In Green's Jungles tbotss-2 Read online

  "Not if you can't."

  "I can't. You're an intelligent young woman. Can you summarize everything you've told the Duko for me? Briefly, we haven't a lot of time."

  "I think so. First there was the ammunition problem. Blanko had a lot of slug guns left over after the last war, but not much ammunition for them. Inclito was able to buy some in Aspis, and he got people from there to come here and show our people how to make it, so now there's a shop making ammunition in Blanko, and the town buys it from them as fast as they can turn it out.

  "Then there was a lot of talk about fortifying. Some people wanted to make the town wall thicker and higher, and build more towers, but where was the money coming from? Naturally Inclito was against all that, and so were all the other farmers. He wanted to use the money, or as much as there was, to hire troopers who'd protect everybody, and that was the way it was decided after the farmers said they were going to start taking their produce someplace else."

  Mora put in, "My father went around to a lot of the neighbors to get them to do that, and got some of them to go around like he was."

  "I see."

  "And I told him about you, " Fava continued, "after you came here the first night. Inclito thinks you're a man called Silk he read about-"

  "Good Silk, " Oreb assured us.

  "In some book. Only I don't think the people in books are ever really real."

  "Nor do I, " I told her.

  "And that was the last one, two nights ago. I said you were supposed to be this very powerful witch who'd cast spells on him and Soldo so Blanko would win, and I thought there might even be some truth in it. That was because of the story you told us the first night. Then you told that other one tonight, and you got inside mine and started changing things. I told Mora this morning, and she said we should just go and see you and ask how you did it, as friends. I said you were her friend, not mine, but if she wanted to I'd come along."

  "He's going to let you go, " Mora told her. "He could get Papa to kill you twice over. You couldn't have a better friend than that."

  "Yes, I could. I do."

  "Before we talk about stories-"

  From my shoulder Oreb repeated, "Talk, talk."

  "Before we discuss those, I have a few questions about your reports, Fava. How many times have you gone to Soldo to talk to Duko Rigoglio?"

  She muttered to herself, counting on her fingers. "Nine."

  Torda burst out, "She said she went there night before last, Incanto. That can't possibly be true. She was here when you and the master went back to town, and here next morning for breakfast."

  I nodded. "But let's pretend we think it's true, for the present."

  "Nobody can ride that fast!"

  "Thing fly!" Oreb demonstrated, circling the room. "Bad thing!"

  "Come back, you silly bird.

  "I was about to say, Fava, that you must surely have gained some information of value to Inclito on all those trips. How did you give it to him?"

  "I couldn't, or not very much. He would have known."

  "We both know you could, that you needn't always be Fava. How did you appear to the Duko?"

  "Like I do now."

  Without in the least desiring to, I pictured her as she must have appeared that night, her wig still upon her head, her arms, widened and lengthened to wings, straining the loose cotton stuff of her sleeves.

  Torda was leaning forward to study her. I said, "In bright sunlight you might be able to make out her scales-it's why she carries a parasol. In this room I don't believe you will, unless your eyes are a great deal better than most."

  "I've never seen one up close before."

  "You're not seeing one now. Fava, would you like to show Torda – and Mora-your natural shape?"

  "If you make me, I suppose I'll have to."

  "I won't. I asked whether you would like to."

  She shook her head.

  "They can make themselves look very much like us, as you see, " I told Torda. "They think like us as well. There is a stain of evil in them, however. Perhaps I should say that there is a streak in them that appears evil to human beings like us, an undertone of black malignancy with roots in their reptilian nature."

  Fava began, "We feel-"

  I raised my hand. "Think before you speak."

  She nodded. "I was going to say that we feel the things we do are right, exactly as you and Mora feel that the things you do are right, even when they're wrong."

  "That malignant stain kept you from informing Inclito, who has housed you and been kind to you, as well as causing you to offer your services to the Duko. I hope to equalize matters a little, if I can."

  "I'll help you, " Fava declared.

  Mora asked her, "Was that all it was? You threw away the jewels, you said. Is it just that you don't like us?"

  "I like you" Fava told her.

  I said, "If you really do, you will want to leave her for her sake. You have done a great deal of good here, I believe. You're beginning to do harm however, and it will only grow worse. Remember please that in a week or a month I will be gone, but Mora and Torda will still be here, and both know.

  "Mora, you must understand that however much Fava may have liked you-I'm not qualified to pass on that-she resented the other human beings with whom she came in contact, not only your father and grandmother, but Torda and Onorifica, and all the people she met in Blanko."

  Mora nodded reluctantly.

  "She envied their humanity, and soothed her feelings by doing what she did, proving to herself that she had the power to destroy them-but we have very little time. The obvious question, Fava. Why didn't the Duko attack when you told him about the ammunition shortage?"

  "He should have!"

  "I agree, but he didn't. Why didn't he?"

  "He said he wanted to train his people better, and get the crop in."

  I nodded, wondering as I still do exactly how far

  I could trust her. "And hire more mercenaries, I'm sure."

  "That's right, and equip everybody better for winter fighting."

  I nodded again. "Does it snow here? I suppose it must."

  Mora offered, "It snows a lot more up in the High Hills, and that's where my father wants to meet them."

  "No doubt. Fava, when you told the Duko about Inclito's influence, how he had persuaded the town to fight outside its walls, it would be natural for him to order you to kill him-or so I would suppose. Blanko would certainly be much weaker without Inclito. Did he do that?"

  "Yes, " Fava said. "I wouldn't do it."

  What power was in those words, I cannot say; but as she spoke them I felt once more the stillness of the steaming air between the colossal trees, dripping with moisture and thick with the smell of vegetable decay. Oreb surely felt it, too. Again and again he exclaimed, "Bad place! Bad place!, " sounding half frantic with fear.

  "He'd want me to kill you, too, Incanto." Her fangs came out, for her kind, like ours, appears about to eat when it is pleased. "If I were to go back there tonight, I know he'd tell me to. I wouldn't do that, either."

  Mora and Torda were staring at her, Mora's slack jaw and open mouth rendering her less attractive than ever.

  "I want you to go back to him, " I said, and felt that she and I were sitting together on the damp, fecund soil. A moth with wings the size of dinner plates fluttered above the dark, stagnant pool between us, displaying staring eyes upon its wings before it fluttered up and up to vanish into the vaulted ceiling formed by the lowest limbs.

  "You said you wanted to help me set things right here." I told Fava. "This is how you can do it. Tell Duko Rigoglio that Inclito is about to marry a woman from Novella Citta, and that both Novella Citta and Olmo have agreed to support his counterattack on Soldo once the war has begun. Will you do that?"

  Fava nodded; her fangs had disappeared.

  "If you do, and if you leave here today and do not return, you will have my friendship-for whatever that's worth. I won't reveal your nature to Inclito, or tell him
that you have nearly bled his mother to death."

  Torda grasped my arm and pointed at die idiot-faced, long-legged thing that had fallen from the tree under which we sat; its wrinkled, hairless hide was the brownish pink of human skin, and although it seemed stunned, its blunt tail probed the ground like a blind worm. "Don't worry, " I told her. "They eat leaves, are not good to eat themselves, and are perfectly helpless and harmless. It would never have left its tree if it weren't looking for a mate." At the sound of my voice it lifted its head and stared at me, its eyes as dull as ever and its mouth working.

  Fava leaned forward to admire her own face, studying her reflection in the water as she might have in a slab of polished jet. "Back in Grandecitta, where I lived as a girl-do you mind if I'm older now, Mora? It's been so hard staying young for you while I dined with your grandmother. I kept having to stop on the way to Duko Rigoglio's palace, or on the way back, to find another child. Incanto said I had no trouble finding food, and I heard him say once that we prey upon the poor as if it were an accusation. It's really just that we look for houses that aren't very solid and are poorly defended."

  Mora gasped. "Are you doing this? Is this…? Is it where you come from?"

  Fava nodded. "But I'm not doing it." For a second her mouth opened as widely as a human mouth can, I would guess because she believed she was retracting her fangs. "Incanto is, I'm sure. How do you manage it, Incanto?"

  I shook my head.

  "Back in Grandecitta, it was fashionable to credit witches and fortune-telling, and all sorts of humbug. If you didn't consult a Strega at least once a month, when your period came, you pretended you had and made the charm yourself to show your friends. I did that sometimes, and so did they I'm sure. Charms against the pain, and for love and good luck. When I remember them now, it seems to me that they never helped anyone, though they may have hurt a few of us."

  Her face had become the smooth but delicately wrinkled one of a woman who had been beautiful thirty years ago. "I hope yours aren't like that, Incanto, " she added. "Aren't we all friends here? If we are, anything that harms any of us hurts all of us. I hope you agree."

  I said nothing because I was watching Mucor, who had coalesced from a shimmer on the dark surface. "There you are, Silk. There you are, Horn. I've been looking everywhere for you. Babbie came back without you, and Grandmother's worried."

  "Tell her I found an eye for her, " I said. "I'll bring it as soon as I can."

  There was a knock at the door, and a hoarse, muffled voice outside it.

  Mucor had turned her death's-head grin toward Torda. "Are you sure you want to marry him? Silk will help you."

  The door opened, and for a moment I saw the fat, middle-aged face of the cook, stupid with shock.

  "B-b-breakfast… "

  The colossal trees were fading as the small but comfortable bedroom my host had provided returned.

  "Breakfast is on the table. The-the, uh… "

  Oreb appeared to shrink. "Good place!" He practically crowed it.

  And then, "Fish heads?"

  10

  Untamed Talents

  Mora, Oreb and I went in to breakfast then. No doubt Torda went to her morning duties, whatever they were; I did not see her again until shortly before I sacrificed. Fava must have gone to Soldo, if she has not set off to gather more of her kind to hunt me down. Wherever she went, she certainly was not at breakfast with us today.

  Here I ought to jump ahead to dinner. The two young men who were to carry the letters I had written for Inclito ate with us, and we were all much too interested in talking to them for anybody to suggest the story game. One was raised in Blanko; his name is Rimando – it means "delay, " he tells me, and was given him because his mother carried him for almost ten months.

  "If I'd known that, " said Inclito, "I'd never have accepted you. You'll be half the morning just getting the saddle blanket on."

  The other is the mercenary whose story Inclito told; his name is Eco, and I saw him nod to Inclito when I came into the dining room.

  "They'll ride for Blanko to take my letters to Novella Citta and Olmo, " Inclito explained to his mother and daughter. "It'll be dangerous. They know, and every god knows I do. But they're going to do their best to get through, aren't you, boys."

  Both young men nodded.

  "The Duko's troopers are on their way to fight us already?" my host's mother asked me. "That was what you saw when you sacrificed?"

  "As I told you, madam."

  "We've got to believe it, " her son said. "But if the gods had told Incanto the Duko wouldn't move for another month, we'd have to believe his troops had started anyway. We can't afford the other. You got to stay off the main roads. You got to stay off the little side roads as much as you can. You want grass under his hoofs whenever you can get it."

  Thinking of Green, I added, "And leaves above your heads."

  "That's right. Stay out of sight. Move fast, but not so fast you wear out your horse." Inclito paused. "I don't think you're going to get a chance to change horses, but do it if you can. Lead him uphill wherever it's steep. Give him a little rest."

  Speaking for the first time, Mora said, "They should be riding this minute."

  Her father shook his head. "They rode out here. For today, that's enough. Let them get a good meal now and a good night's sleep. There's good big stalls and clean straw for the horses, water and oats and corn. Tomorrow they go as soon as the sun's up."

  Turning to Rimando he explained, "Decina's going to wake me up. Decina's my cook. She goes to sleep right after dinner and gets up early. I'll wake you up, and you, too, Eco. I'll see you off."

  They nodded, and I gave Inclito what I intended to be a significant glance.

  "Both, we don't want you killed. We don't want you dead, understand? If they try and stop you and you can get away, fine. But if you can't-" He raised both hands.

  Mora asked, "Do they have needlers?"

  Rimando shook his head.

  Her father said, "We can't spare even one for this. No needlers, no slug guns, no swords. They're too heavy anyway. We want them to get away, not fight."

  Decina herself came in as he spoke and transferred the huge roast on the spit to a great pewter platter fit for it; she set it down ceremoniously before Inclito, who stood and took up a fork with which he might almost have pitched hay and a carving knife with a blade as long as my forearm. "Holy meat. Don't anybody swear or talk against the gods while you eat it, it's not polite."

  Eco, seated between Inclito and his mother, asked me whether the victim had been a steer.

  I shook my head. "A young bull, fawn with a black face. Do they sacrifice steers in your town?"

  "I think so."

  "Perhaps they may, customs differ. In my own-and much more in Old Viron – no animal that had been maimed in any way could be offered, just as no private person sacrificing at home was to offer a loaf from which a slice had been taken or wine after he had drunk from the bottle."

  Salica said, "You're not a patre, Incanto? I know, I asked you before."

  I smiled at her. "No, I'm afraid not. Nor am I an augur, which is what we call them. Our canons permit sacrifice by a sibyl when no augur can be found, however, and sacrifice by a layman-or a laywoman, for that matter-when no augur or sibyl is present. Such sacrifices are nearly always private, carried out before a small shrine in the giver's own house."

  "I see."

  "I felt that this one, which was to take place in your son's presence and on his property, with the sacred fire upon an altar of turfs I built myself, could reasonably be considered a private one."

  "Only the family attended, " Salica explained to Rimando and Eco. "My son, my granddaughter, and I. "

  Mora added, "And Torda."

  "That's right, Torda to help Incanto with the knife and the blood."

  Inclito had been carving a thick slice while we spoke. "You're the main guest, Incanto, and you sacrificed him for us. Hold out your plate."

  I did n
ot. "Half that or less. Less, as a favor."

  "Rimando? Here you are." Inclito cut a smaller piece and gave it to me.

  Eco told Mora, "In Gaon, where I was before I came here, they still sacrifice heifers to Echidna, but they won't eat the meat themselves."

  "The gods got the head, all four feet, and some other stuff, " Inclito remarked as he laid a thick slab of beef on Eco's plate. "They said that was all they wanted, and we could have the rest."

  "The people of Gaon do not abstain from beef and veal because they think them unclean, " I explained, "but because they think them too sacred."

  Rimando paused in the act of cutting his meat. "But the gods told you that the horde of Soldo has already set out to invade us? That's the important point. What gods were they, anyway?"

  "The Outsider and the sea goddess of the Vanished People, " I told him. "I don't even know her name, and perhaps no one does now."

  Mora smiled mischievously. "You could ask your neighbors."

  I smiled back. "The Vanished People themselves, you mean? I'll try to remember."

  "Fava didn't believe in them, " Mora told Eco. "Fava's a friend of mine who was staying with us until this morning."

  Rimando said, "I've got her old room. She seems to have left behind a good many of her belongings."

  "She'll be back for them eventually, I suppose."

  I added, "Or she'll send for them, Mora. I would think that more likely."

  Mora nodded.

  "Why did you choose those two?" Rimando asked me. "Isn't there a god for war?"

  "A goddess, " I told him absently, "and several minor gods, as well."

  Salica said; "Don't make him talk, please. He doesn't eat enough as is."

  Eco asked Inclito, "Didn't the gods have anything to say about us?"

  There was a pained silence, broken at length by Rimando. "I believe I understand. One of us won't reach his destination. Or is it that neither of us will?"

  "Fish heads?" Oreb had flapped through an open window to reclaim his post on my shoulder. I passed him up a scrap of meat, and Mora asked, "If I try to feed him, will he take it?"

  "Probably. He likes you."

  She cut a considerably larger piece from the slice on her plate and tossed it across the table to Oreb, who caught it in his beak and flew to the hearth to tear it into shreds of manageable size.