In Green's Jungles (42 page)

"I do not."

He ignored it. "It seems to me like they're the key. If I could just understand them, I'd understand everything, even that place we went to when you thought we were going to Green. Only it wasn't Green, was it?"

I shook my head.

"What was it?"

"Duko Rigoglio said it was the Short Sun Whorl, the whorl from which he had been taken by force long ago to be put aboard the Whorl. To be put into the Long Sun Whorl, I ought to say, perhaps."

"But it was way too long, Father. You said that yourself. Thousands and thousands of years."

I nodded. "So I did, and so it was. That is why I will not call it the Short Sun Whorl."

His next question surprised me. "Do you think they buried him in that big cemetery?"

"Rigoglio? No."

"They said they would."

"So they did."

The guard had locked the gate, saying he was doing us a favor. "I could take you up the short way, there's a break in the wall up there, and I know how to find it."

I remarked that the long road was often the shortest in the long run.

"Only we'd have to go through the Old Yard, and come up on the barbican from in back. That's not regular." He paused. "Some that went in the Old Yard might not come out, too, if you take my meaning. Now get moving, all of you."

I walked beside him, Hide just ahead of us. "Are you bringing us to a physician?"

"To the lochage."

"Your officer?"

He nodded. "What's her name? The one with my cloak?"

"Jahlee.

"Jahlee! You get back here!"

She smiled at him. "Were you afraid I was going to run away?"

"You wouldn't get far, but you wouldn't be any use to me after, either."

Hide shot a glance at him that I hoped he did not see.

"That's mine you got on, and that means you're mine. Get me? You're not with the rest, you're separate."

"And yours." She had taken up a position on his left (I myself was on his right), and she linked her arm with his.

It had been a long and a weary walk, and we were all tired already. Duko Rigoglio had collapsed. His friends had carried him until they could carry him no longer; then the guard had stopped a wagon and compelled the driver to take all of us to the barbican, a low, frowning, thick-walled fortress built on arches over a dry ditch.

"We'll bury him there." The guard had jerked his thumb toward the cemetery. "Only not up here. Close to the river."

I shook my head. "He must live."

But the lochage was of the guard's opinion and told me that I was a master of the torturers' guild.

"I am not," I insisted. "We are poor travelers, visitors. We reached this city of yours only today, following the river north. I have never tortured anyone, and never will."

"He had a sword, too," the guard told the lochage, "only he did something with it when I wasn't looking. The rest say he's a witch."

The lochage nodded thoughtfully, dipped his pen, and scribbled on a scrap of parchment.

"He needs blood," Jahlee told him. "Understand, I don't care if he lives or dies. It's nothing to me. But he needs blood. He's bled nearly dry, anybody can see that."

The lochage looked up from his scrap of parchment. "Are you with them, strumpet?"

"I was, but I'm with him now." She pointed to the guard.

"Then get her out of here."

The guard obeyed.

The lochage motioned to me. "You're the leader?"

"I suppose so."

"Then I'm holding you responsible for the rest. Do you know where the Bear Tower is?"

I insisted quite truthfully that I had never been to this city before and had no idea where anything was.

"I'll send a boy with you." He handed me the parchment. "I've told them to doctor him, or try to, and put the rest of you up tonight. They get him." He pointed to the omophagist. "That's their pay. He'll die in the pit, which is better than he deserves."

I started to protest.

"He stabbed your friend, didn't he? You saw it?"

I nodded.

"All right then. Let him go fight a mastiff."

The omophagist spat at the lochage then, and the guard struck him methodically twice, forehand and back.

"Now, listen to me," the lochage said. "Your friend's likely to die. I've seen more wounds than I ever wanted to, and I think he'll die tonight. The bear keepers throw their dead beasts out with the refuse. I've told them they can't do that with him. It's all in that order I just gave you. They're to bury him like one of their own guild."

WHY ARE THE INHUMI LIKE US?

"F
ather?"

I looked up at Hide, half expecting to see the stone walls and smoldering cressets of the guardroom. The desolate wastes of the marsh stretched behind him instead, eerily illuminated by starlight and Green's virescent glow.

"Why did the Vanished People die out here before they did there?"

"On Green you mean?"

"Uh huh. You were looking at it."

"So I was. Because of the depredations of the inhumi."

A breathless voice from the shadows beyond our fire said, "I see I'm just in time," and both horses neighed in fright.

I motioned to Hide. "See to our horses, my son. They'll bolt if they're not well tied."

Jahlee stepped into our circle of light, tossing back long, sorrel-colored hair that was not her own. "Never mind, Hide. I'll stay away from them."

"Go." I motioned to him again, and she snickered.

I said, "You've been close enough to frighten them twice. Why have you come?"

"You know."

I shook my head.

"To complete your son's education."

"I should kill you instead of inviting you to sit down." I listened again-this time to Hide, who was speaking to the horses to quiet them.

"Do you have a needler?"

"If I did, I wouldn't tell you."

"I suppose not. You're not going to kill me. Not really."

I shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps not."

"You care what your gods think, and you know I have a human spirit."

"Stolen."

"I was one of you when we went to that place, that old, rotten city."

Hide rejoined us. "Where the Duko died?"

Jahlee nodded. "They treated him with herbs and things when he needed blood. I told them."

I said, "You are an acknowledged expert, but they cannot have known that."

Hide asked her, "What are you doing here? Are you coming with us?"

She smiled, her heavy, crimson lips tight. "I may."

"All the way to New Viron?"

"Farther, I hope."

"I won't do what you want," I told her flatly, and Hide turned his puzzled expression from me to her and back.

"I'd like to show you Green," Jahlee explained to him. "It's the whorl on which I was born and on which I grew up, just as your father was born and grew up on that little white one he tries to point out to you sometimes."

"The Long Sun Whorl? I've seen it. Can I ask a question, Jahlee, while you're here?" He waited for her nod. "I'd like to ask you and Father both."

"Yes." Her intonation answered a question that Hide had not yet asked, and she favored him with the tight-lipped smile that hid her toothless gums.

"Why did the trooper who'd been watching the cemetery gate beat you? I don't know his name."

"It was Badour." For a moment her eyes watched something far away. "We had a falling-out, Hide. Men and women frequently do. Ask your father about that."

"I doubt that you will, Hide. But if you did, I would tell you that the fallings-out men have with women, and that women have with men, are in no essential way different from the fallings-out that men have with other men, and women with other women. Whenever a man and a woman come to words or blows, fools are quick to attribute it to the differences between the sexes. The sexes differ much less than they wish to believe, and such differences as are real tend less to promote strife than to prevent it."

He nodded slowly.

"The differences between an inhuma such as Jahlee and a human woman-Mora, for example-are far more profound than those between a man and a real woman. Have you ever seen an inhuma's fangs? Or an inhumu's?"

"No, Father." He paused. "I'd like to."

Jahlee told him, "Well, you won't see mine!"

"We human beings have fangs too, in some sense. We usually call them the eyeteeth, because they originate under the tear ducts." I drew back my lips and touched the small, somewhat pointed teeth that go by that name. "It doesn't trouble us when others see them, however. An inhuma's fangs are hollow, like a viper's; but instead of injecting poison as a viper does, an inhuma uses hers to inject her saliva, which keeps your blood from clotting, and then to withdraw the blood. You've been bitten by a leech at some time or other, I'm sure. They were only too common around Lake Limna when I was young; and they are equally common here, and a good deal larger."

Hide nodded again, and gestured toward the marsh. "I was bitten right here. I didn't have a horse then, so I got a man to take me across in his boat." He swallowed and drew a deep breath. "Silk was over here, they said. Over on this side. That was what I'd heard, and I knew you'd gone to look for him, Father. So I thought you might be with him."

I shook my head.

"Anyway, that's why I went across. I gave him some things I'd brought from home, and he poled us across. It took two days."

"And in the course of them, you were bitten by a leech."

"Yeah, a big blue one. It felt soft and slimy, but it was really tough."

I smiled, or at least I tried to. "That is a surprisingly good description of the inhumi. When you know them as well I do, you'll appreciate the justice of my remark."

Jahlee hissed, "Is this your thanks for my hospitality?"

"Fundamentally, yes. It is always a service to prevent someone from becoming worse than she is already."

"I pulled it off," Hide said, "and the place on my leg bled a lot. The inhumi are like that, isn't that what you're saying? They're like leeches?"

"Much more like them than may at first appear."

"Only they can fly, can't they? That's what everybody says."

I nodded.

"Leeches can't. People can't either, except in a lander or something. But we'd like to." He looked at Jahlee. "Could you show me?"

She shook her head.

"I understand about the teeth, but it must be wonderful to fly. It's not like I'd make fun of you or anything."

"No!"

He turned back to me. "I've seen it, but only when I was a long way away. They look kind of like bats?"

"Somewhat."

"Only their wings don't move real fast, I suppose because they're so much bigger. You saw them up close, I bet, on Green."

"Here too. I know I've mentioned Krait to you. He took wing once when he was close enough for me to touch him, because he was very frightened."

"Of you!" Jahlee spat.

"No. I gave him far too much reason to be afraid of me, but it was not of me that he was afraid at that moment."

Hide asked her, "Can you tell me what that trooper was fighting with you about?"

"I…" She fell silent, darting a glance at me. Her face, the face that she had molded and painted for herself, looked less beautiful than angry in the firelight.

"May I tell him?" I asked. "To help complete his education, as you say. It would be good for him to know."

"You don't know yourself!"

"Of course I do. I saw your trooper. Badour, isn't that what you said his name was? In the Bear Tower, as well as you and your bruises. I'm trying to be polite, you see. I haven't pledged myself to keep that secret."

"Then tell me, Father. It sounds like something I ought to know about. You said so yourself."

"I will, if Jahlee won't-or if she tries to deceive you."

She spat into the fire. "What a fool I was to come here!"

"Then go. No one will hold you here against your will."

"I can fly. I'm not your dog, and I won't do my little trick just because you tell me to, but I can."

"Surely you can. I've never denied it. Like Hide, I envy you that ability."

"I might be able to find a way across this swamp. It would be of service to you."

I shrugged. "Oreb's doing that now. Looking for a way across."

Hide said, "Sometime I want to ask you about him, too."

"Why he looked as he did in the Red Sun Whorl? Because he is more nearly human in spirit than he appears, I suppose, and larger, too."

Hide shook his head. "Why he's with us now. Why he was with you when I first met you. I mean, when they said you wanted to see me and gave me a horse and sent me back. I read some of that book you and Mother wrote. I know you didn't think we did, any of us. But we did."

"I'm flattered."

"He was Silk's bird. That's what you said in there. Silk's pet bird."

Jahlee laughed. She has a good laugh, but I found it unpleasant then. "Haven't you noticed that his bird calls him Silk?"

"I am his owner," I explained to Hide. "I feed him, play with him, and talk to him; therefore he calls me Silk, the name he is accustomed to give his owner. Haven't you noticed that he knows very few names? He calls you `boy,' and Jahlee `bad thing.' "

Hide nodded. "He doesn't know a lot of words, but he's really good with those he knows."

Jahlee rose. "Useless! Utterly useless! I flew thirty leagues to offer my friendship and my love. What a fool!"

When she had vanished in the darkness, Hide said, "I wonder where she'll go now? Back to the farm?"

I shook my head. "Its rightful owners will have reclaimed it by now, I would think." I sighed and tugged at my beard, my head overfilled with thoughts. "You've complained that I don't teach you enough. If I labor to teach you a little about the inhumi now, and perhaps a bit about the Vanished People-you seem very eager to learn about them-will you listen and store it up?"

He raised his hand solemnly. "I swear by all the gods that there are that I'll remember every word."

"Be careful of what you swear to," I told him. "The thought of your failures will haunt you as you grow older.