The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (13 page)

There’s another, deeper metamorphosis, I think. No, I can’t tell you anything about that one. We’ll learn it by ourselves, if we ever do.
You and me both.

Demane spat forth a black glimmering particulate which unmade everything it touched. Each annihilative spark vanished in the instant of unmaking until, headless, the jukiere fell—
stormbird triumphant!
Demane roared as strength upon strength poured unstoppably into him. His skin took light, sublimating off his bones, and they themselves began to glow, turning to hot gas. Up or away he was carried at great speed across darkness into some dense, rushing, many-layered radiance. In the tidal light he found his tier among winged brethren, who gladly made room for him. And having gathered him up, glory deepened to sweep him from the shores of Earth back toward infinity, but
she
caught his arm. The woman had the quiet poise of Demane’s elder sister, a muscled shape like his own, Aunty’s stature, the ageless looks of his parents: so that they all must share close blood, though who this stranger was Demane couldn’t guess. “Stay longer than a moment, boy, and there’s no going back. Will you let that jukiere take over the Wild Depths?” Hard to care about terrestrial trivia when the gods of
TSIMtsoa
called from only a little farther upstream . . . “Wait, boy—
wait!
Didn’t you leave somebody behind? What was it you kept meaning to say to him?”

—But you hate this life, Captain; you know you do. So if you promised ole Suresh this last journey, then come away with me after we get to Great Olorum. All this is so easy in the green hills. There, you and
me
could—

Demane broke from the light, and fought his way back down toward mortality.

“Ha!” Demane laughed; the sonority was palpable in his belly, his bones, his teeth. “I can
feel
that one. My teeth jumping.” Next, Isa gave a rich whistle too high and fast to credit from human lips, except that Demane lay there watching the feat, listening rapt. It was like a bitty songbird’s welcome to the sunrise. “Now
that
one’s pretty, right there. But say again? It went by so fast, I couldn’t catch one word.” Other voices too, none of them any strain at all for him, every one equally his own. And at last Demane exclaimed, “No, no, no:
that
one! I like that one best.”

“This is a woman’s voice, you know.”

“Is it? Beautiful on anybody. Just seem like it fit you, that’s all. But I could see a man or woman, really.”

“No, it’s a woman’s voice.
Deepwaters
,
¹
we say in Sea-john. Men’s start just a little bit deeper, and not so rich. I like this one, too. A long time ago, I used to . . . well, that stuff doesn’t matter now. All right, pop—for you. But only when we’re alone, you hear? On caravan I have to speak much lower; for respect, so brothers will follow. This one’s still too high.”

The weight of the jukiere towed him to his knees, and from there sprawled facedown in its clammy fur. Just a man again, with little more than any man’s strength, Demane couldn’t shift it. The wizard was
heavy.
Its eyes had turned to glass, its flesh to a quarter ton of clay. He braced his heels to the headless carcass and, pulling back against the wet-suck of the wound, dredged forth his arm. It came free badly scored along its length, all gashed and chewed by splintered bone.

He cradled his torn arm to him. A sip of power from the Wildeeps would heal these injuries. But could he hold himself to that, just a sip, or would another apocalyptic binge rapture him beyond the sky, newest and least godling of the radiant pantheons? Well before noon on the day he decides to go dry, the drunkard already finds himself trembling. That Demon whispers:
You can handle it.
A little taste.
Just get your lips wet.

No . . . he’d better let the wounds stand.

Captain was nowhere in sight, and nowhere close by: must have gotten turned around. He’d know to go back and wait at the boneyard. And just how long would he abide there before striking out alone? In space, it was only a quarter league east to reach the Road, but there were several millennia to cross in time . . . Demane cut off that thought. He fetched his spear from where it had fallen. The captain, no fool, would wait longer than the short while that had passed.

Demane jogged back the way he’d come.

Just a man again, child of
TSIMtsoa
? Knifesharp leaves struck him always flat-side, never edged; thickets thinned for him, and fanged thornbrakes, pulled aside, whipped back and missed, points always angled to his advantage: the briars caught by greenery, or broken off or blunted. Any other man—just a man—would wonder that all the rotten bits of debris, the sticks and rocks underfoot, kept presenting only soft or smooth-side-up to his soles. But His Majesty, thinking deep thoughts, was oblivious to the scramble of his countless servitors. Demane had yet to learn he’d never be quit of godhead having now put it on.

Ahead was a tree. Approaching it Demane’s step slowed, his knees made weak by sudden understanding. Jukiere piss-sign had splashed all over the tree’s roots, wet only a day ago: at most two. But the scent didn’t belong to the jukiere cooling stiff and flyblown on the embankment behind him. There was another, nor aged nor male. She was in fresh youth, just a few days from throwing a litter of fiends. Demane ran.

Soft fingers held him, a damp cloth wiping. He blinked sleepily.

Back from bathing, Isa looked up from these ministrations. “It’s true, what you said. But you don’t know the brothers yet, Demane. Somebody’s got to look out for them.” He tossed the cloth aside, beyond the sheets. “It’s in you to learn fast. So after we come to Great Olorum, take over the captaincy if you want.” Isa smiled. “
I’d
follow you. You’d be ten times better at it than I am.”

Demane sat up, caught him, pulled him down. “You just now met me in the market. Where do you get all this?”

“I’m telling you, D., you’ve got a hero’s shine on you. Just as bright as anybody I ever knew. I know it when I see it.”

“Me? Naw; I’m no hero. You got me mixed with yourself, maybe. You been in big battles, ain’t you? And wasn’t you over there in that war?” Demane tapped the red coral and white shell necklace Isa wore, one among many, and many-colored. Isa gave him no reply, only a glance that said too much, or said it too vaguely, for interpretation (his finger tracing vascular bulk and striation of Demane’s shoulder and arm).
Over there
, yes: and marshal of the campaign, too. But Demane would only learn this much later on, when the knowledge could make no difference. “Me, I don’t know nothing about big combat or command. You the one.”

“I know what I’m good for. Believe that, Demane. And I know that if you keep up your wandering, this whole continent will know your name one day.”

Demane smiled peaceably, settling deeper in the pillows; his fastidious new lover sprawled half on, half beside him. If the point was to please him, then Isa could just as well have lain beside him until morning, smelling funky and used. But during two days in bed, with only a quick step out here and there to wolf some meal in the market, Isa always found an imperceptible moment to slip off and bathe, between each time they made love and next. And he never spoiled the afterglow, nor lingered long enough to be missed. What timing! A supernatural gift for love, you’d almost have said. So off south—tomorrow morning!—over the burning rocky hills, across the weeks-wide desert, and finally to some distant, meridonal city called Great Olorum? Sure, all right. This man’s reverent touch, his
vox seraphica
; the beard that looked to be coarse, but was downy to the touch . . . what was there to complain of here?

“I was wrong about one thing, though.”

“Yeah, whas that?”

“I thought you were going to be a hard man. You know—mean to me.”

“What?” Demane frowned. “But why would you go with somebody like that?” He sat up on an elbow. “
Why
—?”

“Aw, don’t get upset, pop. I’m
glad
you’re kind.” If you’d distract a lion? Throw some bloody steak. “Hey!” Captain slipped a smooth long leg across Demane’s lap to straddle him. “Ready to go again? Uh huh, I
see.
We’ve got to make sure you get plenty now, because I can’t let you have it like this on the road . . .”

Overcast warred with blue in the windy firmament. It was sweltering, not long past noon. Two heaps of ash remained of the night’s bonfires, red cinders winking in the white powder. A half dozen burros wandered on the black earth verge, heads in the green while they stood in the mud of the Road. The caravan had decamped, all save for a few brothers—three, four, or five—prayerfully huddled at center-Road. Past the distortion of the veil, the brotherly shapes wavered as if seen through heat shimmer; only the faintest trace of their wet and unwashed humanity came to his nose, their voices remote echoes in his ears. He tossed his burden onto the Road. The grisly decapitation of the monster struck the ground not far from where they knelt in strange vigil, and the head rolled closer still. Five dim forms rose, making noises that were murmurs to him, too faint to make sense of. Walead?—yes; it was Walé who crouched down again to poke at the gore, the tusks, the tongue lolling over the sharp teeth of the gaping mouth.

Xho Xho ran up to the edge of the Road where Demane stood like a revenant on the threshold.

“Where the captain went?” the boy asked. “Why you don’t come out of the trees, Sorcerer?”

“I cain’t, Xho.”

“Hey, you watch out,” Kazza called. “Hear me, Xho Xho? Watch out now!”

The other brothers kept a warier distance. Something wasn’t right. The Sorcerer was barked over with half-dried mud, jellied gore, twigs, and bits of leaves. Blood slathered his left hand and arm to the elbow, the right one lacerated and ensleeved with blood right to the shoulder. He looked to have gathered up some man’s spilled wet insides and tried, by hand, to restore them to the voided cavity. Invisible yet bright, heatless but unbearably hot, he bore a corona any fool could feel. Xho Xho alone was unawed, hanging back from fear of the forest, not of the Sorcerer.

Demane knew them by turban, shaggy hair, narrow shoulders. Kazza, Wilfredo, Faried. He called. “I’ma do my best to meet up with you down south. Go on! Catch up with the caravan. I see you when the caravan cross that other stream southside of the Wildeeps, all right?”

Kazza crept a little closer. “You dead, Sorcerer? Come back some kind of haint?”

Demane chuckled. “No, baby.” A grim noise, for a chuckle. “I just made a bargain, became what y’all been calling me—a sorcerer. It ain’t easy for me to get on the Road or leave the Wildeeps anymore.” Demane put a hand back against the nearest trunk and leaned, taking seat at the roots. He rested his hands on updrawn knees. “I want to see Sea-john down in Great Olorum. Y’all go run after the caravan. I see you down at other end of the Wildeeps,
Godwilling
, as Faedou say. Take that jukiere head to show Master Suresh and them.”

Xho Xho stepped into the forest. The rest cried out in alarm. The smeared apparition of the boy wobbled as if seen through rheum or tears, and became clear once off the Road, by the tree where Demane sat. “Faedou all of a sudden just up and fell out. You better come see, Sorcerer. He dying, I think.” Xho Xho took hold of a filthy hand and tried to pull Demane to standing: budging him not. “And where’s the captain?”

“I told you, little man,” Demane said. “I cain’t get onto the Road.” On both cheeks he bore a delta of rinsed skin.

Willy called. “Ehtá a punto de morir, Sorcerer. I seen his leg, and it look about rotted off already. How he come this far on it, I don’t even know. Tell you this, though. If you don’t work some kind of sorcery on him
quick
, Faedou will be stone dead fore the night come.”

Demane looked out onto the Road. Someone lay there stretched out on blankets just where the brothers had knelt. It was like peering down into deep running water, trying to see across the veil between the Road and Wildeeps. From here, he couldn’t make out who lay there, or whether that brother stirred, or his chest still rose and fell.

Demane stood and wiped either eye with a wrist. “Let me see what I could do. Y’all carry him to me. The Wildeeps won’t hurt none of you. This whole place is my house now.” Afraid, the brothers dithered. Demane spoke again, in tones to get them jumping. “All right! Don’t just stand there stupid! Bring him here.” As they moved to obey Demane gave Xho Xho a little push back towards the others. “Help em carry, little man. You and Walead can lift one corner of the blankets together.”

Like a son too often told before,
Be patient, your father’s coming back soon
,
Xho Xho clung to the Sorcerer’s hand. “Wait. Tell me something, though,” the boy said. “What happen to the captain?”

Demane might have answered, but a fit of palsy took his face. His mouth worked soundlessly. He shook his head.

The shroud of leaves frays and a brightness ahead dapples the jungle. There are glimpses of the jagged stump rising into sunlight. He can hear but not yet see the jook-toothed tiger growling, the captain and his harsh, controlled pants. All while Demane runs, he shouts too, I’m coming. Hang on. There was another one. I killed it. He bursts out into hot glare. Captain and the tiger are a hundred long paces up, tangling where other trees overshadow the compost of leaf and woodrot remaining of the felled tree’s canopy. Captain has lost his spear and fights with a sword. It’s always been sheathed across his back, although he but rarely draws it. A sword’s very much the wrong weapon, requiring far too close quarters, for the power and claws of a jukiere. Captain’s spear must have broken. He wouldn’t just throw it aside,
he wouldn’t.

First one paw and then the other bats at him. As sails of a ship belly in the wind, when tacking hard off one course to another, Captain bows deeply over the claws, and as fast again, bows at a slightly altered angle. His robe’s much slashed but person still unscathed. As if down some abyss in freefall, Captain drops. The tiger leaps over and misses pinning him flat. He’s up off the ground, afoot when she wheels on him with chops snapping. He skips back blindly from the fangs and bringing around his sword twohanded, all his might in the blow, arrests the jukiere’s whirling lunge. This lays another thin red stripe through the cat’s darkbrindled fur. She flinches, though not much. That cut and the others are weirdly shallow. The wizard won’t be killed without a better weapon than the one Captain holds . . . Demane should have been at his side all along.
Isa.
Hang on, Isa. Captain’s attention splits for an instant. He must see Demane coming through the light and hear his shouts. That much he’s almost sure of.