I was up when Jerrel and Devel rose.
It was partially dark, but some light was creeping through the cloth over the gap in the tree. Jerrel pulled it loose, let the beginnings of early morning seep in.
Jerrel and Devel moved to an area of our cave away from me and whispered. As they did, Devel would glance at me from time to time. His face was a mixture of emotions, none of them appeared to be amused.
After a moment Devel came to me, said, “Jerrel trusts you. I feel I must. Her judgment is generally sound.”
“I assure you,” I said, “I am trustworthy.”
“Words are easy, but you will have your chance to prove your loyalty,” he said. “Don’t let us down.”
“Did I let you down in the fight?”
“No. But what we face from here on out will be much worse. It will try all of us.”
“Then put me to the test,” I said.
We flew away from the tree and into the morning sky. As we went, the sun grew large and the sky grew bright. The glowing bugs were long gone to wherever they go—some in the gullets of the Night Fliers—and the hungry bat things were gone as well. We sailed on into the bright light and before long it was less bright and the clouds above were dark and plump with rain. Finally, the rain came, and it came hard and fast and began to flood the seats on the craft.
Devel guided our flying sled down and under the lower limbs of the trees. We dodged in between them swiftly, and close to limbs that for a moment looked like inevitable crash sites. But he avoided them, flicked us through clusters of leaves, then down under a series of trees that were smaller in height than the others, yet wide and numerous of branch with leaves so thick the rain could hardly get through. It was as if a great umbrella had been thrown over us. As we went, the sky darkened more and the rain hammered the trees and shook the leaves; random drops seeped through. Then came the lightning, sizzling across the sky with great gongs of thunder. There was a great crack and a flash, a hum of electricity, and a monstrous limb fell from one of the trees.
The lightning, as if seeking us out for dodging the rain, flicked down through a gap in the larger trees and hit one of the smaller ones just before we glided under it. A spot on the limb burst into a great ball of flame and there was an explosion of wood. It struck the front of the craft, hit so hard it was as if a great hand had taken hold of the front of the flying machine and flung it to the ground.
Fortunately we were not flying high at the time, but it was still a vicious drop. Had it not been for the centuries’ buildup of loam from leaves and needles and rotting fruit to cushion our fall, we would have burst apart like a tossed china cup.
We smacked the ground hard enough to rattle our teeth. The machine skidded through the loam like a plow breaking a field. It went along like that for a great distance beneath the trees, then hit something solid that caused us to veer hard left and wreck against the trunk of one of the smaller trees.
It was such an impact that for a long moment I was dazed. When I gathered my thoughts and put them into some reasonable shape of understanding, I examined my surroundings. I was in the middle seat of the flying sled, Devel ahead of me, Jerrel behind. But she wasn’t. She was missing. I struggled out of my seat, got up close to Devel. He wasn’t moving. He couldn’t. He was dead. A short limb jutting out from the tree had been driven securely through his chest, bursting his heart. His body was painted in blood.
I fell off the crumpled craft, landed on the ground, and started to crawl. When I got enough strength back to manage my feet under me, I searched around for Jerrel, screamed her name.
“Here,” she said. I turned, saw her rising up from behind a pile of leaves and branches. She was scratched up, but from where I stood she looked well enough, all things considered.
When I got to her she surprised me by taking me into her arms, clutching me to her.
“Devel?” she asked.
I gently freed myself from her embrace, shook my head. She made a squeaking noise and fell to her knees. I squatted beside her, held her as she shook and cried. As if to mock us, the sky grew light and the rain stopped. The world took on a pleasant, emerald glow.
I was still astonished to find that at death all that was done in way of ceremony was that the dead were placed on the ground. I assumed that in the humid air of Venus, aided by insects and internal decay, bodies would soon lose their flesh and find their way into the soil. But it was still disconcerting to see Devel pulled from the machine by Jerrel, stretched out on the soil to be left. Jerrel wept over him, violently, then she was through. She left him, as she said, to Become One With The All. I convinced her to stretch his cloak over him though she thought it was a waste of material. I know how this makes her sound, but I assure you, this was custom. I guess it was a little bit similar to some American Indian tribes leaving the corpses of the dead on platforms to be consumed by time and elements.
We traveled forward. The sky had completely cleared and the storm had moved on. We could hear it in the distance, roaring at the trees and the sky. I don’t know how long we walked, but finally we came to a clearing in the wilderness, and in the clearing were mounds of giant bones. Some were fresh enough that stinking flesh clung to them, others had almost disappeared into the ground itself. Teeth gleamed in the sunlight. In the distance the dark rain clouds moved as if stalking something, lightning flashed and thunder rolled and the wind sighed.
“It’s a kind of graveyard for the great beasts,” Jerrel said, looking around.
It was indeed. It went on for what I estimate to be ten or fifteen miles long, a half mile wide.
We had brought some supplies from the crippled flying sled with us, and we found the shade of some very large and well-aged bones, sat down in the shade the bones made, ignored the smell from stillrotting flesh, and ate our lunch. It was an odd place for a meal, but our stamina had played out. We sat and Jerrel talked about Devel. It was minor stuff, really. Childhood memories, some of it funny, some of it poignant, some of it just odd, but all of it loving. She talked for quite a while.
When our strength was renewed, we continued. I guess we had walked about a mile among the bones when we found her uncle’s airship. It was blackened and twisted and smacked down among a rib cage that looked like the frame of a large ship. The man I had seen before, the one who had been driving the craft, was still in it, though some creature had been at him—had actually sucked the flesh from his head and face. But it was him. I could tell that, and if I had any doubts Jerrel dismantled them. She drew her sword and cut off his fleshless head and kicked it into a pile of the bones.
“Traitor,” she said. I saw then not only the beautiful woman I had fallen in love with but the warrior, and it frightened me a little.
“The question,” I said, “is where is your uncle? Wait. Look there.”
A little farther up, among the bones, were the wrecked bodies of several bird-men, blackened and twisted and scorched by fire.
“The lightning hit them same as us,” I said. “Maybe your uncle was killed.”
But we didn’t locate his body. Perhaps a beast had found him, but it was also possible that he was journeying on foot to the kingdom of the Varnin.
“This means we might catch up with him,” I said.
Before long I spied his tracks in the soft soil, pointed them out. Jerrel could find Varnin without tracking her uncle, but it was him and the talisman we wanted, so the tracks were encouraging.
It was near night when we finally passed the lengthy stacks of bones. We edged toward the forest. The trees, low down and high up, were full of ravaging beasts, but the open land worried me most. Anyone or anything could easily spot us there.