"Have you been beaten?"
"Not often," she said. "No more than three times. Once I was beaten unjustly, for something I didn't do."
He frowned. "Are you implying that it was just the other two times you were beaten?"
"I had erred," she said calmly, without resentment.
"The Devourers drive pongs to do their work for them, beat them. Why don't these pongs simply rise up and slay the Devourers?" She laughed. "Impossible."
"Are there so many more Devourers than pongs?"
She looked puzzled. "No. No. We are many, but— Well, you simply don't understand. They are—mighty. They are—" She took a deep breath. "It is impossible."
"Are the Devourers immortal, cannot they be killed?"
"Oh, they die. I once saw a Devourer crushed by a falling tree."
"And was he not as dead as the animal I killed on the slope above?"
"Yes, but—"
"The pongs are many, the Devourers of lesser numbers and yet pongs do not fight."
"We have no weapons. They have the seed from which we grow our food. They control the animal pens from which we get our meat. We work only under supervision. We are alone only in the pongpen, at night."
"But you escaped."
She nodded.
"Have others done the same?"
"So it is said. I know of no one in my lifetime who has. One tried. He was caught and peeled and left to die slowly tied to a post in the central compound of the pen."
Gradually, Duwan began to piece together a picture of life in the Land of Many Brothers. The Enemy, called Devourer by Jai's people, lived mainly in cities built of stone, lived on the hard work of those called pongs who were, if they were like Jai, with pores in their feet, Drinker. It has been thus forever, according to Jai. It was the will of the dus— and this concept amused him, for there was only One Du, great, kind, life-giving Du—that it be thus, that the dus-favored Devourers enjoy the fruits of pong labor, living well off the bounty of the rich land.
Of the great truths of life Jai knew nothing. She did not even know that she drank life from Du, although it became obvious, after long questioning, that she had eaten nothing more than some rather tasteless and relatively unnourishing moss for many days. She knew that she felt good basking in the rays of Du, but she had no concept of why. Pongs, at work, covered themselves with poor garments woven from the poorest of material, under orders from their overlords that the rays of the sun, being harmful, were to he avoided. The main food, aside from flesh, that was consumed by pongs came from, if Jai's description could be believed, a grass-like brother that seeded hard, bland-tasting kernels that were then ground, mixed with water, and baked over fires. The plenty that existed around them, everywhere, in the fixed brothers, was forbidden to them, poisonous. Such teachings were drummed into all pong young at the hands of lash-wielding Devourers, and to taste of the good fruits of the brothers, except for certain berries and nuts, was punishable by death, if, indeed, the poisonous, forbidden things did not kill the unfortunate pong first.
Jai had seen pongs die of the poison. It occurred, she said, usually at the time of the new growth, when the land greened, and the sun warmed.
"They die badly," she said. "Just at this time, when there was still a hint of cold, and the green things were beginning to break through the earth, one was tossed into the pongpen, after having eaten green. He writhed and screamed and died with noxious discharges coming from his body openings."
"Did you see him eat the green brothers?"
"No, he did it in secrecy," she said, "for had anyone seen him he would have been reported."
"Yet you have eaten green and you are well."
"It is because of you, Master."
Having been at his frustrating questioning for most of a day, Duwan was restless. His thoughts kept going north, past the land of the waters, across the great barrens, past the land of the fires. "Tomorrow," he said,
"you will take me to this city of the Devourers, so that I may see for myself."
Great tears sprang to her eyes.
"Du," he exploded, "why do you weep?"
"If you say that I am to die, it is well," she said.
"You will not die."
"I will die if we go to the city."
"I will see that you live."
"You are great, Master, but one against so many?" She sobbed. "I will be peeled. My skin will be tossed into the animal pens, and I will be suspended on a pole, and when I am dead I, too, will become slop for the animals."
"I must find someone who can talk sense," Duwan said to himself. He watched her weep until she subsided. She had heard his muttered comment, and it had given her hope.
"It is said, whispered in the pens at night, that those who have escaped in the past traveled far to the west, and that they live there, how I do not know, but that there are no overlords there. They would talk sense." Duwan considered. Perhaps it would be too dangerous to visit a city. The Devourers he'd seen in the land of tall brothers to the north had appeared to be strong, capable, well armed. Yet, he had to know more than he could learn from this empty-headed female.
"Sleep," he ordered. "We will travel with the First light of Du." Truly, the Land of Many Brothers was a land of promise, a land of plenty. He gorged himself on a variety of food that pleased him, and, as the days passed, he saw that Jai's frail, thin limbs were filling out, for she ate more constantly than he. She refused to accept the fact that the good, green, growing brothers were not poisonous, but continued to express her conviction that the magical powers of Duwan kept her alive after doing the forbidden. Duwan gave up trying to convince her.
She had no conception of brotherhood with living things. She knew nothing of the legends of immortality for Drinkers, of a life, different but full, of fixed contentment after a return to the earth. She listened respectfully when he spoke of such things, and once, in a whispering grove, he tried to get her to hear the unspoken, almost alien thoughts of old ones who had grown tall with endless years of sun, and wind, and rain.
"Almost I hear them," she said, but the look on her face told him that she was lying.
Jai's favorite topic of conversation was how she had guarded him while he slept, at one with the earth, how she'd climbed the tree to escape the great beast, and then how she'd fought it with Duwan's sword—all to protect him. It was as if she needed constant reassurance that, since she'd served him well, he would protect her. Almost every time she started to eat she would look at him, her purple eyes imploring, and say, "You have made it good?"
After several attempts to explain, once again, he gave up and merely nodded, or said, "Yes, it is good."
Although a variety of growth was the rule, the overall aspect of that good land was of many tall brothers, rushing streams, small hills. Twice they skirted isolated settlements, Jai trembling in fear when they came close enough to see Devourers driving their pongs. As they traveled toward the setting sun, day after day, Jai began to glow with health. She halfway believed Duwan's explanation that her body drank energy from the sun, and took to traveling without even so much as the tattered garment that scarcely covered her now. Time and again Duwan found his eyes going to her marked bud point, but he became accustomed to her lack of modesty. Ahead, the low mountains began to rise into heavily covered mounds, each ridge reaching higher toward the sky. There, in a little valley, Duwan killed his first Enemy. As they followed a stream, now walking on mossy banks, now in the shallow, cool waters, he heard the telltale sounds of cutting tools and led Jai into the tall brothers to skirt another settlement. They crossed a well-traveled path after Duwan had looked carefully both ways and had listened, and they were into the cover of the forest again when he detected the sound of running footsteps. He told Jai to hide, and remain motionless, made his way silently back to the trail in time to see a young female, not many years past mobility, running toward him along the trail. She had large, green eyes that were widened in panic. Duwan's first impulse was to stop the female and find out what had frightened her, but he held back, for, just behind her, there ran a male, broad of shoulder and sturdy of body, a great longsword clanking at his thigh as he ran. The trail opened into a small clearing on the bank of the stream and, as the running female entered it she tripped on a stone and fell heavily, could not get to her feet before the running male was on her, fell beside her, grasping her arms and holding her to the ground. Duwan growled in his throat and his right hand was on the hilt of his longsword.