Authors: Garon Whited
I was surprised, however, at how easily I remembered each of the things he taught me. My suspicion that my recent meals had carried some of their language with them felt nearly a certainty now. I’d had examples—my first meal had brought a lot of financial information with him; things I could not put into words, but seemed familiar whenever I came across such things again. They were like lessons learned long ago, now almost forgotten. Familiarity without proficiency.
After he finished a length of branch for roofing—I had done about two and a half, but he wasn’t feeling well and was also trying to answer me about objects—I took them and assembled them into something resembling a structure.
It took a while.
We took several breaks; I checked his wounds and found they had grown visibly better. He was still going to have a major scar, but I was fairly sure the eye wasn’t damaged. His chest was much better, too. If that kept up, he would be well in a week. That didn’t jibe with what I recalled as normal for that spell—at least not the description of that spell; I’d never tried it before. I guess I got some overkill. Or overheal.
I made a mental note to be stingier with power whenever I had recently eaten. Apparently my sense of scale was distorted. Like a person who is used to normal gravity who is suddenly on the Moon; he is six times stronger than he’s used to, and a simple step is a sizable jump!
His—sister? Cousin? Tribe member?—Utai was still unconscious. I didn’t fool around with any spells to probe her physical structure; I didn’t know any. It would have to wait until nightfall before I could look inside with vampire tendrils. But her breathing was strong and her heart regular.
Unfortunately, she was also
quite
unconscious. I had to clean her up.
This, surprisingly, brought out Ubar’s defensive nature. He spoke to me sharply when I started to undress her and was not at all mollified when I showed him the soiled clothes. I had to threaten him physically before he shut up. But I did clean her and then moved her to a pile of leaves where the lean-to would eventually cover her. Meanwhile, I covered her over with the clothes from the travois.
“Ubar, I’d have let you do it, but you’re in no shape to pick her up, turn her, and so on,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t understand; but my tone was gentle and apologetic. “Please don’t be angry.”
He was, though. He said something to me and I caught the words for “man” and “woman” and figured I wasn’t supposed to see her naked. Well, tough.
I left him with lean-to materials at hand and went down to the creek. I needed to refill my canteen and to wash out her soiled things. While I was doing laundry, I had myself a bath—sword and pistol in reach on a handy rock. I had forgotten about the facepaint until I rubbed water on my face and black and green came off on by hands. I got the facepaint off with some scrubbing; I can only imagine what Ubar was thinking when he first saw me.
When I got back, he had made little progress on the lean-to, but seemed to have made a lot of mental progress; he looked glad to see me. I hung up her clothes on the lean-to poles as he greeted me. I hailed him in return and he seemed very pleased.
We got to serious work on that shelter. There was a layer of pine needles, then a layer of oak and maple branches, then another layer of pine needles. If that didn’t keep rain out, we couldn’t do it. I started in on the other half of the shelter—I can’t call it a lean-to when it’s more like a full roof—when Ubar called a halt.
Another language lesson followed; I learned a lot of words about hunger, food, and eating. I was also pretty sure I had nailed down the word for “please.” I had been ignoring the gut rumbles of my own stomach—not an unnatural hunger; I’d fed well last night—but a typical one. Ubar and Utai were healing rather rapidly for mortals; doubtless they were both famished.
I got out a couple of MRE entrees—I hadn’t brought the full brown bags, just the smaller, green ones to save space—and poured water in the packages to heat them. Ubar looked surprised and watched in fascination. When I opened them up and handed him one, he looked impressed. I confess the chicken isn’t too impressive; it must have been the whole idea of using water to heat the things that did it.
We finished a layer of pine needles on the second side and called it quits on that score; it would keep out most rain and the wind, and that was good enough for now. I helped him into the shadow of the shelter and made him lie down. As I suspected, he was asleep soon.
It seemed like a good idea to conserve calories. So I did, too.
When I woke up, there was a cat looking at us.
Well, it was feline. It looked to be about three feet long, not counting the tail, and reminded me of a cougar. It was mainly dark brown with greenish stripes.
I looked at it. It looked at me. We both held very still.
Slowly, I drew one of my pistols. It growled, tail flicking low. I worked the action and then pointed it, taking aim. It flexed, slightly, crouching lower.
I put a bullet between its eyes.
I’ve fired several pistols before, from .22 caliber to one .44 Magnum. The kick doesn’t bother me and the noise is just loud. But it was always at paper targets or cans. This was the first chance I’d had to see the effects of a .45 automatic with hollow points at close range.
And I thought swords made a mess. Ick.
I made a mental note:
This is not my world. There are dangers here I don’t begin to guess.
The cat—or what was left of it—collapsed on the spot. Ubar woke immediately, looking wild-eyed and panicky. I reassured him. With a dead predator handy it was easy; it helped that he could see it was, most
definitely
, dead.
Utai moaned and stirred.
We were both solicitous. She muttered and mumbled and Ubar spoke to her. I only caught occasional words and failed to follow; I let him handle it.
Meanwhile, I looked over the cat’s remains. I wondered if it was worthwhile to skin it and eat it.
Nothing ventured…
I strung it up by the rear feet and gutted it, taking care not to pierce the intestines. I’ve helped dress out a deer before; this was different in detail if not in gross. It was a bloody, messy job, and I don’t doubt a real woodsman would have finished in a quarter of the time it took me—and would have been a lot less messy about it. I ruined it as a skin, I’m afraid. Still, it looked like catburgers for dinner.
Ubar was already piling small sticks together. Apparently he was hungry again, but he wasn’t complaining. He was also doing a lot better; he moved more quickly and with less pain. I stopped him anyway and made him wait while I dug a hole with my knife. We built the fire in the hole. I didn’t want a lot of light to give us away at night. I also roamed fairly far afield to find all the driest wood possible—smoke could be bad, too.
We feasted on broiled cat; Utai ate some as Ubar fed her. I took that for a very good sign and resolved to double-check her as soon as night fell.
Ubar and I then discussed a bit. Apparently the creature was a
tuva
, and quite dangerous. Since it was coming up on sunset, I pointed at the fire, made sure several long branches were sticking out of the hole in easy reach, and handed him my knife. Then I pointed at the blood, sniffed several times, and made a growl-and-hiss while raking my fingers like claws.
He nodded, grasping immediately that there might be more than one. I pointed at my eye and made walking motions in pantomime. He looked puzzled, then got the idea—I would go look around while he kept guard with a flaming stick.
I headed off into the bush and back to my hidey-hole to wait out the sunset.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1
ST
F
irst thing out of the bag, I sent out rolling tendrils all over the place. I reached out like an uncurling flower, looking for any more of those cats. Found one, too; it was coming upwind, following the scent of blood. I reached into it, hooked its spirit with the claws of my tendrils, and fed on it.
I felt the impulse to lick my fingers afterward. That gave me a shiver.
I went down to the stream instead; the water was cold but I needed another bath. Anything that wanted to bother me could brace me in the middle of the water at night, when I could see it coming. It was safer for me—and more comfortable—to bathe during the darkness; I resolved to try and stick to that.
Nothing bothered me. I washed up. A few moments of concentration were all it took to dry out my now-washed clothes. The bloodstains might never come out, but at least they weren’t sticky or itchy.
Ubar was awake and vigilant; he spotted me as I walked up to the campfire. I said, “Tuva” and held up one finger, then made a throat-cutting gesture. Ubar nodded and relaxed a bit. I checked his wounds—still healing nicely—and then checked Utai’s. Ubar made no protest, instead turning his attention to cooking. That he was still hungry was not surprising. I gave him my canteen and he drank a lot of it.
Utai was doing much better. Her eyes focused and she seemed more aware—more dazed than comatose. I carefully felt her head, both with fingers and with tendrils. The bone had knit, mostly, and the skin had mended well. She would probably have a pair of thin, parallel scars under her hair, but that was better than the alternative. The important thing was the
inside
of her skull seemed to be coming together nicely. I couldn’t detect anything out of place—and her life energies were flowing peacefully, not leaking out or “sparking” across broken areas. I was hoping that meant everything was going to be all right.
I made a couple of trips to the creek to refill my canteen and let them drink, then stood guard at a modest distance while they managed to make a joint latrine call. After Ubar’s initial reaction, I thought it best to let them do for each other rather than risk antagonizing or embarrassing either. After that, they both ate some more. Utai, especially, seemed starved; she’d gone a lot longer without eating. Afterward, they both seemed stronger.
Since Utai was sleepy again, Ubar and I continued with language lessons. I bit down on my dislike for mind-affecting things; I deliberately touched his mind with tendrils, lightly, listening as he spoke. I was very careful not to
do
anything to it—this was more on the order of getting an X-ray instead of doing surgery. It wasn’t “all right,” but the slow way we were progressing frustrated the hell out of me. Touching and listening—that made things much easier; no more guessing. Or, at least, much more confident guesses. We made a lot of progress. My vocabulary was growing like a weed near a manure pile.
Ubar gradually got tired. I let him sleep. I was busy letting language wander around in my head, trying to think in it.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3
RD
I
t’s been another couple days of recuperation and language lessons; both have progressed nicely!
Both Utai and Ubar are up and about; Utai is much better off. Ubar still has a nasty scar on his chest and some muscle damage—he can’t bring his left arm in toward his chest with any force, but I have hopes it will get better. His face is no longer bandaged, but he will have that scar for the rest of his life, as well as a nose nobody will ever call pretty. Utai has scars hidden in her hair and no other injuries. I guess the soldiers didn’t really want to hack a pretty lady to pieces.
Between the two of them, we’ve managed to get my vocabulary to somewhat over two thousand words.
I would have said it was impossible. I have no talent for languages. I know enough German to get into trouble, enough French to swear effectively, and enough Latin to sound impressive, but that’s about it. But I’d never consumed someone who spoke any of those languages as a native language. I wonder if someone who spoke several languages would have the same effect on all of them, or if the native tongue would be stronger? Not an experiment I want to try, as such, but something to note.
Ubar and Utai were impressed at my facility with Rethven, to say the least.
“You learn our language as though you had but forgotten it,” Ubar said, once.
“It feels that way,” I replied. “It seems as though I
should
know it. Like I can almost remember the words I want to say.”
Unfortunately, with increased facility and fluency came questions. About myself, and about their
gata
, or extended family.
“I didn’t see what happened to them,” I admitted. “What do you recall?”
Utai shook her head. “Horsemen rode up after we encamped and started killing; I was struck and fell.”
Ubar nodded. “I saw her fall. These were soldiers of the Hand of Light. They called us consorts of darkness and allies to evil as they killed us. I do not know why.”
I sighed. “I can’t tell you either. I know there was some sort of excitement back in that city—what’s it called?”
“Telen.”
“Telen, yes. Thank you. There were alarms and shouting all that night before. Might that have had something to do with it?”
“I have no idea.”
“Nor I,” Utai added.
I shrugged. “Whatever the case, when I came on the scene they were firing the last of the wagons and mounting up in a hurry. The sun had just gone down and they were heading back toward Telen as fast as their horses could go.”
Ubar shook his head. “It makes no sense.”
Utai looked thoughtful. “Perhaps it does.”
We both looked at her. “Oh?” Ubar asked.
“Do you recall Ulegba’s stories about the
na’irethed
?”
The word
na’irethed
wasn’t familiar; we hadn’t covered it in my language lessons.
“Of course,” he said. “Everyone knows children’s stories.”
“She once told me the stories were true—there used to be
na’irethed
, and they ruled the world before the Hand of Light hunted them.”
Ah. Vampires, obviously. The assassin had called me a
marivel
; I guess I need to review more insults with Ubar and find out what it means.
“She would,” he said, disdainfully. “She loved to tell stories.”
Utai slapped him across the chest, not hard, but he winced.
“She insisted this was true! She told me there had been
na’irethed
who were kind, as well as
marivel
—” Well, so much for my idea that it was just an insult. More than one kind of vampire, maybe?—“and that our
gata
had been allied with one of the
na’irethed
. He cared for us and helped us, and we helped him and hid him from the dawn. But the Hand of Light did not care. They slew all the
marivel
and
na’irethed
together.”
“Right, right, right,” he said, rubbing his chest. “So?”
“So, the stories say the
na’irethed
fled from the Hand of Light. They went through a door of shadows through which the light could not follow. Maybe one of them came back through the door.”
I felt something like a centipede go running down my spine. It couldn’t have
been
a centipede, of course; any centipede that cold would shatter. If that was only a guess, I was going to get paranoid very quickly.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t that far out; she obviously spent a lot of time listening to stories from this Ulegba. And here I was, a stranger in odd clothes, bearing strange devices. For all I knew, touching her brainstem with my tendrils had given her some unconscious clue as to what I was and where I was from. I just didn’t know enough about it.
Someday
, I promised myself,
I’m going to sit down and figure me out. Now I know why the former me spent so much time and effort on studying vampires!
“Maybe,” Ubar said. “And what if one did? So what? Do you think it will be the one we were ‘allies’ with?” he asked, sounding scornful. “Or is it more likely that the Hand is starting up another one of its purges?”
Utai looked so disappointed. “A purge, yes. That’s much more likely.”
“So,” I broke in, “if there is a purge going on, what exactly does that entail?” Could be a bad time to be even a mundane stranger, much less a bloodsucking fiend of the night.
“The Hand will kill heretics, blasphemers, and unbelievers,” Ubar replied, “or, at least, those who do not shout their faith loudly enough. People who are known to be less than faithful will find their land and property seized by the Church of the Light and themselves either killed outright or purified by pain. This will continue until the Hand is satisfied that ‘evil and corruption’ have been destroyed.” He sounded disgusted.
“What is the difference between the Hand and the Church?”
“The Church is the main organization. The Hand is part of it.”
“So what is the Hand supposed to do?”
Utai spat, “It does all that. It is
supposed
to hunt down evil and corruption and destroy it, root and branch,” she said, and her voice broke. I looked at her and she looked away. She rose, still facing away from us both, and walked away.
I looked at Ubar. “What?”
He shook his head. “Let her go. She is a strong woman and will not shed tears where a stranger may see them. It is not done.”
I blinked at him. “A stranger?”
He hesitated, thinking, then said, “You are not part of our
gata
.”
I nodded. “And?”
“You are a stranger.”
We took a linguistic distraction for what it was worth. The word I had thought was “stranger”—
tilar
—was closer to the Japanese “gaijin.” It meant “outsider” more than anything else, although there was also an implied “barbarian,” or “uncivilized person.” “Stranger,” merely a person one does not know, was
timat
.
“So I am not a member of your
gata
. I see. And that’s why she cannot cry in front of me?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. I can understand the
tilar/timat
difference, but why is it a woman cannot weep in front of someone not part of her
gata
?”
“It is not done.”
I suppose every culture has customs that seem odd to outsiders. Kissing a woman’s hand would be perfectly acceptable in an English ballroom; doing so in Baghdad could get you killed
“All right. I’ll take extra time tonight, when I’m hunting. You two can talk and she can cry on you if she needs to. Tomorrow I’d like to go back to the place and look over the remains. You two can start thinking about what you want to do.”
Ubar nodded. “I would like to see what is left.”
“Then we’ll get an early start tomorrow—just after dawn.”
“Good.”
I spent a goodly portion of the rest of the day discussing politics—and avoiding questions about how Ubar and Utai and their
gata
fit into everything. Ubar isn’t exactly a political theorist, but since when does the average man on the street know the details of how his government works? He gave me the gist of it.
The country I’m in is, technically, a feudal monarchy complete with lesser nobles, knights, guilds, peasants, serfs, and slaves. His Majesty has a few problems with absolutism. First, there was a Court of Nobles. Second, there’s the Church. Third—and increasingly—there are the wizards.
This is the gist of it.
The Court of Nobles functions a lot like a Senate, I think; they can overturn a decree of the sovereign by a two-thirds majority. They could also pass a law with or without the Royal Seal of Approval by the same margin. The King presides over the Court of Nobles and runs the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom, commands in war, and so forth.
The Church is not part of the government; it is, however,
highly
influential. As a whole, it commands a lot of popular support. Getting into a good afterlife is generally high on people’s lists of Things To Do. The idea of eternal damnation was never popular. The Church is also rich. Really rich. So rich it needs big, solid, stone castles to keep people from thinking about it too hard. Apparently a few centuries of steady tithing does wonders.
The wizards were becoming more of an influence in the last decade or so because they were becoming more unified. The local society was already using a guild system; the wizards, instead of being independents, were starting to realize how useful it could be to have other wizards to help out with some projects, share information, trade spells, and the like. Magic was becoming more commonplace and more necessary to society.
Ubar used two words for wizards, both
hetu
and
hetaru.
In context, it seemed that the
hetu
weren’t sticking together, while the
hetaru
were wizards trying to form a union. I also gathered that everyone believed in magic in a very matter-of-fact way. They believed in magic the same way people in my world believe in electricity.
Not that all of this helped as such, but I felt more comfortable knowing what might or might not blend in, as well as what to expect.
“So where do you fit in?” I asked. Ubar smiled widely and gestured broadly, without even a wince.
“We fit wheresoever we wish. We are
gata
, and we go wherever we will. There are no borders to us, for we live within the whole world.”
“No borders?” I asked.
“Well, there are often persons who would presume to manufacture one and so trouble us, but we try to humor them.”
“Oh,” said I, and I asked more questions.
The
gata
were a combination of circus, tinkers, traders, and witches. They provided entertainment in small towns and villages, provided minor services—repairing pots and tools, shoeing horses, and other things a village blacksmith might do if the village
had
one, and if he had the time—and traded various things, such as cloth, garments, and jewelry. Traveling wizards were the main source of magic for smaller towns and villages, but the
gata
did some fortune-telling, minor charms for continued health or for conceiving children—subtle things. They often performed music or small plays. Utai was a dancer and the whole
gata
had worked to keep her looking her best; she was a major source of income. Ubar was a musician, one of the three that played while she danced. They both had other functions within the
gata,
but I gathered those were their main occupations.
I considered this to be fortunate; since my two strays had some experience outside the normal lines of the system they should be invaluable in keeping me from getting colored in as a dark thing of evil.
Of course, most people would agree I
am
a dark thing of evil, but I don’t see it that way.