“What is it with the figurines?” I asked him when we got back outside. “Why do the Outlanders keep them?”
“They represent constellations of stars. The Outlanders believe that the stars, and particular groupings of them, can affect our lives.”
“How? They’re just little pinholes in the Great Mother’s Evening Gown.”
“The Outlanders have a somewhat different belief system.”
“I’ll say. How come you keep asking about the figurines?”
“Each of the dead Outlanders had a collection of them. From each collection a figurine was missing.”
“From Art’s too?”
“Yes, according to Bill.”
“Well, obviously,” I said, “the lion didn’t take them.”
He smiled. “Obviously,” he said, “the lion did.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“All—”
“Yeah, right, all in good time.”
“Patience, Doder.”
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t carrying twenty crocks of mead.
“Come,” he said. “We must interview a few more Outlanders.”
Which we did, three or four of them in different parts of the village. More jabbering. Finally, when we got outside the last of the houses, Berthold turned to me and said, “I believe it’s time for dinner.”
“You’re really going to eat, in the middle of all this stink?”
“Food isn’t the only thing that’s served at dinner.”
“Yeah? What else is?”
“Sometimes,” he said with a cryptic smile, “the Truth.”
The Truth, just then, was that I wanted to take a swing at him with the sack.
The house of Leo, the lion expert, was an old one, far from the riverbank where we first met him. When we knocked on the door, it was Bob who opened it.
“Hey, man,” he said to Berthold. “Come on in. How’s it going?”
Leo’s house, inside, was pretty much the same as all the others, except that in here, standing beside a large dining table, there was a pair of twins. They were identical young females with identically long black hair, and they wore bracelets of lion claws, spotless leather pants, and freshly washed red plaid shirts. They were slender and sleek, and I suppose that from an Outlandish point of view they were fairly attractive. Neither of them had an eyebrow ridge like Ursula’s, naturally, and I’ve never really been fond of hairless skin. But they were handsome enough, as specimens of their species, and it seemed a pity to me that they were going to be sacrificed next year. I was pretty sure that even among the Outlanders, there weren’t that many virgins around.
“It goes well, I think, Bob,” said Berthold. “And these are, of course, the twins.”
“Oh yeah. This is Geena, this is Leena.”
Right away, I have to admit, they surprised me. As Bob gibbered away in Outlandish, they smiled and nodded. The one on the left, Geena, said slowly but clearly, hesitating only a little, “Hey... man.” The one on the right, Leena, said, “What... is... happening?”
Berthold smiled. “Congratulations. Your accents are excellent.”
“Thanks... man,” said Geena.
“We speak four... distinct... languages,” said Leena.
“And all of them extremely well, I’m sure,” said Berthold.
“Dinner is nearly... ready,” said Geena.
“We’ve got to go... help Dad in the kitchen,” said Leena.
“We’ll be right back,” said Geena.
As they left, Bob turned to Berthold and said, “So. When do we start stalking the lion, man?”
“I have been stalking it,” said Berthold, “since I arrived here.”
“Huh?”
“All in good time, Bob.”
Just then, Leo entered the room and gave a hearty gibberish shout of greeting. Grinning hugely, moving here in his own home as though he weren’t blind at all, he came around the table and offered his hand to Berthold, who shook it enthusiastically with his own, and then to me, who shook it. When no one was looking, I wiped mine clean on the curtain.
We all sat down at the table, and the young women served the food. There was salad and fish (trout now, not the poisonous kraydon). Throughout the meal, the conversation was mostly small talk. The young women demonstrated their facility with The Language. Berthold and Leo jabbered away. Bob asked me why I wasn’t eating, and I told him that I’d eaten a large lunch.
It was during dessert — cookies and milk, which I also couldn’t eat — that Berthold sat back against his chair and said to Leena, “Tell me, Leena. Which of you killed your neighbors, you or your sister?”
Bob, whose mouth was filled with milk, promptly spat it out across the table. No one was sitting opposite him, fortunately.
“Come again?” said Leena, looking confused.
“It had to be one of you,” said Berthold. “One of you was seen shortly after each of the murders. None of the witnesses thought anything of it — after all, the victims were killed by a lion.”
“Hey, man,” said Bob. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“As Doder will tell you, I never kid. Doder—?”
“He never kids,” I said.
Berthold frowned impatiently. “Doder, when you told Marta you were allergic to cats, you were speaking the truth, were you not?”
“Absolutely.” You didn’t lie to the Great Mother’s representative.
“How allergic are you?”
“Very. I get hives if I go into a room where a cat used to be.”
“And yet this afternoon, when you were in a house that had apparently been visited by a lion, you had no reaction at all.”
“Well, no,” I admitted. I glanced over at Leena and Geena, who were exchanging puzzled looks.
“Hey, man,” said Bob. “Those marks on Art’s body and the others. They were made with claws.”
“Yes,” said Berthold. “By those claws—” he pointed to Leena’s bracelet. “Or by those—” he pointed to Geena’s. “As were the lion tracks outside Art’s house in the earth.”
Old Leo frowned, maybe sensing that the meal wasn’t working out. He cocked his head and gibbered something.
“But those were lion tracks,” said Bob.
“Either twin would have known what lion tracks look like, and how to duplicate them. Their father is, after all, the local authority on lions. Tell me this, Bob. If it was a lion who killed your neighbors, why didn’t the beast eat them?”
“Well, uh...”
“None of the victims had been eaten. No parts had been taken. A few had been redistributed, yes. But none had been removed. No, Bob. One of the sisters killed your friends and made the death look like the work of a lion.”
“Why?”
“So no one would suspect her true motive.”
“Which was what?”
“Theft. The theft of a gold figurine. One was stolen from each victim.”
Leo gibbered something, turning his head left and right.
Bob patted him on the back impatiently and asked Berthold, “Why steal a figurine?”
“To provide herself with finances.”
“But neither one of them needs finances, man. They’re sacred, both of them. So long as they’re here, they get everything they want.”
“Yes. So long as they’re here in your village. But if one of them wanted to leave?”
“But why would either one of them want to?”
“To avoid being sacrificed.”
Bob shook his head. “Oh no, man. That can’t be right. Being sacrificed, man, that’s an honor.”
Berthold smiled. “On that matter, Bob, one of the sisters disagrees with you.”