CHAPTER
THREE
“Wake up,” François told Lowanna. “Wake up, there’s breakfast. It’s fish, and fruit. And, ah . . . trouble.”
“I can see!” Muwat said.
Lowanna knew Gunther had tried to heal Muwat’s blindness and hadn’t succeeded . . . but maybe there’d been some delayed effect to the healing? Interesting. But not interesting enough to get her out of bed.
“Trouble for breakfast?” Lowanna grunted, not really wanting to wake up yet. She wasn’t comfortable, exactly, just tired. Her watch had been uneventful, but long.
François prodded Lowanna’s shoulder. “Trouble for breakfast, trouble for lunch, and probably enough trouble left for snacks. Come on, get up. You aren’t the only one who stood watch last night.”
“Yeah,” Lowanna murmured, “but I did the best job, and it was exhausting. You can have my share of the trouble.”
“I can see! I can see!” It was Muwat’s shouting rather than François’s poking her shoulder that finally made Lowanna stir. “You are great magicians!”
Lowanna sat up from her bed of matted grass. Before they had gone back in time, a night spent sleeping in the grass would have left her with kinks in her neck and multiple charley horses. She would have dragged her carcass to a coffeepot and hugged it to herself until it rescued her from morning crotchetiness. But the time travel, or the alien ankh-devices they each possessed, had revitalized them all, and she felt fine.
Maybe even perky. She took a deep breath, and smelled the salt of the sea, along with the tang of pine needles.
Somewhere in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere, on the sea.
François walked away toward Muwat’s hut. A bright yellow sun cracked barely over the flat horizon of the ocean. “There’s fish when you’re ready. Arnun is a fast learner.”
“Who’s Arnun?” Lowanna shot back, stretching.
The sun rising over the water meant they were on the east coast of whatever land mass they were on.
Arnun is Muwat’s son, the weasel Shush told her. The creature sat up on his haunches a few paces from her. He held a snail in his front paws and pecked it open by tapping it repeatedly against a stone. Zidna is his wife. Telipi and Yaru are his daughters. I am his weasel.
“I’m used to speaking to animals,” she said. “Well . . . sort of used to it. I’m not used to animals having very much to say.”
I’m not used to humans speaking, Shush said. Mostly, you just make that mushy moaning sounds with your mouths.
“Mushy?”
Like fruit rotting, but loud, Shush said. Like a wave, but without the crisp snap of it striking rocks. Like the rumbling of an empty belly. You all make the sound of a sick herd beast, calling out to its fellows for attention.
Was Shush a poet? “But why do you live so close to these humans? To Muwat and his family?”
They are my pack. The weasel shrugged. They sound like sick herd beasts but they catch food and they let me take shelter in their hut.
“You are a clever creature,” she told the weasel.
He pried the snail from its shell and gulped it down. So are you. Then he turned and bolted into the grass.
She stood and stretched, enjoying the feel of her muscles unwinding. On the open space of packed earth and pebbles beside the hut, her companions gathered around a fire and ate.
“You’re not Neshili,” a voice said. The voice didn’t startle her, but it sent a bit of a shiver up her spine; it was a baritone purr, masculine but also gentle. She turned to face the voice and found a muscular man with coppery-brown skin, a high forehead, and straight black hair to his shoulders. He wore an undyed kilt and sandals and he leaned on a spear. A quiver hanging behind him from his belt held half a dozen javelins, and a throwing stick—an atlatl—hung attached to the quiver. His eyebrows danced playfully and one corner of his mouth curled up.
“I’m not,” she admitted.
“I don’t think you’re a spirit, either,” he pressed.
“What if I were?” she asked. “Are you a shaman, to capture me? Or an exorcist, to drive me away?”
He laughed. “I would do as my king required.” His eyebrows leaped. “Or my queen.”
Behind him, three men in white togas moved toward the fishing hut and the fire. They walked almost in synch, taking steady, solemn steps. They had the spearman’s complexion, but with the lines and wrinkles of age, and hair white as snow.
“But you may be a wise woman,” the warrior continued. “I listened to you speak with the animal.”
“As I am speaking to you.”
“Yes. As you are speaking to me.” The warrior inclined his head. “I am Sharrum.”
“I see.” Lowanna left him without introducing herself, trotting to join her friends.
The fisherman Muwat orbited around the fire, staring about himself, eyes wide open. Beside the fire on a stone sat a woman a few years younger by appearance, clasping both her hands over her mouth and staring at the fisherman. Three youths, teenagers by the look of them, cooked fish and fruit on wooden skewers over the flames. François handed Lowanna a kebab of cubed roasted fish alternating with chunks of something that looked like pineapple, and then turned to the approaching elders.
Surjan stood and faced them squarely as if preparing to fight. He held a spear whose point looked like a unicorn’s horn.
Marty stepped forward, putting himself between Surjan and the approaching elders. Behind the elders came Sharrum and two other men wearing kilts and carrying spears, with javelins and throwing sticks on their belts. They kept their distance, several paces behind and to the side of the older men. They planted their spear butts in the dirt and smiled, eyes alert.
“Don’t worry, Lowanna,” François said. “I’ll protect you.”
“Shut up,” she told him.
“Welcome,” Marty said to the newcomers. “We didn’t expect visitors, or we’d have prepared more food. Still, we have abundance. May I offer you fish?”
One of the elders, a fat man with a neck creased like an accordion, grunted and folded his hands over his belly. “Since when does the blind fool Muwat have abundance? His children have been struggling to keep him alive for years! He’s known to eat fish that washes up dead on the rocks!”
“Blind no longer!” Muwat shrieked. “And if not blind, then perhaps not a fool, either, eh, Ammun?”
Ammun snorted. “Have these strangers lifted the veil from your eyes, then? Did your own people cause your blindness? Perhaps the gods were angered by my words, and punished you with blindness for them!”
Muwat stooped, snatched a pebble from the ground, and send it winging into the fat man’s belly. “Witness for yourself! Compose a poem about it! Tell the genealogy of the stone!”
The three elders murmured to each other.
Gunther stared at the ground beside Lowanna, where he was drawing a repeated geometric image with a long, straight stick. The symbol resembled a triangular E, a W with a back to it, or maybe a crown.
“What’s going on?” Lowanna whispered.
Gunther shook his head as if trying to escape a buzzing mosquito.
The second elder, a tall, thin man with long fingers and a vertical scar running down his left cheek, cleared his throat and looked past Marty at Surjan. “Was it you who healed the fisherman?”
“Does any man heal?” Marty interjected. “Or do the gods heal? Is it not they who provide the herbs with their properties and the stars with their virtues and even the words of power?”
The thin man shook his head and focused on Marty. “You did not kill the king.”
Lowanna grabbed Gunther by the shoulder. “Someone killed the king?” she whispered.
He turned his head to meet her gaze and spoke slowly, in German. “Yes, someone killed him.”
“Are you here to inquire about the death of a king?” Marty asked. “Tell us about your king.”
“I am Tudhal,” the thin man said, “high priest of the Neshili, who speaks on their behalf to all their gods. Who are you?”
“He is Marty Cohen,” François called out, stepping forward. “His titles are Doctor and warlord. He wears the secret black belt of the spirit fighters of shaolin. He has come from across the ocean. He brings only prosperity and peace. Behold, we have already instructed the son of Muwat in the art of setting traps for fish, and the daughters of Muwat in the sacred cooking craft of kebab.”
“How long did I sleep in?” Lowanna murmured.
“If kebab means meat on a stick,” Ammun said, “your gifts are not so rare or so precious.”
“And you are his herald,” Tudhal said.
“I am his minstrel and herald.” François crossed his arms over his chest. A stiff sea breeze ruffled his hair, blowing it out sideways. “I am also a loremaster and a crafter. I am François Garnier.”
“Would you force me to violate the rules of guest-friendship, Tudhal?” Muwat keened. “Would you harass guests in your own house with unwanted questions while they were trying to eat? Stop bothering my guests. This tub of fat Ammun has no decency, but I always took you for a good fellow and a wise man. If you want to ask these people questions, I’m sure they can come to the palace later.”
“Silence!” Ammun bellowed. “Or I will restore your blessed blindness by tearing out your eyes with my bare hands!”
“Would you undo what has been done by the gods?” Muwat shouted.
“If I undo a thing, it is undone by the gods themselves!” Ammun’s face was red and veins bulged out in his neck and temples.
The third elder pulled Ammun back. This man was built like a low brick wall, wide and flat, with a hard face and a few streaks of black remaining in his hair. He stepped in front of Ammun and cracked his knuckles.
“My name is Sapal. You,” he said, pointing to Surjan. “Are you shield bearer to the warlord? Do you serve him? Carry his booty from the field?”
Lowanna shook her head and plucked Gunther’s elbow. “Doesn’t this conversation seem strange to you?”
Gunther had surrounded himself in crowns scratched into the dirt. In answer to her question, he only shook his head.
“Why can’t they just ask what they want to ask?” she wondered out loud. Their king was dead, they believed—correctly, as it happened—that one of the strangers had done it . . . why couldn’t they ask directly whether their guess was right?
“Technically,” Surjan said, enunciating carefully, “I work for François.”
“Worked,” François said. “Nobody’s on payroll now.”
“But I’m accumulating a pension, right?” Marty cracked.
Sapal shook his head. “Your words are strange. Do you also serve your own minstrel?”
“It was a joke,” Marty said. “We come in peace. We do not wish to disturb you or your people. Muwat is right, we should come visit you in your palace, where we can pay our respects to your leaders.”
The three elders looked at each other uncertainly.
“We do not know how to receive you,” Tudhal said.
“For what purpose did you come to Nesha?” Ammun asked.
“We save humanity from monsters,” Surjan said.
“I knew it!” Ammun snapped.
“The king had lost his powers,” Tudhal said. “He was no monster.”
“Perhaps he had lost his powers,” Sapal cautioned his fellows. “That was the question that was put to the test.”
“And we know the answer!” Ammun roared. “Look! It would stab you in the eye if you were standing any closer!”
Lowanna’s gaze flickered to the warrior Sharrum and found him staring at her. She felt her face flush. Looking away, she noticed Kareem. The young Egyptian stood at the edge of the party. He seemed to drift away without consciously trying, as if he were just disappearing into the grass behind him, moving away from the group and toward a spot behind the elders. She shook her head at him, and he shot his hands into his pockets and frowned.
“I know why you have come,” Surjan said.
“Surjan,” François said. “You don’t need to do this.”
“Someone has killed your king,” Surjan said.
“Yes,” Ammun agreed. His normal color had returned.
“The order of things is upset,” Tudhal observed.
“Justice must be done,” Surjan suggested.
“The world must be set right,” Tudhal said. “The world cannot be right without an effective king upon the throne.”
“What was your king’s name?” Surjan asked.
Ammun raised his eyebrows. “Which name?”
Surjan frowned. “Whichever is right to tell me.”
“Beware,” Sapal muttered. “You have invited the genealogist to speak all day.”
“And poet,” Ammun said. “Genealogist and poet. His mother gave him the cradle-name Hoom. But of course when he took the throne, he was crowned Zarum the Fourth.”
“Least of his line,” Tudhal murmured.
“May he not be the last of his line,” Sapal said.
Lowanna braced herself for the clash that seemed unavoidable now. She looked into her heart, trying to find that space where the lightning lived, but couldn’t reach it. The sky was disappointingly clear. She put a hand into her pocket and found her sling.
“Enough, perhaps, that he not be the last.” Ammun cleared his throat. “And what is your name, stranger, killer of monsters?”
“Surjan Singh,” Surjan said.
“May I know its meaning?” Ammun asked.
Kareem had his hand on his ankh. Marty stood with a relaxed posture, but his hands curled ever so slightly toward making fists.
Surjan hesitated. “‘Singh’ means ‘lion.’ I think ‘Surjan’ is a person who is godly or pious.”
“Ah,” the three Neshili elders murmured together.
“The divine lion,” Ammun said, as if announcing a revelation.
“I slew your king,” Surjan admitted. “I did not intend to kill him. He attacked me.”
The three elders gasped, and for a few blinks of an eye seemed like frozen statues, when suddenly they settled onto their knees and then bowed low, faces to the ground. After an added moment’s hesitation, the spear-armed warriors followed suit.
A cold tingle of shock raced through Lowanna as she realized how much had happened while she’d slept.
Muwat dropped to his own knees, dragging a woman, who must be his wife, down with him.
“What are you doing?” Surjan asked.
“You have the royal spear,” Tudhal said, his voice muffled by the earth into which it was released. “We have been waiting for you to claim your deed.”
“There was no deed,” Surjan said. “I was simply scouting. Exploring, to make certain our campsite was safe. And a man attacked me.”
“Zarum,” Sapal said.
“The fourth,” Ammun added. “Your predecessor.”
“Whoa,” Surjan said. “Slow down.”
“This is an ancient pattern,” Lowanna said. She chose her words carefully, not wanting to sound too alien to the three elders. “When a king is weak, when his magic begins to fade and his presence no longer protects the people, he goes into the sacred place and waits.”
The six men rose from their prostrate position but remained on their knees, watching Lowanna intently.
“What is this, Golden Bough stuff?” Marty muttered.
Lowanna ignored him. “The man who can challenge the king in the sacred place and kill him has the favor of the gods. He becomes the new king.”
“I didn’t challenge him,” Surjan protested.
“He’s innocent!” The voice came from behind the three elders. All three turned their heads, but no one was there. Lowanna looked among her companions, half expecting to find Kareem missing, but the young Egyptian was at the edge of the grass, staring intently at Surjan.
“Sometimes the challenger has to be one of the old king’s retinue, one of his warriors.” Lowanna looked to Sharrum and saw him narrow his eyes. “Sometimes it can be anyone. Even a stranger who happens along and wanders into the sacred place.”
“The king attacked me,” Surjan said. “I tried to warn him off. I tried not to fight him.”
“Even better,” Tudhal said. “The voice of the gods is clear. You did not choose the throne. They chose it for you.”