Carnivores of Light and Darkness (18 page)
It had been a terrible dream, but an efficacious one. From now on he would leave strange weapons alone, no matter how much they might tempt him. Even if they belonged to someone who was simply a fortunate herdsman and not a sorcerer. He was lucky he had only dreamed about stealing—um, borrowing—the sky-metal sword. Had he tried to take possession of it, the harrowing visions he had experienced while sleeping might have become real.
Turning away from the no longer amicable sky, he lay on his side gazing in Ehomba’s direction. Tomorrow they would resume their northward trek. With luck they would come to a river that could carry them to the sea, where they would find a town at which seaworthy vessels called. They would book passage westward, to the fabled lands of Ehl-Larimar, where dwelled Hymneth the Possessed, and the treasure he knew in his soul must be at the heart of the poor herdsman’s quest.
As he lay still, his head resting in the cup of his right hand, he saw that Ehomba’s weapons were no longer neatly aligned on the smooth rock above his head, but had been put askew. Perhaps the herdsman had disturbed them in his haste to awaken and free his friend from the anguish of his nightmare.
Ignoring the feathered spear and the tooth-edged sword, he found his gaze drawn inexorably to the scabbarded blade of wondrous sky metal. It seemed to be partly drawn, just enough to expose an inch or so of the metal itself. The Widmanstätten lines etched into its side caught the moonlight and twisted it the way a child would knot a rope. A nimble pain shot through part of his forehead as he felt his left eye poked with too-sharp perception.
He rolled over quickly and closed his eyes tight, resolving to look upon nothing save the inside of his eyelids until dawn renewed both the day and his trust in the authenticity of existence. Some dreams drifted too close to reality, and some realities too close to dream. In the company of a perambulating curiosity like Etjole Ehomba, he decided, it was important for one to concentrate with unwavering determination on the path between the two, lest one’s world suddenly slip out of focus.
Opening his eye just a crack, it was filled with a flash of light. For a dreadful moment he was afraid it was one of those hellish globes of fire he had seen floating in emptiness. Almost as quickly as he started to panic, he relaxed. It was only the glint of moonlight off a chip of quartz embedded in the rock close to his face.
He closed his eyes again, and this time did not open them until the sun began to sneak its first rays over the eastern horizon.
XVIII
M
ORNING ARRIVED NOT WITH THE EASE OF AWAKENING WITH
which Ehomba was most comfortable, but with a thunderous declaration of life that had both him and Simna ibn Sind erupting from their place of sleeping. Initially panicked, the men relaxed when they saw it was only Ahlitah, greeting the arrival of the sun with an ardent bellowing that all but shook the rocks beneath them as his robust roars detonated against the vast expanse of the veldt.
ORNING ARRIVED NOT WITH THE EASE OF AWAKENING WITH
which Ehomba was most comfortable, but with a thunderous declaration of life that had both him and Simna ibn Sind erupting from their place of sleeping. Initially panicked, the men relaxed when they saw it was only Ahlitah, greeting the arrival of the sun with an ardent bellowing that all but shook the rocks beneath them as his robust roars detonated against the vast expanse of the veldt.
“Must you play the lord of all roosters?” Exhaling sharply, Simna sat back down on the smooth, cool granite.
Standing with his forefeet on the highest point of the kopje, the litah turned his great black-maned head to glower down at him. “I am king of this land, and must so remind my subjects every morning.”
“Well, we’re not your subjects,” Simna snapped, “and we’d appreciate it if while we’re traveling in each other’s company you maybe just waved to your subjects every once in a while.”
“Yes.” Ehomba was already packing to depart. “I am sure the mere creatures who inhabit the veldt already recognize your suzerainty, and that it is not necessary for you to remind them of it quite so loudly every morning.”
“Oh, I do beg your pardon. From now on I’ll do it like this.” Looking away and throwing back his head, the massive jaws parted and Ahlitah let loose as resounding a meow as Ehomba had ever heard.
“Much better,” Simna commented tartly.
“I am so pleased that you approve.” Tomorrow morning, the great cat vowed, it would roar again as loudly as ever—making it a point to place his lips directly opposite one of the stocky swordsman’s ears as he did so.
But he would not argue the point now, when they were about to set off for a portion of the veldt that was new even to him. While he was embarrassed at having to keep company with humans, a part of him was anticipating the forthcoming opening up of new territory. He looked forward to meeting the inhabitants, and to eating some of them.
As they descended the kopje, which had proved to be an agreeable refuge in the midst of the all but featureless veldt, Ehomba found himself again questioning the suitability of his companions. Given alternatives, he would have chosen otherwise. One was inhuman, tremendously strong, but reluctant to the point of apathy. He wondered how he was going to be able to rely on someone to watch his back who would do so only out of a sense of enforced obligation.
His other associate was fearless, wily, experienced, and tough, but interested in only one thing: the domineering illusion of false wealth. Again, not the truest motivation for standing behind someone in need. Still, he supposed it was better to have them at his side than not, to have company and companionship in strange country than to be traveling alone. If nothing else, it gave potential enemies someone else to shoot at. For all his unrelenting babble about treasure, Simna ibn Sind would prove useful if he took but one arrow meant for Ehomba. And Ahlitah the same if he did nothing at all but stand still and frighten off a single stealthy assassin.
Yes, it was better to travel in the company of an entourage, however small and however uncommitted. They would be of no use against someone as overawing and powerful as this Hymneth individual, but if they could simply help him to achieve that final confrontation then all would be worthwhile. Until that ultimate moment he would suffer their company, dealing with Simna’s endless harping about treasure and Ahlitah’s incessant muttering.
• • •
Another day’s walking brought them within sight of a line of trees. This was greatly to Simna’s liking since, as he put it, he had seen enough grass and weeds to last a million cattle the rest of their lives, and him not able to eat a blade of it. Ahlitah was more circumspect.
“Trees make good places to hide behind.”
“Maybe in the veldt, where trees are few and far between.” Simna was leading the way. “In lands where they’re the rule rather than the exception, they’re no more dangerous than taller grass.”
But the trees did hide something: a river; broad, murky, and of indeterminate depth. Ehomba resigned himself to another swim.
“Don’t be in such a hurry.” Simna was leaning over the bank. It was a short drop, less than a foot, to the water. There was no shoreline, no beach of sand or mud. Short, stubby grass grew right up to the water’s edge. “It
looks
shallow.”
looks
shallow.”
“Fine,” commented Ahlitah. “You try it first.”
The swordsman nodded at the big cat. “Your legs are longer than mine, but if you’re that afraid of water, then I’ll break trail for you.”
Making sure that his pack was secure against his back, Simna stepped off the bank. The water barely reached to the tops of his ankles. Turning, he spread his arms and smiled.
“See? No swimming, Etjole. The bottom has the feel of fine gravel. We can walk across.” He kicked water in the direction of his friends, causing Ahlitah to blink and turn his head away momentarily.
Snarling softly, the great black shape hopped gingerly into the moderate current. Water ridged up slightly against his ankles before continuing to flow westward around them. A disappointed Ehomba followed. Had the river been deeper, he would have entertained notions of building a raft and following it west to the ocean. He missed the sea very much. Surely they were far enough north now to resume walking up the coast. But any raft made large and strong enough to carry them for any length of time risked running aground every few yards in such shallows. Northward they would have to continue to trek.
He fingered the sack of pebbles that rested heavily in the pocket of his kilt, remembering the beaches back home, the way the cold water foamed and danced whitely over sand and rock. As always, in helping to bringing back memories, the sheer tactility of the rough gravel in the little cotton bag helped to soothe his thoughts and ease his mind.
Once, something that was softer than stone but harder than water bumped into his right foot. Glancing down, he made out an indistinct, elongated shape hurriedly darting upriver away from him. A freshwater eel, perhaps, startled by the presence of something long, straight, and moving through the water that was not a drifting tree branch. Some eels could give a man quite a nip. Thereafter he paid more attention to the water swirling around his ankles.
Halfway across, the strangest thing began to happen. It could not be explained any more than it could be ignored. While the river itself grew no deeper, patches and pockets and globules of water began to come into sight above the actual surface. At first they were no bigger than a man’s fist, but soon much larger blobs began to appear. The largest were the size of small ponds.
At their highest, these individual drifting sacs of liquid were as tall as the trees that were now visible on the opposite bank. Some had transparent undersides while others were dark with accumulated muck and soil. Water lilies, reeds, and small bushes grew from these individual pockets of aerial swamp. Some plants put down roots that traveled through the intervening air to suck nourishment from splotches of water floating in midair beneath them. Wind roiled their surfaces just as it did that of the shallow river beneath.
Sometimes two wandering patches of water would flow slowly into one another and merge to form a larger pond shape. Elsewhere, ample globules would slowly break apart to form two or more separate aqueous bodies. It was quite the most extraordinary landscape any of the companions had ever encountered.
Ducking beneath a floating raft of pond weed as big as a boat, Simna jabbed a finger upward and pulled it free. The bottom-side surface tension stuck to his finger for an unnaturally long moment, clinging to the skin more like clear glue than water. Then the contents of the floating pond began to drain out through the finger-sized gap, as if the swordsman had punched a hole in a transparent, thin-skinned balloon.
Fascinated, they watched as water grass, tadpoles, struggling fry, black-shelled snails, and other inhabitants of the airborne pond spilled out into the river below. After a minute or two of free flow, the hole was blocked and sealed by a clump of soil that formed the root-ball of a water hyacinth. Amazed and delighted by the aqueous phenomenon, they resumed their crossing.
The river never bulked up against a far bank so much as it spread out to form a vast, shallow lake whose extent they probably could not have determined even if the view northward had not been blocked by more and more of the free-floating aerial ponds and lakes. Not only were these becoming larger, but they were also growing considerably more numerous, as if drawing strength and sustenance from the boundless, shallow inland sea beneath.
Of more immediate concern, the travelers began to encounter places where the underlying river-lake itself deepened. It was difficult enough to keep moving forward while avoiding masses of drifting water that rose higher than a man’s head. Doing so while stumbling into hidden cavities that brought the water up to one’s neck was not only harder, but frightening. In such an environment it was technically impossible to keep one’s head above water, because individual blobs of water were constantly drifting past at levels higher than one’s hairline.
Within an hour they were having to duck beneath a small airborne lake that completely blocked their path in all directions. Hunched over, Ehomba was more wary of the great mass of water that hung just above his head than he was of the foot or so they were sloshing through.
“No experiments here,” he warned Simna. “Do not stick your finger into the water hovering above us. If it were to break and all come down in a rush, we would surely drown.”
“Don’t worry.” The swordsman was walking next to him, bent over and eyeing the underside of the great shimmering mass uneasily.
They passed out from beneath it without incident, but were then forced to advance single file down a narrow corridor between two twenty-foot-tall bodies of free-floating swamp. The dark green walls that hemmed them in on either side were in constant, if lugubrious, motion, bulging and rippling with a great volume of water constrained only by thin, transparent walls of unusual surface tension.
“Guela!” Simna, who had momentarily taken the lead, suddenly let out an exclamation of surprise and stopped short. Behind him, Ahlitah let out a warning snarl. A concerned Ehomba stopped short of the cat’s flicking tail.
“What is it, what’s wrong?”
“Look to your left.” The great cat was pressed up against the floating swamp-sac on their right, his eyes focused in the indicated direction.
The crocodile that swam slowly past at eye level with the travelers was at least twenty feet long and weighed close to two tons. Its huge armored tail swayed slowly from side to side, propelling it languidly through the murky water. As it swam past, one eye swiveled to meet Ehomba’s. The slitted yellow orb tracked the man standing next to the side of the aerial pond for a long moment. And then the hulking reptile was gone, turning back into the distant depths of the floating lake it called home.
“I don’t understand.” Simna’s tone betrayed his lingering tension. “Why didn’t it have a go at us? It could have broken out easily.”
Ehomba considered. “We are making our way through air, not water. Perhaps it did not see us as part of its environment. Who can imagine how the creatures that have learned to live in such a remarkable place have developed? Possibly they consider each individual bubble of water, whether as big as a lake or small enough to fit in a bucket, an isolated world whose boundaries are not to be tampered with.” Looking away from the dark green water that hemmed them in on either side, he tilted back his head to regard the narrow band of blue sky that still held sway directly overhead.
“Even our world could be like that. Stick a finger up high enough, hard enough, and you might puncture the lining of the sky and let all the air escape out into nothingness.”
“That’s ridiculous!” With a snort of derision, Simna turned away and resumed walking. But for a while thereafter, every so often he would sneak a glance at the clouds and resolve to suppress any impulse to make sudden, sharp gestures upward.
They emerged safely from between the two large bodies of floating water only to find themselves surrounded by a dense population of smaller but still sizable globules. While some of these were clear and contained nothing larger than small cichlids and kindred swimmers, others were opaque with flourishing plant life, crustaceans, shellfish, and aquatic reptiles. Though still able to advance, their progress was slowed by having to walk around or duck under the proliferating floating bubbles.
Once they had to wade right through a drifting airborne pond too wide to walk around. As they did so, they experienced the most peculiar sensation of being soaked from sole to ankle, then dry up to their waists, and then wet again up to their necks. By lowering their packs so that they temporarily rode not on their shoulders but on their hips, Ehomba and Simna were able to keep their gear dry despite the double immersion.
All day they trekked through the unprecedented landscape, ducking beneath, walking around, or hopping over individual intervening patches of water, until the sun, a welcome harbinger of the normal world, began to set. Certainly it was a most curious place to make a camp.
Simply choosing a suitable site presented unique problems of its own. Standing in six inches of water with not a suggestion of dry land visible in any direction, the prospect of a fire was out of the question, much less any thoughts of lying down and keeping dry. Big as he was, Ahlitah would have no trouble keeping his head above water during the night, but it was not inconceivable that Ehomba or Simna could roll over in their sleep and drown. Furthermore, soaking themselves to the skin for an entire night was not the best way of ensuring continued good health.
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