Greatshadow

by James Maxey

  “Ugamadebasda!” the lead pygmy shouted. “Ugamadebasda!” Every forest-pygmy tribe had its own dialect; I could understand most east-slope pygmies, but these west-slope pygmies slurred all the syllables of a sentence together into a single word, which made it tricky to follow. Still, from the general tone I gathered he was saying, “Shut up and keep your hands up.”

  “I don’t speak the lingo, guys,” said Infidel. “I do know a little river-pygmy. Nanda chaka? Gratan doy bro?” Her accent was atrocious. She probably meant to ask if anyone knew river-pygmy, but instead she was asking if anyone had a canoe in their mouth. It didn’t matter; the forest-pygmies didn’t seem to understand her anyway.

  She sighed. “I’m not getting of here without hurting a lot of you, am I?”

  “I think there’s been enough hurting here today,” said a man’s voice from high in the trees above. The speaker used the crisp, finely enunciated syllables of a Silver Isle accent; it could have been Lord Tower speaking, except the voice wasn’t as deep or forceful. “Are you responsible for this slaughter?”

  “Not me,” said Infidel. “There was this invisible woman who went crazy and, uh... hell, that’s just not believable at all is it?”

  “Not terribly,” said the voice above.

  Infidel shrugged. “If I was any good at lying, I’d make up something. But, there really was an invisible woman. She cracked a few swords over my head as well. I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

  The branches above rustled. Suddenly, a patch of green, the color of moss, lowered down toward the platform on a slowly descending loop of vine. It was no pygmy. It was an elderly man of normal stature, wearing only the same gourd codpiece as the pygmies, his skin dyed green. He was all bones and skin, his flesh covering his thin limbs like aged leather. His hair was a few long green strands braided down the back of his scalp. His eyes were a sharp and penetrating blue.

  “Who are you?” he asked, as his vine brought him to the platform.

  “Who are you?” Infidel answered.

  The old man scowled, then cocked his head, as if he was searching for some bit of information just beyond his grasp. “It’s been a while since anyone asked that question. The Jawa Fruit tribe calls me Tenoba. It means old long gourd. Among your people, my name... my name was...”

  He paused, trying to remember how to say the words. It didn’t matter. I knew what he was about to say before he said it.

  A light flickered in his ancient eyes. “My name,” he said, “was Judicious Merchant.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ENOUGH

  I WAS TOO stunned by my grandfather being alive to closely follow the swirl of activity that unfolded. A wounded pygmy at the edge of the platform verified that they had, indeed, been attacked by something invisible, and confirmed that Infidel hadn’t hurt anyone. Forest-pygmy scouts were rushing up, telling about the fight further down slope, and how a group of long-men had killed the invisible assassin. I would have focused more on what they were saying, but I was too busy doing math in my head. My father had me when he was twenty-three. Judicious had been twenty-five when he sired Studious. So... that meant the man standing before me was ninety-eight.

  For a man two years shy of a century, he looked pretty good. He still had all his teeth, for starters, even if they were the same jade hue as the rest of him. When he moved, he was as fluid as a jungle cat, without a hint of the stiffness or weakness that hampered most people his age. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him; his wrinkled leather skin sat atop wiry muscles so sharply defined you could have taught an anatomy class using them. Of course, I was seeing more of that anatomy than I truly wanted to. It’s one thing to discover your long lost grandfather is still alive. It’s another thing entirely to learn he’s a grass-colored nudist with his privates stuffed into a dried fruit.

  “I knew your grandson, Stagger,” said Infidel.

  Grandpa frowned.

  “His real name was Abstemious Merchant.”

  I winced on hearing my birth name. I must have been really drunk to have told her. Abstemious means someone with control of his appetites... perhaps my father’s lapse on his vow of celibacy inspired the choice. Stuck with this moniker, it was only a matter of time before I became an incurable drunkard.

  My grandfather frowned even deeper. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve had seven wives. My children have produced scores of grandchildren. I’m afraid the name isn’t triggering any memories.”

  The words were like a slap in the face. I’d revered this man. I lived on the Isle of Fire in imitation of his greatness. He didn’t even remember my name?

  Infidel produced the bone-handled knife. “You gave him this when he was ten.”

  My grandfather took the blade, sliding it in and out of the sheath. He scowled as he saw the dried blood smeared along the metal. “He didn’t take care of it. It’s dirty.”

  “He took great care of it,” said Infidel. “He kept it clean and sharp for forty years. If it’s dirty, it’s my fault.”

  “Hmm.” Suddenly, a light flickered in his blue eyes. “I remember this knife. The handle was carved from the tibia of a dragon.”

  Or so he thought. He’d told me this when he gave me the knife, but one of the monks who specialized in the study of anatomy had assured me the bone was merely that of a bull. But, what if the monk had been wrong? If the hilt truly was dragon-bone, could the magic that infused dragons explain how my spirit had become ensnared by the knife?

  As Judicious turned the knife over in his hands, he nodded slowly, as if he were accepting the memories flooding back to him. “I had a son who became a monk. Studious, I think? He had a bastard child raised in an orphanage. That was Abstemious?”

  “Yes.”

  Grandfather grinned. “I recall him now. Bright kid. Voracious reader. He became a monk?”

  “He became you,” said Infidel. “Or, at least his dream of you. He was an explorer, a scholar, and a storyteller. No one knew more than him about the ruins of the Vanished Kingdom. He lived in your old boat in Commonground.”

  “I notice you’re speaking in the past tense.”

  Infidel nodded.

  Grandfather sighed. “I outlive many of my relatives.” He looked down the slope, in the direction of Tower’s party. “I suppose, if you’re friends of the family, I should show a little hospitality. Go tell your companions they’re welcome to stay the night in our huts.”

  “I’m not sure they’ll take you up on the offer,” said Infidel. “The leader of the party is kind of snooty.”

  “Still, extend the offer.”

  Infidel nodded. “If they accept, you need to know that I’m pretending to be a machine. I don’t talk around them.”

  “Ah,” said Grandfather. “I wondered why you were dyed silver. I thought it might be some new fashion. You fooled me, by the way. When I first saw you from the trees, I mistook you for one of the ancient engines, and wondered how you were still intact. You reminded me of a mechanical dancer I once excavated. A lovely, wondrous thing, though I never found her head. The clockwork that used to drive her had long-since corroded, but I’m still left breathless by the cleverness of the men who once lived on this island.”

  THE PYGMY HUTS were better described as tree houses. I’d never been in one before, though I’d caught sight of them often enough. The floor of the forest can be a quiet place; the real action is unfolding high above in the canopy. Here, the forest-pygmies had woven together seemingly endless ropes from blood-tangle vines and strung them together in a complex network of swinging bridges. Houses were built with floors of dense netting spread from branch to branch, with roofs of still-living vines and branches woven together overhead. The floors seemed solid enough when the pygmies flitted across them, but once Lord Tower began to carry the party up to the huts, the platforms sagged ominously beneath the weight. The floor weavers had probably never planned for someone as large as Aurora to visit. No-Face swiftly moved toward the thick trunk of the tree that formed one co
rner of a large communal area and wrapped his chain around it, with his good arm still coiled in the links. It was hard to read the mood of a man who didn’t have expressions, but I got the distinct impression he didn’t like heights.

  The forest-pygmies seemed especially wary of Aurora. None dared look directly at her, though behind her there was a crowd of small green people pointing and gawking.

  “The blue tint of your skin makes them think you’re some sort of oddly sized river-pygmy,” Grandfather said. “The river-pygmies work with the slavers, so they’re wary.”

  Aurora took a seat near the edge of the netting, looking out over the lush forest. She didn’t seem bothered by the sagging floor or the drop off. “Since I left the north, I’ve gotten used to people being cautious around me,” she said. “At home, I was a runt and a weakling. If not for being born with the mark of a shaman, I doubt they would have fed me as a child.”

  Zetetic stayed as close to the center of the floor as possible. I remembered his reaction when he’d first arrived in the cave. Apparently, No-Face wasn’t alone in his acrophobia. Yet, though Zetetic clung to the woven floor with white knuckles, his voice was curiously enthusiastic as he said, “Mr. Merchant, I’ve read everything you ever wrote about the Vanished Kingdom. The world lost quite a scholar when you vanished.”

  Father Ver glowered as Zetetic spoke, ready to pounce if the Deceiver attempted anything. Reeker also kept his gaze fixed on the man, no doubt intent not to be taken by surprise again.

  My grandfather seemed unaware of the tension in the air. He dismissed Zetetic’s compliment with a shrug. “The world lost nothing. I’ve come to understand that scholarship has very little to do with actual knowledge. In the world I grew up in, knowledge was something found chiefly in books. It was information that gets passed on as scribbled marks on paper. When I first started exploring this land, I wrote down everything I learned, because that seemed like a validation. It was as if nothing I was doing mattered until I committed it to paper.”

  “It’s the echo of the divine that makes you feel this,” said Lord Tower. He had never actually landed on the platform; instead, he was hovering a few inches above the netting, perhaps worried about adding his weight to the already strained vines. “When we write, we imitate, in our own pale way, the original act of creation.”

  Grandfather chuckled. “You’re my guests, so I’ll say this as respectfully as possible: books aren’t real. I mean, yes, books as physical objects exist, but they contain no reality or truth within them.”

  “Have a care,” said Father Ver. “Your words venture dangerously close to the heresy of the Deceivers.”

  “No,” said Grandfather. “The Deceivers think that everything is a lie. Reality itself is a fiction, which clever men are free to rewrite.”

  “Actually—” said Zetetic.

  Grandfather kept talking, ignoring the interruption. “The Deceivers are wrong, as is the Church of the Book. Neither accept the obvious truth: the only thing that defines the world is the world itself. Reality is the tree we sit in; it’s the sun on your face, the evening breeze, the bitter burst of jawa fruit on the tongue. The things we write in books are only daydreams and memories, mental constructs pleasant and useful, but not real. By the time a man writes of an experience, that experience is forever gone. The past vaporizes behind us; the future is devoured voraciously by the present. It is only in the now that we are alive. The physical world surrounding us is the only truth.” He looked out over the green mountain, toward the azure sea. “It is... enough.”

  “Bah,” said Father Ver with a dismissive wave. “These are the pointless musings of the spiritually weak. The here-and-now is but a trap; the pleasure of the moment seduces men from contemplation of larger truths. Feeble-minded youth sometimes fall prey to the desire to glamorize the now, but I’m disappointed a man of your advanced age has made this error. Look around you, old man. You live in a bug-infested tree, among primitives who don’t even know how to make clothing. Without accepting a greater spiritual truth, man can be nothing more than another beast.”

  Grandfather smiled as he looked at the leaves above him. He lifted up his skinny arm and snatched a bright green katydid from the nearest branch. The insect was perfectly blended with its surroundings, but my grandfather seemed to have spotted it effortlessly. “You call them bugs,” he said. He popped the leggy creature into his mouth and crunched down. “We call them snacks.”

  During this philosophical debate, a stream of pygmy women had been flowing onto the vine platform across the rope bridges, carrying dark green leaves the size of dinner trays. And, dinner trays were precisely what they were. A buffet was laid out on the floor; bright blue jawa fruit adorned one leaf, plump white maggots writhed on another. There were speckled eggs the size of grapes, dark red snails the size of oranges, and at least a dozen kinds of nuts, half of which I didn’t recognize. One leaf held what looked like raw meat, chopped and ground to a paste. Nothing looked cooked.

  “There’s no formality here. Dig in,” said Grandfather, snatching up a snail and a jawa fruit. “Since we live in trees, we don’t built fires.” He squeezed the fruit and the bright blue juice sluiced through his fingers and into the snail shell. “Fortunately, jawa juice is acidic enough that it effectively cooks most meat. Your civilized guts won’t suffer.”

  Father Ver looked aghast as Grandfather sucked the snail out of its shell, giving it a tug as the last of the meat fought to hold onto its casing. The coil of pale flesh smacked into his lips before it disappeared into his mouth. Grandfather lay back on the floor-net, looking up at the sun-dappled branches. “Eat meat while it still has life in it. Keep fruit in your belly and sun on your skin. Sleep when you are tired and drink when you are thirsty. This is all a man needs to enjoy a long life.”

  “There are elderly among the civilized as well,” said Father Ver. “Your recipe for life will not keep you alive a single day longer than the span the Divine Author has recorded for you in the book.”

  Grandfather scratched the dark green pubic hair around his gourd, seemingly unconcerned that anyone was watching. “You are free to think what you wish. I wouldn’t trade my life for the wealth of a king. I live in the eternal moment, while a civilized man worries only about tomorrow, or longs for yesterday.”

  While Grandfather and the Truthspeaker sparred, Menagerie dug into the food with gusto, not bothering with the fruits, just tearing into the raw meat directly. Reeker was more dainty, picking through the nuts and berries and less wriggly-looking insects. He carried a leaf full of food over to No-Face, who squeezed the fruits and bugs into a colorful mush, which he slurped loudly from his palm into a fold beneath his face-flap.

  The Deceiver went straight for the nastiest looking dish, a sort of chopped spider salad laced with bright green chilies. He washed it down with a freshly opened coconut, the pale milk spilling down the corners of his damaged mouth.

  “Doesn’t the spice hurt the cuts in your mouth?” Reeker asked, still keeping a close eye on the man.

  Zetetic shrugged. “I’ve learned to enjoy pain. Plus, I’ve always had a sense of adventure in my diet. In my travels, I’ve been delighted by the different attitudes regarding what one is supposed to put in one’s mouth. One man’s spoiled milk is another man’s cheese. Some men hunt with dogs, others eat them in stews. What half the world believes is true about food, the other half thinks is false. It’s left me with an open mind and a daring stomach. I’ll put anything in my mouth at least once.”

  Neither Lord Tower nor Father Ver made any move toward the dishes.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” asked Grandfather.

  “We have our own provisions,” Tower answered. “It would be a sin for me to partake in this food. Your people live in such poverty.”

  Infidel’s eyes kept flickering toward the buffet. All the earlier excitement had probably built up her appetite, but she did an admirable job of just standing at attention, her face devoid of obvious longing.

&nb
sp; “I assume you’ll see she gets fed later,” I said to Relic, who had a fistful of maggots.

  Of course, he answered, as he shoved one of the plump larvae into the shadows beneath his hood. We have all the details planned out. You need not worry for her comfort.

  Meanwhile, Grandfather had responded to Lord Tower. “Poverty? What poverty? None among us are hungry. We all have a safe place to sleep in the company of our family. There is not a single physical need we go without.”

  “You dwell in spiritual poverty, separated from the Church,” said Father Ver.

  Zetetic said, with a mouthful of spiders, “Why do you have to be such a jerk, Ver? Show a little graciousness for a fellow who’s giving us a roof to sleep under.” He glanced up at the leaves. “So to speak.”

  “I’m not bothered by his attitude,” said Grandfather, as Father Ver eyed the Deceiver with a murderous gaze. “It’s nice to be reminded of all I left behind. Which I suppose leads to the question, why are you here? You didn’t come looking for me. You’re too heavily armed for tomb raiding. Are you going after Greatshadow?”

  “Yes,” said Lord Tower. “King Brightmoon has decided to rid the world of his tyranny.”

  “I don’t think tyranny is the word you’re looking for,” said Grandfather.

  “I chose the word with precision,” said Tower. “The dragon has crushed every attempt to colonize this island. He’s shown nothing but hatred toward humanity. We must destroy him now, before he one day destroys the world.”

  Grandfather smiled softly. He said, “If he hates humanity so much, why does our tribe live in peace in his very shadow? Presumably, he could kill us at any time. He could daily scour the slopes of this island with lava. Nothing at all could grow here. It would be as dead as the Silver Isle.”

  “You know nothing of the Silver Isle, sir,” said Tower. “I’ve flown from shore to shore; there is no inch of it I have not witnessed. It’s a lovely, green land, an emerald jewel amid the vast dark sea.”