Zan-Gah: A Prehistoric Adventure (12 page)

Zan saw that Lissa-Na cared for Dael. For a moment the discovery caused him a sharp pang which he was unable to explain to himself. But he longed to see his brother, and was ready to rise from his sickbed to rescue him. “Lissa-Na, can you bring me a spear or at least a knife? I will need a weapon to get Dael away from his captors,” and he checked to see that the sling was still tied around his waist.

Lissa knew better than to assist Zan in a reckless enterprise. She reminded him that there was nowhere to flee but into the desert where they would die if they were not well equipped for the journey. Zan was in no condition to travel, and neither was Dael. However, she promised to help them—at much risk to herself, as Zan knew—and her eyes lighted up at the prospect of delivering Dael from his suffering. She would find a way to bring him to the sacred cave.

“You care for my brother. Why? He is not one of yours.”

“I do not deny it. When he first came here, sold to us by the wasp people, he was beautiful and gentle. You are quite different from him, although you look exactly alike. He was used so roughly that it made me weep, and later, when he was often in my presence, or where I could see his wretchedness, I came to love and pity him. I have never told anyone, but I gave him food—and kind words when I could. They keep him in a cage so small that he cannot fully stand up or lie down. I have longed to bring him here, but I dared not. The Na women would not have allowed it before, but now they think it proper.”

Zan mused on what she had said. “If you can secretly bring him here, you can put him in my place. Then I could hide somewhere until we make our escape together.”

Lissa-Na, who was by disposition soft-spoken and reserved, brightened with enthusiasm and swore she would attempt it. The prospect of seeing Dael filled each of them with a private happiness. But there was something in Lissa's words that stung Zan. “She ‘loves and
pities' Dael. She will ‘put him in my place!'” he thought ruefully. Still his gratitude overwhelmed his jealousy and he eagerly awaited the night (for night it had to be) when the liberation could be brought to pass.

 

It was nine nights before it happened. Zan pretended extreme illness when members of her healing order were present, and Lissa-Na made ready a place of hiding. When she could, she brought food, articles for storing water, and tools, hiding them for the time of escape. She also obtained two spears, one at a time. All of these efforts were exceedingly dangerous, for violations of the laws of her people and the Na women were punishable by death. However, Lissa-Na enjoyed a certain respect among the Noi, and was not closely watched.

Finally one midnight as Zan lay alone in his supposed sickbed he saw by the faint light of the small fire a pair of legs coming through a hole in the roof of the cave—and then a second pair, descending down a long rope. (Zan had never seen twisted rope before, and examined it well when he had a chance.) The opening served the purpose of admitting light during the day, and was an exit for smoke. The legs belonged to Dael and Lissa-Na, who climbed down toward the fire, avoiding it when they got to the floor of the cave. Lissa was breathless and gaily laughing. Dael was silent. “Dael! Dael!” Zan cried, leaping from his bed.

When Dael heard his name he seemed not to know it, giving Zan a puzzled look, as if he did not know him
either. Zan flew to Dael, embracing him with all of his strength. He was so glad to see Dael that he could have died of joy. But Dael, strangely quiet and surly, hardly returned his embrace. He just stood there like the imbecile column of stone that Zan had lately mistaken for his brother. Zan looked at him fully in the face. Dael was taller, with some hairs on his chin. Zan felt his own chin and it was the same. There was something else—a jagged furrow ascending Dael's brow that looked like the scar of a recent wound. Zan hugged him again and kissed his neck, unwilling to let him go. “Dael, I have come to rescue you.” Dael did not respond. Zan looked at his scarred face with wonder and saw a blank. The happiness and play that had always been there before were gone. This laughing child looked as if he would never laugh again. For a moment Zan actually doubted that the youth in front of him was Dael. He scrutinized him as one would stare at a lost dog that might or might not be his. It was Dael, but how changed! The twinkle of his eyes was replaced by a leaden dullness, and his ever-present smile seemed to have died forever on his lips. Dael said nothing, and hardly even looked at Zan, but there was something in his lusterless eyes and expressionless face that was dangerous, startling, and deadly.

Lissa-Na put him in Zan's bed and prepared to hide Zan in a dark, unused alcove of the cave. Because it was night, and no one else was there, Zan could keep out of hiding for a while to talk with his brother. It had been a long time and he had much to tell. But Dael showed no interest in his brother's conversation, although he seemed to be listening. Zan wasn't even sure of that,
but continued to speak excitedly of their family and of his confrontation with the lion, acquainting him with his name of honor, Zan-Gah. He showed Dael his scars, stealing a glance at Lissa-Na to see her reaction. Then he told him of his meeting with Aniah and of his adventures along the way. Dael said almost nothing, as if he were absorbed by some painful or perplexing memory. Zan could only guess what had happened to his gentle twin to work such a transformation in him, and he began to speak more softly, as one afraid to disturb a sick person.

 

Dael was soon missed. Warriors of Noi spent the next day searching for him, and eventually one was dispatched to inquire of him at the cave. Ab-Lunt presumed to enter, although he knew better than to go very far into its forbidden depths. He was an arrogant man, muscular and very hairy. He had a heavy club over his shoulder, made from the thighbone of a large animal. Presenting himself to Lissa-Na, who was the only female there, he told his errand, demanding to know who was lying within. Lissa tried to block the advance of this large, aggressive man, but she was no match for him. Dael rose from his bed, ready to submit himself to his captors, and perhaps hoping to spare Lissa any trouble. That was when Zan came out of his place of hiding and stood beside Dael, holding a spear.

Poor, stupid Ab-Lunt was frozen with fear. He gazed on the twins with horror as if confronted by twin devils. Dael walked up to Ab-Lunt, who did not move a muscle but stared straight across at Zan with wide-eyed
paralysis, his face twisted into a grotesque, hairy mask. With no resistance whatever from the rigid, staring warrior, Dael took the coarse thighbone club from his grip.
Then it happened!
With the unnatural shriek of a wild animal Dael struck Ab-Lunt on the head with his own club. The blow was so violent that the man fell to the ground with a groan, his head split open and his brains bursting from his skull. He was dead. Yet that was not all. Dael kept beating him with mindless fury as if he did not know what he was doing. “Enough, Dael, enough!” Zan said, grabbing his wrist to prevent yet another blow. Dael looked up at his twin with a dazed, vacant stare, as though he had been awakened from a frightful dream, and listlessly dropped the weapon. What had once been Ab-Lunt lay on the ground, his shaggy head crushed to jelly and his blood forming a sticky pool.

Zan was sick at heart, and Lissa-Na was weeping and tearing her red hair. It was true that Dael had slain the man who would have imprisoned him, but the deed was so sudden and the manner of it so unspeakably brutal that Zan and Lissa-Na were shocked to the bottom of their souls. Lissa-Na could see that her life with the Noi people was over. Out of love for Dael she had betrayed all trust, and now his furious hand had brought down a man of Noi. The Na women might enter at any time, and raise an alarm, so there was nothing to do but hurry away. The body of Ab-Lunt had to be hidden in order to delay pursuit if only for a little while. They took the all-important store of food, water and other hidden supplies and made ready, dragging the horrible corpse to the same place of concealment. Dael did not help, but stood in the
same spot, breathless and almost as stupefied as Ab-Lunt had been, so that Zan and Lissa had to drag him off too. It was plain to see that the landscape of Dael's soul was charred; the wind had blown a fire through and everything living had been burnt to blackness. The knowledge that the Noi would take vengeance upon him for the murder of Ab-Lunt seemed not to concern him. He had shut off the part of himself that feels pleasure, pain, or fear. But coming to himself, he followed Lissa, more than Zan. His face was firmly set, with his teeth tightened and one eyebrow of his deeply scarred forehead frowning. They whispered as they went. He said nothing.

The cave had appeared to be fairly limited in size, but as they turned around the curved wall a narrow opening was revealed. Lissa-Na led the way. By the light of their torches Zan beheld a place of wonder. “This is the womb of the earth—our most sacred place. We should not be here,” Lissa said. “And I wish I had not been the one to defile it,” she added to herself. The sanctuary was long and narrow, like a human intestine. On the walls and roof of the passage game animals had been vividly painted by the priestesses in black, red, and ochre. All of the beasts were depicted in actual size, and all faced in the same direction. “We must follow the way of the animals,” said Lissa-Na, “and exit where they do.”

After they had advanced into the depths of the cave for some time, Lissa-Na caused them to stop and to listen carefully for any noise of pursuit. They heard nothing but the dripping of water. With any luck the body of Ab-Lunt and their absence would not be discovered for some time.
Whether for fun or out of desperate anxiety, Dael suddenly let out a shrill and startling cry, shattering the silence and causing his companions to gasp with amazement as the echo screamed back again. Dael seemed not to be in mental contact with their situation. He laughed nervously, almost giggled, as if he had become a child again. Lissa hushed him and gently stroked his cheek and brow, and they went on.

The cave was very wet, which surprised Zan, for above ground all had been parched desert. Evidently there was fresh water in abundance, but he had not been lucky enough to have found it. They even came to an underground river fed by a concealed spring as they went deeper and lower into the cavern. The water seemed perfectly still, but when Zan stuck his spear in to determine its depth, the invisible current nearly took the weapon out of his hand. Where it was shallow he could see a few pale fish and eyeless salamanders. The further they went, the more the water dripped, sculpting the interior into fantastic shapes that glowed eerily in the light of their torches. Pointed shafts of stone descended from the ceiling or rose from the floor. Some, thin as reeds, barred off large sections of the cave and cast mysterious shadows. As they progressed, the stone took on ever more fabulous configurations. Rocky substance hung in folds like the living flesh of great fungi, or seemed to spout into geysers. The hardened stone tumbled and flowed as if it once had been soft and spongy stuff bubbling from the ground. Who would have known that the hollows of the earth held such mysteries! Then the color of these cursive forms changed abruptly from yellow to red, as if
flowing with blood, and soon changed back again when the three went on.

The passage gradually narrowed so that advancing became difficult, but all at once the space opened dramatically to a great overhanging dome eaten hollow by the ages. Painted animals reappeared on the walls, seeming to stampede forward toward another narrow place. From the incessant dripping Zan guessed that they were under a river—the water supply of the Noi. The air was heavy with moisture and they could see each other's breath. Their torches sputtered, throwing forth a sulfurous light and immense, surging shadows.

At last they began going upward again, walking, climbing, and struggling. They spoke but little, but when they did their voices made ghostly, whispering echoes. In the silent darkness Dael screamed forth a reasonless yelp as sudden and startling as before, and hundreds of shrill-voiced bats were roused. “We are nearing the mouth of the cave. That is where the bats live,” Lissa said, and with remarkable tenderness she again soothed Dael's agitation.

Far off they saw a glimmer of daylight reflecting off the dripping walls.

 

 

 

 

As the three fugitives approached the opening, they felt with increasing force the lively wind that had pursued them from one end of the cave to the other. Its low-pitched, whistling moan was more noticeable now as they ascended the last few feet of the tunnel. Lissa-Na was the first to emerge into the brilliant light of day. From behind Zan saw the bright sunlight strike her blowing orange hair, turning it for a moment into fire. He could not help himself. He was on fire too—he loved her! But he said nothing—for what was there to say? The constant attentions she lavished on his brainsick brother told him where her affections lay. And if anything in the world could nurse his twin brother to restored health, it was the open and affectionate heart of Lissa-Na.

They did not know if they had been followed, either within the cave or over their heads. It was quite possible that a war party would be waiting for them nearby. Lissa,
who was familiar with the area, scouted the terrain for pursuers lest they be ambushed. No one was there. When Zan finally regained his sense of direction he was able to inform Lissa of the path toward his home. Having neither desire nor choice but to go along, she led them to a shallow river which flowed from the direction Zan had pointed out. Zan, who had suffered so much from thirst and the desert's heat, was amazed to see a river along which he might have traveled had he known about it. He simply had not located it before or during the agonizing trek that had almost killed him. It was the lake of salt that had gotten his notice from a distance, and had unfortunately become the focus of his journey. Zan could not think of that lake without nausea. But now they could travel along a stream of fresh water. It seemed too good to be true!