Turning to the cookstove and lifting the lid of the pot to find that its contents have begun to softly bubble and pop, Caliphestros fetches several earthenware bowls and spoons, as well as a ladle, the utensils all carved from a tightly grained wood, and then sets the collection of objects on his rough-hewn table. “But before this process can begin, much less be mastered, we must work, eat, and then sleep. My admittedly theatrical exhibition was intended only to hearten your spirits about the struggle to come — not to slow our progress.”
“And you have achieved your object, old fellow,” Heldo-Bah declares. “Now, let us finish the packing of your possessions, that we may consume this fare — for if you can cook stew as well as you can steel, Lord of Feathers and Fangs, it shall be satisfying, indeed!”
In this way — by the portentous shattering of a single sword — is formed an odd yet fast friendship between the most infamous person in Broken’s history and the three Bane foragers upon whom the mantle “saviors of their tribe” rests most precariously.
The stew is, even Heldo-Bah must admit, a most excellent concoction, not least because it is flavored with all manner of herbs and heartened by roots and greens, all taken from Caliphestros’s own garden. Of course, the fact the three foragers have been swiftly running and somewhat madly searching for most of the last three days and nights would make almost any food palatable, at this moment. But so genuinely satisfying is Caliphestros’s stew, and so much do his guests consume, that, by the time all the packed sacks have been set by the cave entrance, the three Bane are more than ready to seek out places among the many large bags filled with the down of various birds that cushion the cave’s hard rock protrusions, in its walls as well as on its floor. Exhausted and sated, the foragers fairly collapse onto these welcome spots to sleep away the few idle hours they have been allowed, ere nightfall signals their departure.
For his part, Caliphestros attempts sleep, as does Stasi, the latter lying on her side at the foot of her companion’s bedding, vigilantly lifting her head whenever a sound is captured by her exceptional ears, in order to assure herself that the Bane men are indeed slumbering harmlessly. In time, however, this duty becomes plainly unnecessary, and the great white panther rises, glances once more about the cave, and then walks slowly to its entrance, where three heavy deerskin sacks, as well as two lighter bags, sit waiting for their bearers to rise. Stasi will now sit and stand guard from this spot, and at first, she thinks to do this duty alone; but her wakefulness has brought her companion out of his comparatively light slumber, for they are as alive to each other’s restiveness as any two humans who have lived together for many years. Caliphestros drags himself across the cave, using the arms that have grown powerful in the absence of his legs to swing his half-body forward, and reaches the spot where Stasi now sits, her hind legs tucked beneath her, her fore legs side by side in front of her, and her powerful neck holding her head in an easy but alert position.
Caliphestros makes a small, affectionate sound of greeting, one that he is glad the three Bane cannot hear, for he does not wish them to think him overly sentimental. Yet his watchfulness, at this moment, is not a matter of sentiment alone: for often, on pleasant evenings when the pair have found themselves abroad in Davon Wood long past nightfall, Caliphestros has noticed Stasi’s wont to climb some log or large stone and fix her eyes on the distant sight of the small lights that flicker atop the great mountain to the northeast. The old man has always been able to see — in the panther’s strikingly expressive eyes, in her steady, low growls of threat, and in a distinct tightening of those muscles which all cats, the greater as well as the lesser, employ during their deadliest maneuver, the pounce—that Stasi long ago identified those lights as marking the den of her enemies. Caliphestros has usually seized the chance to speak to her, at these moments, and tell her of the day when they must and will scale the distant, shadowy mountain, and fight against the humans in the city that crowns it. And so he believes sincerely, this evening, that the panther understands that the moment when they must undertake their great, shared object has arrived.
The old scholar leans his left side against Stasi’s nearest shoulder, and together they sit and observe for what may be a final time the gardens before their cave and the forest beyond them, which are illuminated by the twilight that seems to slice open the highest mountain ridge far to the west. From there, the light is fractured by the countless new leaves that cover the boughs of trees far and near, and finally comes to burnish both the colors in and about the old man’s gardens and Stasi’s unique coat. The panther’s near-white fur absorbs and then reissues the fading sunlight, until she seems to become even more than usually apparitional. The sun moves ever closer to the mountaintops, and then, still casting its bright spring light, sinks below them; and yet, from the manner in which Stasi’s head remains up and constantly moving, just as her tail continuously swipes from side to side as she warily and knowingly glances in the direction of what seems every noise produced by the surrounding Wood, Caliphestros determines that his words continue all the while to sharpen both her alertness and her desire that they at last be on their way.
The foragers, however, never wake, making it necessary for the pair at the mouth of the cave to wait, if only for a short while longer. But as they do, and as the old man whispers still more words into the white panther’s ear concerning their coming, shared vengeance, Caliphestros suddenly notices in Stasi’s expression a new aspect. It is an expression of longing, that much is plain, but longing for what? Revealed in those dazzling green eyes that comprehend all that lies before them and many things far beyond are powerful emotions that burn deep in the panther’s heart, emotions that Caliphestros has seen her display during their life together, but never with this suggestion that what she longs for is beyond this cave, this companion, this life, and will give her greater reward than that which is to be had with the mere sight of her enemies’ suffering: it will, in fact, restore at least one among the missing pieces of her spirit—
“What is it, my girl?” Caliphestros whispers, his voice full of urgent curiosity. He pulls himself round to face her, and places his hands on each side of her noble head. “You would have more than blood — I see this. More than killing, richly deserved though the killing may be — but what?”
Stasi’s steady gaze never breaks, however; and she offers no hint to her companion of what the unprecedented longing he has detected might be.
But this display has not escaped another mind present: for, unnoticed by the old man, Keera has suddenly yet silently woken, and has spent the last few moments using her remarkable ears and mind to listen to and try to comprehend Caliphestros’s moment of worried confusion. And, slowly, the tracker realizes that she saw something similar earlier in the day, something in the great cat that the old man evidently has not himself seen and, even more essentially, cannot see; cannot, Keera detects, by simple virtue of his sex, and of his never having fathered children.
The two Bane men finally start from their own beddings, upon the first cry of what sounds like a Davon dog-owl.† Yet this bird must be unusually large, if it is indeed a dog-owl, Keera judges silently. Just what has prompted such an alarm, the Bane tracker cannot say, the area outside the cave being out of her sight; but she wonders if the as yet unknown creature is without, standing guard; and so she stands, herself, to carefully look out the mouth of the cave into the semi-darkness, attempting to see what might be the cause—