But he was unable to close the space between him and his prey. He had plenty of stamina left, but there appeared to be no way that he could compel the rebellious muscles of his legs to drive him onward any more quickly. It began to become clear to him that the steetmoy would elude him once more.
Not so. The beast fetched up against a thickly snarled mass of brush and vines and came to a halt there, unaccountably choosing to swing about and stand its ground instead of ripping its way through. Had it decided to halt for a showdown with its bothersome foe? Or was it simply tired of running? Those were questions that Dekkeret would never be able to answer. He had no time to pause for thought at all. Before he even realized fully what had happened, his own momentum brought him virtually up against the animal, which was standing erect with its back to the tightly woven underbrush. He heard the creature’s angry growling. A massive paw swung toward him. Instinctively Dekkeret ducked around it and brought the poniard upward and inward. The steetmoy roared in pain. Dekkeret stepped back, thrust forward again, found his target a second time. Brilliant crimson blood spurted over the soft white fur of the steetmoy’s breast.
He stepped back, breathing hard. Would a third blow be necessary? Did he need to use the machete?
No and no. The steetmoy, looking confused, remained upright for a moment, rocking slowly from side to side, as its bright red-rimmed eyes slowly began to glaze. Then it toppled. Dekkeret stood over it, hardly believing what had happened. The animal did not move.
Turning, then, he cupped his hands and yelled. “Hoy! Akbalik, where are you? I got it, Akbalik! I got it!”
A muffled reply came to him through the mist from far away. He was unable to make it out.
He tried again. “Akbalik?”
This time, no call came in return. There was no response from any of the hunters either. Where was everyone? If he left the steetmoy lying here, would scavenging beasts tear it apart before he could return to it? For that matter, would he even be able to locate it again in this mysterious misty forest?
Some minutes passed. Swirls of new snow descended. Dekkeret realized that he could not continue to remain where he was. Slowly he began to make his way back in the direction from which he thought he had come, searching for his own tracks in the snow as he went. After a time he saw the tight-grown copse again; and on the far side of it he came upon a scene that would remain in his mind to the end of his days.
Akbalik and four of the March-men hunters were standing in the middle of the clearing back of the copse. A bloody machete dangled from Akbalik’s hand and there was more blood all over the snow. The March-men, farther to the rear, stared stonily at Dekkeret as he came into view. The gap-toothed woman lay on her back, motionless, her entire mid-section torn apart, a terrible wound. Five or six feet away from her was the dead body of some squat thick-snouted beast that had been cut practically in half by Akbalik’s machete. It had bloodstains on its muzzle as well.
“Akbalik?” Dekkeret asked, bewildered. “What’s happened here? Is she—?”
“Dead? What do you think?”
“Is this the animal that killed her? What is it, anyway?”
“A tumilat, they said. A scavenger, a carrion-feeder. They live in underground burrows around here. It’ll kill, sometimes, if it finds a dying or unconscious animal. But what I can’t understand is why a scavenging animal would attack someone who isn’t—”
“Oh,” said Dekkeret, in a very small voice, and put his hand over his mouth. “Oh. Oh. Oh.”
“What is it, Dekkeret? What are you trying to say?”
“Not the tumilat,” Dekkeret murmured. “The steetmoy. It came out of nowhere and ran right into her and knocked her down with its paw. And kept on going. So did I. I went right after it and caught up with it and killed it, Akbalik. I killed it. But I didn’t stop to think about the hunter woman. She was lying here—wounded, maybe, unconscious—oh, Akbalik! I never even gave her a thought. And then, while she was lying here all alone, the scavenging animal came up to her, and—oh—” He stared into the gathering whiteness all about him, appalled at what he had done. “Oh, Akbalik,” he said again, feeling numb. “Oh!”
9
When Prestimion and his companions emerged from the Labyrinth’s southernmost mouth they saw the broad reaches of Alhanroel stretching before them like an endless ocean. The land was flat here, and the horizon was a gray hazy line that seemed to be a million miles off. Every day brought new landscapes, new kinds of vegetation, new cities. And somewhere ahead of them in that unending vastness was Dantirya Sambail, slipping steadily away.
The royal party halted first in Bailemoona, that lovely city of the fertile plain southeast of the Labyrinth where the Procurator’s man Mandralisca had had his encounter with Prince Serithorn’s gamekeeper. Kaitinimon, Bailemoona’s new young duke, Kanteverel’s son, met them outside the city’s bright claret-hued walls and gave them a royal welcome.
He had his late father’s round-faced easy-going look, and, like Kanteverel, preferred simple loose-flowing tunics to more glittery formal garb. But Kanteverel had rarely been anything other than cheerful and jovial, and there was a barely hidden tension about this man, a poorly concealed rigor of spirit, that showed him to be of a different sort entirely. Still, it was a long while since a Coronal had visited Bailemoona, and Kaitinimon displayed nothing but delight at Prestimion’s arrival, staging an appropriately splashy festivity for him, a host of musicians and jugglers and cunning conjurers and a grand display of the famed cuisine of the region, with local wines to match each dish. And, of course, he provided a visit to Bailemoona’s legendary golden bees.
Nearly every city of the realm had its special item of distinction. The golden bees were Bailemoona’s. Once, long ago, in the days when only sparse bands of Shapeshifters had lived in this part of Alhanroel, such bees had been far from uncommon throughout the entire province and the adjacent territories. But the spread of human civilization had sent them into a long decline that brought them eventually to the brink of extinction, and now the only ones that remained were those that the Dukes of Bailemoona kept sacrosanct in the celebrated apiary on the grounds of the ducal palace.
“We open the apiary to the general public just three times a year,” Duke Kaitinimon said, as he led Prestimion through the palace garden to the bee-house. “On Winterday, on Summerday, and on the duke’s birthday. Admission is by lottery, a dozen visitors an hour for ten hours, and tickets change hands at high prices. At other times no one is permitted to visit them except their regular keepers and members of the ducal family. But, of course, when the Coronal comes to Bailemoona—”
The apiary was a building of startling beauty: a huge lacy structure of radiant metallic mesh, held upright by smooth tubular struts of some gleaming white wood that crossed and crossed again in an intricate way baffling to the eye, the entire thing seemingly so insubstantial that a puff of wind would hurl it into ruin. Within it Prestimion was able to make out a myriad bright bursts of light winking on and off with a rapidity that made the mind reel, like semaphore signals so swift that no one could possibly decipher their message. “What you’re seeing,” said the duke, “is sunlight glancing off the bodies of the bees as they move about. But come: come inside, if you will, my lord.”
A long entryway leading to a series of small chambers, each with a door at both ends, admitted Prestimion and his party to the apiary proper. Which was a gigantic dome four or five times the size of the Confalume throne-room, and so artfully woven that the mesh of which it was made was only faintly visible when beheld from within, a mere faint film against the open sky.