“All right, it could be more than myth. If it is, then Miradomon started off by killing all the gods, because he is presently impersonating one of them. If they were still around they would have taken some action against him by now.”
Borregad sat up. “Exactly, ’pon my soul! Look at his power!”
“Then, my notion is still right. The best time to attack him is the moment he appears in that room, in physical form, unprotected.”
“Unprotected? From what? What will you do, kick him in the shins? The
crex
is lying in the tavern yard.”
“Well, where do you suppose we’ve been going while you slept?”
“What? But I thought we were riding patrol inside this water-logged excuse for a country.”
“We are. We’re also headed west. We should arrive at the tavern by tomorrow midday. We will retrieve the
crex
and ride back to Ladoman, and our week’s patrol will be up. I only hope Miradomon doesn’t intend to move quickly. From what you said, he seems to be doing the opposite, delaying, manipulating on a vast scale. If he proceeds as he did the last time, then Ladomirus will assemble an army and Miradomon the god will lead that force into battle and annihilation. If only a localized phenomenon.”
“The army of Ladoman? Those stupid, scabby miscreants against all of Secamelan? And any other nations that band with them? It’s preposterous. The fat man’s army wouldn’t survive one battle. Miradomon wipes out worlds, whole continents at a time. There have to be more nations involved—Miria, Novalok these other places. And what about this assassination he’s cooked up with Ladomirus? What are we going to do about that?”
“What can we do? I don’t even know the circumstances surrounding it. We can’t stop it when we don’t even know where or when it’s to take place. No, the only thing we can do is confront him in that room. The rest of whatever he has planned will have to take care of itself. You were the one who said I shouldn’t waste my time worrying about these creatures and their problems. Well, I’m not. I’ve concerned myself with one thing and one thing alone.”
They rode on for quite some time in silence, each of them tangled in his own thoughts. Lyrec had taken sides with Borregad, and was forcing himself not to let the day-to-day problems of an entire race get between him and his goal—a task requiring him to deny all emotional involvement. He found this to be the equivalent of lying to himself.
The sun had nearly set when Lyrec steered the horse off the trail and along the river. Both he and the animal were tired and needed rest and food. Not far downstream of the ford he came upon a clearing that seemed like a good place to camp.
The cat interrupted his thoughts. “Lyrec, there is one other thing. I’ve hesitated to bring it up.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If Elystroya really is still alive, and you slay Miradomon in that castle room, before we find his sanctum, you’ll lose our one thread to her.”
“That cannot influence what we do. We’re here to stop Miradomon. To kill him. And he wouldn’t have kept her alive. There’s no reason why he would. I have to accept it. She’s dead.” And that statement seemed to incense him. With more anger he continued, “Don’t speak to me of her again. Don’t offer me false hope! Elystroya’s
dead
. And you know it the same as I do.”
The cat said nothing, but jumped down from Lyrec’s shoulder and plodded away.
Borregad reached the river and began to pace along the bank. The water drifted lazily by, curling around a sandbar not far away. The cat did not understand himself: he couldn’t perceive his own motives in taking sides against Lyrec. He adamantly refused to believe it was out of spite, but he could not accept that they had changed positions so extraordinarily.
The cat walked onto the sandbar and lay down. He looked at the water. It slid past him in a ceaseless stream, indifferent to the plans and doubts of men or gods or beings who were neither.
*****
Borregad had no idea how long he lay there on the sand, but at some point the breeze upon his fur cooled, and he opened his eyes to find that the sky had darkened. He got up and headed back to where he had left Lyrec.
He found a fire burning, but Lyrec, in his Ladomantine uniform, was nowhere to be seen. The cat listened to the forest and heard a soft splashing that might easily have been produced by some large fish. Instinctively he set off toward the sound and soon came upon a narrow path. The clearing must have been a popular campsite for travelers through the wood.
The river turned back upon itself not far south of where he had lain. Another sandbar peninsula hooked around there, enclosing a pool where there was little current. Lyrec’s uniform lay piled on the sand and he swam in the middle of the pool.
Borregad walked out to the tip of the sandbar. He considered how the water seemed to refresh Lyrec, but some deeply embedded emotion caused him to hesitate in joining his friend. Gingerly, at the water’s edge he dunked one paw.
A wave of dread besieged him. He backed away and fled to the safety of the shore, there pausing to clean off his foot. The baleful glares he cast at the black waters were more cat than Borregad in origin.
Lyrec climbed out of the river and sat on the sandbar in the dusk for awhile. The swim had charged and awakened him; the chill of the air redoubled this effect, making him feel lean and tightly strung. He’d seen Borregad come out onto the sand earlier, but now he couldn’t find him. Closing his eyes, he probed and located Borregad not far away, sitting on the far side of a fallen tree.
“Bo,” he called out, “forgive me for my anger before—I’m still unaccustomed to being affected so deeply. It’s as you said the first day we arrived. The total sweep of emotions has invaded us just as we’ve invaded this world.
“For awhile I thought how lucky we were to have come across Miradomon so quickly, but I’ve changed my mind. We would have found him in any violence anywhere, any cruelty or crime would have led us back to him eventually. I think he basks in the violence these creatures throw off. He loves it—it’s part of him.
And
I am deathly afraid it has become part of me, too. I’ve hidden most of it from you, but twice now I’ve been driven to murderous anger; the last time I actually relished it. I looked at what I’d done and I was sickened and thrilled at the same time. This duality, I can’t reconcile it. I’m not even certain I
want
to find Elystroya. What would she be like in this environment? What I recall seems to have been a dream, a fading memory of a life so unlike this one that it cannot possibly have been real. But if I were to find her, what then? Can we exist in this world? Borregad, I’m afraid of myself.”
When, after a few minutes, the cat did not reply, Lyrec got up and dressed in the orange and brown uniform once again. “I don’t want to fight with you any further. We have only us, and both of us must survive.”
Borregad sidled out from behind the log. “Of course we’ll both survive. I already knew about your anger—as a matter of fact, I’ve been its recipient since we arrived here. If you wouldn’t insist on being in control all the time, we would get along much better. And stop worrying, will you? It’s not as if you can change who you are.”
Lyrec walked up to him, paused, then said, “All right, I’ll stop worrying … if you stop nagging.” He walked on.
The cat looked insolently after him. “Nagging? Me? See if you ever get a drop of sympathy out of me again, ever.” Lyrec climbed the bank. Borregad stood on his hind legs and shouted, “And instead of being afraid of yourself, you might show a little respectful fear of Miradomon—because I’ve seen him, and
he
doesn’t have a single, solitary reason to be afraid of
you!”
He gestured angrily and fell over on his back.
*****
Embers lay where the fire had been. The two figures lay motionless, asleep. The clearing was embalmed in momentary silence, as if the entire forest had hesitated in unison.
The moment ended.
Lyrec’s eyes opened. He stared straight into the darkness. What had awakened him? He shifted his gaze. In the dim red glow he could just make out Borregad lying on his back with his paws stretched in absurd directions. If he was awake, he was doing a remarkable job of concealing it. Lyrec looked at nothing and concentrated on listening.
Forests at night are full of sounds that no living being from outside the forests would call natural: Dead branches succumb to their own weight after months or years of hanging on and crash to the ground, nocturnal animals escape from nocturnal predators with a dash through brush, various forms of insect make passionate love calls with their legs. Lyrec identified what sounds he could and accepted that the rest belonged there. Apparently nothing extraordinary had awakened him. He closed his eyes and shifted to lie on his side.
Silence fell upon the forest again.
He opened his eyes again and waited. He began to believe that he could actually see the silence strung like a cobweb around him. He felt it creep like a chill into him. With defensive instinct he closed off his mind and, faintly, the natural sounds of the forest returned.
Someone was probing him.
With his own wall up, he sent out a reciprocal probe, discovering quickly that his inquisitor had remarkably little defense and numerous personalities.
Shh … I can’t find … thistle’s in my … be quiet … someone there … feel queer … head, my head, must tell someone …
A dozen or more voices in all, the thoughts circled him chaotically. Completely awake now, he sat up, pinpointing a cluster of people, although he could not see their physical shapes. For a second he had the rare experience of seeing himself through someone else’s eyes.
Gently, he called out to them:
There’s no need for this.
You are all welcome in my camp.
Borregad flipped over and stood, his fur in hackles and his ears low. His reflective eyes rolled around in panic. “What? What is that? Lyrec, what’s happening?”
“We have company.”
“Is it
him?”
“No.” He stood.
“Then, who, who’s coming?”
“I don’t know yet. Why don’t you settle back down and let me find out.”
They moved into the clearing slowly, one or two at a time. The younger ones assisted their elders, some of whom could barely walk. Lyrec added new wood to the fire, stabbing at the embers to spark a flame.
The faces varied in shape and age, but shared a common enervation. He saw in their eyes some wariness as well as wonder and realized that what troubled them most was the Ladomantine uniform he wore; beyond that, their gaze contained some collective semblance, as if two eyes, passed around, had been replicated in each face. They were of a cognate stock and, at the moment, a very weary one. As the fire grew brighter, he could trace faint markings on some of them: lines and dots and swirls reshaped or redefined the natural features of many faces. In the flicker of the new fire, the lines made them seem to be wearing masks.
As one they studied Lyrec, and then Borregad, who slunk back beside his comrade, much intimidated by the procession. Seeking reassurance, he asked again, “Who are they?” forgetting in his fear that he spoke aloud.
Someone gasped. Another cried out, “A spirit!” A woman near the front said, “It’s a
glomengue.”
“Come again?” asked Lyrec. Their crisscrossing thoughts were meaningless, useless.
“A
glomengue,”
the woman repeated.
“Preposterous,” Borregad snapped, “I am a
cat.”
Someone laughed weakly.
“No, Borregad,” explained Lyrec. He had begun to understand. “It’s a—a spirit—a nature spirit, isn’t it?”
A few heads nodded. “The trickster of the forest,” someone added.
“Trickster? In that case, Borregad
definitely
is a
glomengue.”
“And you,” said an old man with a bandaged head, “are you not Kobach, then?” The old man’s words bore a heavy accent. Lyrec concluded that his native language was not the tongue of Secamelan.
He considered carefully how to explain himself. “We … have things in common. But I have no Kobach blood in me that I know of.”
The same woman who had spoken before pointed at him. “But you had fingers in the darkness.”
“Fingers?”
“He isn’t one of us, Belda, you can’t use our terms and expect him to know,” chided the old man. He then said to Lyrec, “We sensed you reaching out to us just as you must have sensed us.”
“He gave me a terrible headache,” said a young voice from the back.
Lyrec pursed his lips. “I see. I’m sorry if your head hurts.”
“They’re Kobachs!” exclaimed Borregad.
A few of the people laughed uncomfortably.
“On top of the situation as always,” replied Lyrec. “All of you are welcome to share our fire and camp. You seem more than a little tired.”
“Most tired,” agreed the old man. “We would greatly appreciate the chance to rest. My name is Malchavik. I have become a sort of leader for our group.”
“And my name is Lyrec. His name you know.”
“Ly-rek. And you say you’ve no Kobach blood? How uncommon.”
“You’re not the first who’s thought so.”
The old man crouched down slowly, his face showing pain. “Yet,” he began, “you travel with a
glomengue.”
“Would you mind not using—”
“Borregad,” Lyrec warned.
“Well, ‘cat’ has proved sufficient for me. Or f-feline. I don’t care for the implications of that other word.”
Malchavik made a brave attempt at a smile. “Not surprising behavior for the trickster, eh?” The group murmured to one another, marveling at the cat. They had heard stories, but none of them had ever seen a forest spirit before. Borregad turned his back on them and watched the old man and Lyrec alone. “Your village,” Lyrec said, “is to the north quite some distance as I recall. And by your looks I would surmise you’ve come nearly that far without much food or pause. Something must have happened. It’s not good, is it?”
Malchavik shook his head, then began his tale of the destruction of their village by the mob from Trufege, how apparently all those from Trufege had perished. He described the arrival of the mythical krykwyres and the way the sky had swirled as it sucked up the bodies of the slain. He recounted their flight from Boreshum, with soldiers hacking paths after them. They believed the whole country had turned against them and that the soldiers hunted to kill them. So they had shunned all towns, traveled mostly by night, and survived by eating things found in the forests. It was possible that others of their kind had escaped, and they were following the river to Lake Cym where a handful of their kind lived in secrecy, certain that any other survivors would know to gather there.