After finishing the fruit, I shed what was left of my old clothing and put on the robe. It had a large neck and very wide sleeves and reached down to my ankles. It was comfortable enough as robes go, but it was somewhat disconcerting to walk around in it with nothing underneath.
I went back to the open window and looked again out onto the city. The sun was just dropping behind the mountain. Again I marveled at the architecture. It truly rivaled anything that I had seen in Italy or Greece, and not just because so much more of it remained than in those time-ravaged classical realms. I wondered just how old this great city of Mu might be. I wanted to ascribe an age of two thousand years to match it to those other ancient lands, but I had no way of really knowing. It could have been half their age, or ten times as old.
I was pulled from my observations by a sound behind me. I turned to find a palace slave girl, though not Akia, waiting by the open door and bidding me by hand signals to follow. We met Moloko and another girl in the hallway. He was dressed in the same type of robe that I wore, and he looked much rested. In fact, whereas I had previously thought he must be well over fifty years of age, I could now tell that he was probably closer to forty. The conditions he had endured in the dungeons and the arena of Mu had conspired to age him before his time.
“You look much better, my friend,” he said, as if reading my thoughts.
We were led through the great structure that must have been a palace that somehow attached to the coliseum. I had not been able to keep track of where we had been taken that morning, and I had no better luck now. Finally we entered a large room with a great table in the center. There were about twenty chairs arrayed on either side, and all save two had already been filled. At the head of the table, King Lataska was already engaged in talking loudly, in between stuffing his mouth with food. His guests were Tumukua men that, though they were dressed in fine robes much nicer than that which I was wearing, were all almost as brutish, primitive, and ugly as the king.
Moloko and I were seated in the two empty chairs. Two already filled platters were before us. The king shouted something.
“King Lataska says to eat,” Moloko translated.
I needed no more encouragement than this. Except for a bowl of rice that morning and the recent bit of fruit, I couldn’t remember having eaten in days. The platter, which looked to be made of solid gold, was filled with sliced meat, some kind of sausages, and several different kinds of vegetables. The meat could have been some kind of venison, but I couldn’t identify any of the vegetables, with the exception of sweet potatoes. Whoever prepared the king’s meals, certainly knew his herbs and spices. To me, it tasted as good as anything I’d ever had anywhere.
I tried to pay as little attention as I could to those around me, with the exception of Moloko. The Tumukua at the table acted more like animals than diners at a royal meal. They grabbed handfuls of food and shoved it into their mouths, caring nothing about it sticking to their faces or staining the fronts of their robes. Food flew from their mouths as they grunted at each other in their bestial language.
Every so often, Moloko would translate a sentence or phrase.
“Special for the games in two days. Bad weather coming. More food. New palace slaves. Sacrifice to Lanakata and Kanana.”
“What?” I started to awareness. “Did they say something about Kanana? What did they say about Kanana?”
The room went suddenly quiet, and all the diners turned toward me.
King Lataska got up from his seat and made a broad gesture with his left hand as he spoke. “Kanana sook soot gahrumo sook.”
“Kanana is the great darkness,” Moloko translated, and as the king continued, so did he. “The world is divided into two camps. Lanakata is the male spirit. He is the keeper of the city and the sky. He is the bringer of life and goodness and daylight. Kanana is the female spirit. She is the keeper of the forest and the earth. She is the bringer of death and evil and darkness.”
“Groto soot andana Lataska,” said the king.
“He asks if you enjoyed his woman?”
“What? Oh, um, yes. She was very nice.”
“Yak!” the king called out, and then turned and started for a door at the far end of the chamber.
The diners immediately got up from their chairs and fell in line behind him. Moloko and I did as well, and we were followed by a dozen armed guards who, though I had not noticed them until now, had lined the walls of the great dining room.
The next room was similar, though not identical to, the room in which I had first met the king. There was a dais and a throne, and he immediately ascended to it, only to be surrounded by a half a dozen slave girls, who fawned over him. At the other end of the room were two great statues, each about twelve feet tall and standing on platforms that raised them up an additional four. On the right was a man, his arms spread out wide, with his palms facing forward. Though he was wearing robes similar to those worn by the Tumukua, his face looked nothing like theirs. He had wide eyes and a bearded chin, the effect of which was to make him look very much like many statues of Jesus that I had seen. To the left was a statue of a woman. She was naked but for a loin cloth, and though her arms were outstretched too, they weren’t open and beckoning. She held a dagger in one hand and a human skull in the other. And looking at her, it seemed as if my bowels were suddenly filling with ice water. In face and form, the statue was the exact replica of my jungle girl.
“Lanakata,” said Moloko. “And…”
“Kanana,” I finished for him.
At that moment, hidden doors in the platforms below the statue opened and out slid two women, one below each statue, strapped to a stone surface. As we watched, hidden clanking mechanisms raised the platform beneath the head of each woman, until they were almost vertical and facing us. I then recognized the girl in front of the Kanana statue as Akia, and I thought the girl in front of the Lanakata statue was the girl who had tended to Moloko earlier in the day. The hiss escaping his lips seemed to confirm this.
Lataska bellowed something.
“He says that after we have soiled them, they are only good for sacrifice now.”
I looked from the king to Moloko and back, and then I turned back to Akia. Her eyes begged me for help. I took three steps of a running start toward her, and then it happened. A long, curved blade slid out from a slot in the stone behind her and sliced through her neck. I slid to a stop and watched in horror as her head slipped off her shoulders and rolled to the ground at almost the same moment as the head of the other girl.
I was frozen for a moment, and then I turned and made for Lataska.
“You bloody bastard!” I growled as I leapt toward him.
But half a dozen Tumukua guards intercepted me and knocked me to the ground. Then they and the other members of the dinner party began beating me. I was beaten until I lost consciousness. The last thing I remember was Lataska’s guttural laugh.
Chapter Twelve: The White Goddess
I spent the next thirty-six hours being tortured. There isn’t really another word for it, or if there is one, it’s a lie, because torture is just that. I was awakened by having my head dunked into icy water, and being held there until I thought I would drown. Then I was beaten until I lost consciousness again, and the process started all over. I wish I could say that I held up stoically, but that was not the case. If they had been torturing me for information, I would have given it to them. But their only interest was the sadistic pleasure of seeing a man in pain. Finally, I was dumped into a small stone cell. There I collapsed.
I never found out what happened to Moloko. I hope he fared better than me.
I must have been lying on the smooth stone floor for more than an hour, when I was returned to awareness by a grinding sound. For a brief second, I couldn’t figure out the source. Then a glance at the walls revealed it to me. The floor was being pushed up by some mechanism and the grinding sound was the result of the stone floor rubbing against the stone walls. I marveled that such a seemingly p
rimitive civilization would have such complex machines as this and those that I had seen used prior to the sacrifice of poor Akia. I wondered if ancient Greece and Rome has similar machinery that we simply don’t know about because the bronze gears and pullies were not as long lasting as stone.
The floor was moving upward. My first inclination was to look to the ceiling, since it seemed that I was to be mashed between it and the floor. However, when I looked up, the ceiling was in the process of sliding open. By the time I reached the point that I would have been able to touch it, had I been standing, the ceiling was completely open, and I could see the sky above. Minutes later the movement ceased as the floor of the room became level with the surrounding landscape, and I found myself lying in the center of the coliseum of Mu.
The stands were filled with the city’s citizens, and that vicious bastard Lataska was in his seat. I rose to my feet, which wasn’t easy after the beatings I had suffered. Looking around, I saw that I was the only one in the arena. There also seemed to be nothing to use as a weapon.
I started running toward the far end of the field, above which the king, his cronies, and his guards were seated. I thought that perhaps I could make a jump up, and given enough momentum, might be able to grab the top of the wall and pull myself up. I would probably be killed, but I would make sure to take the brute king with me. But it was not to be. I was not in any kind of shape for any part of that plan. I could not even run across the floor of the arena. My legs gave out and I collapsed. The crowd in the stands found it most amusing.
Everything about the situation angered me. It angered me that I was doomed to die in the arena, of course. It also angered me that my death was to be so ignominious. Determined to put a brave face toward whatever fate awaited me, I dragged myself to my feet. As I did so, my fate was revealed. A doorway right below the king’s box opened, and out walked a bear.
I have hunted grizzlies in Wyoming, and staring one in the eye, even over the site of a rifle can put terror into a man’s heart. This bear would have put the fright into the largest grizzly. It was twice the size of those great North American bears. Even walking on four legs, it was nearly nine feet tall. It had to look down to see me, and must have weighed a ton.
I didn’t know what to do. I knew for a fact that I couldn’t outrun a grizzly bear, and this fellow looked, for all his size, as if he might be even faster. His legs were certainly longer in proportion to his body. I threw my arms up and made the most ferocious growl that I could. The crowd in the arena went quiet, no doubt interested to see exactly how this monstrous furry creature would kill me. The bear stared at me in curiosity for a full thirty seconds. Then it pushed itself up onto two legs and looked down at me from a full fifteen feet. It let loose a growl that let everyone present know just who the top predator really was.
There wasn’t anything else to do. I ran. I knew it was fruitless, but when fight is unavailable, then flight is the only option. I am happy to say that I at least used my brain to its advantage. Rather than turning and running directly away from the bear, I ran to the side to make him pivot. It might only give me two seconds more to my life, but that was enough to make the effort worthwhile.
Then an even more ferocious roar than the bear’s echoes through the stadium. I stopped and looked, just as every other eye in the great coliseum did. Even the bear turned and looked.
Standing at the top edge of the great structure, silhouetted by the sky was a human form. Even if I hadn’t known instinctively who it was, I would have recognized her. She was standing in the exact pose that the statue of Kanana had held in the sacrificial chamber, with the sole exception that in her right hand she held two long spears instead of a skull.
Kanana roared again, the sound echoing through the great space. And the coliseum erupted into chaos. A few soldiers tried to move toward her, but most of the audience decided, as one, that this was not a good day for games, and made for the exit. Switching one spear to her other hand, she launched the remaining missile in a long, high arc in my general direction. While it was still in mid-flight, she threw the other spear in a different direction. It must not have been the actual case, but to me, it seemed as if both spears hit at the exact same moment. The first hit the bear squarely on the top of the head, the shaft driving the stone spear point down through his brain and out his lower jaw. The second hit King Lataska in the chest and pinned him to his throne. Both he and the bear slumped down, dead.
The white goddess of death, as the Tumukua believed her to be, jumped from her lofty perch, landing two levels below. It seemed impossible that anyone could survive such a fall, but she barely slowed down. She ran through the grandstands and toward the arena floor, but not toward me. Rather she ran toward a great gate that was at the end opposite the royal box. Most citizens were doing their very best to get away from her, but those who were too close, found their throats slit with her flashing blade. There would be no changing the opinion that she was a bringer of death after this day.
By this time, some of the soldiers stationed around the coliseum began to rally and make their rush toward the sandy arena floor. When Kanana reached it, she stopped just to the side of one of the great doors. There was no way for her to open them, as a great bar held it from the other side. Pressing her lips together, she recreated the sound that she had used to call Giwa. This time it was answered not by one trumpet, but by at least a dozen. The great door burst open and an entire herd of mammoths ran into the arena.
As the first and largest of the mammoths raced past her, the jungle girl grabbed onto his long tusk and swung herself up onto it. She shouted something in its ear, and the beast turned toward me. As they bore down upon me, she held out her hand.
“Jump, Henry!” she called.
I dived for her hand and she swung me past the great pachyderm’s ear and onto his back as easily as if I had been a child. The herd made a circle around the arena and then headed back toward the open door. By this time however, several dozen warriors with long spears stood in the way. As the mammoth reached them, he tossed his head, sending Kanana, in a graceful dive, right into the middle of them. How many of them she killed and how many were simply trampled by the herd, I couldn’t say, for the beast carried me out the gate, away from the coliseum, and through the city.
The herd rumbled through the streets, destroying everything that came between them and where they wanted to go. Whether it was a wooden cart or a citizen, or something else, it was trampled. My prehistoric elephant was in the lead and it was clear that he wanted out of the city by the shortest route possible, and I had no way to tell if it was the way that I come in or not. I looked back over my shoulder, trying to see Kanana, perhaps on the back of a different animal. She was nowhere in sight.
We reached the edge of the city and immediately hit the jungle. My mount didn’t slow down one whit. He dived right into the emerald forest. It was fortunate that he wasn’t any shorter than he was, for the branches and leaves we pass through whipped my legs. Fortunately the upper canopy was far above me, so all I had to do was dodge an occasional creeping vine. But no matter how far away from Mu we went, the great beast seemed to have no intention of slowing down.
It may seem strange, but eventually my utter exhaustion combined with the movement of the pachyderm to drive me to unconsciousness. I simply draped myself over his massive head and fell asleep. When I came to, we were no longer in the jungle and we were no longer rushing. The mammoth stood in the middle of the great grassy plain, ripping bundles of dry grass from the ground with his trunk and stuffing them into his mouth.
Sitting up as high as I could, I looked around to see if I could find Kanana. I was sure she would have used one of the other mammoths as a mount. Though I could see about a dozen other specimens matching my current companion wandering the grassland, none of them carried a passenger.
“Come Giwa,” I said. “We must find Kanana.”
A powerful trunk reached up and took a sniff of me. A bellow followed. I got the imp
ression that the monstrous fellow had forgotten that I was with him.
“Tut, tut!” I called, and tried to steer him like a horse.
He was having none of that. Squatting down on his haunches, he dropped to his side. Since I wasn’t too sure that he didn’t intend to just roll over and squash me, I jumped clear and hurried away. Back on his feet, he trumpeted at me, but made no move to follow.
Chapter Thirteen: Alone in the Wild
It didn’t take me long to recognize the danger of my new predicament. Here I was, once again, alone in the primordial wilderness. I was not only figuratively naked. I was literally naked. Looking around the grassland, I could make out many of the animals that I had seen before, and one additional one. Walking through the tall grass, I could easily see a cat that, like the Elizagaean leopards I had seen before, had huge scimitar like teeth. This creature was much larger though, almost as big as the lion Kawunsa. This was the fabled saber tooth tiger. He could have blended well into the grass and I got the distinct feeling that the only reason I could see him now was that he wasn’t hungry.
I immediately set off for the edge of the forest, which was about a mile away. As soon as I was there, I found several young trees that would have made good spears, if I had some way to cut them down and shape them. Instead, I settled for making a club. I found a short piece of broken branch that had a fork at the end. Within a few minutes, I had found a suitable stone and fastened it into the fork by tying it with several strands of woven grass.
The first order was water. I decided that I would walk through the jungle until I could find a downward slope. That way I could follow it down to a stream. I hadn’t gone very far, when I stumbled upon a little ravine that must have flooded during the rainy season. There was a small pool, but I saw immediately that it wouldn’t be suitable. The body of one of the Chihuahua-sized Elizagaean deer was floating in the water. If I were to drink that water, I probably would have poisoned myself.
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