“Listen to me, Veloc,” Heldo-Bah says, as he leans into the fire, unconscious of its heat, and holds his back strap beef over a high flame with one of his knives. “That foul city has never meant anything save suffering for the Bane tribe—all your other ‘historical’ discussions only confuse that one supreme truth!” With his free hand, Heldo-Bah snatches up a stick of firewood and pokes at the bright coals mere inches from his deerskin boots, sending sparks flying at Veloc.
“Here!” Veloc cries, swatting at the glowing embers. “Unprovoked immolation is a crime, Heldo-Bah, even under Bane law!”
“Oh, I’ve been provoked!” Heldo-Bah counters, the beef having revived his strength. “By falsehoods from a festering philanderer!”
Veloc returns to the calm condescension that is ever his course of last resort when he is losing ground to his friend’s bullying: “Perhaps your own luck with women would be better, Heldo-Bah, had your father not eyed a sow with lust and produced a son with the face of a pig.”
“Better the son of a sow than a patron of Broken whores!”
“Whores?” Veloc’s false demeanor is shattered. “Why, you ape, I have never paid any Tall for her favors—each has offered herself to me!”
“And I suppose that you have never been indicted by the Groba for the trouble your failure to pay these ‘willing’ women has created?”
“Dog!”
The two men face each other across the fire, seemingly ready to fight to the death; yet Keera exhibits no great concern, for she knows how the exchange will end. Both Veloc’s and Heldo-Bah’s jaws tremble with anger for a silent moment; and then, with a suddenness that might bewilder anyone unfamiliar with their friendship, each bursts into laughter, throwing dirt harmlessly and rolling on the forest floor.
“It seems folly to bicker so,” Keera remarks, to herself as much as to her companions, “when, on every occasion, you only end by—”
Suddenly, the Bane tracker gets silently up on her legs, keeping them bent so that she can spring in any direction. Her remarkable nose is in the air, while her hands cup her ears. Heldo-Bah and Veloc stifle their laughter and creep noiselessly to Keera’s side: in much the same manner, she notices, as her three small children do when frightened. The men listen to the Wood, but are unable to catch the noises or scents that have alarmed her so.
“Again he moves,” Keera whispers in frustration. “But I cannot understand his movements—he neither hunts nor makes his den …”
“Not the same panther …” Veloc murmurs in disbelief.
Keera nods slowly. “I was worried that the smell of the stew might draw him, if we crossed paths again. But such an encounter seemed unlikely—I deliberately chose a different route. And yet there is no mistaking that step. It is so … odd. Hesitant, anxious, searching—he could be wounded, I suppose. Or I may be wrong, he may stalk us. Whatever the case, we must seek refuge. Heldo-Bah—”
But when Keera turns, Heldo-Bah has already disappeared. She worries for an unreasoning instant that her noisy friend has been taken silently by the panther, for the great cats are more than capable of thus picking apart a group of humans without ever being heard or seen. Soon, however, Keera hears grunting from above and sees Heldo-Bah, his deerskin sack slung over his shoulder, scaling the straight trunk of an ash, one of many trees that, due to the thickness of the forest canopy, have no lower limbs to offer a panther an avenue of pursuit. “By the Moon!” Keera murmurs. “Up the tree before I’ve given the word!”
“Waste your explanations on your fool brother,” the squirming Heldo-Bah hisses, by now some twenty feet up. “I’ll be no cat’s dinner!”
Veloc and Keera quickly follow Heldo-Bah, using their powerful feet and legs to climb two neighboring trees. Once lodged in the closely clustered aeries provided by the extended branches of their protectors, the three Bane watch expectantly—but the dreaded panther fails to appear.
“You’re certain it comes, Keera?” Veloc whispers to his sister.
Keera lifts her shoulders in confusion. “Ordinarily, I would say that the fire might be keeping him away—but this cat was close enough to both smell and see the flames, yet he continued to venture nearer …”
“Likely it’s deciding what order to eat us in,” Heldo-Bah hisses, clutching his sheathed throwing knives with moist hands. “But I’ll—”
Keera raises her hand; and then a resonant growl can be heard outside the hemisphere of light created by the fire below. “At last,” Keera whispers, allowing a small smile. “You almost made me look a fool, cat …”
The panther rumbles; but it is a confused sound, neither aggression, nor pain, nor any other noise that so experienced a tracker as Keera can understand. Her smile quickly reverts to an aspect of consternation.
And then he appears: his great paws of the darkest gold padding against the Earth of the clearing, the panther enters the light of the camp. He is young, but large (well over five hundred pounds) with short tufts of hair about the neck and shoulders. The dark spots and stripes on his nine-foot body are pronounced, giving the animal a distinctly masculine coat. This is significant: the Moon faith teaches that uniformity and richness of color in a panther’s coat are signs of divine favor, and certainly of mature (and usually feminine) wisdom. Though lacking such, this animal yet displays evident power in his long, thick muscles—which makes his interest in the diminutive foragers more mysterious, for he could easily take down a stag or wild horse, or even one of Lord Basterkin’s shag cattle, any one of which would be a better meal than a human.
As the newcomer circles the camp, he shies, yet does not run, from the fire, which would ordinarily keep the majestic beast at a safe distance: but this male has an apparent purpose that emboldens him. With each step, his thick muscles cause the rich, iridescent fur to ripple ever more splendidly in the firelight, as though he is attempting to intimidate a rival or display his power for a mate. Yet Keera is right about the complexity of the panther’s behavior: for the amber eyes are glazed with passion, and, along with the quick panting of the tongue and mouth, they create an impression of consternation that belies the purposeful body.
“What is it, cat?” Keera says softly. “What agitates you so?”
As if in reply, another form slowly enters the light of the fire: two feet taller than even Veloc, it is a young woman, her seemingly flawless body moving easily inside a black silk robe edged in red velvet. Visible through slits up the sides of the garment are long, beautifully formed thighs and calves, the movements of which mirror those of the panther’s four legs, as he paces on the opposite side of the fire. Sheets of black hair fall to the woman’s waist, and her eyes—which glitter an alluring green in the torchlight, a green the color of the best emeralds the Bane have been known to bring out of Davon Wood—are fixed on the amber orbs of the panther, which already betray some sort of enthrallment.
“A woman of the Tall,” Keera whispers. “In Davon Wood!”
“And one of rare form,” Veloc adds with approval, his gaze lustful. “She’s no farmer or fisherman’s wife, and no whore, either.” But then Veloc’s attention turns from the woman’s flesh to her raiment; and his stare becomes quizzical. “But—her robe. Heldo-Bah, am I mistaken, or—”
Heldo-Bah shows the black gap in his vicious teeth. “You are not.”
Keera looks at the gown. “What is it that he is so correct about?”
Heldo-Bah’s whisper takes on a killing tone, without either increasing in volume or losing its air of delight. “She is one of the Wives of Kafra.”
“A Wife of Kafra!” Keera nearly slips from her branch with the news, although she, too, keeps her voice from rising. “It can’t be. They never leave the First District of Broken—”
“Apparently, they do.” Heldo-Bah holds a knife by the blade between the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand, judging carefully the distance to the ground. “And by the Moon, this is one that won’t get back again—not tonight, at any rate.”
Veloc l
ooks uneasily at his friend: the dim light and the shifting shadows of the leaves are transforming Heldo-Bah’s face into an exaggerated mask of delighted bloodlust. “You would murder a woman, Heldo-Bah?” Veloc whispers.
“I would murder a panther,” comes Heldo-Bah’s answer. “There are better uses for the women of the Tall—and not the kind you’re thinking of, Veloc. Or not merely that kind. She could also bring a ransom such as we have never demanded: weapons that the Tall have always refused us—”
“Stay your blade,” Keera whispers urgently, putting her staff before Heldo-Bah’s arm as he lifts the knife. “You’ll murder neither woman nor panther—not unless the cat attacks us. They are possessed of powerful souls, and I want no such enemies—” Her lecture stops short. “Hold …,” she says, more perturbed than ever. “What sorcery is this?”
The Wife of Kafra keeps her eyes on the panther’s as she squats before the animal, her long legs angling out through the slits in her gown. The great beast begins to growl again, and to shift from side to side nervously—but just then, as if seeing the fire and the stew pot for the first time, the woman glances about quickly, beginning to hurry her apparent ritual.
“Has she seen us?” Veloc asks, withdrawing deeper into the leaves of his tree with no more sound than that of a flitting thrush.
“Steady.” Heldo-Bah, too, nestles further into his perch, looking even more pleased. “She’s seen nothing—but we, apparently, are going to see a great deal …”
The Wife of Kafra quickly unties a golden cord that gathers her robe at the waist. With impressive confidence, she strides directly to the panther, as ever staring into his eyes intently; then she kneels, and puts her nose to the throat of the beast.
“She invites death!” Keera says. “Unless she is a sorceress …”
The foragers grow silent once more. The woman’s long hair falls in front of her breasts as she moves her cheeks against the cat’s face in long strokes. The panther growls, but the noise soon fades into a loud purr: the beast, still confounded, is now completely enthralled.
“Oh, Moon,” Keera whispers. “This is sorcery, indeed.”
“If she persists,” Heldo-Bah cackles, leaning forward eagerly, “what that cat will do to her will be anything but sorcery …”
As the panther continues to purr and only occasionally growl, the woman begins to run her long fingers through the thick golden fur as she might a human male’s hair, coaxing the animal to fold his forelegs; and then, with a swiftness that startles the Bane foragers but not the cat, she slides onto the animal’s back, looping the golden cord that girdled her waist about its thick neck. When the woman pulls back on the cord with authority, the panther stands; and when she tightens her knees on the cat’s shoulders, he starts forward slowly.
Heldo-Bah clearly fears that his prized quarry will escape, however unbelievable the method; and he produces the same knife once more, ready to do what he must. But then he, his two companions, the Wife of Kafra, and even the panther snap their heads toward the southeast, expressions of alarm on all their faces:
Through the forest comes the low call of a powerful horn, its sonorous, steady drone slow to reach its peak but full of urgency. Called the Voice of the Moon, the massive instrument rests against a high hill in the Bane village of Okot, and is as old as the tribe itself. It was fashioned from clay taken out of the bed of the Cat’s Paw, after the first of the banishments resulted in the exile community’s establishment two centuries ago; and it has been used ever since to order tribesmen home, throughout as much of Davon Wood as its twenty-foot tube and ten-foot flaring bell—so enormous that the Horn requires huge bellows to produce its single, mournful note—can penetrate.
The foragers silently wait out the sounding of the Horn, hoping that they will not have to descend while the Wife of Kafra and the panther are still present. But after a few seconds of silence, the enormous instrument calls out again, and with greater insistence; or so it seems to Keera, who is keenly aware that danger in Okot means danger to her family. “Come!” she murmurs. “Two blasts, we must—” But Heldo-Bah points to the ground without comment:
The Wife of Kafra, on hearing the Bane Horn, seems to have disappeared atop the panther. Likely she is moving through the northernmost portions of Davon Wood toward home as swiftly as she can urge her unusual mount to go, the fiery Bane thinks; but his face says that they cannot yet be certain.
The great Bane Horn grows silent again; and only when Keera can detect neither scent nor sound of the woman as well as the panther does she nod, at which Heldo-Bah throws his knife angrily toward and into the Earth. “Ficksel!” he declares, shaking a fist in the direction of Okot, the Voice of the Moon, and the Bane Elders who ordered the sounding of the mighty alarm. “Bloody Groba,” he grumbles, making his way back down his ash. “No sense of timing!”
The three are soon on the ground, Keera deftly leaping from ten feet. “Two blasts of the Horn,” she says. “What can have happened?”
“Try not to fret, Keera,” Veloc says, pulling Heldo-Bah’s knife from the ground, tossing it to his comrade, then quickly starting out for the southeast. “Why, I’ve heard the damned thing sound for no more reason than—” He stops with an awkward rattle of his sack, however, when he hears the Horn sound yet again; and then he turns, not wishing to appear as concerned for Keera’s husband and her children as he feels. “Three blasts …,” he says evenly, looking to Heldo-Bah; but all he finds playing across his friend’s scarred features is worry to match his own.
“Can either of you remember so many?” Keera asks, her composure deteriorating.
Heldo-Bah forces a smile onto his face. “Certainly!” he says, with an affected lack of concern: for he knows well that something undeniably important, and likely sinister, is happening. “I recall it well—so do you, Veloc. When that detachment of Broken soldiers chased an Outrager party into the Wood—the Groba ordered at least three blasts, and I’m fairly certain there were more. Isn’t that so, historian?”
Veloc understands Heldo-Bah’s intent, and quickly replies, “Yes—yes, it is.” He can dissemble in no greater detail, and the three foragers stand motionless as the third blast wanes; but when the Great Horn immediately issues another, Keera moves quickly to her brother’s side.
“It doesn’t stop!” she cries. “Why would they issue so many? It will bring the Tall to the village!”
Veloc puts an arm tight around her, trying to make his voice as gentle as his words are hard: “They may already be attacking Okot, Keera—that may be what is happening …”
“More bitch’s turd!” Heldo-Bah declares. “Pay him no mind, Keera—the Tall can’t find Okot, much less attack it. Besides, do you not find it even a little odd that we should hear so many Horn blasts on the same night that a Wife of Kafra entrances and then makes away with a Davon panther?” He tousles Keera’s hair. “What is happening has naught to do with any attack on Okot—something of a different nature is going on, I’d stake my sack’s earnings on it. But we won’t know anything until we get there—so let’s be off.”
“If you’re saying that you do suspect sorcery here, Heldo-Bah,” Veloc says, as the group strap their sacks tight and Keera buries their fire, “then I must tell you that Bane historians have determined that, since the expulsion of the sorcerer Caliphestros following the reign of Izairn, the Tall have forsworn—”
“Ah, the scholar speaks again,” Heldo-Bah declares, as he leads the party away. “What’s your explanation, then, cuckolder? Has all of Nature been stood on its ear during the Moon we’ve been away? Do women now seduce and ride upon great cats, and will you rule in Broken, come sunrise?”
Veloc, at the rear of the little column, rolls his eyes toward eternity and sighs heavily. “I did not say that, Heldo-Bah. But it is a fact that—”
“Oh, fact, fact, fact!” Heldo-Bah spits, as he increases the party’s pace to a steady run. “I’ve no use for your facts!”
Keera has no strength to stop her c
ompanions from arguing, nor to take her usual place at the head of the group. Heldo-Bah knows the way back to Okot, and it is all Keera can do to keep herself from growing frantic as she travels. My family is in danger—the phrase repeats itself silently in Keera’s mind, along with all its terrible implications: My family is in danger …
Who speaks truth, and who insults Kafra with lies, in the Sacristy of his High Temple?
THE FIRST BLAST of the mighty woodland clarion had reached the ears of Arnem, Niksar, and Yantek Korsar, along with those of their escort from Lord Baster-kin’s Guard, just as the group reached the marble-paved forecourt atop the steps outside the entrance to the High Temple in Broken.
“It’s the Bane Horn—in Okot!” Niksar had pronounced, with more alarm than he would have liked. But if Arnem’s young aide had been startled by the Horn, the detachment of preening soldiers from the Guard, who had done nothing save laugh among themselves during the walk to the Temple, had been struck dumb with fear by it. Arnem and Korsar, for their part, had halted, at first showing little concern at the dour intonations; but as the number of blasts had continued to rise, both grew silent and speculative, wondering what could prompt such blaring from an instrument that seldom saw use.
Now, a fifth sounding of the Horn is echoing up the mountain and over the walls of Broken, bringing momentary stillness to even the crowded Stadium. Yantek Korsar gazes back over the slate-tiled rooftops and the southern wall beyond: from the group’s vantage point atop the highest spot on the mountain, the old commander can discern the Moonlit Cat’s Paw’s, and the edge of Davon Wood beyond it.