Tranto tried to speak, but only blood-flecked spittle dribbled forth. Jay placed a reassuring hand on one leg—just about the only place he could find that wasn’t terribly wounded.
“Mizar?”
The hound turned from where it had been menacing the swirling vultures. A few yellow-and-blue feathers were caught in his jagged metal teeth.
“Yes?”
“Mizar, I want you to find Nazrat for me.”
“Hard. Genius loci do… not need to be… Is here.”
“I want to talk to him, like I do to Caltrice. How can I send him a message?”
Dubhe tossed a handful of dates at one of the vultures, chortling when he scored a hit.
“It’s impossible if lie doesn’t want to hear you, but I’d bet he has at least some of his awareness extended into this area. Tranto isn’t just any proge.”
“So I should just talk to the air?”
“Why not?”
Jay shrugged. The idea was not as alien to him as it might be to someone with a more Veritean attitude toward Virtu. Still stroking Tranto’s leg, making a silent inventory of the phant’s damage, he soliloquized.
“Nazrat, we’ve met in passing before. I’m Jay Donnerjack. When I came here to play in your jungles or to talk to Tranto, I’ve praised the beauty and versatility of your site. Now, I think something’s wrong here, really wrong. You see, I can’t imagine that something could tear Tranto up like this and just walk away. I can see from Tranto’s tusks that he must have seriously hurt his opponents, but when I look about me, I don’t see any blood trails leading away. Isn’t that strange?”
He paused, but there was no answer.
“I came here hoping for Tranto’s advice. Finding him like this… it’s wrong. Can’t you fix him somehow?”
The pooled blood stirred, bubbles popped making words: “Tranto is destined for Deep Fields.”
Jay nodded. “How interesting. That’s where I’m going myself. If you fix Tranto, I’ll take him with me.”
More bubbles. “You mock me!”
“No, really. You must know something of my family. My father made the trip twice. Call it nostalgia, but I’m going, too.”
“Nostalgia? Insanity!”
“Nazrat, I’m going to make a guess that whatever did this to Tranto wasn’t of your creation. Therefore, you can mend him without violating your own internal laws.”
“Why should I?”
“As a favor to me, as a means of preserving a fantastic proge.”
“You will take him to Deep Fields?”
“That’s where I’m going. I can’t exactly force something as massive as Tranto to go with me, but I’m willing to believe he wouldn’t make a liar of me.”
The great ear flapped agreement.
“I am amused, young Donnerjack. Angered also by what was done here. Very well, if you promise to take Tranto to Deep Fields with you, I will erase the errors that have entered his system.”
“What was done here?”
“Ask the phant. I do not care to converse any longer.”
And the surface on which Tranto lay began to froth as the blood he had shed foamed and, contrary to the basic laws of gravity, began to separate from the dirt, flow up his sides, and descend into his wounds.
When the process was completed, the phant’s hide was coursed with myriad fresh scars, but not a trace of the blood remained.
Getting to his feet, Jay looked down at his hands, checked his trousers, and laughed, knowing that the genius loci would hear his pleasure.
“That was impressive! Tranto, how do you feel?”
With a sigh as of great weariness, the phant rolled to his knees, then surged to his feet to a chorus of disappointed shrieks from the vultures. Tranto trumpeted at them, then he felt himself with his trunk.
“Far better than I would have imagined possible. I owe Nazrat—and you—my thanks.”
“What happened? Who did that to you?”
“I will tell you while I get something to drink and perhaps some forage. Nazrat has written out my damage with immense skill, but I am still depleted.”
“I understand. Dubhe, toss down some of those bananas and coconuts, will you?”
“Sure, Jay. That was rather fascinating. I wonder what Death is going to have to say about yet another Donnerjack cheating him of his due?”
Jay shrugged with a nonchalance he did not entirely feel. “I guess we’ll know soon enough.”
As Tranto was refreshing himself, he told his story.
“A short time ago, I had a visit from a strange, female phant. She spoke of recruiting among my herd as warriors in a battle meant to right some of the inequities between Virtu and Verite.”
“Inequities?”
“I confess, I did not understand her fully, but she seemed to feel
J
that Verite has been misusing the virt. When I expressed no desire to join her crusade, she grew indignant and retreated into the jungle. Still ill at ease, I set myself to guarding the herd, but what I did not anticipate was a traitor from among those I trusted.
“At daybreak, I moved the herd on, wishing to be away from where the stranger phant might yet roam. It was while we were moving that I heard the trumpet of challenge. I turned…”
Muggle strode from the fringes of the herd, but what an altered Muggle he was. No more was he the runt bull—scrawny, weak, barely tusked. Now he loomed vast and bulky, a great grey mountain with coarse, wrinkled skin and yellow-white tusks so long that he should not have been able to lift them clear of the ground. He glowed with a faint aura of golden light that was clearly visible even in the brilliance of the day. Only his voice was unchanged and it was by his voice that Tranto knew him.
“I’ve come to challenge you for leadership of the herd, Tranto.”
“Put on some weight, haven’t you, Muggle?”
Tranto’s tone was mocking, but inwardly he was checking out his opponent. What he saw was not promising. Muggle hadn’t just acquired mass, there was grace and agility to go with it. The way he handled those tusks, he now possessed strength and to spare. For the first time in a long, long while, Tranto knew fear.
In the first pass, one of Muggle’s tusks furrowed a long wound on Tranto’s flank, removing Tranto’s last hope that Muggle did not possess the ability to use his new weapons along with a great quantity of flesh and blood. Still, Tranto’s hard-learned cunning and skill stood him in good stead. Time and again he raked Muggle, giving wounds as good or better than those he received, but each time Muggle faltered the golden light flared about him and his wounds healed.
At first Tranto believed that he had somehow offended Nazrat and that the genius loci had raised a champion against him. But there was that about the golden light, about the strange scent that lingered around Muggle, that reminded him of the stranger female. Before he crashed to the ground, he had become convinced that he had been betrayed less by Muggle than by her.
“Still,” Tranto said around a mouthful of grass, “my supposition did not grant me much comfort when I watched Muggle lead away my herd.”
“We can find them for you,” Jay offered.
Mizar scratched behind one ear (tapestry print, roses after the Victorian style).
“I do… not scent… phants.”
“Not anywhere?”
Mizar shook his head, continued scratching. From his perch in the treetops, Dubhe belched, dropped a banana peel near Tranto (who added it to his next mouthful), and called down:
“I don’t see anything from up here and I have a pretty good view over the plains. A herd the size of Tranto’s would stir up some dust.”
“Gone,” Tranto said mournfully. “Muggle—or whatever it was that changed him—has taken them to fight someone else’s battles. I can only hope that the calves will be spared, but I doubt it. There was something cold about that stranger phant.”