It had rained the night before, but smoke rose weakly from a few piles.
On the hillside were a dozen widely scattered charred corpses of women and children and the burned carcasses of a few bears and dogs. These had been fleeing when rayed down.
He had no doubt that the Black Bellers had done this. But how had they connected him with the Hrowakas?
His thoughts, wounded, moved slowly. Finally, he remembered that the Tishquetmoac knew that he came from the Hrowakas. However, they did not know even the approximate location of the village. The Hrowaka men always traveled at least two hundred miles from the village before stopping along the Great Trade Path. Here they waited for the Tishquetmoac caravan. And though the Bear People were talkers, they would not reveal the place of their village.
Of course, there were old enemies of the Bear People, and perhaps the Bellers had been informed by these. And there were also films of the village and of Kickaha, taken by Wolffand stored in his palace. The Bellers could have run these off and so found the Hrowakas, since the location was shown on a map in the film.
Why had they burned down the village and all in it? What could serve the Bellers by this act?
With a heavy halting voice, he asked Anana the same question. She replied in a sympathetic tone, and if he had not been so stunned, he would have been agreeably surprised at her reaction.
"The Bellers did not do this out of vindictiveness," she said. "They are cold and alien to our way of thinking. You must remember that while they are products of human beings" — Kickaha was not so stunned that he did not notice her identification of Lords with human beings at this time — "and were raised and educated by human beings, they are, in essence, mechanical life. They have self-consciousness, to be sure, which makes them not mere machines. But they were born of metal and in metal. They are as cruel as any human. But the cruelty is cold and mechanical. Cruelty is used only when they can get something desired through it. They can know passion, that is, sexual desire, when they are in the brain of a man or woman, just as they get hungry because their host-body is hungry.
"But they don't take illogical vengeance as a human would. That is, they wouldn't destroy a tribe just because it happened to be loved by you. No, they must have had a good reason — to them, anyway — for doing this."
"Perhaps they wanted to make sure I didn't take refuge here," he said. "They would have been smarter to have waited until I did and then move in."
They could be hiding someplace up on the mountains where they could observe everything.
However, Kickaha insisted on scouting the area before he approached the village. If Bellers were spying on them, they were well concealed indeed. In fact, since the heat-and-mass detector on the craft indicated nothing except some small animals and birds, the Bellers would have to be behind something large. In which case, they couldn't see their quarry either.
It was more probably that the Bellers machine, after destroying the village, had searched this area. Failing to find him, it had gone elsewhere.
"I'll take over the controls," Anana said softly. "You tell me how to get to Podarge."
He was still too sluggish to react to her unusual solicitude. Later, he would think about it.
Now he told her to go to the edge of the level again and to descend about fifty thousand feet. Then she was to take the craft westward at 150 MPH until he told her to stop.
The trip was silent except for the howling of the wind at the open rear end. Not until the machine stopped below an enormous overhang of shiny black rock did he speak.
"I could have buried the bodies," he said, "but it would have taken too long. The Bellers might have checked back."
"You're still thinking about them," she said with a trace of incredulity. " I mean, you' re worrying because you couldn't keep the carrion eaters off them? Don't! They' re dead; you can do nothing for them."
"You don't understand," he said. "When I called them my people, I meant it. I loved them, and they loved me. They were a strange people when I first met them, strange to me. I was a young, mid-twentieth century, Midwestern American citizen, from another universe, in fact. And they were descendants of Amerinds who had been brought to this universe some twenty thousand years ago. Even the ways of an Indian of America are alien and near-incomprehensible to a white American. But I'm very adaptable and flexible. I learned their ways and came to think something like them. I was at ease with them and they with me. And I was Kickaha, the Trickster, the man of many turns. Their Kickaha, the scourge of the enemy of the Bear People.
"This village was my home, and they were my friends, the best I've ever had, and I also had two beautiful and loving wives. No children, though Awiwisha thought she might be pregnant. It's true that I'd established other identities on two other levels, especially that of the outlaw Baron Horst von Horstmann. But that was fading away. I'd been gone so long from Dracheland.
"The Hrowakas were my people, dammit! I loved them, and they loved me!"
And then he began to sob loudly. The cries tore the flesh as they mounted upward with spurs toward his throat. And even after he had quit crying, he hurt from deep within him. He did not want to move for fear he would hurt even more. But Anana finally cleared her throat and moved uneasily.
Then he said, "All right. I'm better. Set her down on that ledge there. The entrance to Podarge's cave is about ten miles westward. It'll be dangerous to get near it any time, but especially at night. The only time I was there was two or three years ago when Wolff and I talked Podarge into letting us out of her cage."
He grinned and said, "The price was that I should make love to her. Other captives had been required to do this, too, but a lot of them couldn't because they were too frightened, or too repulsed or both. When this happened, she'd shred them as if they were paper with her great sharp talons,
"And so, Anana," he continued, "in a way I've already made love to you. At least to a woman — a thing with a woman's face — with your face."
"You must be feeling better," she said, "if you can talk like that."
"I have to joke a little, to talk about things far removed from death," he said. "Can't you understand that?"
She nodded but did not say anything. He was silent, too, for a long while. They ate cold meat and biscuits — it would be wise not to make a fire. Lights might attract the Bellers or the green eagles. Or other things that would be crawling around the cliffs.
XIII
The night passed without incident, although they were awakened from time to time by roars, screams, whoops, bellows, trumpetings, and whistlings, all at a distance.
After breakfast, they set out slowly in the craft along the cliffside. Kickaha saw an eagle out above the sea. He piloted the craft toward her, hoping she would not try to escape or attack. Her curiosity won over whatever other emotions she had. She circled the machine, which remained motionless. Suddenly, she swept past them, crying, "Kickaha-a-a!" and plunged down. He expected her to wing full speed toward Podarge's cave. Instead, behaving unexpectedly, as might be expected from a female — so he said to Anana — she climbed back up. Kickaha indicated that he was going to land on a ledge, where he would like to talk to her.
Perhaps she thought that this would give her a chance to attack him. She settled down beside the machine with a small blast of closing wings. She towered over him, her yellow hooked beak and glaring black red-rimmed eyes above his head. The cowling was open, but he held the beamer, and on seeing it, she stepped back. She squawked, "Podarge?" but said nothing more about Anana's face.
One eagle looked like another to Kickaha. She, however, remembered when he had been in the cage with Wolffand when the eagles had stormed the palace on top of the highest monolith, the pinnacle of the planet.
"I am Thyweste," she said in the great parrot's voice of the green eagle. "What are you doing here, Trickster? Don't you know that Podarge sentenced you to death? And torture before death, if possible?"
"If that's so, why don't you try to kill me
," he said.
"Because Podarge has learned from Dewiwanira that you released her and Antiope from the Tishquetmoac cage. And she knows that something is gravely amiss in Talanac, but she hasn't been able to find out what yet. She has temporarily suspended the sentence on you — though not on Jadawin-Wolff — until she discovers the truth. The orders are that you shall be escorted to her if you show up begging for an audience. Although I will be fair, Kickaha, and warn you that you may never leave the cave, once you've entered it."
"I'm not begging for an audience," he said. "And if I go in, I go inside this craft and fully armed. Will you tell Podarge that? But also tell her that if she wants revenge on the Tishquetmoac for having killed and imprisoned many of her pets, then I will be able to help her. Also, tell her there is a great evil abroad. The evil does not threaten her — yet. But it will. It will close its cold fingers upon her and her eagles and their nestlings. I will tell her of this when — or if — I get to see her.
Thyweste promised to repeat what he had told her, and she flapped off. Several hours passed. Kickaha got increasingly nervous. He told Anana that Podarge was so insane that she was liable to act against her own interests. He wouldn't be surprised to see a horde of the giant eagles plunging down out of the camouflaging green sky.
But it was a single eagle who appeared. Thyweste said that he should come in the flying machine and bring the human female with him. He could bring all the weapons he wished; much good they would do him if he tried to lie or trick Podarge. Kickaha translated for Anana, since they spoke the degenerate descendant of Mycenaean Greek, the speech used by Odysseus and Agamemnon and Helen of Troy.
Anana was startled and then scornful. "Human female! Doesn't this stinking bird know a Lord when she sees one?"
"Evidently not," he replied. "After all, you look exactly like a human. In fact, you can breed with humans, so I would say that you are human, even if you do have a different origin. Or do you? Wolff has some interesting theories about that."
She muttered some invective or pejorative in Lord-speech. Kickaha sent the craft up and followed Thyweste to the entrance of the cave, where Podarge had kept house and court for five hundred years or so. She had chosen the site well. The cliff above the entrance slanted gently outward for several thousand feet and was almost as smooth as a mirror. There was a broad ledge in front of the cave, and the cave could be approached on the ledge from only one side. But this path was always guarded by forty giant eagles. Below the ledge, the cliff slanted inward. No creature could climb up to or down from the cave. An army of determined men could have dropped ropes from above to let themselves down to the cave, but they would have been open to attack.
The entrance was a round hole about ten feet in diameter. It opened to a long curving corridor of rock polished from five centuries of rubbing'by feathered bodies.
The craft had to be driven through the tunnel with much grating and squealing. After fifty yards of such progress, it came out into an immense cavern. This was lit by torches and by huge plants resembling feathers, which glowed whitely. There were thousands of them hanging down from the ceiling and sticking out from the walls, their roots driven into the rock.
From somewhere, air brushed Kickaha's cheek softly.
The great chamber was much as he remembered it except that there was more order. Apparently, Podarge had done some house cleaning. The garbage on the floor had been removed, and the hundreds of large chests and caskets containing jewels, objets d'art, and gold and silver coins and other treasures had been stacked alongside the walls or carried elsewhere.
Two columns of eagles formed an aisle for the craft, the aisle crossed fifty yards of smooth granite floor to end at a platform of stone. This was ten feet high and attained by a flight of steps made from blocks of quartz. The old rock-carved chair was gone. In its place was a great chair of gold set with diamonds, formed in the shape of a phoenix with outstretched wings that was placed in the middle of the platform. The chair had been that of the Rhadamanthus of Atlantis, ruler of the next-to-highest level of this planet. Podarge had taken the chair in a raid on the capital city some four hundred years ago. Now there was no Rhadamanthus, almost no Atlanteans left alive, and the great city was shattered. And the plans of Wolff for recolonizing the land were interrupted by the appearance of the Black Bellers and by his disappearance.
Podarge sat upon the edge of the throne. Her body was that of a Harpy's as conceived by Wolff-as-Jadawin 3,200 years ago. The legs were long and avian, thicker than an ostrich's, so they could bear the weight of her body. The lower part of the body was also avian, green-feathered and long-tailed. The upper part was that of a woman with magnificent white breasts, long white neck, and the achingly beautiful face. Her hair was long and black; her eyes were mad. She had no arms — she had wings, very long and broad wings with green and crimson feathers.
Podarge called to Kickaha in a rich husky voice, "Stop your aerial car there! It may approach no closer!"
Kickaha asked for permission to get out of the machine and come to the foot of the steps. She said that would be granted. He told Anana to follow him and then walked with just a hint of a swagger to the steps. Podarge's eyes were wide on seeing Anana's face. She said, "Two-legged female, are you a creation of Jadawin's? He has given you a face that is modeled on mine!"
Anana knew that the situation was just the reverse, and her pride must have been pierced deeply. But she was not stupid in her arrogance. She replied, "I believe so. I do not know my origin. I have just been, that's all. For some fifty years, I think."
"Poor infant! Then you were the plaything of that monster Jadawin! How did you get away from him! Did he tire of you and let you loose on this evil world, to live or die as events determined?"
"I do not know," Anana said. "It may be. Kickaha thinks that Jadawin was merciful in that he removed part of my memory, so that I do not remember him or my life in his palace, if indeed I had one."
Kickaha approved of her story. She was as adept at lying as he. And then he thought, Oh! Oh! She tripped up! Fifty years ago, Jadawin wasn't even in the palace or in this universe. He was living in America as a young amnesiac who had been adopted by a man named Wolff. The Lord in the palace was Arwoor then.
But, he reassured himself, this made no difference. If Anana pretended to have no memory of her origin or palace, then she wouldn't know who had been Lord.
Podarge apparently wasn't thinking about this. She said to Kickaha, "Dewiwanira has told me of how you freed her and Antiope from the cage in Talanac."
"Did she also tell you that she tried to kill me in payment for having given her her freedom?" he said.
She raised her wings a little and glared. "She had her orders! Gratitude had nothing to do with it! You were the right-hand man of Jadawin, who now calls himself Wolff!"
She folded her wings and seemed to relax, but Kickaha was not deceived. "By the way, where is Jadawin? What is happening in Talanac? Who are these Drachelanders?" she asked.
Kickaha told her. He left out the two Lords, Nimstowl and Judubra, and made it appear that Anana had been gated through a long time ago to the Amerind level and had been a slave in Talanac. Podarge was insanely hostile to the Lords. If she found out that Anana was one, and especially if she suspected that Anana might be Wolffs sister, she would have ordered her killed. This would have put Kickaha into a predicament which he would have to settle within one or two seconds. He would either chose to live and so be able to fight the Bellers but have to let Anana die, or he could back Anana and so die himself. That the two of them could slaughter many eagles before they were overwhelmed was no consolation.
Or perhaps, he thought Just perhaps, we might be able to escape. If I were to shoot Podarge quickly enough and so create confusion among the eagles and then get into the craft quickly enough and bring the big projectors to bear, maybe we could fight our way out.
Kickaha knew in that moment that he had chosen for Anana.
Podarge said, "Then Jadawin ma
y be dead? I would not like that, because I have planned for a long time on capturing him. I want him to live for a long long time while he suffers! While he pays! And pays! And pays!"
Podarge was standing up on her bird legs, her talons outspread, and she was screeching at Kickaha. He spoke from the corner of his mouth to Anana. "Oh, oh! I think she's cracked! Get ready to start shooting!"
But Podarge stopped yelling and began striding back and forth, like a great nightmare bird in a cage. Finally, she stopped and said, "Trickster! Why should I help you in your war against the enemies of Jadawin! Aside from the fact that they may have cheated me of my revenge?"
"Because they are your enemies, too," he said. "It is true that, so far, they have used only human bodies as hosts. But do you think that the Bellers won't be thinking of eagles as hosts? Men are earthbound creatures. What could compare with being housed in the body of a green eagle, of flying far above the planet, into the house of the sun, of hovering godlike above all beasts of earth and the houses and cities of man, of being unreachable, yet seeing and knowing all, taking in a thousand miles with one sweep of the eye?
"Do you think that the Black Bellers won't realize this? And that when they do, they won't capture your eagles, perhaps you, Podarge, and will place the bell shape over your heads, and empty your brains of your thoughts and memory, uncoil you into death, and then possess your brains and bodies for their use?
"The Black Belters use the bodies of flesh and blood creatures as we humans wear garments. When the garments are worn out, they are discarded. And so will you be discarded, thrown onto the trash heap, though of course it won't matter to you, since you will have died long before your body dies."
He stopped speaking for a moment. The eagles, ten foot high green towers, shifted uneasily and made tearing sounds in their throats. Podarge's expression was undecipherable, but Kickaha was sure she was thinking hard.