The Revenants (31 page)

Lain-achor and Daingol did not share her calm. They struggled like trapped stallions in the nets with which they were bound. Thewson lay beside the fire, so trussed he could not move. Across the fire Dhariat and Sowsie leaned together to struggle to their feet.

Now began a strangeness. One of the warty creatures knelt at Jasmine’s feet and began to smell her, sniffing like a curious dog at her feet, ankles, thighs, crotch, up her belly to her breasts, then down her arms to her hands, spending a long time smelling her fingers. Then the first was pushed away and another began the same game while the first crouched over Thewson’s immobile body to begin the same procedure. Across the fire Jasmine could see others gathered around the Sisters and the scouts, sniffing and mumbling, making a peculiar susurrus of gargles and sniffs which were almost, though not entirely, words.

A command from the shadows took the creatures reluctantly into deeper darkness beneath twisted trees. Their conversation went on, mumbles and mutters, silences broken by grunts of agreement. They came into the firelight once more, this time grouped around a taller one, one with a head borne forward, the neck extended somewhat like a beast’s, but with joints which were smoother and more ordinarily human. This one came first to Jasmine, and she tingled with apprehension. If dogs had a king, she thought, it should look like this, smile like this with sharp muzzle, let its tongue loll like this through long jaws. It grasped her hand and smelt of it, then the other, then knelt to sniff her feet as the others had done.

It turned away to Thewson, then to each of the others, repeating the sniffing of hands and feet. It hunkered, finally, at the fireside, ears tilting forward toward the assembled warty ones, grunting, ‘These have not been with it.’

Jasmine understood this muttered speech. Lain-achor and Daingol stopped struggling in their astonishment. Thewson turned his head fractionally within his bonds. The dog king repeated, ‘Not these. No smell of the things. No smell of the muldrek.’

Heads cocked, ears swivelled, eyes peered at them. Hands patted at them nervously, taking away the ropes and gags, leaping away as though fearing retaliation. Thewson plucked his spear from the fireside where it had been dropped by the warty ones, drew Jasmine toward the others, uncertain whether to stand fast or flee.

‘What – who are they?’ Jasmine asked.

The dog king regarded her sneeringly, then nodded toward Daingol. ‘He knows,’ muttered the dog king. ‘I see he knows.’

It was true. Daingol drew the travellers into a group around him, stood resolutely facing the creatures. ‘You are the creatures of the Lone Man. The Hermit of Tinok Ochor.’

The creatures gargled and mumbled, giggled a little with a quick, feminine titter. Jasmine wondered if there were women among them. Girls? Was some femaleness caught in these warped and rough-hided forms? The dog king nodded. ‘No more his creatures, man. He made us, but he is gone, and we go on living.’

‘I thought you were a myth,’ Daingol said. ‘I thought you were vanished in history, something to tell the children.’

‘No. Not vanished. Not a myth. Real. Alive. We go on living and living. It is wearisome, but we do it. Sometimes we laugh. When we are killed, we are angry. The things are killing us, eating us, eating our God Horse, our God Mare….’

‘The thing….whatever it is that smells so strange? We smelt it on the trail, but it has nothing to do with us.’

‘Not true. You come from a place, a place
Gerenhodh
, we hear you say it. Those muldrek things go to
Gerenhodh
, and to
Orena
. We hear them say it.’

‘Powers,’ breathed Dhariat. ‘What manner of things are they?’

‘Crawling things, hard as iron, slithering and strong, slow and hard, with feet that tear, with mouths that burn.’

In imagination they pictured some hard, horrible thing moving through the stone halls toward Old Aunt and the Sisters. ‘Where they are trapped, there below…’ breathed Jasmine.

‘If there is a crack, the worm will go there. There is no place it cannot go.’ The dog king intoned this as though relishing their horror.

Sowsie interrupted. ‘I know what he’s talking about. We know them as Tharnel worms, from the far north somewhere. But the Sisters aren’t children. They won’t be easy prey, even for that.’

‘They take them, those muldrek, to your place. You are the cause of it!’ The dog king was accusative and insistent, posturing before his followers as he began shouting at them. They became sharply aware of their position, backed against a rock wall, re-armed, but surrounded by hundreds of shifting bodies who were beginning to murmur restlessly.

‘We are not the cause of it,’ said Sowsie carefully. ‘We are
not
the cause of it.’

‘If you-ones did not live there, the muldrek would not come,’ the dog went on.

‘If you-ones did not live
here,’
Thewson shouted, ‘then the muldrek would not go through your place.’

This confused the dog king, and he cocked his head in irritation before turning to gargle a command at several of those in the mob which surged forward once more bearing ropes, crouching and circling.

‘No,’ thundered Thewson. ‘Did you not see what burden we are bearing? Horse child. Child of God Horse is in our care. Do not offend your God.’

Dhariat caught at Jasmine’s sleeve. ‘Play up to him,’ she urged. ‘Demand that they bring you the foal.’

Jasmine stamped on the stones, spoke shrilly at the circling faces. ‘Bring me the Horse child which was in my care before God Mare is offended with you!’

The warty men quailed under her voice, muttered and drew aside to let others pass through leading the foal. ‘The goat,’ Jasmine cried. ‘To nurse this little one.’

There were expressions of dismay, eyes rolling toward the dog king where he crouched, tongue lolling, against the wall.

‘Ammmm,’ he said foolishly. ‘It is gone. We would eat it.’

‘Then you must find another,’ Thewson demanded. ‘From the fields, from the herdsmen, from the villages. Find one full of milk and bring it here or the God Mare will grow angry.’

Instructed thus, the confusion among the warty men grew even more frantic with small groups going this way and that, aimlessly, like a scattered ant hill. One group broke away to run wildly through the rocky chasm of the entrance. The dog king watched them go saying bleakly, ‘Fools, fools. See them run. Oh, if these were different creatures would I not be a different king?’

‘Did you want them to tie us, hurt us?’ asked Lain-achor. ‘For what reason? A true king would not lead his people to do a senseless thing.’

The dog king shrugged. ‘It would be a different thing to do, different from today, or yesterday. A thing to think of. A thing to regret, perhaps, perhaps not. But at least a different thing. Here in these stones, in our caverns, by our fires, doing what we do, it is the same over and over again, a thousand years.’

Lain-achor pursued the question. ‘But merely for something to do?’

The dog king squatted sullenly on the ground at their feet, panted, turned his head to peer at them all as he gestured toward the rocks. ‘I will tell a story of these stones,’ he said, ‘as it has been told forever.

‘Long time past, Lone Man, Mountain Dweller, last of the wizards in the east, named Sienepas, sat on the mountain. He said, “In the east my brothers make new life, new things and strange, and I have fled away, fled away.”’

‘Fled away, away,’ chorused the warty men.

‘He, last of the wizards said, “Am I less than they, or shall I not do what they have done? So shall I make new life, here in these stones.”’

‘Here in these stones,’ the warty men who remained sang.

‘“Oh, I will be creator and founder of my own. I will return in glory to the east. I will bring a people from these stones!”’

‘Out of these stones …’

‘And the Lone Man, He of the Mountain, created us, from stone he made us, from rock brought us to life, and of fire and other things he had in this place. He made us and then grew weary of us, for we were not beautiful. He said to my fathers’ fathers’ fathers, “See the great horses run in beauty in the meadow, but you, my creatures, are of stone. Worship that beauty as your God, you shall have no other. I will go after my kinsmen to the west.” But he did not go after anyone. No, he never went away after that.’

‘What happened to him?’ asked Sowsie, softly.

The stare which glared from beneath swollen and ominous eyelids was almost answer enough. ‘That which was fitting. He should not have made us. We would be unmade if we knew how, and if it was an easy thing.’

‘How long ago?’ Sowsie asked. ‘Powers. How long ago?’

‘The count of the years is four thousand five hundred seventy and seven. With the moon of summer, seventy and eight.’

‘And you have lived all that time?’

‘Me, my father who was like me. His father. His father again, twice more. We live a long time, a very long time. The Lone Man made well, too well. We grow older than Horse God the beautiful, Horse God who lives and dies like grass. We live longer than men, but it is not good. There is nothing, nothing for us in these stones, and our God gives us nothing but longing.’

He turned from them to join the warty men in the shadows, and from that uneasy group came muffled grunts, snorts, the beginning of a mob sound, a panic sound.

Lain-achor moved to lay more wood upon the fire as they hunkered beside it, whispering.

‘The old man, the Lone Man – they killed him,’ said Jasmine. ‘He offended them.’

‘He offended much,’ brooded Sowsie. ‘Against the Powers, but more against his own creation for he gave them life while withholding purpose, gave ugliness and told it to worship beauty. I, too, might have killed him for that.’

‘They are resentful, bored beyond comprehension, without hope. Then others come with a worm which kills and eats them, a final blow, a mystery, a hatefulness. They question, now,’ Daingol mused, the fire lighting his eye sockets from below, turning him into a skull shape in the dark. Jasmine shuddered.

‘We may question, now,’ said Sowsie. ‘How will we get away? They hold us hostage for their resentment, their current fear. If they can make us responsible, it will relieve them. It will make an excitement, a change. Listen to the hysteria rising in their voices.’

They heard it building in the shadows, a muttering followed by a smothered shout, then a mutter and treble shrieking.

‘We must divert them,’ said Sowsie. ‘Give them something else to think of.’

Thewson rumbled into their silent thought. ‘It would be better for them to have a God like them, one not beautiful. In the Lion Courts we have such. Guardians of doorways. They are called fanuluzhli, the little old gods. They are very ugly, to frighten thieves away.’

‘Yes,’ Sowsie agreed. ‘And more than that. They need a ritual, a new something, a purpose.’ She drew them tighter around the fire as they plotted. At last Thewson rose, carrying his spear high, shouting to Lain-achor and Daingol who bore brands from the fire to twirl them in great circles of flame. Beside a gnarled tree which thrust its way through the rocks of the chasm Thewson paused, shouted once more, began to hack at the tree with his spear, chips flying.

At the fireside Sowsie and Dhariat hunched over stones, tapped a slow rhythm, stone on stone, echoing the shouts of the men with treble calls into the shadow. Jasmine began to dance, praying to the Lady, remembering the theatres of Lak Island, the temperamental demands of actors and dance masters. ‘I am one of the warty women,’ she told herself. ‘I dance the birth of my God.’ She drooped her body, hunched it, forced it to grace within that stooped stance, forced it to express dignity, joy, exaltation within its earthiness, power and longing from its warped and twisted movement. Eyes turned toward her from the shadows. Squat forms drew near to watch. The dog king’s voice rose querulously, then fell silent. Thewson shouted, chopped, shouted, chanted in time with the stones which Dhariat and Sowsie tapped, tapped, passing hand over hand, click, click, click-click.

‘The time of the Horse God is done, is done. The time of all old things is gone, is gone. A new God comes to the people of stone. A new time, a new thing, a new purpose.’

‘A new purpose,’ echoed Daingol and Lain-achor.

It went on, hypnotic, wearying, click of stone, chop of wood, slow, circling dance. The chop of the spear blade stopped, and Thewson began working upon the tree with his knife, detailing the tough wood to his need. The shadowy watchers drew nearer, were seized and brought into the circling dance, one by one, two by two, leaning and shuffling in time with the endless tapping, the chanting, the shouts. Sowsie rose, pressed a stone into the hands of a watcher and drew that one down to join the tap, tap, tap.

High above them the sky paled. Thewson gestured Daingol away, and the brothers began carrying the chips to the fire, casting them into the flames with ponderous, weighty gestures of invocation. Dawn rushed upon them, battered at them with reflected light, and they stood silent, still, heads bent in respect before the giant wooden image which Thewson had made. Before it, Thewson bowed, priestly and potent, booming in a voice like a great drum, ‘So it is commanded, you men of the stone. So each year shall you do before the moon of summer. So shall you take the old God into the deep places of the earth to dream the future of your kind while the new God keeps watch. So shall you go to the old ones in deepest places to inquire of them what purpose the men of the stones shall have. And between the moons of summer, one summer and the next, shall you carve the stones of this mountain and all its ways.’

He turned, blind-eyed, and led them away, leaving the warty men to stare at the great image in frozen silence. They took their horses and led them away through the chasm, quietly, looking back only once to see the dog king staring after them, his face reflecting a kind of cynical awe. They heard the dog king’s voice. ‘So it is commanded. So be it.’

Upon the mountain side they encountered a small group of warty men carrying a goat. Seeing the mounted troop with their weapons gleaming, the warty men dropped their captive and fled into the stones, hooting dismally as they went. Thewson retrieved the goat, putting it across his saddle without comment.