Shadow Valley (26 page)

Stillshadow sniffed the wind. “Help me up.”

Together they walked through the reeds and rushes, coming to the place the hunters had discovered additional tracks. Near the rock wall Frog found a tangled mass of feline and human footprints. Near them lay an abandoned, gore-smeared spear. The soil was thick with blood and grooved with drag marks.

Smirks disappeared. Uncle Snake knelt and examined the footprints more carefully.

“Leopard Eye,” Snake said. “And Sky Woman.” He hung his head. “They died here.”

Leopard Paw bristled, gripping his spear as if he would crush it with his hands. His gaze burned into the grass, seeking a target for his rage.

Frog could not speak. Could not even breathe. Those simple words had dropped him down a crevasse and stolen his
num.
T’Cori dead? Their unborn child in a lion’s belly? No. No.

Tears flooding his eyes, Frog dropped to his knees and began to wail.

Stillshadow hobbled up beside him, as slowly as if her bones were rotted bamboo. She crouched and stirred around in the dirt until she found something thick and gummy. She smeared it between her fingers, then lifted it to her nose and smelled it …

And then touched it to the tip of her tongue.

Ten paces away, half concealed in grass, sprawled a lion’s disemboweled corpse. The hunters probed and prodded the body, lifted its head and haunches to peer beneath. “Leopard’s spear,” Water Chant said soberly, striding in from the brush, holding the bloodied stalk. “Truly, he was a great hunter.”

“This is
his
blood,” Stillshadow said, hands stirring around in the grass. “My son is dead.” Leopard Paw helped her up and over to the new site. She went on hands and knees again, rubbed the gummy wet soil between her fingers. She sniffed. “The lion’s,” she said. “Sky Woman’s blood did not spill here.”

The hunters looked at one another, unable to conceal their skepticism. “Old Mother … you have no eyes. We know your heart is broken, but—”

“No!” she said, voice fiercely urgent. “My daughter is
not
here. Her blood is
not
here.”

The world swam in tears. “What then?” Frog asked.

“It was true. It was strange. Her footprints led to the rock wall … and then nowhere.” Uncle Snake scratched his thin beard and studied the wall. “A pregnant woman could not climb this,” he said.

“You do not know my daughter,” Stillshadow said. “We will continue to search.” She gripped Frog’s hand, nails piercing his flesh. “Yes? You will search for her?”

The rock wall was broken by ledges and vines and small, tough trees struggling to root into rock. Where in the world could she have gone? Unless Father Mountain had lifted her up unto his bosom, nowhere at all.

But Stillshadow said …

The old woman was blind now, maddened, almost crippled. She was no longer the fleshly spirit who had led her people though so many dark days….

Or was she? If Frog quieted the voices of fear within him, he had to admit that Stillshadow radiated a strange and soothing calm. Certainty, perhaps. It was seductive: he wanted so much to believe that his dearest love and unborn child had not died in such horror.

“My brother could still live,” Leopard Paw said. Hope was alive in his eyes, if not his heart.

Stillshadow shook her head. “His heart is still,” she said. “Father Mountain has taken another hunter.”

Leopard Paw turned his head away from them and said nothing.

Frog’s inner eye saw the struggle itself, could see it as clearly as he could see T’Cori and Leopard sexing by the stream. He sighed. What was he to think? T’Cori had given herself to Leopard Eye, as was her right and perhaps even responsibility. What had happened later was simple tragedy.

“Come,” he said. “Let us search.”

As sure-footed as a lizard, Bat Wing wiggled up the rock wall, shouting back down to them “Broken roots!”

“What else?” Frog called up.

“It looks like someone crawled along the rock here. I think it was Sky Woman!” He seemed so excited that Frog allowed himself to hope.

It took awhile to find another way up the mountainside, but Frog remained with Stillshadow as Leopard Paw and Snake climbed, and then shouted instructions back down.

Then he left Stillshadow with Water Chant, and began his own ascent.

T’Cori fell asleep watching the sun paint the sky blue, and awoke again as it stood almost directly overhead. She noted that the earlier trickle of water had ceased, and she sighed. Her mouth prickled with a sour, dry taste she vanquished by licking dew from shaded rocks.

The instant one hunger had declined, it was time to satisfy another. Leopard Eye’s hare was still in her pouch, but she decided to scavenge as long as she could, saving it for an emergency.

Some roots she recognized and knew to be edible. Those she was uncertain of, she broke off a piece the size of her fingernail and tucked it between teeth and gums. She would leave it there for a quarter, to see if her gums itched. Her body might react with soreness, swelling, a sense of sickness. In that case, she would eat no more. She had to keep moving but remain aware of the sensation in her mouth. If her spit still tasted good in a while, and if her cheek and tongue were not sore, then if she encountered another such bush later, she would consider it safe to eat.

She froze as a purple lizard poked its head out of a crack. Willing herself to disappear, to become part of the rock, she remained perfectly still, until it crawled within arms’ reach. T’Cori snatched it up, dashing its brains against a rock. Grinning, she ate it, bones and all, save the tiny sharp claws. Its head she crunched with her teeth like a nut filled with juicy meat.

A little later, she was lucky enough to find a mass of grubs in the shadow of a rotting tree trunk. These she ate one at a time, crunching through legs and carapaces with relish, savoring their sweet, pulpy flesh.

Hunger temporarily sated, she examined her surroundings more fully.
The wide spot in the rocks was linked to a narrower path skirting the mountainside. She edged along it for some ways before it narrowed to the point that she had to stop again.

The valley floor was far below her, far enough to have dizzied most. Clouds cast shadows across it, shading the vast swathe of trees, twisting game trails and lush green elephant grass. She could imagine letting go, kicking away from the rock wall with her legs, plunging down and down to a swifter, more merciful end than any she might find beneath a lion’s claws.

And then … an angry growl behind her. She whipped around to see the white-scarred lioness approaching from behind her, no more than ten long paces distant. Her thighs tensed as she fought a sudden, almost irresistible impulse to urinate.

So. There
was
another way to the ledge.

T’Cori backed up, clambered up a series of rocks and then pitted herself against a vertical wall, climbing twice her height before reaching an overhang she could not challenge.

If the lioness waited below, eventually T’Cori would weaken and fall.

Why postpone the inevitable? Why not just admit that Great Mother had decided it was time for her daughter to come home? Why not return her bones to the earth and dance on the mountaintop? Why?

Because everything inside her told her to keep trying. Keep fighting.

Then she remembered Leopard Eye’s rabbit. Her herb pouch came next to mind, packed with the strangleweed and other herbs to create the last gift, the death potion that eased a wounded hunter’s passing. Praying to Great Mother, she stuffed the herbs down the dead rabbit’s throat.

She hurled the carcass down to the ravening, yellow-eyed cat. The lioness sniffed, snapped it up in one bite, then kept jumping at the rock wall, seeking purchase for her claws.

Rising on a fierce surge of triumph, T’Cori climbed. All she needed to do now was survive, unless herbs enough to send ten hunters to Father Mountain were insufficient to kill a killer.

She braced herself against the rocks as the lioness roared and snapped at her, just out of reach. Her legs quivered, and her strained back ached. Agony flowed up her bruised and bloody fingers.

Then the lion’s roar weakened. If the cat had been human, T’Cori would have said its voice sounded almost confused.

The cat’s rear legs collapsed. It coughed, tried to spit twice, and made a hacking sound, as if its saliva was congealing. It slipped, stood again and seemed to wobble. Took a few halting steps, and turned in a circle, as if trying to bite its own tail. And then, one leg at a time, the strength left its legs
and it fell to its right side, exposing pale skin and teats swollen from recent nursing. Under other circumstances, T’Cori might have felt a flash of guilt.

Her mouth twisted into a triumphant snarl. T’Cori knew the signs of strangleweed: unbuffered by special herbs the weed was a swift, painful toxin. The lioness would strangle painfully to death, choking on thickened saliva and a closing throat.

Relief, and a fierce vicious joy rushed through T’Cori, refreshing as a dip in shaded water.

If the lioness had reached her ledge, did that mean there was a way down from above? She made her heart a stone and edged past the dying cat. It pawed at her weakly, then forgot the human and concentrated on its own struggle for breath.

Where had the predator come from? How had it reached the shelf?

And then T’Cori glimpsed a narrow path, as wide as her arm was long, jutting out from the cliff beneath an overhanging shelf of reddish rock low enough that she would have to crouch. She decided to crawl. Oddly, crouching on her hands and knees steadied her nerves, and, after a few nervous breaths, she was able to stand again.

Could she go up? Yes, if she retreated a hand of paces. T’Cori was able to grip enough rocks and roots to pull herself up to a wider path along the rock. There, finally, she was able to walk again.

This path came out in a wider, flatter place, and she stopped, surprised by what lay before her on the ground.

A rough circle of stones, set around a heap of crumbled ashes. She knelt, feeling the flakes. They were cold. The circle was less disciplined than those made by Ibandi men. Looser somehow. And yet… it did not resemble Mk*tk fire stones, either. Whoever and whatever had left this, belonged to neither group.

Perhaps the blunt-faced folk who had come for the child?

Which led to another possibility. Unless the people who had left this had climbed up from the valley floor, there had to be a way down from the top, and she intended to find it.

For the next quarter, T’Cori walked paths and climbed rocks until she neared the ridgetop. Looking down, she could see a switchback trail along the valley wall, leading down toward a much-more-inviting-looking mass of trees and grass and shrubs. Her heart lighter, she picked her way back down. From time to time she found berries, and once a kind of small orange fruit
she had never seen. She did not dare eat it, but saved one, planning to tuck a portion against her cheek later.

Almost halfway down the slope, she froze.
Something was wrong.
Was it the wind? For a moment the breeze shifted, and she caught a sour, meaty scent.

Lion.

Where? Was it merely lion spoor or the cats themselves? Hunkering down behind a bush, she watched silently for a time.

Nothing.

Alert now, she descended with greater care.

Then she saw them. Two. Three. Were these the same that had killed Leopard Eye? How could they have tracked her up a rock wall?

Her
scent.
She had caught theirs. How foolish of her to doubt they would detect hers in turn.

Her fears had been justified. By sexing Leopard, she had somehow transgressed against Great Mother. Forces infinitely larger than human strength and will were in play Great Mother. Father Mountain. The
jowk
must have decided that this was her time.

The three lions were clambering up the rocks, barely a spear’s throw away. T’Cori backed up, trying to stay far enough ahead of them that they might not see her.

An angry growl behind her. There down the switchback crouched one of the big cats, tail lashing back and forth in anticipation. In that instant, their eyes meeting, predator and prey knew each other. There was no question now, and the lions were running up the switchback, one of them trying to climb directly up the side, sliding back down with a howl, skidding halfway down the slope before slamming into a boulder. It shook itself with a kind of injured dignity, glaring up at her.

Lack of food and water, the fatigue and fear all crashed down upon her at once. T’Cori’s arms and legs felt limp and devoid of strength. An exhausting series of pulls and clumsy clamberings finally brought her over a boulder as high as her waist, leading to a flat grassy knoll. The young medicine woman was quivering and spent.

T’Cori did not doubt that if she tried to climb that way, the cats would catch up with her. What, then? What could she do?

Attempt a direct ascent of the rock wall above her? The footholds here were not as good, and she could only get a man’s height from the ground before her escape route dead-ended. Immediately to her right, roots sprouted from the cliff face. No matter how she strained, they were out of her reach.
To the left a rock jutted from the face, but no matter how she extended her foot or tried to twist and turn, she failed even to touch it. This was as far as she was going.