Sunlight slanted down through the leaves, illuminating blossoms of white, yellow, and pale red. Winged things flitted from branch to branch through the dapple of sunlight and shadow, seeming to flicker in and out of existence. Some light fell near the cave mouth, but did nothing to illuminate its interior.
Marika never had approached closer than the near bank of the creek. From there, or where she squatted now, she could discern nothing but the glob of darkness. Even the propitiary altar was invisible.
It was said that meth of the south mocked their more primitive cousins for appeasing spirits that would ignore them in any case. Even among the Degnan there were those who took only the All seriously. But even they attended ceremonies. Just in case. Ponath meth seldom took chances.
Marika had heard that the nomad packs of the Zhotak practiced animistic rites which postulated dark and light spirits, gods and devils, in everything. Even rocks.
Kublin had his breath. Marika rose. Sliding, she descended to the creek. Kublin followed tautly. He was frightened, but he did not protest, not even when she leapt the stream. He followed. For once he seemed determined to outgut her.
Something stirred within Marika as she stared upslope. From where she stood the sole evidence of the cave's presence was a trickle of mossy water on slick stone, coming from above. In some seasons a stream poured out of the cave.
She searched within herself, trying to identify that feeling. She could not. It was almost as if she had eaten something that left her slightly irritable, as though there was a buzzing in her nerves. She did not connect it with the cavern. Never before had she felt anything but fear when nearby. She glanced at Kublin. He now seemed more restless than frightened. "Well?"
Kublin bared his teeth. The expression was meant to be challenging. "Want me to go first?"
Marika took a couple of steps, looked upslope again. Nothing to see. Brush still masked the cave.
Three more steps.
"Marika."
She glanced back. Kublin looked disturbed, but not in the usual way. "What?"
"There's something in there."
Marika waited for an explanation. She did not mock. Sometimes he could tell things that he could not see. As could she ... He quivered. She looked inside for what she felt. But she could not find it.
She did feel a presence. It had nothing to do with the cave. "Sit down," she said softly.
"Why?"
"Because I want to get lower, so I can look through the brush. Somebody is watching. I don't want them to know we know they're there."
He did as she asked. He trusted her. She watched over him.
"It's Pohsit," Marika said, now recalling a repeated unconscious sense of being observed. The feeling had left her more wary than she realized. "She's following us again."
Kublin's immediate response was that of any pup. "We can outrun her. She's so old."
"Then she'd know we'd seen her." Marika sat there awhile, trying to reason out why the sagan followed them. It had to be cruel work for one as old as she. Nothing rational came to mind. "Let's just pretend she isn't there. Come on."
They had taken four steps when Kublin snagged her paw. "There is something in there, Marika."
Again Marika tried to feel it. This sense she had, which had betrayed Pohsit to her, was not reliable. Or perhaps it depended too much upon expectation. She expected a large animal, a direct physical danger. She sensed nothing of the sort. "I don't feel anything."
Kublin made a soft sound of exasperation. Usually it was the other way around, Marika trying to explain something sensed while he remained blind to it.
Why did Pohsit follow them around? She did not even like them. She was always saying bad things to Dam. Once again Marika tried to see the old meth with that unreliable sense for which she had no name.
Alien thoughts flooded her mind. She gasped, reeled, closed them out. "Kublin!"
Her littermate was staring toward the mouth of the cave, jaw restless. "What?"
"I just ... " She was not sure what she had done. She had no referents. Nothing like it had happened before. "I think I just heard Pohsit thinking."
"You what?"
"I heard what she was thinking. About us-about me. She's scared of me. She thinks I'm a witch of some kind."
"What are you talking about?"
"I was thinking about Pohsit. Wondering why she's always following us. I reached out like I can sometimes, and all of a sudden I heard her thinking. I was inside her head, Kublin. Or she was inside mine. I'm scared."
Kublin did not seem afraid, which amazed Marika. He asked, "What was she thinking?"
"I told you. She's sure I'm some kind of witch. A devil or something. She was thinking about having tried to get the Wise to ... to ... " That entered her conscious mind for the first time.
Pohsit was so frightened that she wanted Marika slain or expelled from the packstead. "Kublin, she wants to kill me. She's looking for evidence that will convince Dam and the Wise." Especially the Wise. They could overrule Skiljan if they were sufficiently determined.
Kublin was an odd one. Faced with a concrete problem, a solid danger, he could clear his mind of fright and turn his intellect upon the problem. Only when the peril was nebulous did he collapse. But Marika would not accept his solution to what already began to seem an unlikely peril. Kublin said, "We'll get her up on Stapen Rock and push her off."
Just like that, he proposed murder. A serious proposal. Kublin did not joke.
Kublin-and Zamberlin-shared Marika's risk. And needed do nothing but be her littermates to be indicted with her if Pohsit found some fanciful charge she could peddle around the packstead. They shared the guilty blood. And they were male, of no especial value.
In his ultimate powerlessness, Kublin was ready to overreact to the danger.
For a moment Marika was just a little frightened of him. He meant it, and it meant no more to him than the squashing of an irritating insect, though Pohsit had been part of their lives all their lives. As sagan she had taught them their rituals. She was closer, in some ways, than their dam.
"Forget it," Marika said. By now she was almost convinced that she had imagined the contact. "We came to see the cave."
They were closer than ever they had dared, and for the first time Kublin had the lead. Marika pushed past him, asserting her primacy. She wondered what Pohsit thought now. Pups were warned repeatedly about Machen Cave. She moved a few more steps uphill.
Now she saw the cave mouth, black as the void between the stars when the moons were all down. Two steps more and she dropped to her haunches, sniffed the cold air that drifted out of the darkness. It had both an earthy and slightly carrion tang. Kublin squatted beside her. She said, "I don't see any altar. It just looks like a cave."
There was little evidence anyone ever came there.
Kublin mused, "There is something in there, Marika. Not like any animal." He closed his eyes and concentrated.
Marika closed hers, wondering about Pohsit.
Again that in-smash of anger, of near insane determination to see Marika punished for a crime the pup could not comprehend. Fear followed the thoughts, which were so repugnant Marika's stomach turned. She reeled away and her sensing consciousness whipped past her, into the shadows within Machen Cave.
She screamed.
Kublin clapped a paw over her mouth. "Marika! Stop! What's the matter, Marika?"
She could not get the words out. There was something there. Something big and dark and hungry in a way she could not comprehend at all. Something not of flesh. Something that could only be called spirit or ghost.
Kublin seemed comfortable with it. No. He was frightened, but not out of control.
She recalled Pohsit across the creek, nursing inexplicable hatreds and hopes. She controlled herself. "Kublin, we have to get away from here. Before that notices us."
But Kublin paid not attention. He moved forward, his step dreamlike.
Had Pohsit not been watching, and malevolent, Marika might have panicked. But the concrete danger on the far bank kept her in firm control. She seized Kublin's arm, turned him. He did not struggle. But neither did he cooperate. Not till she led him to the creekside, where the glaze left his eyes. For a moment he was baffled as to where he was and what he was doing there.