‘Lek! Wait! Please don’t-’
But she would not stop and disappeared among the trees.
Damn! Gods, what a fool I am! Oh, Lek. I am so sorry … Gods, I pray I will meet you again. Then I’ll hold you and not let you run away again.
She walked on, thinking perilous indeed is Jakal Viharn and conversing with Ardata. Perilous in so many ways …
* * *
For several days Hanu carried her. He assured her it was not trying for him at all. She tested the leg by walking longer and longer distances. It was healing; that Thaumaturg, Pon-lor, certainly did know his trade. This day they came to a rise, a hillock or mound. Giant tualangs crowned it and a river curled round three of its sides. Saeng wondered whether it was the same river they’d crossed days ago. Her spirits sank as she came to suspect that perhaps it was. One particular tree offered excellent purchase for climbing and she had Hanu lift her up so that she could try to have a look about. She ascended the mostly naked trunk to quite a height until she had a vista over the surrounding canopy. Here a sight almost made her cry. It was not the league after league of undifferentiated verdant emerald jungle that surrounded them on all sides. No, it was to the west. There, still within sight, rose the dark steep teeth of the Gangrek Mounts.
She threw herself down from hold to hold in a recklessness of despair. She almost fell the last short distance but Hanu steadied her foot. She climbed down a few more knots and depressions in the bark until he took her weight and lowered her. She kicked the tree with her bad leg then danced, cursing and fuming.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
She pointed mutely to the west, almost spluttering her disbelief. ‘We’ve come hardly any distance at all! We’ve just been meandering — directionless! Lost!’ Pon-lor’s warnings came to her then and she bit her lip. Damn the man. Yet he would have had her turn round!
She felt tears stinging in her eyes and she turned away. What were they to do? They were out of food, lost, and she was still without any hope of finding this ‘Great Temple’. She was a complete failure! Her throat burned as bile rose again — she’d been heaving of late, and suffering from the runs. She could keep little down and what she did manage to choke down went right through her. She knew it was their bizarre diet — the few odd things she knew to be safe to consume — but she wouldn’t risk poisoning herself with anything strange.
That was the worst of her maladies, of course. It was hardly worth dwelling upon the huge patches of angry itching rash, the swellings, the weeping infected cuts, and the countless bites from being eaten alive every night. Among all this, the infestation of maggots in a sore on her foot barely even registered.
She was weakening. They both knew it. She hadn’t the strength to fend off any new illness that might take her at any time. A raging infection, the chills, water fever — the list was endless. Then it would be the end. There was nothing Hanu could do.
Perhaps it would have been better if she had remained …
No! She struck a fist to the tree. I have my mission! I must succeed.
The faces of the drowned girls wavered in her blurring vision: you must help us, they had pleaded of her. Pleaded!
‘Which way?’ Hanu asked, ever practical.
Saeng started down the hillock. ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’
She walked among the brush for a time until she stumbled through hanging lianas, leaving a shower of fallen blossoms carpeting the dead leaves. They would disappear quickly, she knew, as the many insects would converge to consume them. As they shall me soon.
A rigid grip righted her. ‘You are delirious,’ a voice spoke in her thoughts. Arms lifted her then cradled her. She smelled something then: a scent of home. Woodsmoke. She reached for it. Rice steaming on the fire. Fish over the open flames. The arched branches of the high canopy passed her vision as she seemed to float effortlessly. She closed her eyes.
The scent of food woke her. A palm frond roof above. Reed walls. Movement, and an old woman appeared. She held out her hand; something was smeared there. Saeng opened her mouth and the woman pressed her fingers within. Saeng swallowed. She did this many times until sleep took her once more.
She awoke once again and this time she could raise herself on her elbows. She was in a village. A village of Himatan yet not a ghost one. Living and breathing. She was alone in the hut; the old woman was gone. People crossed the open commons the hut faced: they were mostly naked, in loin wraps only. Some were painted in smears of coloured mud, male and female; others not. One woman noticed that she was awake and ran off. Moments later an old man thrust his face into the hut. He was painted, but garishly so, with feathers and necklaces of objects she took to be talismans: teeth, bits of metal, chipped stones, talons and a dried paw.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Awake for certain,’ he remarked. ‘Have you the strength to converse?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Even better.’
‘What happened?’
He shrugged in a rattle of bones and claws. ‘You were ill with fever. Close to death. Your stone servant delivered you to us.’
Saeng sat up straighter. ‘Where is he — the stone servant?’
The old man gestured to the grounds. ‘He stands in the village, unmoving. No doubt he awaits your command.’
Of course. ‘Hanu? Can you hear me?’
‘Saeng! Shall I come?’
‘No. I’m all right — thanks to you. How are you?’
‘Sufficient.’
‘You’ve eaten?’
‘Yes. These villagers set out offerings and I ate some. This amused them no end.’
‘All right. Well … I’m tired still.’
‘Rest.’
‘Thank you, Hanu. Thank you for everything.’
‘It was nothing.’
Saeng sat back, relaxing. The old man had watched her throughout. ‘You communicated with your servant?’ he asked.
Saeng saw no reason to explain things; she just nodded.
‘Good. I know these things, you see. I am a great magus.’ He rattled the fetishes about his neck. ‘I command the shades of the dead. I am beloved of Ardata herself.’
‘Is that so.’
‘Oh yes. No doubt this is why your servant brought you to me.’
‘Well, thank you for healing me.’
‘Certainly. My wives are great healers. But enough of that for now. Rest, heal. We shall talk again.’ He disappeared in a clanking and clatter of the engraved stones hung from his neck.
Saeng lay back to regard the roof once more. Mocking gods … how much time have I wasted? Am I too late? But no — we would not even be here if I was too late. Isn’t that so? It made her head hurt to think of it. She shut her eyes to sleep again.
The next day she felt strong enough to try to get up. The old women who had been tending her rushed to her aid. The magus’s wives, she supposed. And thinking of that — it was they who healed her, not him. She limped out to the central commons to see Hanu there, waiting.
He was sitting cross-legged, meditating perhaps. Before him lay clay bowls of oil, burning incense sticks, and bowls and saucers of rice, stewed vegetables and dried meat.
‘You seem to have made an impression,’ she said, coming up.
‘These are propitiations intended to appease my anger, apparently.’
‘Oh? Your anger? They’re afraid of you?’