What had set him on the path that had led here? He might have set off from the meadow on any number of paths through the forest, but he had taken this one. Had the Bear God truly guided him here, as Madekha had suggested, so that Kwasin would remain and help Old Father Nakendar’s people? Or perhaps the Goddess Herself wanted him to stay and fight, for Her own unknowable reasons. He did not know, but the end result was the same. One moment, he had been on the road to Dythbeth, caring little for anything but his own self-interest; in the next, a path of blood and death lay before him.
Though a dark rage had seized him, he set about the task of burying the dead innocents. He had no tool but the sharpened head of his ax to dig the graves, but he could not turn away from the unpleasant chore, notwithstanding the furious urge to take up the war trail straightaway. What these children could not expect of life, he would assure they received in death. When he could, he would hunt down a wild boar and sacrifice it so that their spirits would not hunger and thirst. But now he had only the time to bury their mortal remains.
The early afternoon having passed at his grim labors, Kwasin set off for the meadow where he had last seen Adythne. It took him longer than he would have liked to find the place, and when he did, the priestess was not there. He did, however, find her spoor, as well as that of the bear. The two had set off in different directions, the bear toward the southwest where the forest deepened as the valley widened, and the woman, not surprisingly, in the direction of the village.
After following Adythne’s trail for fifteen minutes, the spoor disappeared beneath the fresh bootprints of many men. He tracked the party a short distance before noticing a woman’s footprints diverging from the group. He followed her tracks but found they made only a little loop through the woods before rejoining the prints of the main party.
Standing beneath the vaulting cedars, Kwasin reconstructed what had transpired. Adythne had set off from the meadow and quickly parted with the bear. Perhaps she had commanded the bear to head into the deep woods, where the animal would be less likely to have a confrontation with the soldiers. About a half-mile from the meadow, Adythne had spied a group of soldiers in the forest, at which point she turned to the east. From the length of the woman’s stride, as well as the shallow impression of her heels, Kwasin could tell she was at this point running, as if the soldiers had seen her. She had gone a distance and then stopped beneath a sprawling pine amid the cedars before finally turning back in the direction of the soldiers. Then she had been caught.
But why had the woman detoured from the party of soldiers only to return to be captured by them? Unless...
Kwasin jogged back to the great pine and looked up into its array of widely spread limbs. He grunted approvingly when he spied what he sought, then pulled himself up among the branches and climbed high into the pine.
When he neared the top of the tree he plucked from between two joining limbs what the woman had cached there: the tightly wrapped antelope-hide bundle that contained the sacred bear pelt. Then he returned to the ground with his prize.
Kwasin removed the pelt from the waxen hide, eddied the pelt over his well-muscled shoulders, and sat down glumly beneath the great pine. His head couched in his hands, he sighed deeply. He thought of how he had abandoned Adythne in the forest against her urgings that he help her defeat the soldiers occupying her village. Now those soldiers had caught her.
That the all-too-determined priestess would have been apprehended by the soldiers sooner or later did nothing to assuage Kwasin’s guilt that he had not assisted her. He was not one to live his life imprisoned by feelings of remorse—he did what his heart told him and bore the consequences. But since he had returned from the Wild Lands, something had changed in him. His actions no longer seemed as certain as they once had. Perhaps he had become unaccustomed to civilized companionship. Or possibly the feeling of uncertainty was due to the dreams that plagued his nights, or maybe the furious battle between Great Kho and Resu that shook the land. Why, he wondered, had he so desired to return to the empire that spurned him to begin with?
Of course, he knew the answer. He had suffered a terrible, soul-aching loneliness while in the wilds. But when he had returned to civilization, a stark feeling of nothingness had rapidly descended upon him, even more smothering than the isolation he had faced in the far-flung land of the savages. In the hope of filling that void of nothingness, he had seized upon the idea of returning to Dythbeth and obtaining a pardon for his crimes. But now, in the mountains above his homeland, the emptiness remained and he wondered if he would ever find that which would satisfy the cravings of his soul.
As Kwasin sat brooding thus, his head cradled deeply in his hands, something cold and wet nudged his forearm. He lifted his head and nearly leaped to his feet when he found himself looking into the large and terrible dark eyes of a great brown bear. It was all he could do to keep from jumping up, but he knew that if he moved suddenly, the bear would become enraged and all would be over for the mighty Kwasin—the bear’s horrible fangs would devour both body and soul, and even dread Sisisken, goddess of the underworld, would be left wondering what had become of him. The nothingness that he feared most would blot him out forever.
And so Kwasin sat there, unmoving, watching the bear. That it was Parbho, the bear that had accompanied the priestess Adythne, he had no doubt. In fact, the bear had a forlorn look about it, as it sat on its haunches, snorting and nudging Kwasin gently with its cold, black nose. Almost, Kwasin thought, as if the bear understood its mistress had been captured by the soldiers—as if, finding Kwasin in the forest with the sacred pelt of the she-bear draped about his shoulders, the bear sought comfort from the man-thing. Did the bear believe, because its mistress had commanded it not to attack the man-thing, that Kwasin was consequently its mistress’s friend? And by extension, the bear’s friend?
Kwasin did not question his attribution of human emotions and motivations to the bear; all living things were by extension the children of Kho, the Mother of All, and even the deities felt love and hate and greed and sorrow. The bear was no different.
Of course, Parbho’s playful nosing of Kwasin might simply have been due to the pelt the human wore. As a holy artifact, it was likely used in the sacred rituals of the Klakordeth, and Adythne had said the villagers thought of their trained bears as spirit guides. Doubtless Parbho had taken some role in the totem’s rites and was accustomed to the scent of the pelt, which must have reassured the bear in the absence of its mistress.
Boldly, though hardly sure of the wisdom of his action, Kwasin reached out a hand and scratched Parbho behind an ear. The bear tilted its head and, if Kwasin was not mistaken, smiled at him as it whined affectionately.
Kwasin smiled back with genuine delight, but he was careful not to bare his teeth. He did not want the bear to mistake his grin for a threatening snarl.
For some time Kwasin sat with Parbho, caressing the beast as friskily as he dared. The bear even rolled onto its back in apparent jollity, and then back onto its feet to push Kwasin with a playful nudge that was at the same time forceful enough to almost send the human sprawling.
Finally, Kwasin decided he had to get to his feet and assert himself at some point or he might be trapped playing with the frolicsome bear until it grew tired of playing and turned on him. Slowly, the sacred she-bear pelt still about his shoulders, he rose. As he did so, the bear got to its feet as well and let out a deep growl that froze Kwasin where he stood.
Then inspiration struck him. He would not merely wait to see what the bear would do next. Adythne had, after all, said her people had trained the animals to dance. And so Kwasin crouched down on all fours and began to act out one of the ritual dances of the Bear people. As he danced, Kwasin also began chanting in gruff tones a primordial song of his totem. The ritual was, in fact, the Dance of Klaklaku, reputed to depict the same motions of that legendary hero of the Klakordeth, who, donning bearskins, had convinced a sloth of bears to adopt him. If the dance had worked for his a
ncient totem ancestor, Kwasin thought, perhaps it would work for him as well.
At first the bear just watched him. Kwasin thought that from its look the animal believed the human to be mad, that at any second the bear would leap upon him and tear him to bloody pieces with its great claws and teeth. But then, much to his surprise, Parbho jumped in behind Kwasin and began following him in his dance, acting out the same motions that had been passed from Bear brother to Bear brother down from the time of Klaklaku himself!
Kwasin was amazed. But he also understood he had been lucky. Bears, whether trained or not, were by their very nature wild and deadly animals, and he had encountered this one under just the right circumstances. The villagers must have taught Parbho just this same ritual dance, one of the most ancient of his people. Seeing Kwasin attired in the sacred pelt, doubtless worn by Adythne or another totem member during the local rituals, and then watching the man-thing enact the familiar dance of Klaklaku, the bear was probably only doing what he had been taught to do as a cub.
Just when Kwasin felt the day could not grow stranger, he heard a rustling from the forest. Suddenly, out walked another brown bear, just as giant as his brother Parbho. Still Kwasin did not stop his dancing and singing. He feared too much what would happen if he did.
In the same manner as Parbho had at first done, the newcomer sat on his haunches and watched Kwasin intently. Then, as if waiting for just the right timing in the ritual display, the newly arrived bear rose up on all fours and swayed in behind Parbho, mimicking the exaggerated motions of the dance.
When the third bear, and then a fourth and a fifth, arrived Kwasin did not question it. Nor did he do so after all seven of the bears mentioned by Adythne had come and joined in the ritual. By this time Kwasin had lost himself in the dance and now fully believed himself possessed by the spirit of his ancestor, Klaklaku the Man-Bear. And who could have doubted it to see Kwasin thus, leading bear after bear in that erratic dance upon the forest floor! Sometimes he stopped and rose up on two legs, hands lifted up like raking claws; at other times he fell back again upon all fours, swaying back and forth and huffing and growling no differently than the great ursines that trod so closely behind him in the circling path of the dance.
How long the impromptu ritual went on, Kwasin was unsure, but at last he—and he believed the bears as well—grew tired. He knew the dance could not go on forever, and if stopping his wild motions would cause the bears to turn violently upon him, so be it. If he had to die, then at least he would exit this world directly following one of the most supremely satisfying experiences of his life—the exalting of his ancient ancestor’s soaring spirit in communion with the spirit guides of his people. If his bear cousins devoured him, Kwasin knew in the utter conviction of the moment that old Klaklaku would be there to welcome him into the afterlife.
Following the traditional means to conclude the dance, Kwasin leaped high into the air with a roar and then collapsed upon the ground and lay still. Through slitted lids he watched the bears as they attempted to imitate his closing leap—they were, of course, too heavy to jump fully off the ground as he did—and then flopped onto the forest floor in apparent exhaustion. For several minutes the ursines lay there with Kwasin. Eventually, one bear arose and sniffed one of its companions before finally swaying off at a leisurely pace into the woods. Then the other bears followed suit, one after another, until only Parbho remained lying next to Kwasin. Finally that great beast too rolled up onto his feet. He walked over to where Kwasin lay, sniffed him, and padded off toward the north upon some errand only the bear could know.
Contented in a way he had never before known, Kwasin stood up and watched the bear disappear into the woods.
* * *
The next few days were busy for Kwasin, and though he regretted leaving Adythne in the hands of the soldiers while making no attempt to free her, he knew he needed to invest some time and much patience if his plan to help the priestess and her people was to succeed. Still, if he waited too long, he would be too late.
Though he worked hard at his preparations during the day, at night he lingered outside the village walls eavesdropping on the villagers. On the first night he learned nothing of importance, but on the second he overheard two sentries discussing how their commandant, a captain named Riwaphe, intended to sacrifice Adythne to the sungod as an example to the people of Q”okwoqo. The ceremony was to occur at dawn on the morning of the second fire day of the month, in only five days.
Because of this intelligence, Kwasin was forced to speed up his preparations, working well under a timeframe he considered wise. But then, luck—and the Bear God—was on his side. What other sign did he need of the god’s favor than the bizarre congregation of the dancing bears of Q”okwoqo that had communed with him? Old Father Nakendar was looking after him. He hoped. He would need the Bear God’s help if his daring plan was to succeed.
On the morning of the month’s second cloud day—the sixth day since his arrival in the area and the day before Adythne’s scheduled execution—Kwasin set out for the nearby hot spring. His experience with the bears had struck him profoundly, and he wanted to pay his respects to the Old Father before the night of trials that lay ahead and ask the god for his blessing and for strength.
Kwasin made sure to keep a watchful eye out during his journey to the spring. Over the course of the preceding days, he had observed the officers in command at Q”okwoqo make something of a daily ritual out of hiking out to the spring and soaking in the soothing hot waters. Always did the soldiers leave the village at the point when the sun had descended approximately halfway from the zenith of Kho’s blue bowl, filing along the same forest path with a number of local women who, from their attitudes, seemed to be seeking the favor of the officers so that they might elevate their social status in the new order of things. Today Kwasin arrived at the spring in the late morning, well ahead of the soldiers’ expected visit.
He climbed the high, rocky prominence that overlooked the spring, stopping briefly at the ledge upon which rested the great boulder that sealed off the entrance to the Bear God’s cave. After examining the obstruction for a few minutes, he continued on. At the slope’s summit, the land leveled out and Kwasin walked only a short distance before coming upon a scattering of branches and dead brush. He cleared these away and examined the sacrificial opening about which Adythne had told him.
The circular opening was just over five feet in diameter and rimmed with expertly fitted blocks of white, red-veined marble. A thick bear smell came up out of the hole from the black abyss of the cave, and though Kwasin strained his eyes, he could see nothing in the darkness below. Perhaps the Bear God had at last succumbed to the very mortal afflictions of starvation and thirst. It had been at least six days since the priestess had last visited the god and fed him, and for all Kwasin knew it could have been much longer.
“I am Kwasin, brother of the Klakordeth!” he shouted down the shaft. “I have come to help your people, O Nakendar!” His own words came hollowly back at him from the enormous cavern below, but other than the echo, he heard nothing.
“Hear me, Old Father!” he cried again. “I seek your blessing in destroying the enemies of the Q”okwoqo!”
Finally, Kwasin grew tired of staring down into the murk. Concluding sadly that the cave bear must have really died, he rearranged the dead foliage over the opening and went off to look for lunch.
He ultimately found his meal in the form of a termite colony nested high in a tree. He would have preferred to roast the insects but he could not take the chance of building a fire, which might alert the nearby soldiers to his presence. But he needed his strength for what was to come, and so he had to make do fishing the insects out of their nest with a stick and eating them raw. This was not much of a concession; many Khokarsans ate their termites raw by choice.
His belly full, Kwasin climbed down from the tree and lay down in the shade of a great boulder on the rock-strewn slope overlooking the spring, where he thought to rest f
or but a few minutes. Soon, however, his meal made him sleepy and he drifted off into a deep slumber.
When the sound of laughter and splashing water below awakened him, his first impulse was to pull the sacred pelt of the she-bear over his head and continue sleeping. Then, remembering his whereabouts, he cursed groggily.
He rose to discover Resu’s weltering red eye had already slipped below the western mountains, the heavens staining the forest a dim crimson. Beneath him at the foot of the slope, the band of officers, their two foot soldiers, and the women who accompanied them frolicked in the warm waters, oblivious to the giant that observed them from behind a boulder.
Kwasin cursed again. His hopes to assail the village while Captain Riwaphe and his officers were absent at the spring were now dashed. But then, as the sleep-fog cleared from his mind, he remembered that the Bear God had come to him while he slept.
Or rather, Kwasin had come to the god, for in the dream he had sat before Nakendar in the darkness of his cave. All that Kwasin had been able to see of the god was the eerie glow of his terrible red eyes; the Old Father, however, had spoken to him in a series of huffing growls that, somehow, Kwasin understood. And he had told Kwasin that the sleep that had overcome him was not due to a lapse in the mortal’s determination. No, the god had cast the slumber over Kwasin that he might advise him. There was, according to the Old Father, a more effective way to keep the officers from the village, and one that would not leave the god hungering in his cave-prison.
Recalling the task with which Nakendar had charged him, Kwasin grinned widely.