dawdled, gouging out last bits, cawing complaints at them, before at last taking to wing and scattering down to other feasts. With the butt of his spear Demane knocked aside the shoddy cairn. Facedown, Cumalo lay atop swatches of his clawed-apart robe. The rigid fingers of one hand clenched about some final treasure, which Demane crouched to recover: a knucklebone die. Iridescent flies resettled along the white and red-gummed exposure of his pelvis and femur bones. The back of the body, apart from the mauled shoulder, and the neck, lolling askew—“You see, Captain? They kill by choking”—remained whole. Demane swung the butt of his spear toward bushes a few long strides away, under which were heaped the ropes and bags of their brother’s entrails, pulled out whither the taint couldn’t turn the meat faster. Demane paused doubtfully. Did he belabor? Was he speaking with strange dispassion? Both of these? He peeked sidelong.

Captain sweated copiously. His face was drawn taut, immobile but for his upper lip quivering in a nauseated sneer. Abruptly he staggered back, bowed forcibly: retching forth a mouthful of water, and then heaving dryly several times. There was no reckless courage in this world—no hardihood, no manful strength, no mad feats on fields of battle—that would keep down the gorge in the boneyard of a jukiere. Demane allowed bitter citrus attar to flood his mouth. He pulled the captain upright and forced a deep strange kiss. The agile mollusc of his tongue lapped over and under Captain’s, and then around and up into either nostril. Once let go, Captain sucked in a long breath and rubbed at his nose, while the tart potency stunned his sense of taste and smell. He grunted—hornlike, tuneful—and nodded ungracious thanks.

The men this side of the continent didn’t like their weakness watched, so Demane turned away, studying the ground. He wandered, and hunkered down next to prints lately pressed into bloody muck. The noisome airs and flies’ whining roar blunted the fine acuity of his nose and ears; but sight had all its sharpness. Something was bothering him about the sign, these prints; what? When Demane next glanced over, Captain had found the remains of the merchant Iuliano. Demane looked down again, trying to grasp what eluded him. Jukiere tracks, no doubt about that: the spread and shape of toes, the forefoot polydactyl where the claws didn’t retract . . . And this was sure enough the boneyard of a jukiere, all the waste of half eaten bodies, and yet,
something
—

A dry stick cracked, nearby.

“Here it come!” Demane shouted.

The great cat roared, just out of sight in the trees. Closer to the noise, Captain bolted toward it, spear in hand. Demane had followed only three steps when the jukiere broke cover and streaked across his path, crashing westward into the brush, though the captain had gone north. “West, Captain,
west
!” Demane shouted, while turning to give chase.

His attention narrowed to matters of pursuit. The great cat surged around the trunks of trees, plunged through black densities of brush. Demane held his best sprint without tiring; but faster over the short distance, the jukiere kept easily ahead. The ground began to grade upwards, and there Demane found himself gaining with every step. He burst into sunlight where the slope cleared to treelessness between thickets. Only a short lunge away up the embankment, the tiger whirled at bay. It leapt back downwards.

Male. The bearded ruff, those thickly gnarled foreshoulders. Downcurved tusks a full foot long—

Demane moved with instinctual speed. Planting his spear’s butt against the ground, he leveled its point toward the cat, and braced for impact. The shaft jarred deeply into leaf-rot. Demane ducked from scrabbling claws, yanking with all his might. Impaled, the jukiere vaulted overhead and on down the embankment. The spear tore loose from his grasp, he himself somersaulting downward one time, before arresting his descent with a snatched handhold of rank vine.

Only in movement could the jukiere be seen. When still, the creature’s brindled coat merged with the jungle’s greenish light and shadow. The fur of its flanks and back was mature evergreen, dark-stippled as if muddy. Its fur hung thick and longer along throat and underbelly, new-grass-color, white with age at the fringes. The spear had broken the joint of the great cat’s left foreshoulder, and there was lodged. The cat stepped its right forepaw and great weight onto the shaft, but the wood held, unbending. Not would it ever break, so long as Demane lived. Batting at the shaft, the jukiere worried at it until the spear fell free.

Demane kicked against slick crushed greenery and mud. His hand clutching at vines, his feet gaining purchase neither to move upwards nor to stand. Wind rose at his back, blowing to the jukiere and past him came a windborne power spinning counter to his own, TSIM
tsoa
. The hot air became foul with maneater’s funk, with bowels torn bloodily open; the wind rang with such cries as quarry gives when caught, when eaten alive: the squeals and screams, a rare decipherable word,
help
. As the jukiere pulled strength from the Wildeeps, this shrieking miasma whipped about it. The red hole in the tiger’s shoulder ceased to bleed, and fleshed over, and the nude flesh furred. That fourth paw came down gingerly. The cat put confident weight on it.

He could do the same, Demane saw: spinning the power as
TSIM
rather than
tsoa
. A chrism of bright sun poured down, and humanity dropped off him like a cloak. His imperfect flesh ripped itself inside-out with the rise to perfection,
Not
piece by piece, all at once: metamorphosis is like death,
as he welcomed the change he’d fought off since crossing over into the Wildeeps
in that it ruptures mind from body. By grace of the blood, though, your consciousness can cohere into flesh and bone after transformation.
If you’re strong enough, if you don’t vanish into the void.
Only you can judge whether the gods’ heritage is enough expressed in you to bring you back past throwing off human shape. No one can tell you that; only you will know. For a talisman, gather thoughts of what matters most to you.

—All
mine
shall live so long as I do: I spear these desperadoes in defense of my brothers. For clumsy little Walead; for Faedou who took a knife to the leg; for Ca—

Join together these precious lights as a beacon, and the gathered shining of your treasures will call you back from the fall into death.

—Aunty needed one of us to pick up the burden. Somebody has to. I’m not leaving the green hills to hurt you, whom I love. I go because I’m the last one left who can—

Becoming the stormbird is as easy for me as you put on your mantle for holidays; I’ve got the trick of it. I think you can get it too. But don’t hurt yourself, Mountain Bear. A heart like yours or mine works miracles best doing for others. So wait on your cause.
Or on love.
His talons, rootlike, sank lengthily into the mud. Demane came back within a heartbeat: winged and leatherskinned, now. He was no longer a couple inches shy of six feet but just past seven, with hands and maw full of knives.

The tiger made to spring, low and hunch-shouldered. Its sooty lips curled up, the ribbon of its tongue lolling. Fiery pinpricks glowed in its wizard-eyes.

Demane fell back a step, and another man’s last thoughts became his own:

Four lines of black ice slit his belly to tatters. His first scream owed more to fright and surprise, not yet wholly to pain. Hot wet weight slopped down his lap and legs, the living burden of his body suddenly lightened. He thought only to—
run!
But already too weak, he fell sprawling about to shout
Help!
Captain!
Sorcerer!
But agony forestalled any such outcry: fingerlength spikes drove through his shoulder. The socket burst, collarbone crumbled, and bony wing of his back shattered. Great rough strength slung him through the mud. The bonfires on the Road went dark. He saw nothing, felt only the scratching smack of leaves, and weird soft loops entangling his legs. He could scream, he could kick—there was nothing else left to do. A gamey fetor lunged at him,
hot
, faceward. Last act in life, he got up his elbow, somehow, into the way. Almighty teeth savaged that arm, and folded it down throttlingly around his own throat. There was no breath and no breath and still there was none, and still none. You could count these last slow final blinks on the fingers of one hand, nor need all five. Drugged sleep dampened the fires of his terror. This world ebbing, the enigma burgeoned . . .

Cumalo died. Demane woke, toppling backwards under the weight of the wizard. Claws raked down his chest unable to score his hide. Fangs closed on his impenetrable throat. Stronger, he tore himself free of the crushing maw. The evil wind blew again, and the wizard’s green brindled coat went black and bright as a thundercloud, its fur blazing and freezing in restless patches. Crackling flashes snapped between the hot and cold spots. Demane struck again and again, with all his strength, but his bladed fingers turned on the jukiere’s flesh, and frost bit his hands. Fire scorched them. Where was his spear? The absent gods had left that spear for this very purpose: killing jukiere. Where
was
it? Neither talon nor claw drawing any blood, they traded blows, impervious to each other. The cat snarled, and Demane husked the strange roar that bespoke his anger in this shape.

And still the Wildeeps went without master, its numina inexhaustible and unclaimed: so draw
again
. Drink!

Demane drank. His galled and ashen hands blackened, sleek and whole.
When I was even younger than you, my mother came back from a long time away—but not in the flesh. She came as light, only to say goodbye. I think she’d gone too far or too deep working some great miracle, and so lost the route back to humanity.
He batted the jukiere off its feet and against a great tree, which burst to flinders, the splintered wood into flames. Back broken, the jukiere tried to rise, front paws scrabbling. Time to finish it. Laying his talons point-on-point to make spears of his hands, Demane winged toward the cat.
Which drink would be one too far? When was the last line crossed?
Already?

In unison Demane and the wizard reached to partake of the Wildeeps—and neither could. Back and forth, they wrestled for ascendancy, the jukiere winning. It surged to its feet. On patches of its fur the action of minute particles ceased, or nearly so; but the hot patches blazed with diametric heat. When Demane speared down a hand to impale the cat, his hand burst into flames. The talons shattered on contact. Seething eruptions of blisters went up his arm. Body and wings: his whole self began to smoke. He crashed to earth. Trees—all the vegetation roundabout—crisped to black, the cinders falling to white ash, and the ash too burning. In another moment, some patch of the jukiere’s fur, infinitely cold, would meet parallel fires, and the resulting discharge . . .

One last drink, then: nothing measured, as much as he could hold. Everything. The talons that had broken regrew, the intact hardened to adamant, and then tapered finer than a hairsbreadth. He flung that hand around, knifing into flesh, cleaving between ribs. The wizard halted the talons’ plunge with its whole visceral will; its stormy fur went dark. They strained against one another. And still Demane drank, as the river below drinks when the dam above has broken.
“The gods travel as light,” she said. “I’m joining the Tower in the purissime. You and the children come up when you can.” A star falling the wrong way: that’s how she left me.
It is possible for one to win and yet lose—or the other to lose, and die, but take out the enemy too. The jukiere stopped its struggles and instead lunged, with jaws fully agape, forward onto the impaling talons. The tiger’s fangs and tusks, death-limned and aglow with every mustered erg of necromancy, would for a last act snap shut upon Demane’s head.