By Tooth and Claw Page 21

  Raish had tried tying her knife to a long stick with a cord and using it as a spear. She might have scared a couple of small animals with it, when the cast spear landed somewhere in their vicinity. Not much, though. Neither one of them had scuttled or hopped more than a short distance before settling back down.

  They’d tried eating some succulent-looking berries that they’d come across on the second day. Fortunately, Zuluku had insisted that none of them could eat more than two berries without letting enough time elapse to make sure the things were not poisonous before eating any more.

  Fortunately, indeed. Within a short time, all three of them had gotten sick and started vomiting.

  At least they hadn’t lost any food already eaten. Their stomachs had been empty of anything but digestive bile and what was left of the treacherous berries.

  As the party of strangers grew near, Nurat Merav raised her head from the litter and peered at them. Immediately, both Mrem cried out her name and came rushing forward. A moment later they were clustered over the wounded Mrem, jabbering at her in their own tongue too quickly for Zuluku to understand much of what they were saying.

  This much was clear, though: the Mrem were very pleased. One of them even broke off from jabbering at Nurat Merav long enough to give Zuluku a quick embrace.

  A “hug,” she thought that was called.

  Odd creatures, Mrem.

  Sebetwe

  “You’re saying she is the best dancer among you?”

  Achia Pazik shook her head. “No, Sebetwe.”

  “Achia Pazik is our best Dancer,” said Gadi Elkin. “Nurat Merav is not really very good at all.”

  “Then why are you so pleased—”

  Achia Pazik interrupted him with a raised hand. “You don’t understand. Nurat Merav is our . . .” She looked aside, her expression frustrated. “What is the word? It means something like designer of the Dance.”

  Sebetwe gaped his jaws a little. “I doubt if we have any such word. We Liskash don’t dance very much.”

  “And thank the gods for that!” said Gadi Elkin. Her own jaws gaped in that manner whereby Mrem showed amusement.

  Sebetwe was not offended. It was a simple truth that Liskash didn’t begin to have the fluid and supple grace—not to mention the sheer energy—that Mrem used in their dancing.

  “All right, then,” said Achia Pazik. “We will use our word for it. Nurat Merav is our choreographer.”

  “Koree—koree . . . a-gra-fuur?” The word was awkward on his tongue.

  “Close enough,” said Achia Pazik. “She is the best among us—”

  “The best in any tribe!” interjected Gadi Elkin proudly.

  “—when it comes to understanding how a Dance must be shaped to accomplish whatever its purpose might be. Now do you see how important it is that she has been rescued?”

  Dimly, Sebetwe did begin to see. If a real expert, someone with great talent, could analyze a dance and see how it might be modified and adapted to do something as unheard of as merging with a great predator like a gantrak . . .

  He began to feel some of the Mrems’ excitement. So much so that he almost ordered an immediate resumption of the march.

  But he didn’t. They’d taken a rest not simply or even primarily for the sake of those who’d been alternating the duty of carrying the litter. Mostly they’d stopped because the person on the litter was weaker than any of them.

  Person. Not for the first time, it struck Sebetwe how easily that word came to him these days. There was still much about the Mrem that was peculiar, even unsettling at times. But at some point—he didn’t know when, exactly—they had become people, not just intelligent creatures.

  Nurat Merav

  It took her a while before she finally grasped the full extent of the ambition. When she did, she hesitated a moment out of sheer disbelief.

  “With the Liskash?”

  Achia Pazik waggled her hand back and forth. “It would be more accurate to say that we use the Dance to provide the Liskash shaman—they’re called ‘tekkutu,’ by the way—and the gantrak with a rhythm that can sustain them both. The tekkutu are really the ones who work directly with the animals.”

  Nurat Merav pondered the matter, for a time. Partly, because she was very tired; but mostly because the concepts involved were so outlandish.

  And yet . . .

  A wedding Dance worked in somewhat the same manner Achia Pazik was describing. What would happen if you modified the chain turns in the middle of a wedding Dance and blended them with the insistent, fierce rhythm of the whipping steps that provided the war Dances with their basic framework? The end result might be . . .

  The Liskash they called Sebetwe who seemed to be their leader came up to the little group.

  “How soon will you be strong enough for us to resume the march?” he asked Nurat Merav.

  She waved that question aside impatiently. “How soon will we get there once we do?”

  Zilikazi

  They were almost out of the mountains. Two days’ march, no more than that. Then, another day’s march—perhaps two—down the foothills to the seashore where the Kororo were finally penned.

  “They’re building rafts, you say?”

  “Yes, lord,” answered the scout. “Big ones, at least seven of them. Too big to go on the river with. They must be planning to cross over to the island.”

  The scout’s jaws gaped with derision. “Crazy plan. You should see the monsters there! Some of them could probably swallow a raft whole.”

  “I will see the monsters there,” Zilikazi stated.

  Personally, he doubted the scout’s assessment that a sea monster, no matter how large, could just swallow a raft in one gulp. It was not impossible, he supposed. He’d seen great snakes swallow prey as large as they were. But by all accounts he’d heard, the really huge predators in the sea did not include snakes.

  There seemed to be three types. One was basically a giant lizard that had adapted to marine conditions. Another was a reptile that had a snake’s head and neck perched on what resembled a turtle’s body. But that was supposed to be the smallest of the big sea predators.

  The one that apparently grew to the greatest size was the strangest of them all. It was said to have tentacles, much like the small squids that were sometimes caught near the shore. But the body was quite different. According to the accounts, the creature’s entire body was nestled inside an enormous coiled shell.

  Experience with the sea was rare among Liskash, but not entirely absent. It was said by those who had that experience that the shelled monsters—ammonites, they called them—were rarely attacked by other predators, and never once they reached a certain size.

  Some of them fed exclusively on the tiny shrimplike creatures that swarmed in parts of the sea. But others were hunters of much larger prey. It was said that the very biggest could even devour the giant lizards.

  Zilikazi was skeptical of all these tales. Not so much because he disbelieved them but simply because he was skeptical by nature. That tended to be true of all Liskash nobles. Having the power to coerce others by sheer force of mind had the side effect of making the wielder of that power suspicious of all claims made by reason and observation.

  Reason was what they said it was, no? And observation was always subject to interpretation—and who but a noble had the final authority to interpret everything?

  No matter. He’d find out the truth soon enough. Three days, maybe four. After that, the Kororo Krek would be just a memory—and it would be Zilikazi who dictated the nature of the remembrance.

  CHAPTER 13

  Meshwe

  “Can you do it?” asked Meshwe.

  Sebetwe raised a hand in a gesture for silence. His eyes were closed, his mind searching across the water for . . .

  What would you call it, exactly? Meshwe turned his head and looked at the incredible creatures who had been slowly gathering around the narrow spur of rock—a miniature promontory, as it were—that jutted out into t
he strait.

  There were five of them, now. Two huge ones and three who would be called huge if they’d been placed alongside any other creatures. In this company, they just seemed very, very big. Half-amused and half-appalled, Meshwe contemplated for a moment the possible necessity of developing fine distinctions with regard to size. Which words should indicate the larger monster? Huge, gigantic or immense?

  What added to the eeriness of the scene was the silence and near-immobility of the creatures. Unlike the giant sea lizards, who seemed to be constantly in motion, these ammonites were just floating on the surface. Their only movement was an occasional slow flutter of tentacles to keep them in position so their eyes could gaze steadily at Sebetwe.

  Huge eyes; lidless eyes; unwavering eyes. Meshwe thought he might have nightmares about them when he slept.

  Next to him, Sebetwe finally spoke. “Join me, Tekkutu,” he said. “I need your wisdom.”

  The suggestion was . . . unusual. Tekku did not work well—as a rule, not at all—when more than one tekkutu tried to meld minds with a predator. Such beasts invariably had a narrow psychic focus, which did not react well to complexity.

  But were these ammonites really predators, in the normal sense of the term? Meshwe wasn’t sure.

  Yes, they ate meat. But they were not active hunters in the same way that the sea lizards or the turtlesnakes were—or gantrak or any land predator, for that matter. They grazed for meat, as it were. Their great nest of tentacles would reach out and engulf anything around them. They seemed quite indifferent to the nature of their meal. Fish, large and small; crustaceans scuttling across the sea floor; incautious sea birds; anything at all—even other ammonites, if they were considerably smaller and foolish enough to come too close.

  It was done quite casually, to all appearances. There was none of the intent focus of a hunter chasing after its prey. If a fish managed to wriggle out of the tentacle mass, or a crustacean scuttled quickly enough under a rock—or another ammonite fought them off long enough to escape—they seemed quite indifferent. There would always be more food coming along, soon enough. And meanwhile, as they floated on the surface, their eyes looked elsewhere.

  Meshwe took himself into the tekku trance; quickly, with the skill of long practice.

  He found Sebetwe’s mind almost immediately. The younger tekkutu was by now almost as skilled as Meshwe—more skilled, when it came to this new facet of the art—but he’d been his student for years. Meshwe could have found him in an ocean of mental turbulence.

  Almost as quickly, he became aware of Sebetwe’s . . . audience, was the only term Meshwe could think of. His guess had been right. The minds of these ammonites were not at all similar to those of predators he had encountered in the past. They were much more akin to the minds of plant-eaters, except—

  They were vastly greater. Those must be huge brains, nestled somewhere inside the floating behemoths.

  Strange brains, judging from the strange minds. They were like nothing Meshwe had ever encountered.

  Not intelligent; not, at least, in any sense that would mean anything to a Liskash or a Mrem. But very far from dull-witted, either. And there was a sense of cool space to their minds—a sort of vastness, you might call it.

  They were ultimately quite passive, he realized. So big, so powerful, so well armored that fear was essentially unknown to them. And so also were fear’s cousins, aggression and fury. So dominant by their very nature that they had no need, no instinct, to dominate at all.

  They were observers, more than actors. Very curious. Indeed, as his own mind probed deeper into theirs, he realized that their strongest emotion was probably curiosity itself.

  They didn’t need food. Food came to them; food was a given.

  He didn’t think they needed to mate, either, although he wasn’t sure. For all their immense size, these creatures were still akin to those little shelled creatures who simply scattered their seed with careless abandon. For them, reproduction would be simply another given. It would have no roots in passion or lust.

  He almost laughed aloud, then. The monsters were bored.

  Well, not bored, exactly. Boredom needed intent focus also. It might be better to say that the giant ammonites passed their lives in a state of mind so placid that any sort of entertainment would fix their attention.

  Fix it mightily, he thought.

  Mightily enough, perhaps, to allow an entire people to find their sanctuary.

  He withdrew from the mindmeld.

  “I will be back soon,” he said to Sebetwe, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “In the meantime, keep them interested in you.”

  Sebetwe nodded curtly, but his eyes remained closed. Meshwe strode off the little promontory and headed toward the clot of dancers on the nearby beach.

  Nurat Merav

  She stared up at the old Liskash, wondering if he were serious.

  His jaws opened in the Liskash version of a smile. “Yes, I am quite serious.” He motioned toward the dancers, still moving through their steps. “This wedding dance is not right. Close, but not close enough. It is too ceremonial. We need something that conjures simple joy and delight. No solemnity at all.”

  Achia Pazik had broken off her part in the Dance when she’d seen Meshwe approaching and had come over. She joined them in time to hear the last few sentences.

  “What about the Jottuk Festival Dance?” she suggested.

  Nurat Merav stared at her. “But . . . That’s just a kit’s dance!”

  Achia Pazik shrugged. “True. But you have to admit it’s joyous and delightful. Not a trace of solemnity to be found anywhere.”

  “Do you even remember the steps?”

  Achia Pazik grimaced ruefully. “I think so. We’ll probably miss a few, at first, until we’ve practiced a bit.”

  She looked at Meshwe. “Do you think that will be a problem?”

  He turned his head to look out at the great shells floating in the distance. “I doubt very much if they would know the difference. What matters is simply capturing the delight, and the joy.”

  Achia Pazik and Nurat Merav looked at each other. Then, at Meshwe. Then, back at each other.

  Nurat Merav tried to lever herself upright in the litter—which was more in the way of a pallet, by now, with added cushions and hides. Hissing with concern, Zuluku and Selani helped her to sit up. Not knowing what else to do, Zuluku and her companions had continued to serve as Nurat Merav’s caretakers.

  Once her head was high enough, Nurat Merav sheltered her eyes from the sun with a hand and stared at the monsters in the sea.

  “Do I understand this correctly? You want me to shape a Dance for—for—these—”

  “I think they are much like children, in their own way,” said Meshwe. “Please, Nurat Merav. Indulge an old tekkutu.”

  “If that’s what you want.” She leaned back, supporting herself partly on spread hands but mostly on the strong grips of her two Liskash tenders. Then, after thinking on the matter for a while, she looked up at Achia Pazik.

  “I’ve forgotten some of the steps myself. It doesn’t matter, though, since we’ll be modifying it a lot. I think mixing in some of the steps from the Drunkard’s Dance would probably help—and it would sure be a lot easier to do on a floating raft.”

  Achia Pazik frowned. “Why would we do it on a raft?”

  Nurat Merav grinned. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? The crazy old tekkutu here”—she nodded toward Meshwe—“figures we can keep the shelled monsters happy while we cross the strait to the island.”

  The Dancer stared at Meshwe. “But . . . What about the sea lizards? Do you think they’ll be kept happy also?”

  Meshwe whistled his derision. “Not likely! From what I can tell, the only thing that keeps those things happy is devouring something. Maybe mating would excite them too, but I haven’t seen them doing that yet. For which I am truly thankful.”

  More seriously, he added: “But I’ve been watching them and one thing is ob
vious: they stay well away from the ammonites. I think they’re afraid of them. Wary, at least.”

  He shrugged. The gesture was quite similar to the one used by the Mrem. So similar, in fact, that Nurat Merav had found herself wondering if one race had learned it from the other.

  It was possible. They’d coexisted for a long time now. Not too happily, perhaps, but they’d still managed it for centuries. Maybe longer. No one knew.

  “It’s a risk, I admit,” said Meshwe. “All of it’s a risk. But I don’t see where we have any choice.”

  He pointed now to the mountains rising in the west. They were some distance away, since the slope down to the sea was shallow and the foothills between were wide. Still, they were easily visible.

  “Zilikazi’s army will be starting down the slope soon. By tomorrow morning, our scouts say. And there’s no way to stop them. They’ll be coming through the same broad saddle pass our people used. You remember it, I’m sure. Gentle slopes on the sides, very few rocks, and no streams beyond little rills. Their warriors outnumber ours at least eight-to-one. Our only chance now is to find sanctuary on the island.”

  “And what will stop them from crossing after us?” asked Achia Pazik.

  For whatever odd reason, that question banished all of Nurat Merav’s doubts and hesitations.

  “Ha!” she exclaimed. “You think that scaly snake”—realizing she was perhaps bordering on insult, she gave the Liskash around her an semi-apologetic smile—“meaning no offense to anyone here—but if you think that—that—”

  “Scaly snake,” Meshwe offered.

  Nurat Merav grinned. “That scaly snake can keep monsters as entertained as we can, you’ve never see what a really well-designed Dance can do!”

  Sebetwe

  When Meshwe returned to the rock spur, he brought two other Kororo with him. One of them was Zinzile, the oldest and most experienced tekkutu other than Meshwe himself. The one with her was her son Tofar, who had only a smidgen of her experience but was a very talented tekkutu in his own right.

  “Sebetwe, show them what you’re doing and how you’re doing it,” Meshwe commanded. “They can take over keeping the ammonites interested—”