“Sure, I understand that, your Slimness. But the thing is—”
“You were of great help to Berthold in the matter of The Disappearing Necklace of Pretty Blue Stones. And also in the matter of The Mysterious Destruction of Poor Ulrich.” She could do that, talk in capital letters. It’s something that comes easily to queens, I’ve noticed.
“Yes,” I said, “but—”
“The Great Mother has spoken,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “Absolutely.” You didn’t argue with the Great Mother.
Berthold stood up, lifted his leather sack, and held it out to me. “Let’s be off then, shall we, Doder?”
I took the sack. It was filled with crocks, and the crocks were filled with mead. And so, usually, was Berthold.
Outside, I took a deep breath of fresh air. It wasn’t as fresh as it might have been, because Bob and his fumes were traveling alongside me, but it was still better than the air inside Marta’s cave. Berthold walked on the other side of Bob, sipping now and then from one of his crocks.
“Tell me something, Bob,” he said. “Before the lion killed Tammy, had it bothered any of you?”
“No,” said Bob. “Tammy was the first.”
“And how large a lion is it?”
“Huge, man. At least eight feet long. You should see the tracks.”
“Have you actually seen the lion itself?”
“Nope. No one has, except Leo.”
“If my memory serves me, Bob, Leo is blind.”
“Well, yeah, sure,” said Bob, “in the sense that he can’t see anything. But he’s a soothsayer, right? And he’s an expert on lions. He saw it in a vision.”
“Ah. But no one has observed the lion visually?”
“Nope. For one thing, it only shows up at night, when we’re all asleep. And for another thing, it’s magical.”
“Magical, in what way?”
“It can disappear whenever it wants to. We’ve tried to trick it, man. But the tracks lead down to the river and then disappear. Leo says it’s a ghost lion.”
“I see.” He drained the last of the mead. “Doder?” Reaching back around Bob, he handed me the empty crock. “Another, please.”
“You should talk to Leo,” Bob told him.
“Indeed,” said Berthold.
I handed Berthold another crock. That was my share of this particular division of labor.
He pulled the cork, handed that to me, and took a drink from the crock. “Have you left Art’s body as you found it?” he asked Bob.
“Sure. Everyone wanted to bury it, but I figured you’d want to see it first.” Like us, the Outlanders believe that death was contagious and like us, they buried a body as soon as it became one — said a quick word or two, “Nice fellow, too bad,” and then planted it as deep as possible.
“Excellent,” said Berthold, and took another drink of mead.
We crossed the mastodon tracks and came to the river, and we walked alongside that for a while. It was a beautiful day, one of those bright polished days that Memory, in recollection, is always multiplying. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the grasses in the meadows were shimmering. The breeze was warm and gentle, and it was probably sweet too; but with Bob walking beside me, I had no way of knowing.
It took us nearly four hours to reach the Outlander village, but I could smell it after three and a half. Even with Bob walking beside me.
As we approached it, we came upon an old male Outlander sitting on the riverbank, a fishing pole in his hand. Fishing poles were another Outlander improvement over the traditional way of doing things. The traditional way meant standing in the stream with your hands dangling in the water and waiting for a fish to swim between them and surrender. Not a lot of them did, usually.
He had a big head of hair for an Outlander, a bushy white mane. It swung along the shoulders of his red plaid shirt as he turned to face us. I saw that his eyes were as white as his hair.
Bob said something in Outlander gibberish, and the old male responded in kind.
“This is Leo,” Bob told me. “He’s our lion guy.”
Berthold could speak Outlandish, and he did so now. The old male’s empty eyes widened, and he babbled something in return, and the two of them were chattering merrily away. Berthold claimed that Outlandish was a beautiful language, precise and elegant, but to me it always sounded like a box of pebbles tumbling down a hillside.
“They’re talking about the lion,” Bob told me.
The old male was doing more than talking now. He was making claws with his hands and sweeping them through the air. He was growling. He was hunching his shoulders and glowering right and left, his teeth bared, and then he was making claws with his hands again. Like Bob, he wore a bracelet, but his was made of lion’s claws, six or seven of them that rattled as he waved his arms.
It was a fine performance, and it lasted for about ten minutes. Berthold stood there, watching, sipping from time to time at his crock. Every so often Bob would translate a scrap of the old male’s monologue for me. “It lives in caves at the center of the earth... It’s angry at us because we don’t offer it enough sacrifices... It’ll kill anybody who tries to find it...”
Terrific, I thought.
Finally, the old Outlander’s energy, or maybe just his story, ran out. Berthold said something else. The old male grinned, leaned forward, reached into the water, and pulled out a length of rope. Attached to the end of it was a flopping yellow fish, about two feet long. Berthold said something. The old male nodded proudly, then added a few more bits of cheerful gibberish.
“He wants to know,” Bob explained to me, “if we’ll all join him for dinner.”
“Not if he’s serving that fish,” said Berthold. “It’s a kraydon, and deadly poisonous.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Bob. “He thinks it’s a trout. One of the twins will switch it on him before they cook it.”
“The twins?” said Berthold.
“His daughters. Geena and Leena. They’re the village virgins.”
“Village virgins?” That was me, making my first contribution to the conversation.
“Yeah. They’re sacred. They’re going to get sacrificed next year.”
“Sacrificed?” I said. “Virgins?”
“Right,” said Bob. “To the thunder god. For the crops.”
“But that’s — ouch!” Berthold had kicked me in the shin.
“That’s what?” said Bob.
“Doder meant to say, That’s wonderful,” said Berthold. “And personally, I think that dinner would be a splendid idea. Now, Bob, suppose you show us to Art’s house.”
The last time I visited the village, lively Outlanders were milling enthusiastically about, stinking the place up, naturally, but looking very colorful in their red plaid shirts, laughing and sporting with each other in that childish way they have, which Berthold always found charming and which I always found, well, childish. Today, however, the village seemed deserted. The death of three of your neighbors within a week can put a damper on your enthusiasm, even if you’re an Outlander.
Art the Archer’s house was on the edge of the community. Like the others, it was a rambling wooden structure. At one side was a small, fenced-in enclosure that held a threadbare goat and a very tired-looking ram. Both of them eyed us suspiciously as we walked up to the front door. By this time, I was breathing entirely through my mouth.
One of the Outlanders was standing guard at the door, a short stabbing spear resting on his red plaid shoulder. He gibbered at Bob. Bob gibbered back and then turned to me. “He’s asking when they can bury him.”