Outlaw. Part 29

Lela stopped by the exposed roots of a towering deciduous tree, winded from the long, arduous climb up the path that would bring them into the Tulim valley.

"There, over this summit," she said, shoving her chin at the forested crest ahead, "you will see all of the Tulim."

She'd often stopped to rest this past hour. Clearly she didn't have the same endurance as he or Shaka. It had been over a day since he'd slept, and only now was his body beginning to tire. How many times had Shaka urged him to climb faster, run longer, sleep less? To discipline the body is to remind the costume that it is only something to be used and enjoyed, Shaka often said. Never let it use you.

"Are you with a man?" he asked impulsively.

Her eyes darted up.

Perhaps he should clarify his question.

"My mother wrote much about the union of many to produce infants. You were to be with a man?"

"There is no love in this valley." She spat to the side. "I will gouge out the eyes of any man who attempts to force himself on me."

Her vehemence took him off guard.

"And yet you are from among the Impirum. Julian wrote of much beauty among your people."

She turned away. "There is now only Warik. Only hatred."

"With you I feel only love."

Tears misted her eyes. "It's been a long time since any man loved me," she whispered.

Those words broke his heart with compa.s.sion. How terrifying it must feel, not knowing that one was loved.

He thought to tell her that, in reality, she needed no more love than what was already offered inside of her, where the realm of the Master's love would rule, but again...she wouldn't understand. He could only serve her by speaking to her limited understanding.

He felt a strange kind of belonging next to Lela, an awakening of awareness that she, even by her simple presence at his side, fueled his own fullness of love. As did Shaka, when Stephen was with him. But with Lela that love felt different somehow.

He let a wave of emotion that cried for him to pull her close wash over him, then let his affection be known by his words.

"You are loved by a man now," he said softly.

Lela seemed to soften, staring into his eyes. But she didn't seem able to accept the fullness of his love.

"By a child," she said.

His smile broadened. "By a child who knows how to love. And by far, far more."

She offered the jungle a blank stare. "I envy you, son of Shaka," she said quietly. "This kind of love is only a distant memory for me."

"I will help you remember," he said. "The woman who gave such love to my mother has forgotten far too much."

She hesitated, then swallowed deeply. "Come and see what I have forgotten."

Lela turned back up the path and led him to a cliff that fell away into a vast valley. Stephen pulled up and studied the view before him.

Many times he'd seen the valley from a greater distance, often enshrouded in a low-lying fog. But that fog had always been white and thick, not wispy with gray tendrils that clung to the entire lower reaches, stretching out to the swamps. In and of itself, this didn't matter one way or the other.

What did matter, however, was the fact that this mist seemed to be moving unnaturally. s.h.i.+fting and circling over a focal point far south, as if of its own mind, alive and aware and gathering to defend.

What mattered even more was the faint, high-pitched whine that came from the valley. A barely audible scream behind a low hum.

Fear sliced through his mind as he stood on the cliff, spellbound, struck by the impression that the ground in the valley was groaning and the mist above shrieking its torturous pain.

This was more than a valley blanketed in fog.

"There," she said, pointing to the south. "The Warik."

Stephen could make no sense of the dread reaching into him. There was nothing here or anywhere that could threaten him. Everything he'd learned from Shaka made this plain.

Why did he feel this strange fear?

"Below the mist?" he asked.

She looked up at him. "Mist?"

So then Lela couldn't see what he saw.

You will see this darkness in a way you never have, Shaka had said. It will know you have come.

Do not forget.

He did not.

Immediately the mist began to fade. And with it the faint whine and the low hum. Only a thin layer of smoke rising from cooking fires remained.

He slowly exhaled through his nostrils, breathing out the balance of his concern. What his hearing and seeing meant, he didn't know, but the threat was gone. Defeated already.

"The smoke," he said, nodding at the section of jungle far south.

"Yes, below the smoke. They'll see us before we arrive. Kirutu's spirits see always. His warriors roam the valley."

A barely discernible hum of anxiety tempted his mind again, whispering of the unknown.

"How far?" he asked.

"We won't make it by dark."

"No."

The apprehension that crossed his mind wasn't in itself a problem. That he wasn't able to dismiss it easily, however, might be one.

"You're frightened?" she asked.

He turned his head. She was with him, and he drew comfort from her presence. Perhaps it was why Shaka had brought her for this final quest.

"I've never been to this valley," he said. "It's a strange place of men, unknown to me."

"Now you doubt?"

He tried to consider his feelings, but he wasn't quite sure what to think.

"No." And he didn't. But he couldn't dismiss his unease, however slight.

"We can sleep here tonight," he said, "and go together when the sun rises." Then he added, for good measure, "Don't worry. We are safe."

Chapter Twenty-six.

The sense of caution that had presented itself to Stephen on the cliff vanished as darkness fell. He concerned himself then only with making Lela as comfortable as possible, because she couldn't dismiss her fear of what the morning might bring.

In her presence he felt no fear.

They both needed food, preferably meat to eat with the sago Lela carried in a net bag at her waist, but she insisted they not build a fire-it might be seen. So they ate raw strips of a small snake he killed near their camp. She wasn't accustomed to eating uncooked meat. He'd settled her fears by stuffing his mouth with far more than it could comfortably hold and showing great pleasure with every chew until the juice ran down his chin. Smiling, she first nibbled, then ate, strips of the flesh with him, although she insisted the Tulim were a more refined people.

"You killed this snake with your spear?" she asked, staring at the severed head.

"Yes," he said.

"It has a small head, and yet you struck it."

"I used the spear as a blade. Better to keep a spear close to be used again than throw and chase it."

"Shaka taught you how to fight?"

"Shaka taught me all that I know."

"You may need these skills when you meet Kirutu."

The thought hadn't occurred to him and he rejected it outright.

"Hurting Kirutu would only inflame more insanity."

She grunted her disapproval. "Then you should kill him."

He would never do such a thing, but Lela wasn't able to understand the teachings he'd learned over so many years, so he just smiled and let the statement pa.s.s.

They rested on a bed of gra.s.s, side by side, and in that time beside her warm body, he felt a great comfort that filled him with awe as sleep coaxed him into dreams of running through fields of flowers with Lela at his side, laughing with delight. All was well.

How could it not be?

Stephen woke Lela before dawn to begin the journey into the Tulim valley. The insanity he'd seen the day before was long gone. Even the memory of it had faded, because he had little use for memories that might bring fear into the present.

And in the present he was with Lela, fully grateful for her as he watched her walk down the path, amazed at her every movement and her repeated urging that he take their approach to danger more seriously.

By the time morning dawned, Lela had led him down the mountain to a worn path, headed south.

The jungle in the lowlands was thicker in some respects, crowded with mangroves and casuarinas and broadleaf gra.s.ses of endless varieties. Here the animal life was more abundant than in the highlands-snakes, possums, bats, lizards, marsupials, many species of which Stephen recognized by sound alone. But there were too many to be known fully. More than seven hundred kinds of birds lived in this jungle, Shaka said. And more insect species than could be counted in a full year. It was a land of abundant life.

Thinking of that, Stephen thought the jungle seemed oddly quiet. The birds' calls seemed to lack their full delight. Rodents took to hiding long before Stephen and Lela came close. Only the insects seemed unperturbed by the humans' arrival, singing without reprieve as they always did.

Stephen was at peace and fully aware that only his costume pa.s.sed here, delighted to be in the company of another.

They walked for a long while, ever closer to the area where he'd seen smoke. All was well. Today he might bring his peace to his mother.

All was well, but then suddenly it wasn't.

They had just stepped from the trees onto a gra.s.sy knoll that gave them full view of the jungle when the high-pitched whine Stephen had heard on the cliff returned.

He pulled up, intrigued by the sound. Above, a gray sky. Ahead, the knoll, which fell into dense forest. At the bottom of the valley, smoke from morning fires, drifting up through a heavy canopy.

The whine was slightly louder, like a chorus of insects unknown to him-a vast army spread across the jungle, too small to be seen but making its presence known in this unending scream.

"What is it?" Lela asked, on edge, looking back at him. She followed his eyes, scanning the jungle ahead. "What do you see?"

"I hear."

"Hear what?"

"The sound of insects, high and low at once. A kind I haven't heard."

She listened for a moment. "I hear nothing new."

"Then you shouldn't worry."

But it was too late, Lela's fingers were trembling already.

"These are the evil spirits!" she said. "You hear death with the ears of the shaman!"

Stephen thought she might be right, but he could find no words to express what he did not know. He could only a.s.sure her that all would be well.

"How far to the Warik?"

"I told you, the whole valley is Warik," she said. "The main village is just beyond this draw where the land has been cleared to the swamps. Down this path." She motioned to a narrow trail fifty paces ahead.

"Then follow me."

He pa.s.sed her and headed down the path, unable to dislodge the whine from his hearing, eager to discover its source. Even more willing to root the sound out of his mind.