Chapter 12
Jaysh couldn’t tell what he was looking at across the valley. It appeared to be some sort of animal peeking its head from the grasses, but that was just a guess. At this distance, it was impossible to be sure.
He let his eyes relax for a moment, least he get a headache from the strain, then scrunched them up anew. Across the way, the thing in the grass had not changed. It still looked like it had been painted the wrong shade of dirty white, that it had the roundish head of a feline—heavily jowled, perhaps?—and that it was staring right at him.
You cain’t know that last part, said a female voice from deep inside his head, the voice of his woman friend, Gariel, whom he had left in Castle Arn and whom, he was sure, was enjoying her new life of luxury.
Jaysh continued to study the pasty white blob in the distance. He knew better than to argue with the voice of his woman friend, even the projection of her voice.
Exhaling soundlessly through his nose, he thought, Sure looks like it.
But even that was a lie. From across the growing shadows of the valley, the angle of creature’s head was impossible to discern, let alone the position of its eyes. What Jaysh should have said, had he wished to be honest with himself (and the voice of his woman friend) was that it sure felt like it.
He began to chew his vine again, moving his jaw in slow and thoughtful circles and pondering what he saw. After a while, he decided it was the creature’s immobility that was causing him to feel this way.
It had been several long moments since Jaysh had spied the thing lurking in the brush and shushed his partner to be still, and yet the thing hadn’t moved once in all that time, not even to change the position of its head.
Now, Jaysh knew immobility was in no way related to the visual aptitude of a creature of the prairie, just as he knew that it was in no way proof that the little beastie was staring at him as he lay motionless in his blind…but, oh man, does it ever feel like it.
The imaginary Gariel in his head held her tongue this time and Jaysh was left to stew in the silence of his mind, listening to the echo of his own declaration and hearing, finally, how ridiculous the idea sounded.
Gariel was right. He didn’t know the thing was staring at him. Just like he didn’t know the alleged watcher was an animal. Considering the Bottoms were no more than a stone’s throw to the east and that the thing across the way was acting like no animal he’d ever seen, it was more than likely an ugling.
But you cain’t know that neither, Gariel told him, and again she was correct. Until the thing broke from its paralysis and began moving through the reeds, all Jaysh could say for certain was that its pelt was a dirty white and that its head hadn’t moved once since he’d seen it peeking from the reeds.
In lieu of good head shake, which was what Jaysh usually did when he needed to clear his mind and change perspective, he rolled the pulp to his other cheek and began kneading the damp mulch with the fresh side of his mouth.
He wasn’t a smart man by any stretch, and most of the council members would have vouched for this (in a heartbeat, actually), but he did have a fairly solid memory about him, so long as it was focused on information stored over the last ten ages, or the period of time he referred to as A.G.B. (After the Green Blob), not to be confused with B.G.B. ( Before the Green Blob).
For example, he could tell you which birds you’d find roosting in the boughs of the Shun and what time of day they’d be active, or which areas of the Kilashan housed the most bears during the winter cycles and when to steer clear of them, and even what kind of berries a red squirrel preferred to eat and what exactly the little critter did with the seeds.
But if you asked Jaysh to share with you his favorite toy as a child, or any of the wild adventures he and Iman had shared when they were kids, he had no idea what you were talking about.
Like the two krysts he supposedly spent time with, and the treacherous Lathian War he’d supposedly survived, everything he had stored away during the formative ages of his life no longer existed.
Thankfully, though, his knowledge of the Sway and its many predators had been accumulated A.G.B., so he knew right away that what he was staring at across the way was probably a member of the canine family, a coy dog or a stray, or maybe a coyote or scabe-wolf.
Had he only his eyes to rely upon, he might have said the pale creature on the other side of the ridge was a cougar or bobcat or some other round-faced feline, but since he was also viewing the animal through a thick pane of past experience, he knew that cougars and bobcats in this region stayed out of the pastures.
On occasion, the big cats might stray far enough from the Shun or Kilashan to snag an isolated deer or cow, provided the prey was weak or sick and within sight of their natural habitat, but they would not have come this far inside.
Likewise, a feline predator wouldn’t have been so foolish as to reveal themselves in the presence of the decoy. That was dog behavior. Dogs were the ones that came barreling into the open and spooking their prey into a chase. Cats preferred to slink and to stalk.
So le’ me see if I got this, Gariel said, sounding like she did when she’d been hitting the sauce hot and heavy. It’s some kind’a dog…that’s actin like a cat? She paused for Jaysh to think, then said, Cause it ain’t exactly barrelin down the hillside, now is it?
Jaysh stopped chew his vine and winced at the pale head in the reeds. He didn’t say anything to his woman friend, least he incur her horrible wrath, but those were the kind of observations he could do without.
And when was the last time, Gariel went on, that you saw a cat or a dog with that shade’a hair, huh?
The truth of the matter was that Jaysh had never seen hair like that. He’d seen a handful of albino animals through the ages—ivory predators, pink-eyed pets—but that wasn’t what he was seeing now. The thing on the opposite ridge was not a snowy white of clean alabaster, but dingy white of eggs still sitting in the coop, half-buried in straw and feathers and flecked with little black drops of crap.
Hey, you know what, Gariel said. Maybe ole Mister Whithead ain’t really starin at you after all…Maybe he’s starin at the place where it heard the talkin.
Jaysh felt a streak of hope flash through his center. Despite the raging alcoholic who’d uttered those words, the idea was actually pretty good. He and Serit had been talking up a storm before the creature appeared. Who was to say their voices hadn’t drawn the creature?
Squinting once more, he searched the sides of the creature’s rather large head for anything resembling a fold or flap or lobe. When he found nothing, he searched it again, and then one more time after that. On the fourth go, he decided it was official: the side of the creature’s head was as smooth as the helmet on a foot soldier.
That didn’t mean anything, of course. Snakes and voles didn’t have ears and they could hear you from afar, or at least that’s what Serit had told him. It had something to do with feeling minute vibrations in the ground, or something like that. At any rate, if it worked for snakes and voles, he reckoned it could work for the thing across the way.
And ain’t it startin to look like a snake? he wondered. With its head up like that an’ its body holdin still?
As if sensing these incriminating thoughts, the animal on the opposite ridge broke from its stance and waddled back the way it came, disappearing in the reeds.
Jaysh sat up and stared disquietingly at the empty space where it had been, his muscles tense and his mind spinning.
From the shelter beside him, Serit said, “Young Jaysh?”
Jaysh took in a lungful of air. “Yeah.”
“What was that?”
“I dunno,” Jaysh said, exhaling his breath and realizing there was a thin line of discomfort pulsing on the side of his head.
Serit said, “It wasn’t our quarry, was it?”
“Huh-uh,” Jaysh said, pressing a finger to his temple.
“It wasn’t large enough?”
“Huh-uh
,” Jaysh said, thinking about the damage he’d seen on the crumpled cow and mangled bear.
“I didn’t think so,” Serit said. “But did you notice the kryst?”
“Huh-uh,” Jaysh said, hooking a finger in his mouth and prying the juiceless vine from his unfeeling cheek. “Wha’d it do?”
Serit huffed at him. “It did nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing.”
Wondering why he was being told about something that didn’t happen, and not quite sure how to respond, Jaysh said, “Huh.”
“Do you know what this means?” Serit asked.
Jaysh sent his tongue along both sides of his jaw, searching for stray splinters and left over bark and recalling the uncomfortable conversation he’d been having with Serit prior to Mister Whitehead’s appearance.
Serit had been treating him to his latest theory on the kryst, a theory explaining how the crystal man was either unwilling to help in their quest or inclined towards spontaneous bouts of suicide.
Licking wood flakes from the seam of his lips, Jaysh said, “I din’t think you was sure about that.”
“Well, of course, I’m not certain,” Serit said, desperation in his voice, “but there isn’t a means to be certain, not unless one of us speaks to Lorn, and even then…” he trailed off, made a few whimpering sounds, then said, “…Lorn rarely communicates with others, and when he does, it is only with kings. So I couldn’t be the one to ask.” He added this quickly and, Jaysh thought, conveniently. “It would have to be you, young Jaysh. You would have to be the one who speaks with him…,” he trailed off, “…Didn’t you say it communicates with you?”
“Yeah,” Jaysh said, and added to himself, before it started throwin my stuff aroun an’ scarin my pet off. But since he didn’t think that would hold much weight with the general, he said, “But what am I gona tell the thing that it doan’ ah’ready know?”
Silence from Serit’s blanket, followed by an uneasy sigh. “That’s true,” he said. “If you’ve heard about the missions, then rest assured the kryst has too. There’s no historical record to indicate its perception is any worse than ours. In fact, considering what I leaned of Aden on the day of his demise, I’ve often wondered if their perception wasn’t superior to that of our own, perhaps even clairvoyant.
“In any event, that only serves to prove my point. If the kryst knows the folly of the kingdom and still it refuses to assist, then…then what chance do we have?”
Sitting there with damp pulp in his hand, Jaysh didn’t know. For that matter, he didn’t know what Serit was talking about either. He’d stayed afloat until the word clairvoyant and then things had just unraveled. He was pretty sure he didn’t have to talk to the kryst now and that, pretty much, was all he cared about. He’d rather swim the Dell at full moon than look into those empty cobalt eyes.
Still, it wasn’t like they were out of the woods yet. They still had no idea if they were hunting the mystery killer or if they were simply laying out here and waiting to be squished. According to Serit, the kryst wasn’t going to lift a finger unless the king was in danger, and Jaysh most certainly wasn’t in danger, not way up here in his blind safely removed from—
A thought flared to life in his mind, one so simple he wondered how he’d missed it.
“If the king were—If I were in danger,” he said, digging his fingers into the soil, “that thing back there would fight?”
Serit seemed to think about this, then said, “Well, theoretically…based upon historical records…I can’t—I don’t see any reason…”
This went on for quite some time and, again, Jaysh found himself functioning by inflection alone. The words in the Serit’s answer could have meant anything, but his tone said yes.
Wriggling his fingers into the roots, Jaysh said, “So all we need is fer me to be in danger?”
Another thoughtful pause, followed by: “Technically speaking, young Jaysh, we are in danger.”
“Yeah, but not enough,” Jaysh said, prying his fingers back and forth, widening the dimensions of the hole. “Sounds like I need to be closer.”
“Clo—Closer?” Serit chocked, then cleared his throat. “Closer to what?”
Jaysh dropped the pulp in the hole and pushed sod back together. “The decoy.”
Serit paused again, and this time Jaysh could practically hear the sound of a human brain popping and pinging. The general said, “How close?”
Jaysh wiped his fingers on the grass and pulled a pouch from the inside of his shirt. “I reckon I’d fit,” he said, extracting the coil of vine from the pouch and biting off the end. “I’d ‘ave ta ‘ull em ‘ankets out,” he said, his tongue wrestling with a fresh load of vine, “but I reckon I’d fit.”
“Young Jaysh, you’re not…you’re not talking about entering the decoy?”
Spit pooling at the back of his throat, Jaysh said, “Uh-huh,” and this time the silence was so great that he could feel it rolling out of the grass and pressing in against him.
Serit cleared his throat. “Young Jaysh,” he said, “I think that would be MOST problematic.”
“How yeh reckon?”
“How do I—”
“I’d be in danger, wouldn’t I?”
“Yes. Yes, you would. That’s the problematic part.”
“But you was the one—”
“Do you remember the bear, young Jaysh? Do you remember the way it looked like a pile of hairy guts and you had to tell me it was a bear? I’m still not certain that it was—it could have been a horse or two bears or a whole cete of badgers—but my point is that any beast capable crushing a full-grown animal into a meat pie is nothing we wish to trifle with.”
On the small of woodsman’s back, he felt Zeph jerk awake. She had been heavy and purring one moment, then tense and silent the next. Not wishing to startle her further, Jaysh lay there motionless and listening, feeling her stand between his shirt and the camouflage, then stiffen her legs and arch her back.
When he felt her relax, her claws no longer pricking at his flesh, he said, “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Serit said. “What do you mean maybe?”
“Well,” he said, counting the cat-thing’s steps as she crept from the small of his back to the blades of his shoulders, “that bear din’t have no kryst protectin it.”
Serit made a gasping, huffing sound, then said, “Well, excuse me, young Jaysh, but I strongly disagree. Or have you forgotten the last time you placed your life in the hands of a kryst!”
The answer to that question, of course, was an emphatic yes, but thanks to that uncomfortable conversation Serit had shared with Jaysh just before Mister Whitehead appeared, the woodsman knew the general was referring to a castle kryst named Aden and some horrible event at the end of the Lathian War.
Having no idea what he was talking about, but feeling the need to say something, least he lose this debate, Jaysh said, “That was just one time.”
“Just one—” Serit froze up, his camouflage vibrating with tension. “Young Jaysh, please. Please, listen to me. Does it not stand to reason that you would be in less danger by going to the council and telling them how Aden failed you, than by crawling into a decoy and hoping Lorn follows through?”
The answer to this question was also yes, but it didn’t matter. Less dangerous or not, Jaysh could not go to the council and tell them how Aden had let him down. Aden and the horrible event had occurred B.G.B. and, therefore, were beyond his powers of recollection.
If he tried to retrieve them from their shelf, he would likely swim about in the blackness of his mind, find a few recent images—a Swim Day here, a Hike Day there, a picture of Gariel inebriated on her bed—and then he’d come face to face with an ugly green mass.
Jaysh contemplated telling Serit this, green blob and all, but considering how worried the old man became the last time the woodsman had revealed this inconvenient truth, he decided against full disclosure.
Instead, he said, “Yeh doan’ know that’ll
happen again,” whatever that was, he added to himself, “but even if it did, I doan’ see how we got much choice.”
“We have Mums’ plan,” Serit shot back, referring to the titan’s suggestion that they flee the land. “There is always Lathia or the Gabatween or the great cities of the south. Because I am here to tell you, young Jaysh, I believe Mums is right. I believe the land is becoming Drugana—all of it—the whole of the kingdom, and just so you know, Mums and I were both in favor of leaving, as is most of populace I would imagine, and as was your brother before young Iman cajoled him into staying.”
Serit took a breath, then surged on. “Young Iman, as well as Reets and Balthus, do not have pure motives. Yes, they voted to stay, but I can assure you their motives had nothing to do with the good of the people.” He paused to inhale deeply then finish with, “But we do have a choice, young Jaysh. We always do.”
Jaysh lowered his lip to the grasses and spat out a streamer of saliva. He thought about his previous attempt at emigration, about packing his things and stealing his map—nothing personal, Serit—then heading out for the wilds of the Hinterland, but that hadn’t exactly worked.
He’d had his gear slung, his map read, his destination set, but when push came to shove, he’d found that walking away wasn’t as simple as he thought. Sure, he could regain his hobbies in the lands beyond the Blades, his simple way of life and his random shots of vine, but in so doing he would lose the little angel on the Hill, the one who watched over him at night.
Zeph slunk off his shoulder and slipped around his head. He let her nestled down beneath his chin and lowered his beard to her back.
“I cain’t leave, Serit.”
Serit made a sharp intake of air, and not a pleasant one. Jaysh could almost see him over there stewing in his phobias and rubbing vigorously at his chest.
“And why is that?” he demanded.
Rather than tell him about Beth, Jaysh said, “I like it here.”
Serit sucked more air through his teeth. “Yes, well, I understand that,” he said, “but for how long will the place you like remain the same? If Mums is correct, and I believe that she is, how long do you have before the place you love becomes something else?”
Jaysh made a face as he thought about his answer. He’d not come around to embracing that side of the coin yet, so enamored he was by the face on the other side, the side with the resolved happenings and that restored hobbies, but yes, there was another side, wasn’t there.
On the other side of the coin, the land became uninhabitable, Gariel left, his precious Zeph was crushed in the Sway by the mystery killer, his precious Beth was lost to the ever-expanding slopes of the Bottoms.
This last image stuck with him a while and he watched as the little stone angel slipped down that gradual slope of slime and mucus, her head bowed, her arms behind her back, her tiny body vanishing in the frozen mists within.
He set his jaw against the image, refusing to accept it. He would stay in the land of the old ones and he would spend his nights on the Hill, even if it killed him.
He opened his mouth to speak these words and make real the painful truth, but before he could he caught sight of movement across the way.
He turned his head to look…and found himself speechless.