*
The jungle waged constant battle against the caravan. Fever harrowed Lucinda as well as many of the merchants and pilgrims, and Jaki relied on Maud's knowledge of plant remedies, learned from her Aunt Timotha. Without her help he could not have administered to all the ill. Incessant rains slurred the trail, and ferny vegetation and vine-grip seemed to flourish before their eyes so that the crew had to hack a path with broad blades. Out of the riotous undergrowth, whose profusion of blossoms becharmed a girl from the caravan, a cobra struck. The child collapsed in convulsions, her flesh discoloring in black bands, and Jaki stabbed her throat with a reed tube and breathed for her until the toxin relented.
Giant pug marks began to appear. Jaki had never seen cat prints so massive. By clawspan and stride he knew the panther to be over ten imperial feet long. "Tiger," the mahout announced when Jaki called him over to view the spoor. "Tell no one. Panic. Very bad."
Jaki kept the secret two days, and on the third a crewman disappeared at the watering pool. Ganger Sint found the prints beside the pool, and he felt as though his wrath had gone beyond him and taken bestial form.
The caravan grouped more tightly, and men with flintlocks escorted those who departed from the trail to fetch water. Even so, the next night another crewman vanished from the tail of the caravan.
Three days passed before the tiger approached again. Each night, Jaki had set up a lean-to of atap leaves at the back of the caravan and propped his blowgun between his legs, waiting for the beast. When its eyes appeared in the darkness like two drips of fire, Jaki stared back blankly, dizzy with drowsiness. And only Wawa's screech alerted him.
Jaki lifted his blowgun, sighted the flickering sparks of eyelight, and huffed with a breath from the core of his belly. A roar bawled from the darkness so loud the elephants trumpeted in fear, Wawa leaped into Jaki's arms, and slumbering travelers woke with shouts. The eyeglints vanished, and the roaring came again from farther away.
Sint, half naked, with a flintlock in his hand, and the mahout, gripping a kris in one hand, a hatchet in the other, jumped to Jaki's side, toppling his lean-to. "What have you done?" the mahout cried.
"He hit the tiger with a dart." Sint spat in disgust. "You're not hunting pigs now, half-breed. That is a Bengal tiger. If you hit it three times with your puny darts you wouldn't kill it. You fool heathen." He stood up and scanned the jungle night. "Now we'll have to go after it."
"No, no," the mahout warned, waving his kris. "Jungle is the mouth of the tiger."
Lucinda and Maud stepped through the gathering crowd of nervous travelers, Kota and Mang behind them. "Have we lost anyone?" Lucinda asked anxiously.
"Strengthen the fires," Sint ordered. He turned abruptly and announced to the caravan, "The aborigine wounded the tiger with a dart. As the poison inflames the creature, it will strike more boldly — not to eat, only to kill. Get close to the fire — and arm yourselves."
A roar jumped from the jungle, sonorous and crazed. Elephants bellowed, and the people rushed for the smoldering fires and fed the flames with branches.
"We have no choice now," Sint went on, squinting warily. "At first light, we will have to track it or no one will be safe."
"No," Lucinda said. "No one is going after it." She spoke directly to Sint, with iron authority. "We will stay together and go forward. We will use the elephants as a moving barrier and mount bowmen and musketeers to guard our perimeter fastidiously. No one will be lost."
Sint stared at her in the slithery light. "Lady, you are not playing chess now. Every piece you sacrifice will be a human life."
"I am the owner," Lucinda said, and another roar flashed from the darkness, vile with hurt. Lucinda ignored it and said, "I will not permit a hunt. If we lose you, we lose our weapons. Then, we are truly helpless."
A merchant called out from beside a fire gushing with new kindling. "The foreman is our protection. The company sent him for that. Let him decide."
Murmurs of agreement billowed from the crowd.
"The foreman is under my command," Lucinda insisted, with a cadence of authority she had learned from her father. "I decide what is best for the caravan. We will stay together and guard our flanks. No one will leave the camp." She stared hard at Ganger Sint and met his small, deadly eyes unflinchingly. "Are we agreed, Mister Sint?"
The foreman stifled his surprise with a sullen nod and barked orders at the men with flintlocks, positioning them on the perimeter before hunkering down beside a fire, flintlock across his knees.
Lucinda had torches propped at the edge of the camp and arranged the people in a circle facing out from the fire, their jittery stares searching the darkness for movement.
Jaki sat with Maud and Wawa, and nearby Kota and Mang herded their young wives between them. No one spoke. When Lucinda joined them, Jaki bowed his head, too ashamed to meet her gaze, and he accepted her consoling hand on his knee by tightening his grip on the blowgun beside him. He wanted to be alone with his shame, and there was nowhere to go.
"You did what you could," Lucinda whispered to him. "That is more than anyone else."
"It's my fault," he muttered. His face glinted as if frosted.
"You did not create the tiger," she assured him.
"I made it more terrible."
The demonic cry burned again in the darkness. The elephants stamped and snorted fearfully, and Wawa clung tightly to Jaki's leg.
Kota handed Jaki one of his flintlocks, and the soul-catcher passed it to Lucinda and gentled Wawa by scratching his ears. "I had my shot at the beast tonight.”
She accepted the gun with a sad frown. "This should be your weapon now, Jaki. Your blowgun cannot help you anymore."
He did not look at her. Instead, he kept his gaze on the thriving darkness of the jungle, one hand on Wawa, the other on his blowgun. She was right, he knew. He could not carry his past with him anymore. He hated that truth. The blowgun had been Jabalwan's, and to surrender it was to relinquish his last physical bond with his beloved teacher. The Life had led him far from all he had learned as a sorcerer, yet still he clung to the old weapon, the old way. Where, where truly, awaited his place in this kingdom of guns, big ships, and money? The answer had her hand on him — though he could not face her yet.
He would have to begin his life again — though not until he had righted what he had made wrong. He decided then that he would meet the tiger as he had met the savagery of the monkeyfaces on the high seas, and, before that, the Spider. He would go alone at first light into the jungle.
*
In the apricot light of dawn, while Lucinda circled through the camp readying the caravan for that day's journey, Jaki put on his hat, picked up his spear and a flintlock, and sent Wawa into the jungle ahead. The gibbon came hurtling back through the treetops shouting its cry that it had seen a man.
Jaki sent Wawa ahead again and followed with Mang and Kota. Around the next bend, a bald, squat man popped up from behind a toppled altar stone where he had been relieving himself. Hurriedly lowering his orange robe, he hobbled from behind the rock, tripped over a braid of knotweed, bounced over the rocky ground, and sprang back to his feet, a hapless smile pressed into his rotund face. He bowed before the armed men.
Startled, Jaki returned the bow, and the clumsy monk proceeded to jabber away in singsong dialect. Jaki, not getting a word of it, tried English, the smattering of Dutch he knew, and finally, in exasperation, Spanish.
"Ah, so you speak the Jesuits' tongue," the monk replied in crisp Spanish. "Might I have a drink from your flagon?" Jaki signed for Kota to give his water to the monk. When he had drunk, the bald man said, "I came here to pray two weeks ago, when the tiger began to harry my fellow travelers — and the tiger trapped me in these ruins. My caravan dispersed into the jungle, and no one returned for me. I heard your elephants last night, and the tiger troubling you. I added you to my prayers."
"Who are you?" Jaki asked.
"I am Dhup," the monk replied through his relentless smile, "a
monk wandering the palm lines of the Buddha. I am traveling to Sarnath, the Deer Park in India where the Buddha first revealed his wisdom."
Gunshots and screams erupted from the camp, and Jaki and his men rushed back down the trail, Wawa scampering after them.
The camp bustled with fear. Buffalo kicked their hoofs high, and most of the elephants had snapped their restraints and pressed together despite the loud protests and blows of the mahout. People scattered to get out of the way of the alarmed elephants. Children wailed, men shouted. Jaki searched wildly for Lucinda and, not finding her in the turmoil, howled her name.
He headed through the mêlée of animals and people to a knot of men with flintlocks and spears. Ganger Sint stood at their center, his big, chipped face strained with yelling. Lucinda defied him, shaking her head, her arms outstretched, trying to hold the group together. As Jaki hurried closer, he spotted the latest casualty: the mangled body of a young girl — the young girl he had saved from snakebite.
"You!" Sint bellowed when Jaki shoved to Lucinda's side. "You've brought this on us! We're going after that tiger now." The foreman trained a brittle stare on Jaki. "And you are coming with us."
"No one is going," Lucinda insisted. "We will kill it when next it attacks."
"Three of us are dead," Sint challenged, veins clicking at his temples. "How many more will die while we cower behind these elephants?" He returned his vengeful gaze to Jaki. "You are a hunter. You can stalk this beast."
"I will," Jaki said.
Lucinda pulled at his vest until he turned about. "You are my husband. I forbid you to go."
With a stricken expression, Jaki shook his head. "I would be useless to you if I stayed."
"You cannot protect me out there," she said quietly to him. "I need you here to stand with me against Sint. Affirm my authority, Jaki, or we will have a mutiny."
He put a hand at the back of her neck and bowed his face close to hers. "I serve you best by meeting the evil I have created."
"Jaki — you are leaving me again as you did in Singapore for your pirate captain. Do not do this to me. If you truly love me, stay with me."
His hand tightened at the back of her neck. "I do love you, Lucinda. That is why we are here and not at sea now." He dropped his hand. "I must do what it is within me to do."
"Jaki-"
"No more will die because of me," he said loudly, looking around him. The monk had edged into the crowd, little noticed, and watched impassively as Jaki declared, "I will go after it alone."
"That's stupid," Sint scoffed. "You can track it, but you will need men with flintlocks and bows to bring it down."
"Kota," he called, and the small, stout man stepped forward, his tall companion sagging with relief. "You stay with my wife and protect her with your life. Mang, you will wear tiger fangs today."
Mang jerked as if struck. "Or they will wear me," he grumbled and shuffled forward.
"Everyone else stays here," Jaki ordered, "or I will not go. I will not have the whole caravan crashing through the jungle with me."
Ganger Sint allowed himself a grin that dimmed slightly when Jaki removed his hat and handed it to Lucinda. "The tiger will overlook my informality," he told his wife.
She took his hand with the hat. "Do not go, Jaki," she begged, tears brightening. "Stay with me."
He wanted to console her, and words balked. He twisted his hand free, took the flintlock from Kota's grip, and gave it to Lucinda. "I will return."
*
He followed the tiger's spoor easily, even in the smudgy light of early morning, the prints were so huge. Wawa chirruped from ahead. Mang and Sint staggered noisily behind. Jaki signed for them to hold back and separate. He knew the danger of exposing his back to Sint, but blundering through the jungle like this was certain death. He signed for Sint to move to his left and hoped that Mang would spy any treachery early enough to save him.
The hunt demanded full alertness. Jaki had a flintlock, one shot, and his spear, which he trusted more. Hope has no tribe, he heard Jabalwan whisper far back in his head. Always before when he had abandoned hope and charged heedless of his life into battle, he had lived. If he had cherished any hope during any of those fights, he might never have known the beauty of Lucinda or the dream of their future. He paused to think this through and heard Mang and Sint bumbling along. He had to give up hope. He had to find his place at the desperate center of the world where passion thrived single-minded. That was where the tiger lived.
Wawa chirruped from ahead, and Jaki slinked forward so silently that the men following did not realize he was gone. Wawa cried again, more urgently this time, and Jaki froze. He whistled for the gibbon to come to him. Wawa called back his signal for danger.
Jaki whistled again, more loudly, this time commanding Wawa to wait.
A scream returned through the trees. Jaki abandoned caution and charged through the jungle. He smelled it then — the musky fetor of the giant cat. A roar banged over him, and he swung around. The forest shimmered with stillness. The beast's cry had come from above. Jaki looked up. Wawa dangled from a branch, his bowels hanging in a scarlet tangle.
Jaki howled, and the roar crashed again from above. The tiger fled through the canopy, an ember of yellow light melting among the leaves. Jaki fired his flintlock. Twigs flapped, and he dropped his gun. With his spear, he lowered Wawa's body to the ground.
Jaki bowed over the animal. The gibbon's hand grabbed a lock of Jaki's hair. Blinking away tears, the youth peered into Wawa's black eyes. "Rest," he whispered, beginning the intonation for the dying. "The wind knows your name now. You are part of the song it sings to the stars. Rest." Wawa's hand relaxed, and its eyes widened darkly. Jaki pressed his face to the warm muzzle of his animal.
The tiger snarled from somewhere behind. Jaki rose from Wawa's body with rageful intensity, not bothering to pick up the flintlock. He barged through the vine-tangle, spear thrust forward, a war cry spiking from his lungs.
In the clearing, he found Mang sprawled forward, the right side of his neck torn away, his head twisted at a brutal angle. The wind in the treetops dropped the hot stink of the predator. Another squall of tiger rage battered the glade, and Jaki shouted back with all his might.
The canopy rustled behind him, and he spun about. The tiger flashed into sight in midleap, claws outstretched, fangs bared. Jaki swung his spear up and rooted himself to his death, the fierce moment bursting from him in one mad cry.
The beast collided with him, heaving him to the ground. Claws furied, rending his doublet, slashing his flesh. Raving jaws chewed the spear beside his head. And then vanished. Jaki lay in the leaf litter, heart a gusher of pain. His blowgun split open, he gazed at the white woodmeat as into sunglare, just comprehending that he was still alive.
He struggled to sit up and watched Ganger Sint emerge, cold-eyed, from the nearby brush.
The foreman raised his flintlock and aimed it at Jaki's head. As he fired, another roar crashed through the trees, and his shot went wild. He whirled about and glimpsed the tiger blasting through the vine wall.
Ganger Sint's mouth worked a silent scream. He ran three pathetic steps, and the giant pounced. A livid howl escaped before the monster shape smothered him. Jaki squirmed to his feet as the big cat finished mauling Ganger Sint and turned about with gorged rage.
Slowly, Jaki slid into the curtain of vines dangling from the high trees. The animal loped toward him, and the sorcerer flew over the root humps and leaf drifts, growls spilling like a drum song behind him. The wind veered, carrying the underworld smell of the cat.
Ahead, the caravan burst into view, and in an explosion of clarity he saw that he was going to be torn apart in front of everyone. Sparking cold sweat, he threw himself into the clearing.
The elephants swung aside and people scattered, shrieking. All but one, who stood fast. Terror had blinded him until the flintlock blasted his hearing. Now he glimpsed Lucinda, still aiming her flintlock, smoke and gunfire rushing from it. Her blond
face gazed beyond him, an arrow of concentration suddenly obscured by smoke. A great weight struck Jaki from behind, and he collapsed.
Lucinda appeared at his side in an instant, pulling him away from the claws that had dug into the back of his boots. Jaki sat up and gazed agog at the giant tiger sprawled beside him, the socket of one eye caved in where Lucinda’s shot had piereced its brain. The stub of his own poison dart stood embedded in the tufted brow.
A last shiver of fear wavered from him with the touch of his wife's hand on his shoulder. After Njurat, he thought he had defeated fear. Life is afraid — and not to feel fear is to move closer to death. His face relaxed, and he felt a void inside, the scooped-out space of his soul where he had touched the world.
Jaki wobbled to his feet and clutched Lucinda to him. Blood soaked his shirt and torn doublet, and the deep gouges in his flesh yelled with pain now that his terror had quelled. "The brute is dead," Lucinda said, the sound of her voice calming him. Locked in a death grimace, the ten-foot tiger looked like a bestial thunderbolt, jagged with black strokes on silver and gold fur.
"Old tiger, lah." Kota prodded the dead cat with his parang, lifting its long silvery jowl whiskers.
The numbness in Jaki's chest deepened immensely as he signed for Lucinda to wait, then led Kota and several of the crewmen to the dead bodies in the jungle. While the crew carried the bodies of Mang and Sint to the camp, Jaki returned to where Wawa lay. He crouched over the gutted gibbon, waving off flies. A great sob escaped him and met a small cry from behind. Lucinda approached, hand to her mouth.
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