West of January

by Dave Duncan

  Shisisannis himself lifted me ashore and told me to walk. I set off with my absurd skirt held high, but the ground was tangled with lush undergrowth and I fell repeatedly. Each time I raised myself again, buttocks first, walking my hands backward and keeping my throbbing furnace knees straight. I heard chuckles of amusement, but I persevered until I took a worse than average tumble and Shisisannis s voice behind me said that was enough. I lay on my belly and panted, groaning at my weakness and humiliation. Eventually I recovered enough to roll over and sit up. I had covered about fifty paces, yet I felt as exhausted as the paddlers.

  Food was passed, but half of the men were asleep before it even reached them. Soon they all were, stretched out on crumpled bushes or wet moss. Only Shisisannis remained awake. He sat on his heels, alert and watching, a darker shape of menace in a deep gloom, staring at me without a blink.

  Back from the water’s edge, the undergrowth was not as thick as it had been on the bank. All around us, giant pillars of trees rose up ten times higher than any I had ever seen on the grasslands, seeming as solid as rocks nearby, but fading away with distance into murky wraiths. The close-packed jungle trees grew almost vertical, with little twist. Only rare speckles of blue showed through the canopy roof and the thick tresses of creepers suspended from every twig. The air was cool and damp, reeking of mold and rain, and so laden with water that it was visible, a dark mist hanging in all the vacant spaces. I was grateful for my all-enveloping garment, wondering how my near-naked companions could bear the chill. Bright-hued birds flashed past sometimes, and their calls echoed eerily among the continual faint dripping sounds. It was creepy and oppressive.

  “Food?” Shisisannis inquired.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He shrugged and continued to stare.

  Nor was I sleepy. One thing was certain, however: I was not going to escape. I might be capable of launching one of the canoes, if I could reach them, although they had been pulled well clear of the water, but Shisisannis was not going to take his eyes off me. He could apparently squat there in the undergrowth forever, watching me, unblinking, with hunters’ patience. He was not even bothering to swat at the bugs and flies that walked on him.

  I lay back, head on hands, and reviewed my hopeless position, bitter with the rank taste of betrayal and the dread of unknown horrors to come. Oh, Misi…how did I fail you? I wallowed in the depths of my ill luck, I soared to heights of self-pity, and I piled up mountains of despair. At last, though, another problem asserted itself, one of the trivial indignities that our bodies use to mock our souls when they seek to transcend mundane affairs. I sat up to meet Shisisannis’s unwavering gaze. I explained.

  He shrugged and pointed with his chin. “Go that way.”

  My captors had all stayed between me and the river, and he had told me that I should go deeper into the jungle. I was not to be allowed to approach the canoes.

  So I rolled over and levered myself vertical again. I raised my long skirt, and I rocked my way cautiously through the tangles, my bare feet sinking into clammy moss and a mush of rotted leaves. Shisisannis would be able to see me and hear me, and without question, catch me if he wanted. I found a fallen tree to use as a seat. I attended to my needs.

  I stood again and was about to return…

  Bird calls, the stirring of the wind, and dripping… The sky had turned gray once more and probably rain was falling on the forest roof, but I could hear something else, a deep humming. It was tantalizingly faint, but as I concentrated it grew more distinct, nearer, and I could tell that it was song, a gleam of silver melody in the green hush. Someone was coming!

  I wondered if Shisisannis could hear it yet. I glanced covertly in his direction; he did not seem to have moved. How much time would I have before he roused his warriors? How far could I travel before he came after me?

  Cautiously I planned a path between the nearest obstacles and then rocked my way slowly forward. I could not tell if I was hearing a wordless voice or an instrument, or both together, but the tones were growing louder, and I was sure that the source was approaching. Rescue! Music meant hope. It meant people, my fellow man. If spinsters were as horribly evil as the angel had suggested, then surely other human beings would take pity on me. No matter who this musician was, I could hardly be worse off than I was now.

  I still did not know whether the sound came from throat or fingers or both, but I was certain the singer was not animal or bird. And it was beautiful! It soared. It brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. It spoke of love and longing and compassion. Strangely, it reminded me strongly of some of the herdfolk songs that my mother had sung to me when I was very small. No one capable of such beauty could be so heartless as to turn down the pleas of a helpless captive.

  Faster I drove my crippled legs, reeling dangerously, tripping, staggering, and never heeding the jarring pains. The melody welled up in unbearable glory, close now, and yet I could see no one in the dense gloom. I wanted to call out, but I dared not interrupt that peerless refrain. Never had I heard such music—

  Two strong hands slammed against the sides of my hood, covering my ears and then holding my head up when I would have fallen with the shock. Shisisannis steadied me, then transferred his grip to my shoulders. I twisted around to stare at the dark contempt lurking amid the green and yellow serpents of his tattoos. The song had gone and I could hear nothing but a faint and distant humming.

  “That’s close enough, wetlander.”

  “What? Who? Wh—”

  He raised his eyebrows in mockery. “I said spinster, not spinner.”

  “I don’t understand!”

  The hum had become melody again, faint and far off. He pointed. “Between those trees, see? No, closer.”

  A man’s length before me, outlined only by faint silver spangles of dew…a giant web.

  “Harp spider, wetlander. There she is, up there. See her?”

  Bewildered, I looked where he pointed. I could see nothing but trailing moss and dark clutters of twigs. Then I made out a tangle of furry legs as long as my shins… I shuddered and recoiled backward. Shisisannis caught me and steadied me again.

  “I’d let you go to her lover’s kiss, wetlander, if that was what you really wanted, but Ayasseshas told me to bring you whole and healthy, and her I will obey.”

  “I’d have been trapped in that web?”

  The aria was soaring louder and nearer again, heart-rending in its wistful glory.

  “Oh, you’d have broken free. Only small animals get really caught. But her ladyship would have had her fangs in you before you did. You would not have gone far, and you would not have shaken her off.”

  “But the song!” I protested, grateful that my hood hid the tears that were soaking into my beard.

  “Cover your ears!”

  I did that and then listened again…a faint humming, far off.

  “Do that when it gets too strong,” Shisisannis said. “Now, come back and enjoy it at a safe distance. She might jump.”

  With a shudder of revulsion and fear, I wrenched my feet around and rolled away from the harp spider’s web. There could be worse things than spinsters, I thought.

  —2—

  THE EXHAUSTED ROWERS were given little more time to rest. Shisisannis kicked a few awake. They scrambled up without a whisper of complaint and began kicking others, while Shisisannis himself draped me over his shoulder and trotted effortlessly back to the canoes. The others came running after, hastily wolfing down food on the way, laughing and joking in their eagerness to be off. I knew enough about physical overload to know how their bodies must ache. I marveled at their zeal and puzzled over its source. It certainly did not stem from fear, for the ants had never inspired such dedication and no one could have used more fear than they.

  The second leg of the journey was shorter and also much hotter. Of course, climate is normally invariant, its changes too slow for men to notice, and this unnatural unpredictability troubled me. Much later I was to he
ar the saints talk of weather and the torus of instability, but I never truly understood how those worked. Whatever they were, we were within them, beset by unpredictable alternations of sun and storm that did nothing to calm my jangled nerves.

  Sweltering within my gown, peering out from the hood, I could see no difference between one bend of the river and the next, but apparently my captors did. A shout of challenge rang out, and all at once they all rose upright on one knee in racing stance. The paddles flashed even more furiously, and the canoes themselves seemed to rise from the water and fly. The pace was brutal, inhuman torment. They could not sustain it, I thought, but they kept it up far longer than I would have believed possible, six men with two passengers in our craft, against five men in each of the others. Ours came in second, driving onto a muddy beach that apparently marked the finish line. The paddlers flopped over, lungs rasping, as the third canoe slid in at our side.

  The winners attempted a cheer of derision and triumph, but they were too winded to sound convincing, and still I could see no landmark to determine why this spot on the bank was different from any other. The spinster’s lair was well concealed.

  Laughing but still gasping, my captors scrambled out and pulled the canoes higher. Shisisannis untied me and bellowed: “Ing-aa?”

  One of the black, woolly-haired swampmen stepped over from the winning canoe. He was decorated with beads instead of tattoos, but he looked every bit as intimidating as the snakemen, and I had met trees that would have been proud to have had sons so tall.

  “You won. You can deliver the goods,” Shisisannis said offhandedly as he lifted the bag that contained Silent Lover.

  The giant flashed teeth in a beam of pleasure. His great hands scooped me from the canoe as if I were a sachet of petals. He laid me over his shoulder, went up the bank in two huge bounds, and hurtled off through the woods at a long-legged sprint. With supermen like these to serve her, what possible need could the spinster have for a cripple like me?

  Head down, I was jiggled and bounced. My knees enjoyed being bent forward no better than being bent backward, and I was only vaguely aware of a narrow muddy track winding through dense and fetid jungle, dark and damp. Then we emerged into sunlight. More mud squelched beneath those enormous feet, and the pace quickened. The giant came to a sudden stop and just stood. I remained dangling over his shoulder, rising and falling with every rasping breath.

  “You going to put me down?” I inquired of his kidneys.

  “No,” said a voice, rumbling so deep that I felt it as much as heard it.

  I gripped his sweaty loins and levered myself up as well as I could, partly to ease the strain on my legs and belly, partly to look around. As far as I could determine through the slit in my hood, we were in the center of a large and very muddy compound. I saw leaf-covered huts shaped like pots, with glimpses of an encircling stockade beyond. The canoes were arriving, being carried in on the paddlers’ heads—on the double, of course. There would be no trace of our arrival left outside the settlement, therefore, except footprints in the mud, and the next shower would erase those. Shisisannis was bringing up the rear, running also, and clutching the bag that contained Silent Lover.

  There were other men around. I could hear the rhythmic chant of a gang working in unison, an irregular thudding of axes, a distant bleating of livestock. I could even see a dozen or two of the inhabitants. Half of them were dark-skinned men very like my captors, striding around in spotted fur pagnes and decorated with either tattoos or strings of beads, some carrying spears. But the other half were draped from crown to toe in all-enveloping burnooses, as I was. Mostly those muffled figures were just standing, staring in my direction. Some, at least, were too tall to be women, and with a sudden flash of hope, I decided that they must all be wetlanders like me, being kept out of the sun.

  Wetlanders came from the far west, so we must be a rare breed so close to Dusk. To collect a dozen or more of us would take considerable time and expense, so whatever the spinster did with wetlanders, she would not put them to a quick death. I felt a little better, then.

  Apart from those mysterious shrouded figures, though, I could see no one but men, no women or children or old folk. The spinster maintained a private army of young males, a very impressive and virile collection, judging by those I had met so far. I wondered why she needed them, who her foes were. And again I wondered at the source of her power over them.

  In the center of the compound, not far from me, stood a massive carving in the likeness of a rearing snake, its cobra hood spread wide and the rest of its body looped around the base, all painted green and yellow, and strangely repellent even to me, who believed in no god. Then I could not keep my head up any longer. I sagged down, feeling sick and giddy.

  Our canoes had been stowed alongside a group of others. The men came running across toward my bearer, Shisisannis going to one side of him and the rest lining up on the other. Then they all just stood, in a silence broken only by heavy breathing, waiting for someone, or something, but with none of the comments or muttered complaints I would have expected. I had my wrong end pointing forward and could not see what they were watching. All I could see was feet, but I did notice that they were placed at the edge of a patch of white gravel, markedly different from the juicy mud that covered the rest of the compound, steaming gently in the sunlight.

  Then a sigh ran through the waiting platoon. I heard footsteps on the gravel.

  “Shisisannis!” said a woman’s voice. “My devoted War Band Leader, Shisisannis!”

  Shisisannis sank to his knees. “My beloved Goddess!”

  “You have done as I asked!” Her voice was deep and throaty, and she spoke as if to a lover.

  “To please you is all I seek in life, my Queen. Command and I obey. And if I ever fail you, Majesty, in the slightest detail of your desires, may I be put at once to pasture.”

  I heard a tinkling laugh that I did not like. “You serve me better thus, Shisisannis my joy. He is a true wetlander?”

  “And already very pale. But his knees are worse than you were told, my Queen. He can barely walk.”

  “Other than that he seems fit?”

  “Quite healthy, Majesty.”

  “Knees are helpful…but not the most essential items.” The men laughed at her joke. “Rise now, War Band Leader. Ah, too long have I neglected you, you most perfect pillar of manhood. I yearn for your strong embrace.” In public such words should be spoken only with humor or mockery, but these sounded like real seduction. Remembering Shisisannis’s expression when he had talked of this woman, I decided she must be in earnest, unbelievable though that might seem. “This ribbon is one I give only for exceptional service. Wear it as my personal promise of a greater reward in store. As soon as my duties allow, I shall send for you, for none is a more dutiful servant or more deserving of whatever favors a valiant warrior may claim from an eager and grateful lover.”

  Shisisannis rose. “Majesty… I…” His voice broke. He sounded overwhelmed.

  “You have done well to return so soon. You must go now and rest.”

  I could not believe my ears. She was sending him off to bed?

  “Great Queen, the stockade progresses but slowly…”

  She laughed again. “You will not serve me well by working yourself to death, Shisisannis, as poor Yshinanosis did. Rest first. It is my wish.”

  Two more feet came forward into my inverted field of view—brown female feet in golden sandals. They rose on tiptoe, and I took the ensuing silence to mean that Shisisannis was being rewarded with a kiss. My dizziness and nausea were mounting, my attention was wandering, but I could have sworn that his knees trembled.

  Then the woman’s heels sank down, and she stepped away again, out of my view.

  “And Ing-aa! Canoemaster Ing-aa, my great black bull!”

  The blood collecting in my head, the constriction of my gut, the sweltering heat of my gown, and the agony in my legs—I was failing rapidly. Red waves surged before my eyes, an
d bile rose in my throat. Yet I could still somehow register that there were unholy things going on. “Black bull?” She was inveigling Ing-aa with the same crude sexual cajolery that she had given Shisisannis, and Shisisannis was right there at their side. She had two young bulls present and by any normal standards of male behavior they should already be rolling around on the ground, doing their utmost to maim and impair. Yet Shisisannis chuckled with the others as she made lewd remarks about Ing-aa’s size, promising him the same reward she had pledged to Shisisannis. I did not understand.

  Then, through my fog of pain and nausea, I heard her say, “But show me this prize you have brought me, lover.”

  Ing-aa slid me forward so my feet hit the ground. He lifted me easily and twirled me around to face the spinster, then set me down again and let go.

  I caught a brief, blurred glimpse of a female figure in a shimmering gown of water silk.

  I pitched forward in a dead faint.

  ─♦─

  Of course my collapse was mostly a reaction to the head-down position and the sudden correction, compounded by overheating, fear, and pain. I was unconscious for only a few moments.

  “He is coming around, my Lady.” Ing-aa’s voice spoke close above me.

  I was stretched out on my back, although I had first landed on my nose and forehead. My hood had been pulled from my face and the front of my gown opened. The ground swayed, my ears sang, and I kept my eyes shut.

  “That is fortunate.” There was no seduction in the woman’s voice now.

  “Majesty… I was thoughtless.”

  “Very! You know his value.” She was furious, and that was encouraging for me.

  I peered narrowly through eyelashes. A huge black shape was kneeling at my side, his fingers on the pulse in my neck. It had to be Ing-aa.

  “Majesty! Forgive me!” He sounded heartbroken or…

  “Forgive you? Why?”

  “My Queen…” No, not heartbroken. I had heard that tone in the ants’ nest. The fingers on my throat trembled.