“They certainly are,” the herdsman readily agreed.
Alongside him, still towing the remnants of their floating pond, Ahlitah snorted. “Omnivores! You’ll eat anything.”
“Not quite anything,” Simna shot back. “I find cat, for example, stringy and tough.”
“But why was it there?” Ehomba was reflecting aloud. “Obviously so far from where its kind of tree normally grows, all alone on top of that small dune? It must have some important meaning.”
“It means somebody else traveling through this Gholos-forgotten land dropped a seed or two, and unlikely as it may be, one took root on that knoll.” The swordsman was not sympathetic to his tall companion’s interest. “You ask too many questions, Etjole.”
“That is because I like answers.”
“Not every question has an answer, bruther.” Simna avoided the disarticulated skeleton of a dead dragonets. Fragments of wing membrane clung to the long finger bones like desiccated parchment.
Ehomba eyed him in surprise. “Of course they do. A question without an answer is not a question.”
The swordsman opened his mouth, started to say something, then closed it, a puzzled look on his face as he continued to stride along. It was early, the sun was not yet at its highest, and the increasing heat disinclined him to pursue the matter further. Not wishing to clutter up the place with another of the herdsman’s inexplicable commentaries, he put it clean out of his mind, a process that with much practice he had perfected some time ago.
Days passed without incident. Game began to reappear. Not in profusion, but sufficient to satisfy Ahlitah’s appetite as well as that of his less voracious companions. Standing sentinel over abating desert, date, coconut, and ivory nut palms began to appear. Other, smaller flora found protection at the foot of these taller growths.
When the travelers began to encounter otherwise dry riverbeds that boasted small pools in their depths as well as more frequent traditional oases, Ahlitah kicked off the shackles he had been using to tow the remnants of the floating pond. It was nearly drained anyway, and he was tired of the constant drag on his shoulders. Despite the escalating ubiquity of freestanding water, the ever cautious Ehomba argued for keeping the pond with them as long as it contained moisture. For once, Simna was able to stand aside and let his companions argue.
Ahlitah eventually won out, not through force of logic but because he had simply had enough of the ever-present pond. Simna watched with interest to see if the herdsman would employ some striking, overpowering magic to force the big cat to comply, but in this he was disappointed. Ehomba simply shrugged and acceded to the cat’s insistence. If he was capable of compelling the litah, he showed no sign of being willing to do so. Simna didn’t know whether to be disappointed or not.
They continued on. Once, when water had been scarce for several days, Ehomba muttered something to the big cat about performing reckless acts in unknown countries. Ahlitah snarled a response and moved away. But this scolding ended the next morning when they found a new water hole. Fringed by bullrushes and small palms, it offered shade as well as water once they had shooed away the small diving birds and nutrias.
After that, Ehomba said nothing more about water and the need to conserve it. This left Simna sorely conflicted. If the herdsman really was an all-powerful wizard traveling incognito, why would he let himself lose an argument he clearly felt strongly about to a mere cat? And if he wasn’t, how then to explain the sky-metal sword and the vial of miraculous whater? Was he really dependent for such expertise and achievements on the work of a village blacksmith and a coterie of chattering women? Where sorcery was concerned, was he after all no more than a vehicle and venue for the machinations of others?
Or was he simply so subtle not even someone as perceptive and experienced as Simna ibn Sind could see through the psychological veils and masks with which the tall southerner covered himself? Much troubled in mind, the swordsman trudged on, refusing to countenance the possibility that he might have, after all, allied himself to nothing more than a semiliterate cattle herder from the ignorant south.
Ehomba’s reaction to the palace that materialized out of the east was anything but reassuring.
Simna saw it first. “It’s a mirage. That’s all.” After a quick, casual glance, he returned his attention to the path they were following northward.
“But it is a striking one.” Ehomba had halted and was leaning on his spear, staring at the fantastical phantasm that now glimmered on the eastern horizon. “We should go and have a look.”
What manner of dry-country dweller was this, Simna wondered, who sought to visit something that was not there? “And just how would we go about doing that, bruther? I’m thinking maybe you’ve been too long on the road and too much in the sun.”
Ehomba looked over at him and smiled innocently. “By walking up to it, of course. Come.” Lifting his spear, he broke away at a right angle to their course.
“I was joking, by Geveran. Etjole!” Exasperated, and starting to worry if his tall friend really was suffering from the accumulated effects of too much sun, the swordsman turned to the third member of the party. “Cat, you can see what’s happening. Why don’t you go and pick him up by the scruff of his neck and haul him back like you would any wayward kitten?”
“Because his scruff is furless and I’d bite right through his scrawny neck, and also because I think I might like to have a look at that mirage myself.” Whereupon Ahlitah turned right and trotted off in the wake of the departing herdsman.
Aghast, Simna called after them. “Have you both lost what little sense you possess?” He gestured emphatically northward. “Every day brings us nearer some kind of civilization. You can practically smell it! And you want to go chasing after mirages? By Gwiquota, are you two listening to me?”
Sputtering inventive imprecations under his breath, the swordsman dropped his head and hurried to catch up to his companions. He calmed himself by determining that while it was a waste of time, the diversion wouldn’t waste much of it.
But he was wrong.
“Interesting,” Ehomba observed as they neared the object of their detour. “A real mirage. I have heard of them, but I never thought to set eyes on one.”
Simna had caught up to the others. “What do you mean, ‘a real mirage’? Is that as opposed to a fake mirage? Have you gone completely balmy?”
“No, look closely, my friend.” The herdsman raised his spear, which when walking he often held parallel to the ground, and pointed with the tip. “An ordinary mirage would be fading away by now, or retreating from us. This one does not wane, nor does it drift into the distance.”
“That’s crazy! Anyone knows that—” Simna broke off, his brows drawing together. “Offspring of Gupzu, you’re right. But how ... ?”
“I told you.” Ehomba continued to lead the way. “It is a real mirage.”
Right up to the palace gates they strode, tilting back their heads to gawk up at the diaphanous turrets and downy-walled towers. From their peaks flags of many lands and lineages streamed in slow motion, though not a whisper of a breeze stirred the sand and soil beneath their feet.
Stopping outside the great gates, which were fashioned of pale yellow and pink wood strapped with bands of pallid blue metal, they weighed how best to enter. Simna continued to refuse to acknowledge the evidence of his own eyes.
“It’s impossible, bedamned impossible.” Reaching out, he tried to grab one of the metal bands. His fingers encountered only the slightest resistance before penetrating. It was like trying to clutch a cloud. Drawing back his fingers, he stared down at the handful of blue fog they had come away with. It lay in his palm like a puff of the finest dyed cotton. When he turned his hand over, the vapor floated free, drifting lazily down to the ground. There it lay, at rest and unmoving, a small fragment of mirage all by itself.
“Impressive walls,” he found himself saying softly, “but they wouldn’t stand much of a siege.”
“This is a special
thing.” The herdsman advanced and the gate could not, did not, stop him. He walked right through, leaving behind an Ehomba-sized hole, like a cookie cutout of himself. Instantly, the opening began to close up, the wall to re-form behind him. Ahlitah followed, making an even larger breach through which Simna strolled in turn, a disbelieving but triumphant invader.
They found themselves in a hallway whose magnificence would have shamed that of any king, khan, or potentate. Pillars of rose-hued cold fire supported a mezzanine that appeared to have been carved from solid ivory. Overhead, the vaulted ceiling was ablaze with stained glass of every imaginable pastel color. It was all vapor and fog, the most elegant effluvium imaginable, but the effect was utterly stunning. Marveling at the delicate aesthetics of the ethereal architecture, they strode in silence down the vast hallway. Beneath the pseudo-stained glass, the color of the light that bathed their progress was ever changing.
“So this is what the inside of a mirage looks like.” Though there was no compelling need for him to do so, Simna had lowered his voice to a whisper. “I never imagined.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Ehomba strode easily alongside his friend. His sandaled feet made no sound as they sank slightly into the floor that, instead of tile or marble, was paved with mosaic ephemera. “No one could. The inside of a mirage is not for human imagining, but for other things.”
Simna’s eyes widened as he espied movement ahead. “It’s not? Then how do you explain that?”
At the end of the overpowering hallway was a throne, eight feet high at the back and decorated with arabesques of rose-cut gemstones. Pillows of lavender- and orange- and tangerine-colored silk spilled from the empty dais to form a rolling wave of comfort at its feet. Sprawled and splayed, reclining and rolling on this spasmodic bed of dazzling indulgence, was a clutch of sinuous sloe-eyed houris of more color and variation than the pillows they lolled upon. There was not a one who would not have been the pride of any sultan’s harem or merchant’s front office.
Giggling and tittering among themselves, they rose in all their diaphanous glory to beckon the visitors closer. Their gestures were sumptuous with promise, their eyes the lights of the passion that dances like a flame at the tip of a scented candle: concentrated, burning, and intense. For the second time since he had begun his journey, Ehomba was tempted to forget his woman.
Simna suffered from no such restraints. Eyes alert, every muscle tense, a grin of lust on his face as pure as the gold he hoped to find, he started forward. One houri in particular drew him, her expression simmering like cloves in hot tea.
Blackness blotted out the enticing, serpentine vision. The blackness had four feet, unnaturally long legs, and muscles bigger around than the swordsman’s torso. Simna started to go around it, only to find himself stumbling backwards as a massive paw smacked him hard in the chest. More than his sternum bruised, he glared furiously at the litah.
“Hoy, just because there’s no cats here, don’t go trying to spoil my fun!”
“There’s no fun here, genital man.” Ahlitah was staring, not at him, but at the hazy, vaporous side corridors that flanked the hallway. The ostensibly empty corridors. “Get out.”
“What?” Two surprises in a row were almost more than Simna could handle. Ehomba stood nearby, not commenting, his gaze shifting repeatedly from the now frantic demi-mondaines to the litah.
“Get out. Get back, get away, retreat, run.” As he delivered these pithy admonitions, the great cat had turned to face the vacant throne and was backing slowly up the hallway, his massive head swinging slowly from side to side so as to miss nothing.
Hesitant, but for the moment persuaded more by the cat’s behavior than his words, Simna complied, keeping the litah’s bulk between himself and—nothing. Or was that a flash, a flicker, a figment of movement there, off to his left? And another, possibly and perhaps, on the far side of the hallway, dancing against the evanescent wall?
Ehomba had joined in the retreat. More importantly, he held his spear tightly in both hands, extended in fighting posture. Together and in tandem, the visitors backed steadily away from the dais and its languorous promise of phantasmal carnal bliss.
“I still do not see anything,” the herdsman murmured tightly.
“Hoy, cat, what are we—”
Simna’s query was interrupted as Ahlitah rose on his hind legs and slashed out with his right paw. The blow would have taken off a man’s head as easily as Simna could pull a cork from a bottle. Four-inch-long claws tore through an unseen but very real something, ripping it where it stood. The two humans saw only reflections of the destruction, flashes of bright gold in the air in front of the cat. Something that was all long, icy fangs and shredded, glaring eyes howled outrage that echoed off the enclosing walls. Tiny individual droplets of wet, red blood appeared from nowhere to fall as slow scarlet rain, crimson bubbles suspended like candy in the cloying atmosphere of the hallway. The mist-shrouded floor sucked them up greedily, hungrily. Thin, skeletal tendrils of the tenebrous surface under their feet began to curl and coil upward, clutching weakly at the travelers’ ankles.
Whirling and roaring like the tornado he had once challenged to a race, Ahlitah snapped viselike jaws on something that had fastened itself to his back. An inhuman high-pitched scream split the sugar-sweet air, and fresh reflections emitted a second shower of rapidly evaporating blood. Simna had his sword out and was looking to cover the litah’s rear, only there was nothing to cover against. Strain as he might, he could see nothing moving save his friends and the delicate feminine visions that seemed restricted to the vicinity of the magnificent, forsaken throne.
“Gronanka—show yourselves—whatever you are!” Close to him Ehomba was swinging the point of his spear from left to right and back again, sweeping it in a deadly arc over the floor as they continued their withdrawal. “Do you see anything, Etjole?”
“Not a thing, my friend!” Alongside them, two immense paws came together with a thunderous clap, and a third something unseen died. Ahlitah’s eyes were wide and wild as he dealt death to the invisible. And all the while the floor continued to scrabble and clutch at their feet with futile fingers of fog.
Two of the gesticulating, moaning houris left their pillows and came running toward them. Their arms were outstretched, their eyes pleading. They wailed and moaned in languages unknown to either man, but there was no mistaking the desperation in their gestures, the imploring in their eyes. They were beseeching the visitors to take them along, to remove them from the mirage in which they dwelled in unsolicited, unwanted, unloved luxury.
Something bellowed angrily and slapped at them, sending them flying backwards to land among the satiny fluff and froth-filled cushions that hugged the dais. Helplessly they lay there, sobbing softly among their intimates, turning their flawless faces away or dropping their heads into their hands.
Meanwhile, the apprehensive, uneasy visitors continued their steady retreat. Having picked up the pace a little, the two men strained every sense they possessed in search of assailants they could not see while Ahlitah continued to rage and destroy corposants that could not be made visible but that could bleed.
They backed right out of that grand and sumptuous hallway, right through the walls of wisp that enclosed the delirium palace, until they were standing once more upon dry sand and rock. The splendid battlements and spires rose high above them, masking but not blotting out the sky.
“Now—run!” Ahlitah commanded.
Turning, they sprinted away from that place as fast as their inadequate human legs would carry them. Though he could have fled westward at ten times the speed, Ahlitah trailed behind, often looking back over his shoulder to make sure they were not being pursued.
But a mirage cannot follow. Sooner than Ehomba would have expected, the litah slowed. “It’s all right now. It’s going away.”
Out of breath, they turned and stared. In the distance the fleecy, resplendent palace was fading from view, waning like a new moon obscured by clouds
until, like a final shimmer of heat pinched between earth and sky, it vanished from sight.
Simna sank to one knee, struggling to catch his breath. “What—what were we fighting in there? I never saw anything.”
“Eupupa.” Through his hands, Ehomba rested his weight on his spear. “I have heard of them, but never before encountered any.”
“How would you know if you had?” Taking an especially deep breath, the swordsman straightened and sheathed his untested sword.
“I am told you can feel their presence around you. They live in the empty, dry places of the world. Only rarely do they come out of the mirages that are their homes. But on a long day, when the sun is high and hot, I am told you can feel them investigating your body, swimming around your cheeks and your chest, coming right up to you to peer deep into your eyes. Outside their mirages they have only the power to cloud one’s thinking. Have you never wondered why so many people who are lost in the desert die only a day, or an hour, or sometimes less than that but a few feet from water, or help?” Looking away, he gazed back at the now ordinary, unmarred horizon.
“The Eupupa do that. They make you dizzy, and stare into the depths of your eyes until they have disoriented you, so that you stumble away from water instead of toward it, or walk in circles, or ignore the signs that would lead a dying man to salvation. And then they feed, beating even the vultures and the dragonets to the corpse, until they have sucked out its soul.”
“Gwythyn’s children,” the swordsman muttered. “Too close, that was.” He frowned. “But the ladies. Not Eupupa. Surely not Eupupa. If these are creatures that can’t be seen, then the ladies couldn’t have been these invisible ghoul-things.” A part of him twitched at the burning memory of those naked, unconditional invitations. “Because I sure as Gelell’s goblet could see them, bruther.”
His mouth tightening, Ehomba dropped his gaze to the gratifyingly solid ground on which they now stood. “So could I, my friend. It was impossible not to see them. That was the Eupupa’s intent, to use them to draw such as us into the deepest part of the mirage, where they could set upon us without having to wait for us to die. Where they could suck out our souls even while we still lived.” He looked up.
Carnivores of Darkness and Light: Journeys of the Catechist, Book 1 Page 27
