‘You are welcome.’ She seemed to study Shimmer very closely with her one good eye — the other was clouded white. Then she turned her attention to K’azz. ‘Why are you here?’
‘We are here to see Ardata.’
‘All seekers are welcome.’
‘Thank you. Where is she? We do not see her.’
‘She is here. Just because you do not see her does not mean she is not here.’
‘Wonderful,’ Turgal muttered and slammed his sword home.
‘We would like to meet her,’ K’azz continued.
‘That is entirely up to you.’
Shimmer blew out a breath and turned a quizzical look on K’azz. He raised his brows. ‘I … see. My thanks.’
The woman bowed and walked off. Her gait was agonizingly slow and awkward as she swung her deformed legs. Her swollen club feet dragged through the dirt.
‘How did she sneak up on us?’ Turgal wondered aloud, watching her go.
Shimmer moved to bring her head close to K’azz. She found she was unable to take her gaze from the retreating form. ‘Is that the disease that kills all feeling in the flesh?’ she asked, her voice low.
K’azz’s eyes also followed the woman as she went. It seemed to Shimmer that the figure projected a quiet dignity. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is no disease. She was born that way. Caught halfway into a transformation from human into something else.’
‘Something else?’
He shrugged to say he knew not what. ‘She must have in her heritage the touch of a shapechanger. This is how it manifested itself.’
A shudder of horror took Shimmer. Gods! No wonder the old dread of shapechangers. Yet what an awful fate. And not of her choosing! Sympathy for the woman touched her. She’d probably been driven out of her community. Denounced as evil or corrupting simply because of her appearance. Cruelty and ignorance, it seemed, lay everywhere.
Turgal stood quietly for a time, arms crossed, watching K’azz struggle with assembling the bamboo poles. Finally, letting go an impatient curse, he joined him. ‘Start with the short pieces.’
‘I was thinking more of a lean-to.’
‘And when it rains? You’ll want a platform.’
‘Ah! No wonder. I see.’
Shaking her head, Shimmer left them to argue the niceties of hut construction. She walked among the immense grey-barked trees. She went without fear; after going to such trouble to bring them here, it seemed to her that Ardata would hardly allow them to be torn to pieces. Her wandering took her deep into the jungle. Something of the manicured nature of the land struck her. It was so flat — cultivated at one time, probably. Perhaps rice paddies. Yet these trees … so evenly spaced. Cultivated as well? A food source? Or some other resource?
Circling one giant emergent trunk, its base a series of arches taller than her, she suddenly came face to face with Rutana. The woman held her habitual scowl. She peered past Shimmer to make certain they were alone.
‘As you can see — there’s nothing here,’ she said.
Shimmer held her arms loose, ready to act. ‘There was. Once. I think.’
‘Perhaps. Long ago. But not now. You should go.’
‘I know. You don’t want us here.’
‘You mock but you have come for nothing. There is nothing here.’
‘I was just assured that there is.’
The woman advanced upon her. The forest of amulets about her neck rattled and swayed as she swung a leg over a root. An inhuman intensity shone in her eyes. ‘Do you think you are special?’ she hissed.
‘No.’
‘She won’t come to you.’
‘I was told that was up to me.’
Rutana snorted her scorn. ‘They wait. They pray. But she does not come. She cares nothing for their desires. Their demands.’
Shimmer was slowly backing away. ‘What does she care for?’
The woman pressed a fist to her bony chest. ‘Strength! Power!’
‘Was that why she came to Skinner?’
A cruel smile now crept up the witch’s lips and she chuffed a harsh laugh. ‘No, fool. Your Vow.’
‘What of the Vow?’
‘Ask your commander. You are all of you doomed. I would almost pity you if I did not loathe you so.’
‘Doomed? How?’
Rutana waved an arm as if casting her away. ‘Ask K’azz. Not me.’ She turned her back and walked off.
Shimmer stood still for some time. Leaves fell from on high. Birds whistled and shrieked far above. Distantly, like an echo of thunder, the roar of a hunting cat reverberated through the clearing. In that suspended moment she thought she’d come close to an answer — a hint of what the woman meant. But then it was gone in the wind brushing through the canopy and the rasping of the dead leaves as they swirled about her sandals.
She walked on, distracted. She hardly noticed her surroundings as she grasped after the hint that had touched her thoughts. After a time something blocked her way. Blinking, she became aware that she stood at the lip of a broad sheet of water. It was a reservoir wider than a city block. It ran north as long as a city’s main concourse. Lily pads dotted its glass-smooth surface. The sun was almost set now, the day having passed unnoticed. The shadows had gathered a deep mauve and edged closer. As she watched, entranced, the sun’s slanting amber rays lit upon the perfectly still surface of the artificial lake and the sheet seemed to erupt into molten gold that rippled and blazed with its own internal fires.
It suddenly struck her vision as an immense causeway paved in sheets of gold. And sparks flashed here and there as tiny waves from insects alighting, or fish feeding, gently rippled the surface. The gems, perhaps, glimmering and beckoning.
She stood utterly still for the time it took the setting sun’s rays to edge their way across the surface. When they slipped away, they disappeared all at once as if snuffed out. The reservoir’s west border was perfectly aligned for the effect.
She took a deep breath — had she even breathed the entire time? She felt so calm. All her worries struck her as trivial, completely unimportant. What mattered any of it in the face of such an immensity of time and space? She felt as if she could remain here for an eternity contemplating such questions. Perhaps, she reflected, the sensation derived from the satisfaction of having solved at least one of the mysteries of Jakal Viharn, city of gold.
* * *
It took some time, but eventually Pon-lor had to admit that he’d lost the trail of the yakshaka, Hanu. He’d backtracked a number of times searching for sign. Now the light was fading and the marks of his own passage helped obscure any certainty he might have felt regarding the trail. As night gathered he gave it up as worthless. He’d try again in the morning. The question, then, was what to do for the night.
Night in Himatan. Alone. Not a promising prospect. He’d got through last night by climbing a tree and tying himself in. Even so, he’d hardly slept. Large night hunters prowled all through the hours, chasing other things. Sudden bursts of calls or screeching announced close escapes, or panicked last struggles. His training might allow him to forgo sleep for some time, but there was no dire need to delve into that yet.
Off to one side the ground rose. He headed in that direction. Here he found a hillock of sloping talus and broken stone topped by a steeper rising cliff riddled in caves, now mostly choked by the accumulated detritus of centuries. Mature trees crowned the rise, gripping it in gnarled fists of roots. Underfoot hard talus shifted, grating, and he bent down to select one of the fragments. He brushed it off: it was flat and slightly curved. It was not stone. It was earthen pottery.
Startled by this he staggered slightly, backwards, to peer up and down along the slope, a good two man-heights above the surrounding plain. Great ancients! A garbage heap the size of a village! No, the remains of a village. Generation after generation squatting in the same spot, dropping their litter and tamping it into the ground. Simply astounding. And now, the slow work of the ages conspired to wipe from the surface even these last vestiges of humanity’s presence.