‘Shut up or I will cut your head off,’ Skinner told him.
The man’s mouth shut with a snap.
The trail led Mara and Petal to a shore cluttered in wave-wrack, the aftermath of the storm. Mara cast her awareness out to sea, seeking a vessel, but discovered nothing. However, by the light of the Jade Banner, as some named it here, it was clear that the party had not entered the surf. Rather, they had milled about for a time then headed south.
She and Petal followed for a few leagues just to be certain. They stopped before the seemingly impenetrable jungle wall at the base of the peninsula. The priest hopped from foot to foot in his impatience. ‘Well? What are you waiting for? Go, now. Retrieve it!’
Skinner shook his head. ‘They have entered Himatan. There is no finding them now. The jungle will deal with them. We will wait. Your treasure will be found among their bones.’
The priest grew still. He gnashed his yellowed rotten teeth. ‘What? You refuse? Very well then. I demand you accompany me to another! Now. Immediately.’
Oh no. Mara threw out an arm. ‘No! Not like that.’
‘Your master demands fulfilment of your terms, Disavowed.’ The air about them grew opaque, tearing into streamers of sickly grey roiling power.
Mara clutched her head and the nauseating agony swelling there. Petal grunted as he fell to his knees. The obscene oily touch of raw chaos enmeshed them and the dune shore, the massed clouds, all disappeared in a snap of displaced air.
* * *
Saeng warmed herself over a meagre fire of wood scraps and dry moss. She squatted near the vine-choked mouth of their cave on the floor of centuries of rotting leaves and droppings. Her outer clothes hung on branches over the fire, drying. She’d stink of smoke but that would be better than dying of the wet-lung. Hanu stood just within the opening, keeping watch.
While she rubbed her hands over the weak flames a spider emerged from the moss seeking escape. Its bulbous red body announced to all its poison. She used a twig to flick it aside. On another side a snake squirmed out from under dead leaves, attracted by the heat. Its glowing yellow and orange bands shouted its deadliness. She scooted it aside as well. Spiders, snakes, bats, rats, tigers, rhinoceroses, ghosts … ye gods. Everything under the sun and those that avoid it into the bargain! It was a miracle they were still alive and not stung, bitten or sickened unto death. Well, me at least … Hanu seems impervious to everything.
‘I think we should return,’ she called to him. ‘They’ve moved on by now, surely.’
He turned his helmed head, gave a slight nod.
He’s not enthusiastic about returning. What does he expect to find? She’s just an old lady! What would they do to her? She must be fine. And speaking of fine … She eyed the glimmering opalescent blues and emerald greens of her brother’s armoured back.
‘What will you do?’ she called. ‘You cannot return … can you?’
‘No,’ he answered with his thoughts. ‘I must leave this land or be hunted down.’
She wanted to dispute that assertion but knew it to be true. She stared at the licking flames. ‘Where will you go?’
‘Somewhere — it matters not where.’
‘Well … what will you do?’
‘I will easily find employment as a guard to some rich merchant or noble. Or I could join a travelling freak show as a living statue.’
Her gaze snapped to him to find his helmed head tilted her way. ‘I’m serious!’
‘As am I. An income will be no issue.’
‘Perhaps I could-’
‘No. You must remain. You belong here.’
‘So you say. I-’ A deep growling roar from the jungle interrupted her. It shook the ground like a minor earthquake. The hanging vines vibrated, pattering down droplets.
‘Your friend wants his cave back.’
‘Well, he can wait,’ she grumbled. ‘I’m not spending one more night out in this damned rain.’ She cast outwards for the beast and found the bright spark of its awareness. She urged it to curl up elsewhere. A throaty rumble answered that, as reluctant as she. Yet the crashing of undergrowth and the shuddering of nearby trees announced the great animal’s capitulation. Hanu, at his post, visibly relaxed. His hands encased in their armoured gauntlets eased from his belt.
‘Tomorrow, then,’ she said. ‘We might make it in one day if we push it.’
‘Very well.’ Hanu’s response was just as reluctant.
That night she dreamed, as she almost always did now. This time she was not fleeing the bony reaching hands of the Nak-ta. Rather, she found herself wandering the deep jungle. It was day, the sun high and hot as it beat down upon her between gaps in the upper canopy. A troop of monkeys scampered about the treetops. They seemed to follow her wandering, curious perhaps. After a time she somehow came to the realization that what she walked was not some empty wasteland, but that the steep hillocks she passed were in fact tall sloping structures, human made, all overgrown and crumbling beneath the clutching roots of the jungle. And likewise, that the broad flat floor of the forest here was in fact a stone-paved plaza, the great blocks heaved up here and there by the immense trees.
So, she walked one of the ruins that she knew dotted the uncounted leagues of Himatan, which featured so prominently in her people’s ghost stories.
Some time later she paused, sensing that she was being watched. Yet she saw no one. After she cast about at the shadows and great tumbled heaps of stone, a figure resolved itself out of the background of a root-choked staircase leading up the side of one of the great hillocks. It was a crouching man, mostly naked, wearing the headdress of a snarling predatory cat, a tawny leopard, some of which still haunted Jacuruku lands, occasionally dragging off the unwary.
‘Hello?’ she called.
The man stood, or rather, he uncoiled; his legs straightened and his arms uncrossed, all in a smooth grace of muscle and lean sinew. He came down the jumble of broken stone stairs in an easy, confident flow and Saeng had to admit that he was the most amazing example of male beauty she’d ever come across.
Closer, however, her breath caught as she saw that the headdress he sported was none such: the man’s upper torso and head was that of a golden leopard. Her instincts yammered for her to run but she was frozen, unable even to scream. He stopped before her and eyed her up and down. Those eyes were bright amber slit by vertical black windows into deep pools of night. His black lips pulled back over jutting fangs, grinning perhaps.
Exhaling, Saeng managed to force out: ‘Who — what — are you?’
‘You know my brothers and sisters,’ he answered, his voice appropriately deep and smooth.
‘Brothers? Sisters?’
The monster nodded, perhaps grinning even more. ‘Boar, tiger, bull, wolf, eagle, bear …’
‘The beast gods. The old gods.’
The creature gave an all-too-human nod of assent. ‘Yes. Some name them Togg, Fener, Ryllandaras, Fanderay, Argen, Tennerock, Balal, Great-Wing, Earth-Shaker … their names are too many for anyone to know them all.’
‘There is no leopard god among all those names.’
The man-monster closed the distance between them in a blur. Its black muzzle brushed across her face as if taking her scent. ‘You have the right of that, Priestess. I am the one none dared worship. And do not mistake me, child. I am not a scavenger. I never skulked about your villages. To me you are the beasts. You are just another kind of pig. I am the reason your kind fear the night.’
Saeng turned her face away from the stink of its hot damp breath. ‘What do you want from me? You name me priestess. I am no priestess.’