Malediction, imprecation,
Jerk his melts, the B’lodo Man,
Mockery, indignity, calumny and ban
Rash and rumor, rancid liver,
Bob Bob B’lodo Man
Rot and rancor, snarl and spoil
Ulcer, abcess, fester, boil,
Epilepsy, apoplexy,
Indigestion, inflammation,
Fecculence and fulmination
Dilapidation, moth and rust
Treachery, atrocity, malignity and lust
Bolodo Man live in love
gold fine gold
Bolodo Man live in love
pearl and emarald.
Jaunniko snapped thumb and forefinger, diving headlong into the music; when Churri paused and looked at him, he began his contribution:
Wa ha wa hunh
Sibasiba Bird
Come out
Come from the river come
Wa ha
The bird come from the river
Wa hunh
Sibasiba
Eat gold
Eat gold
Eat gold
Eat fat greedy soul.
The bird come from the river
Eat those pearl those emarald
Eat you bare, Bolodo Man
Bare ass, Bolodo Man.
Churri laughed, his booming laughter filling the hold, filling that echoing impossible space.
Execration, vituperation
Call your curses, raise them high
Bolodo Man live in love
gold fine gold
Bolodo Man live in love
pearl and emarald
Fulmination, imprecation
Curse him up and
Curse him down
Curse him neck and
Curse him thigh
Curse him heel and
Curse him crown
Bolodo Man live in love
gold fine gold
Bolodo Man live in love
pearl and emarald.
Parnalee stood on his cot, straining his restraints, hunched over, slapping his shovel hands against his massive thighs, his burring basso waking echoes until his words got lost in them.
Thump them, dump them
Down among the dead men
Ekkeri akkari oocar ran
Down among the dead men
Bolo Bolo B’lodo Man
Down among the dead men
Blood and bone, heart and stone
Down among the dead men
Fillary fallary hickery pen
Down among the dead men
Blackery luggary lammarie
Eat the brain, the bod dy
Gut and liver, black kid ney
Rowan rumen mystery
Down among the dead men
The Curse Song went on and on, the transportees taking turns at soloing, their curses growing more extravagant, more surreal as each dipped into his or her culture to surpass the contribution of the last. The rest belted out the refrain until the hold rocked with it. Round and round, Churri playing variations on his verses, the Omperiannas adding flourishes, round and round until, finally, the transportees collapsed in exhaustion and laughter and fell into extravagant speculation about where Bolodo was going to dump them.
“Yo, I remember you. May’s Ass.”
“Aslan.”
Abruptly realizing what he’d said, Jaunniko went bright red, so red his ears and the tip of his long nose were nearly purple. “Ah,” he said. “Thing is,” he said, “May sort of went round saying you had the neatest ah um derriere he uh… He turned even redder. “The time we met,” he went on hastily, “it was at a party, you probably don’t remember me, you brought your mother along and that wasn’t being too successful, I talked to her a while, she was bored out of her skull, one icy lady…” He sneaked a look at her. Her expression must have been rather daunting, because he stopped talking altogether.
After she calmed down, she took pity on him and changed the subject. “How’d Bolodo get you?”
He stretched out on his cot, crossed his ankles, laced his fingers over his flat stomach. “I’d just got my papers. Junior Master. May found me a commission, he’s good about that, you know, Jeengid in the Blade, the Keex of Jelkim. I was one of about fifty she hired, she liked my part of the piece well enough to give me a little bonus, I was feeling whoooo no pain when this stringman came on to me. Woke up in a Bolodo scout tied down and sick as a… well, sick.”
“Any idea where we’re going?”
“None. Except we aren’t coming back from it.”
“So Xalloor thinks. I expect you’re right.
V
1. Still two+ years till Aslan’s Mama meets Quale/ four months after she woke in the belly of the transport/the voyage is finished.
Lake Golga/Gilisim Gililin/Imperator’s Palace/ afternoon.
The Bolodo transport decanted Aslan and the others on Tairanna four months after it collected them at the Weersyll substation. Smallish dark men with cold eyes supervised their transfer. Others of the same type loaded their gear on carts pulled by stocky stolid beasts with horns like half smiles curving up and away from round twitchy ears.
Aslan stepped onto the ground, braced herself to endure the extra weight and found a moment of quiet while their new guards prodded them into line. They’d been stuffed with the local language and a sketchy outline of local customs so they had no trouble understanding the terse commands. Despite the circumstances she was momentarily happy. There was an infinity of possibility stretching out before her, new worlds always did that to her. She stood docilely where the guards put her, sniffing at the wind that whipped around the base of the transport, sampling the smells it brought to her. Fish and rotting flesh, dung and mud and the sharp green bite of trampled grass, the dank musky odor of the beasts, the subtler odors of cart woods and working metal, over all this the faint burnt-cabbage stink of the men. That wind wailed and whined; the carts rattled; her fellow slaves snapped irritably when impatient guards shoved at them, barking guttural monosyllabic orders; behind her the drones servicing the ship clanked and hissed; overhead, racy white birds circled in flittering flocks, their eerie cries a most proper accompaniment to the debarking of slaves into the land of their servitude. The extravagance of word and image made her laugh. Xalloor looked a question, flinched from a guard’s goosing prod (an elastic grayish cane a meter long) and in her indignation forgot what she was going to ask. Aslan sighed and started walking as the guards marched them toward the towered city a kilometer or so away. Nothing to laugh about. She had no control over her life; whatever happened to her depended on persons and events she had no way of manipulating, not now, not until she had sufficient grasp of local verities to do some planning. Her first flush of interest and excitement quickly wore off; she was a slave here, not a scholar. She rubbed at her lower back. Though the gravity of this world was uncomfortable rather than unbearable, she was already feeling fatigue and fatigue made her depressed, diminished her ability to deal with her problems.