by Meredith
Then Zeya took a look deeper into the cave. He would never have identified this oversized crack as an opening into the mountain. But there was a passageway.
He took a few steps into it.
“No!” cried Paya. The Crab Man grabbed Zeya from behind by the shoulders and pulled him to the ground.
Zeya started to growl at Paya and thought better of it. The passage turned here, and the shadows were deep. He got onto his hands and knees and groped.
Paya grabbed him by the feet and wouldn’t let him crawl forward.
Su-Li perched on the highest rock, barely over Zeya’s head, and peered into the three-quarter darkness.
Zeya stretched out. His hands groped forward and felt nothing. Which made his stomach do a flip.
“There’s a vine,” said Paya.
Zeya felt around and found nothing.
“Come back and light a torch,” said Paya.
Torches. Zeya should have known.
Paya showed off his spot. It was a sinkhole twice as wide as a man is tall, and deep enough that Zeya couldn’t see the bottom. He tossed a pebble in. Only after a full breath in and out did he hear a splash.
Su-Li croaked.
A vine dangled from above and dropped into the darkness. “Does it reach the bottom?” asked Zeya.
“No,” said Paya. “You have to know how to climb up and find the end. Good water down there.”
Paya hooked his damaged hand onto the vine, curled his legs around it, and swung across. He let go of the vine, dropped to the cave floor, and let the vine swing back to the middle. He grinned across the chasm at Zeya.
“You’re stuck.”
Paya cackled, pulled a long stick out from behind a boulder, hooked the vine, and sailed back.
“Feel the vine,” he said.
Zeya slid his hands up and down. Every couple of feet Paya had gobbed on pine pitch, to help with climbing.
“Why do you go back in there?”
Paya hung his head and scrunched his shoulders. “You know.”
He would never stop exploring the underground world.
“Some setup you’ve got,” said Zeya. “Lots of setups, I bet, all over the mountain.”
He looked at Su-Li and all around at this hidey-hole. There were plenty of torches, bedding, gourds of water, and lots of mushrooms, wild onions, dried berries, rose hips, and the other food Paya liked.
“Let’s start a fire,” Zeya said. “There’s things I have to tell you.” For instance, I’ve put you into danger. But he didn’t say that.
Soon a flame was cheering the hole up, and Zeya was heating up a rock to make tea. “How many houses do you have in this cave?” he asked.
Paya shrugged.
“How many entrances are there?”
“Paya has found many-many, but there are many-many more to find, to find.”
“Okay, I have to tell you something important.”
The Crab Man gave Su-Li a furtive glance, and Zeya a look just as sneaky.
“The man who has come to kill me, he was sent by Inaj.”
“Inaj!” The sound was more like a hawk of phlegm than a word. Paya got onto all fours like a beast about to flee.
“Please,” Zeya said, and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “It’s all right. I have an idea.”
He tonged a fist-sized rock from the fire into the hanging bag, poured water into it, and dropped in half a handful of dried berries.
“I talked to my mother, Sunoya. You remember my mother?”
Paya quailed a little.
“You remember?”
“Yes.”
“She heard you disappeared when all the big trouble happened at the Planting Moon Festival. Remember that? When the Seer humiliated Inaj and he got kicked out as chief? And then all of a sudden the other Red Chief was dead and Inaj was back in?”
Paya stared into his lap.
“Remember?”
“Yes.”
“Mother heard Inaj told you to stay away. That’s what your relatives thought.”
“He told me, he told me never to come back to the village or he’d tell people something and get me killed.”
After his outburst Paya seemed chastened.
“It was Inaj who hurt your hand. Inaj is the reason you live all alone. The reason you have no family. The reason your hand is a claw. Isn’t that right?”
“Ye-e-s-s.”
“Paya, that man who’s out there waiting, the one trying to kill me, Inaj sent him. Why don’t we get even with Inaj? Get back at him a little bit?”
Zeya hopped along the ridge, up onto one ledge, down onto another. When he got high, he visored his eyes with one hand and peered toward the nest. But he was really watching Su-Li.
As Zeya asked, the buzzard was circling above the nest. When he floated over the assassin’s hiding place, he dipped a wing for a moment and then reasserted his circle. Nothing unusual about a buzzard hovering around. If the enemy changed places, Su-Li would give the signal again.
Zeya worked his way to a low spot in the ridge and then up toward the nest. About a hundred steps away he stopped and began, apparently, to inspect the country thoroughly. He studied the rocks and trees in every direction until he got the sign he was waiting for from Su-Li. The assassin was on the move, sliding toward his prey.
Zeya turned and trotted fifty steps back. Then he stopped and studied the scene again. He couldn’t see his foe. One of his advantages was that the enemy had to move slowly and stealthily. Zeya was free to walk openly, skip, run, or do whatever else he wanted.
In that fashion they worked their back to the crack in the rock that hid the cave. Zeya always knew where the assassin was. But now came the tricky part.
He sat on a high boulder above the crack, laid his spear down, and leaned his back against the rock. He was angled halfway between flat and the noonday sun. He closed his eyes to three-quarters and pretended to sleep. Instead, he was watching Su-Li very closely.
Being bait made his skin prickle.
When it came, a thrill of fear bolted through Zeya.
The killer sprinted straight toward him, in the open. On one side of his head his hair fell to his waist. The other side was shaved clean.
Zeya vaulted off the rock, leaving the spear, and ducked into the cave.
Trapped. Please think I’m trapped.
Half-Shaved Head stopped and crouched behind a rock. He studied the dark hole. Zeya could see him peering intently, but apparently the shadows were too dark.
Zeya stuck his head halfway out and jerked it back.
Footfalls!
Zeya quick-footed around the corner into the darkness. As he grabbed the vine, he shouted, “Leave me alone, you bastard!”
He swung across the sinkhole, dropped lightly to the ground, and jammed the vine into a crack. He grabbed his waiting war club and whirled, ready to…
What’s wrong? Where is the bastard?
Creeping forward, Zeya supposed. Cave dark had scared Zeya, too. But the man’s eyes would have trouble adjusting, like Zeya’s did.
Half-Shaved Head came forward on all fours, carrying a long-bladed knife.
The bastard’s being careful, too careful.
Sure enough, the assassin stuck a hand into the empty air and sat back on his haunches.
If I had my spear now, I could kill you!
Half-Shaved Head turned to go back.
At that moment Paya drove a shoulder low into the assassin. Half-Shaved Head bumped backwards, teetered on the edge, seized Paya’s hand, and plummeted into the darkness.
Paya tumbled after him, screaming.
Zeya shouted, “Paya! Paya!” He shouted himself half hoarse.
He stared across at Su-Li. His mind was tumult. No, he had to tell himself, the buzzard cannot hold the torch as you slide down.
Slide down, though, was exactly what he had to do. Into the darkness.
Paya is down there.
Into the darkness.
“I’m going,�
� he said to Su-Li. He knew the arguments the bird would give him if it could talk, or rather if he could hear it. The same arguments his mother would give him—“Your mission is more important than anything. Don’t risk the people’s welfare for a single life, not even your own.”
He didn’t care. He grabbed the vine, swung across, and lit two torches. Maybe he could go down one-handed for a ways and stick one into a crack and see. The other he would leave as a beacon.
He wrapped his legs around the vine, gripped it hard with one hand, and started sliding.
It wasn’t as hard as he feared. He got down one man-length quickly, then two. He stopped and looked around. No crack for the hand-held torch.
Down he slid again, before worry could paralyze him. Down, down.
He peered toward the water he knew was down there somewhere. He could see nothing, absolutely nothing at the bottom. The pool below was the infinity of night without moon, without stars, without hope.
He swung a little from side to side and—hey!—he spotted a place to jam the torch. That would ease his way back up, and it would soothe his spirit.
He swung vigorously and bumped the side too hard and had to grab hold quick. Carefully, he squeezed the torch handle and rammed it in deep. He tugged at it to make sure. Then he let go and pendulumed out across the sinkhole, and back, and back.
When he stopped, he leaned out and looked down harder. Still nothing but darkness.
He started sliding down with both hands. The bumps of pine pitch felt good.
The torch tumbled end over end, down, down, down, dunked headfirst into the water, and went out.
Downward lurked absolute blackness.
His first impression was that he was a leaf in a wind, blowing to the sky, to the earth, sideways, every which direction.
He closed his eyes. He spoke out loud and firmly. “Your legs are below you. Your hands are above you.”
He opened his eyes. He looked up. There burned the beacon. The world he knew hung by that flickering light.
He descended. Why, he didn’t know.
He stopped and tried to picture what he’d seen by the light of the falling torch. Maybe a hump in the water. Maybe the hump was a back, maybe not.
Fear prickled him. Where was Half-Shaven Head?
He might be anywhere.
He twisted on the end of the vine. He looked at the back. He studied the rest of the water. He studied the lower walls. He decided to descend.
His feet slid off the end of the vine.
He hollered.
In a great hurry he muscled up and got his legs wrapped around the vine. His arms wouldn’t last long.
Then he remembered. Paya had said the vine ended above the water. You dropped into the water and then climbed up the wall a way to reclaim the vine. Paya probably had a hooking stick stored there.
Maybe Half-Shaven Head had climbed up and was… He eyed the walls right around him and then took several pulls to get higher.
“Paya!”
No answer.
“Paya!” Three more times. No answers.
His arms were getting shaky.
I am somewhere in the blackness between stars, clinging to the illusion of a vine. If I let go, I will die. If I wait for the assassin, I will die.
He inched up.
It got harder. And harder.
He forced himself. Legs loose and then up very fast, good grip. He learned to rest his arms by clamping the vine in his armpits, alternately.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. If you want to live, do it again.
He looked up and saw that the darkness was eased by a flame. In that faint light, on the rim of the sinkhole, he saw a shape that might be Su-Li.
Zeya said, “Help me.”
Su-Li a-a-arked.
“Help me.”
He looped the vine under his right arm, behind his neck, and pressed the left side of his head against it. He let his arms drop. He said, “Arms, can you do it?”
No answer.
Suddenly Su-Li launched off the rim and floated down to Zeya. They looked at each other. Zeya wasn’t sure what he was really seeing, but he could hear the slow beat of the buzzard’s wings.
Then Su-Li fell downward.
Zeya felt like he, too, plummeted into the blackness. But only his heart dived. He wondered if Su-Li was frightened by the darkness. At least the assassin couldn’t kill an Immortal.
In a moment Su-Li reappeared, flying the tightest of circles in the hole. The lower part of the vine dangled from his mouth.
Zeya pulled hard on the vine several times to get higher. He wanted to see what was happening. He couldn’t imagine. Saved or killed?
At the top Su-Li disappeared behind a boulder. Zeya heard rustling. Then he felt the vine rise up into his crotch.
Su-Li hopped to the rim, looked down at him, and squawked.
Incredulous, Zeya let his weight sink onto the loop in the vine. It was like sitting in a kid’s swing. He chuckled. Swings were made of vines.
A while later, rested, he pulled up until he could see the rim at eye level. It was out of reach. He swung back and forth. He wasn’t high enough.
Three more good pulls. He swung again. Maybe enough.
He kicked out for his best swing, sailed toward the warm light—now it looked bright as suns—and flung himself into the air.
He hit the rim with his belly. He began to slide. He pawed everywhere for purchase with his hands.
He felt himself start to topple backwards. Just then a toe found a jutting rock, just enough of a bump…
He planted his palms flat on the rim and with the greatest exertion of his life muscled himself onto the rim.
He collapsed and lay flat.
He might have slept except for one thought. Paya is dead.
37
Zeya made the long walk toward the Tusca village in low spirits. He had eighty-one war eagle feathers wrapped in his hide, almost all good ones. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Paya.
He also couldn’t stop fretting. Su-Li rode the air above him constantly, keeping a double-sharp eye out for miles around. Zeya had nearly been killed twice, and now he was walking toward the village where his mother grew up and where he normally would have lived all his life. It was also the village where his great enemy lived, his grandfather Inaj. He had never laid eyes on it.
He topped the ridge on the west side of the valley and looked down on storied territory. On the grassy slope below his mother had been hit by lightning. And there, as she died, he had been born.
Far beyond, by the river in the valley below, he could see the tip of the village.
“The one place I can’t go,” he said out loud. An odd feeling rummaged around in his chest. For my entire life my grandfather has been threatening to kill me. And now he’s going all out.
So he left the trail, angling across the slope toward the forest below. He would make a wide circuit to the north, around the Tusca village and toward the five nests Awahi described, in the mountains on the far side.
Still, he was sure. The one place they’re bound to be waiting for me is here.
Zeya made a fire for his cave camp and started broiling strips of back strap on a stick. Today, for the first time in all his quest, he’d killed a deer and now intended to take time to make meat. He tossed the liver to Su-Li, who pecked at it.
“You like that, don’t you? I like this. Let’s take the next two days off and dry this meat. Let’s take the next two weeks off. Let’s quit this mission before we get killed. I mean, I get killed.” Sometimes he forgot Su-Li was immortal.
He took a big bite, chewed it, and studied Su-Li. “So what are you thinking in whatever language you speak that I can’t hear, much less understand? You’re thinking, I hope this kid gives me time to find the murderer who’s waiting out there.”
He swallowed and bit off another big piece. When he’d finished it, he said, “That’s the plan. I’ll stay here tomorrow while you search. And the next day, too, if you want.
”
He spiked more steak onto his skewer.
“Do you think Inaj knows where we are? Think he knows I killed his first two men? Does he know you’re my secret weapon?”
Su-Li shook his head in the motion that meant, No, uh-uh.
Zeya laughed. Su-Li hardly ever communicated that way. Zeya had almost forgotten he could do it.
“So go out tomorrow and tell me where I meet my fate.”
At sunset the next day Su-Li came back and perched high in the mouth of the cave.
“Well? Where is the killer?”
Su-Li shook his head no.
“No killer? Oh, sure.”
Su-Li shook his head no.
“Okay, seriously. How many nests did you see, all five?”
Su-Li dipped his head down and back up.
“You know which one they’re hatching eggs in?”
Su-Li nodded yes.
“How many killers did you see, five?”
Su-Li shook his head.
“Four?”
No again.
“Three?”
When Zeya got to one, he was really scared.
No again.
“You saw none?”
Yes.
“Not any?”
Yes.
“That’s terrifying.”
Yes.
“It means they’ve outsmarted us both.”
Su-Li squawked.
“You’re probably saying, ‘Damn right they did.’”
Zeya walked toward the last nest in euphoria and dread. He’d left it for last because it was the easiest one to get to, and he’d be worn out by the time he got there.
Su-Li flapped, glided, and soared across the sky all day and saw absolutely nothing.
At the first nest Zeya was sure he and Su-Li were fooled by some demonic trick and he was about to die. He got nine good feathers there, and a pleasant breeze blew the sweat off his body. Fifty feet away from the nest he suddenly whirled back on it, spear cocked. Still nothing, still no one. He didn’t know what to think.
At the second nest he found seven nice feathers—up to 105 now. No matter where he cast his suspicious eye, he saw no trouble. The world was a lovely shape of jagged mountains, rolling hills, shining rivers, and endless reaches of green trees. The breeze was dancing and fresh, the sky innocent of clouds.
