Shadows in the Cave (20 page)

“He went with Koz,” said Tsi-Li.

“Why?”

“He made the choice he thought was right. He is the sacrifice. He
chose
it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“His life was hard. He looked like a monster. People treated him like a monster. He felt like a monster. Now he wants to come back as a man who can have a family, friends, and a place in a community.”

“
We
were his friends,” wailed Aku.

“He was very grateful for that. He told me to thank you for being the only friends he ever had, and very fine ones.”

Aku started to protest again, but he felt overwhelmed. Shonan put a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t wail for Yah-Su,” said Tsi-Li. “He is doing well. You see, though he said nothing, he also learned something down below, something very great. He lost his fear of death. He crossed over to seek life.

“As he has gone down out of wisdom, he will come back in grace. Very soon.”

Aku held to the spinning world, determined not to fall off.

“Now,” the Great Owl said, “you have been very good guests, exceptional guests. This is a historic occasion, for I’m about to say words I have never said before. Aku, Grandson, you have gone into the Underworld and returned with knowledge of life and death. You are free to go back to the world.” He repeated the same words for Oghi. “I salute the two of you,” he said. “Who else can say he entered the Underworld and came back alive? You have the reward of great understanding. Use it well.”

Aku felt a spike of elation.

Then Tsi-Li regarded Shonan with the yellow globes at eyes for a long time. “Red Chief, you are a more difficult case.”

Aku cringed.
No. Don’t let it be
.

“Tell me, what do you think of what you saw—or rather heard—down below? And what do you think of what you saw, if you saw them, up high in the tree?”

“I’ll tell you what I told these two,” Shonan said. “All this stuff about how awful fear is, it’s just a lot of blather about what every good warrior already knows. Before a fight, or before you ever get near any fight, you can cripple yourself in your head. You can imagine your arms being hacked off. You can see a spear ramming straight through your gullet and writhe in agony. You can feel your head being yanked back and your throat slit.”

He clapped his hands on his knees. “I don’t want any men like that at my side. They’re useless. They’re cowards. They get wounded in the mind twenty times for every wound they might get in a lifetime as a warrior. They get killed a thousand times for the one time they’ll actually have to die. And what they do is, they cut their own balls off. They terrify themselves so they can’t fight. And then they
do
get hurt or killed, because they’ve taken the weapons out of their own hands. Their hands quiver, their legs shake, and they can’t do a thing. Believe me, I’ve fought next to men like that, and doubled the risk to myself to save their tails.”

He huffed breath in and out. “A real warrior bans such pictures from his mind. He pictures himself killing the enemy, never himself getting killed. He feels the thrill of the charge, the bright gleam of the danger, the pleasure of the use of his skills, the exhilaration of danger. Live? Die? He is beyond caring. Because for those moments he is truly alive, he is all he can be as a man.”

He shrugged. “And if fate should be against him, or luck, and the enemy defeats him, he makes a short trip to this place and is immediately reborn on Earth. We’re promised that.”

He fixed each listener in turn with his eyes. “So what is this fine wisdom we supposedly got in the Underworld? Old stuff. True, fear of death is trivial. That’s not what undoes a man. What steals away a man’s days in this world? Fear of life, yes, life. No warrior needs to go the Darkening Land to learn that.” He spoke directly to Aku and Oghi. “But you know nothing, because your so-called understanding is words and thoughts. If you followed me into war, into the roar of life and death, I would teach it to you where it matters, teach you so you feel it in your blood!”

In the wake of Shonan’s big speech everyone held his tongue. Aku was flat scared.
Ada, after all this, will I leave here without you?
He thought of his life-saving flute song. No chance, he thought. The Great Dusky Owl would never let him use it.

Shonan kept his eyes on the owl. They said without words,
And I mean it
.

Finally, Tsi-Li broke the silence. “You dare to speak to the master of the knowledge of life and death in such a way.” His words had a sting.

Then Aku thought he saw a laugh in the Great Owl’s eyes. “Actually, what you just did is a fine example. Faced with death by my judgment, you are not afraid.”

Aku breathed. Then, immediately, he jerked. The tap of Tsola’s drum put him on alert. He saw the same tug in Oghi’s eyes.

“As for the rest, your understanding is admirable. Like your companions, you might understand more. You might see that a man needs courage not only to fight but to do the
right things to make a good marriage, and to teach his children to be good human beings.”

His eyes clicked from one listener to another. “Still, each of you has some genuine understanding of life and death. You have triumphed in the Underworld. You are free to go.”

The drum spoke powerfully.
Bang
-bang! Bang-
bang
!

The Great Owl flapped his wings wildly. A dust storm seemed to rise up, and they were blinded.

26

S
honan blinked over and over. “Where in hell am I?” Tsola said, “I think you know, Red Chief.”

The three travelers were flopped on the cave floor around Tsola’s low fire.

From a corner, the black panther, Bola, said, “Welcome back to the Emerald Cavern.” A rich irony lined his gruff voice.

Aku reached out and took Salya’s limp hand. Still cold, still dead.

“What happened?” said Shonan.

“I know you didn’t quite realize how unique it was, but you traveled to the world of the Immortals, the Tree of Life and Death. I can whisk any mortals away from there.”

“And you just did,” said Bola.

“Yes.” She met the eyes of each man. “I’m sorry about Yah-Su.”

“It wasn’t right,” said Shonan. Aku heard unexpected emotion in his father’s voice.

“I speak to the living. Red Chief. Grandson. Seer Oghi. You are splendid. Many mortals before you have gone to the Darkening Land, always hoping to bring back someone beloved. Except in the ancient stories, no one returned until now. Until you. Congratulations.”

Aku gestured with an open palm to his dead sister.

Tsola turned to business. “Let’s examine her.”

Bola licked his paws. Aku thought he was impatient.

The Wounded Healer put her fingers below Salya’s left breast. “Yes,” Tsola murmured.

She placed a palm on Salya’s forehead. “Mmmm.” She rolled the body over and inspected all of it for injuries. She thumbed back one eye, then the other. “Just what we thought, body whole and well, spirit-fire missing. Gone.”

“Stolen,” said Shonan.

“Eaten,” said Aku. His heart twisted as he looked into his grandmother’s eyes. “Can you do anything for her?”

Bola growled, but the growl might have been taken for a chuckle.

“This far exceeds my powers. I have never seen anything like it.”

“There’s got to be something,” said Shonan.

Tsola shrugged.

“Grandmother, I … Grandmother, we could take her to the Land Beyond. Surely there …”

Now Bola’s growl was menacing.

“Aku, I know that the worlds above and below, the Immortals, all that seems like magic to you. But it isn’t, they’re just different realities. And like Earth, they have a particular nature, a way they work. Mortality only exists here. Life can only be restored here.”

“So what do we do?” said Shonan. “Because I’m damn well going to do something.”

Tsola’s eyes glinted. “Perhaps this will please you, Red Chief. It’s really very simple.” She waggled her eyes crazily. “You kill Maloch and take Salya’s fire back.”

Shonan ignored her attitude. “How do we kill Maloch the Uktena?”

Aku focused on his father in amazement. In effect, he treated it simply as a practical problem.

“Maloch has thick fish scales,” Tsola said. “Bola, come here.” The panther padded to her. “The dragon is four-legged, more or less like Bola. Here”—she touched her feline son on the left side—“just behind and below his shoulder, that’s where his heart is. It’s covered by the seventh scale, counting down from the spine.” She touched Bola’s spine. “A fighting man must lift that scale and strike hard underneath. That blow will be fatal. No other wound will faze him.”

“When I know my enemy’s weakness,” said Shonan, “he is dead.”

“Is he?” said Bola. “Will you attack in sunlight? His diamond eye will blind you, and he will kill you.”

Tsola said evenly, “Yes, he will kill you. To Maloch you are no virgin whose spirit must be taken ceremonially. You are an enemy.”

“Who damn well needs killing.” Bola held Aku’s eyes with his mysterious cat globes. “Both of you.” Challenge gleamed from the panther’s eyes. “Why would you attempt it?”

Aku said, “I have to.”

Shonan said, “She is my daughter.”

Tsola hung her head in what could only be sorrow.

Oghi said, “If we don’t kill him, he will never leave us alone. Every year or two we will sacrifice another sister, another daughter, another Salya.”

“A man may fail,” said Shonan, “but he may not surrender his children one by one to a murderer.”

Tsola lifted her face to Aku’s. For the first time she looked worn out to him. “Go, then. If life calls you to a hopeless mission, so be it.” She looked at her son. “Help them get started.”

Each of them pointed his mind toward home, toward Amaso. Aku was impatient to get there and see Iona and touch her belly full of child. Oghi was eager to get back to his town by the sea, the only home he had ever known. Shonan wanted his fight.

They scooted Salya onto a hide.

“I want to recruit some soldiers on the way,” Shonan said. “Not a lot. As many as I have fingers.”

“Father,” said Aku, “we have fifty or sixty warriors at Amaso.” That counted men from both Galayi and Amaso heritage together.

“Not like the ones I’m thinking of,” said Shonan.

They hoisted the hide bearing Salya, and Bola led them through the night-dark passages of the Emerald Cavern, arguing as they went. Since he needed his cat eyes to see the way, Bola stayed in feline form and held his corner of her litter between his teeth.

The four came out of the Emerald Cavern into a night with a half moon, a dazzle of brightness after the absolute darkness of the cave. Bola said, “Tsola told me to help you down to the village.”

Bola changed into human form, paws to hands and feet, fur to flesh, feline head to an elderly man’s face. The four trod the trail to the Cheowa village, carrying Salya through the moonlight. They slept in Bola’s son’s house, and when they woke up, Shonan said, “Let’s leave Salya in here and say nothing about her. There’s no need to cause talk.”

The others agreed, and then joined the other men walking down to the river to wash themselves. It was the way the community of Galayi men greeted the dawn.

Shonan looked back at the main village. Three other
clusters of houses huddled by the river upstream and down. The main village was marked by the big council lodge in its center. This was where all Galayi villages gathered for council three times a year, when they held their great ceremonies.

“A peace village,” said Shonan. He painted the word “peace” with disgust. Two Galayi villages were peace villages, which had no Red Chief, where men did not train seriously as fighters, and haven was offered to anyone who sought it, even an enemy. Shonan had told Aku many times that there were two peace villages only because the five war villages protected them against other tribes.

Still in human form, Bola said, “Red Chief, there’s a man here who could be valuable to you. Tol may be the finest flint-knapper in the tribe. I will introduce you.”

As they walked toward Tol’s home, Aku said to his father quietly, “Why would a peace village have the best knapper?”

“Everyone needs points for knives,” said Shonan, “even women.”

“But your men will already have sharp spear points.”

Shonan said, “You can never have too many points, or ones too sharp.”

In fact, Tol had a number of obsidian points. Bola said, “Will you sharpen the points of Shonan’s men, or replace them?”

“Of course,” said the knapper.

Bola also asked three of his male relatives to go along with Shonan’s party to help carry Salya’s litter. That way half the men would have their hands free at all times.

Before noon they took the trail south and east toward the Tusca village, where the warriors Shonan knew well lived. He told Aku, “I want men I can count on.”

“What good will that do us against Maloch?” said Aku.

Shonan smiled at his son, ever innocent about war. “Who
knows who will be with Maloch? There may a gang of Brown Leaves to take care of.”

Shonan bent to scoop water out of the creek and sip it.

“I want one man who throws a club well. I’m thinking about the dragon’s diamond eye, that thing might be vulnerable. Maybe it can be knocked out of its socket.”

“Grandmother said only a strike to the heart can kill Maloch.”

“What are you going to do to help?” said Shonan.

Aku flushed. “Watch.” He and Shonan were leading the way, so Aku did it in the middle of the trail, where everyone would see. Flesh to feathers, arms to wings, mouth to beak, head brown, neck red-gold, and eyes the amber of the war eagle.

Shonan watched every change, even the tiniest. His face gave away nothing.

“I will be the eyes of this small party,” said Aku. His eagle voice was identical to his human voice. “And search for enemies.”

He launched into the air. When he changed into bird form, he felt a sudden revulsion toward being on the ground. He did what he had done in the Land Beyond the Sky Arch, flapped up the sides of the mountains until he began to feel the air lifting him. He rode it high, high, high. From the tops of the mountains he could see each blade of grass. No enemy would elude his eyes.

At the Tusca village Shonan immediately took Salya to the relatives of his dead wife. Before letting them see the body, he said, “Do not cry out,” meaning the traditional wailing of grief. “She seems dead, but she can be saved. We will restore her life.”

Shonan and Aku lifted the buffalo hide covering Salya. People began to cry softly.

Meli’s brother touched her first. When he felt Salya’s cold cheek, he recoiled and yelped. One by one everyone—Salya’s aunts and uncles, her cousins, everyone but the children—put a hand on her flesh.

“It is a terrible story,” said Shonan, “but it will end in triumph. Until then we cannot tell it. I ask every one of you not to talk about what you’ve seen.” He turned to Aku. “We’ll leave her here for now. Let’s go.”

“Some will talk,” said Aku.

“All we can do is slow the talk down,” said Shonan. “It’s going to get to Maloch sooner or later.”

“That we rescued her from the Darkening Land.”

“Yes. He’ll know what we’re going to do next.” Shonan paused. “Now we’re going to have to face Kumu and tell him what happened to his fiance.”

It was Kumu’s father they faced first.

“Red Chief?” said the club thrower. His voice was wary.

“Zinna, I’m sorry for the things I said last time we saw each other. I was wrong.”

“I was drunk,” said Zinna.

“We have something to show your whole family, especially Kumu.”

Kumu came out of the hut looking like an animal hunted to exhaustion. His mother Monu followed him, and the family walked across the common to the hut where Salya lay.

When he saw her, Kumu fell on her and wrapped her in his arms—he screamed. He looked wildly at Shonan and Aku.

“She’s cold,” said Aku, “but she’s not dead.” They explained, but Kumu kept wailing. The words meant nothing to him.

“Zinna,” said Shonan, “I—
we
—need both of you. We intend to bring Salya back to life. That means we have to kill Maloch.”

Zinna said, “Where do we go? When?”

“To Amaso,” said Shonan, “which is Galayi now. Maloch will come for us there. If he doesn’t, we’ll go after him.”

“Count me in,” Zinna said. He looked at his bereft son. “Him, too.”

“Good man. We leave in the morning.”

The Red Chief led the way to the home of Fuyl.

“Her other suitor?” said Aku.

“No,” said Shonan, “the best spear thrower in the village.” Yim, Fuyl’s father.

Yim invited them in and his wife gave them tea. Most of the family seemed to be out and about.

Shonan gave Yim his story.

“Sorry, I’m out,” said Yim. “My medicine has led me another direction. Let me show you.”

“I don’t have much time,” said Shonan. His mind was scrambling to think of someone to replace Yim.

“This will be worth it.”

He walked to the back of the house and came back with an elk antler in each hand. Rather, they’d once been elk antlers. The branches had been cut away. The thick ends of the remaining stems were polished to a high gleam and—Aku had trouble crediting his eyes—carved into graceful images of bounding elk. Though the Galayi liked to carve, Aku had never seen anything finer. On the other ends were …

Shonan knew immediately. “What spear throwers!” He grabbed one and swung it overhead. “Balanced, strong, beautiful.”

“They are made with strong materials and strong medicine,” said Yim.

Yim knew few villagers were as skeptical as Shonan. “And I have something even better for you,” he said. “Tell me, Red Chief, who is a better spear thrower than me?”

“No one,” said Shonan, “not even me.”

“Wrong. I have taught my son slowly and carefully. Since you left he’s proved his mettle in a buffalo hunt.
Truly
proved it. He is the best in the entire Galayi nation.”

Yim wanted to show his boast was good, and Shonan was willing. They found Fuyl practicing for an upcoming ball game. The handsome youth was probably the village’s best ball player.

Fuyl got his darts and one of Yim’s beautiful elk spear throwers. “With these throwers,” said Yim, “and my strong boy, you can throw thicker and heavier spears.”

The three went hunting and rousted out a buck. Fuyl hurled a spear through it so hard that the point sank deep into the ground beyond.

“That’s power,” said Shonan.

“Let me show you power and accuracy,” said Fuyl. He drove a dart all the way through the trunk of a sapling.

As they walked back, Shonan told the young fellow, “You’re the best with your weapon.”

Fuyl said, “That’s good, Red Chief, but I’m tired of throwing at animals—I want men.”

“I can give you all the challenge you want,” said Shonan.

“I’ll hold you to your promse.”

As he strode off, Aku said, “Spears won’t hurt Maloch, Father.”

Shonan huffed out a laugh. “Do you believe all the gossip you hear? Anyway, think about Maloch trying to bite someone when he has six or eight spears down his throat, each one tall as me.” Now Shonan laughed out loud. “Or think about him trying to eat supper that way.”

Shonan led Aku around the village, deciding on the best men. Shonan picked three or four husky ones and told them to cut the shafts of their spears short. “I want you to be able to stab with them,” he explained, illustrating with a gesture. They looked doubtful. “Listen, that’s what I’m going to carry for my own main weapon. A short spear. Also the heaviest club I can swing.”