“You have never in your life shown true respect for the tenets of the Moon, Veloc,” Keera snaps at her brother, her voice having grown hoarse. “Why, then, do you now show such sudden deference?”
“I’ve told you twenty times, sister!” Veloc protests.
“… closer to fifty …,” Heldo-Bah murmurs, quietly and uselessly, as his head slams into the trunk of the ash again.
“It is one thing to question the faith among men and women,” Veloc declares, paying Heldo-Bah no mind. “I will grant you that I have sometimes done so, often for the pure and idiotic amusement of it. But by Kafra’s rotting bunghole, Keera, when you introduce the white panther herself into this discussion—”
“Fool — you make my argument for me!” Keera shouts, her round face now blazing red. “If, in fact, we are contending with the animal who possesses the noblest and most powerful spirit in all the Wood, then she will not be fooled by your momentary airs of devotion and solemnity — indeed, she will only kill us all the more quickly, when you assume them! You may lie as you wish to the women in the towns and villages you visit, Veloc, you may even, on occasion, persuade the Groba to believe your tales; but if you think for an instant that this panther will not sense your untrue voice and words — I tell you, you must not even attempt it!”
“What, then?” Veloc demands, his own voice exhausted.
“… suicide …,” Heldo-Bah mutters, after which comes the dull thud† of his head striking the tree once more.
“But do you seriously propose that we allow you to go into that place alone, Keera?” Veloc presses once more. “It’s madness! We are faced with the greatest sorcerer ever known to the Tall — so great that he has created, in the worst part of this Wood, a garden that Heldo-Bah says has grown to rival, in beauty as well as bounty, any in the glades about Okot, or even in the Meloderna valley—”
“… far superior, in fact …” Heldo-Bah agrees, now clinging to consciousness, as well as to the ash trunk, by the barest of threads, yet unconcerned with his condition.
“—and in this miraculous place,” continues Veloc, “this place that is plainly governed by sorcerous arts of a kind at which we cannot even guess, this master of black arts lives with this — this wild creature! All this, I might add, only after he survived the Halap-stahla—which neither man nor demon has ever done! How will you stand up to such a being, I should like to know?”
“I will not, you idiot.” Keera bitterly pushes her face close to her brother’s. “I will have no need to. Both panther and sorcerer will sense my sincerity, and deal with me fairly: such great spirits do not demean themselves with the sort of petty viciousness you describe, Veloc. And later, after I have explained to them the — the peculiarities exhibited by you and our touched friend, over there, who—” Glancing at the last member of their party, Keera stops shouting for a moment. “Heldo-Bah — what in the Moon’s name are you doing to yourself?”
“If death will free me from this squabble …,” Heldo-Bah says, through lips that are crushed into deep grooves of the ash tree’s bark, “Then I swear to you, I almost welcome it … Blood of the Moon, Veloc! When, tell me, please, when have you ever judged a predicament more wisely than Keera?” Seeing that Veloc has no answer, Heldo-Bah moves away from the tree at last and bellows, “And so why, in the name of all that is unholy, are we still talking about this?”
“Quiet, fool!” Veloc whispers. “They may hear you — if they really are but two rises away, the sound will certainly—”
“They will hear me, cuckolder?” Heldo-Bah interrupts. “Oh, that is a new depth of dishonesty and dim-wittedness, even for you — the pair of you have been shouting at each other throughout the night. There’s nary a creature in Davon Wood that hasn’t heard you! Heard me … I hope the sorcerer hears me, that he may come and put an end to all this idiocy — that is, if he’s not somewhere around us right now! In fact, he likely is — indeed, he’s probably been here the entire time—” Without turning, Heldo-Bah points accusingly at the tree beneath which the three made their camp the night before: a broad, sheltering oak that stands nearby, protected by the coming together of two relatively small but sharp ridges in the slope of the mountain. “Yes — probably right in that damned tree, having himself a fine old laugh at how petty and imbecilic the Bane can be—”
Heldo-Bah stops suddenly, his arm still in the air. “Ahhh,” he noises, just as a man might release his final breath. “Your cursèd, endless talk, Veloc … Ficksel …” The word is less a curse, on this occasion, than a statement of submission, even a kind of obscene prayer; and, blood-speckled as the upper part of his face may be, it quickly loses all inner color, while his lower jaw falls open ever wider.
“Heldo-Bah,” Keera says. “What is it — have you done yourself actual harm, you foolish—” She moves toward him, producing a small, clean kerchief, ready to mop the blood from his forehead and face. “You look as though you’ve seen a vision of your own death—”
“As I may well have,” Heldo-Bah says. “But — I was wrong concerning one detail. They are not in the oak.” Keeping his arm high, he points all the more urgently, now, just to the left of the oak, where, another ten feet along, stands a beautiful elm. Its delicately laced branches are markedly undamaged, for its being so high on the windswept mountain. “Death and his handmaiden — or is it the other way round? No matter, for there they are — in that elm …”
Keera and Veloc turn to follow their friend’s indication, and when they catch sight of the cause of his gaping shock, their faces and jaws, too, droop open.
Along the crotch of two long, low limbs of the elm lies a pale, glowing form, draped as one might a luxuriant white cloth upon a table, if one were expecting honored guests, or perhaps as one would bedeck an altar. But the folds of this drape are undulating: because, apparently, whatever is beneath it breathes, and the many lines of its surface are not, in fact, ripples of fabric, but the folds of powerful muscles. Toward the left extreme, two brilliant green orbs shine out, lit as if by the sun — despite the fact that the sun is not shining directly upon the spot. Finally, at each end, two long, lazy legs stretch and steady the apparition, while toward its rear, a tail flicks gently, very gently, its languorous movements speaking not of carelessness but of the near-effortless speed with which the creature itself could deliver death, if such a fancy should strike her.