Sundrinker

by Zach Hughes

  It puzzled her. She knelt, examined the points where his legs disappeared into the moist earth, drew on her courage to put her hands on his small arm to feel warmth and smoothness, looked again at his face. A shocking thought came to her, a thought out of hopelessness, out of whispered tales in the stink and noise of the pongpens.

  "Master?" she whispered.

  He will come from the earth, from the deep, rich, sweet depths of the earth, and he will be mighty, and in his strength and wisdom he will teach us, and deliver us.

  She had, until that moment, never believed the hopeless, superstitious mutterings of the lost. Now she sat on her haunches, ragged garment hiked up onto her thin but still muscular thighs and pondered this new thing, this— being—who seemed to be coming from the earth, growing as the trees, the grass, the shrubs, the weeds, the flowers grew.

  "Master?" she repeated, and then, with a sigh, lay back to let the sun strike her full in the face. There was something about the sun. In her days of freedom she had had little food. It was past time for the berry fruits, and the nut fruits were still tiny, green buds, and she had resorted to animalism, eating the spongy mosses along the streams. Even that was forbidden. And yet, in spite of the emptiness of her stomach, she did not always hunger, and seemed to gain strength from the sun, or was it that she was merely still euphoric at being away from the pongpens, from the lash, and the endless drudgery?

  She slept. She slept through the evening and the formation of dew that glistened on her skin and tattered garments, woke only once to see him there, towering over her, to hear the snick-snick of small tiny things grazing on the sweet, rich, new grass, to see overhead the lights of the sky singing down upon her.

  With the morning she could not bring herself to leave him. She went down the slope to the valley and washed herself and drank deeply and nibbled on spongy moss, wondering why—since she'd been eating it for a long time without ill effect—why the Devourers so expressly forbade its intake, along with most growing things.

  She whiled away most of the morning playing in the cool waters of the stream, soaking her hair, letting it dry in the sun, rinsing her ragged garment, then, in the pleasant heat of midday, she climbed the slope again and he was as before. She knew that she should be moving on. They would be after her. They punished escape with the most painful of deaths, and, to keep order in the pongpens, they spared no efforts to return an escaped pong. Yet she'd been moving through these low, forested ridges for so many days she'd lost count and there had been no sign of pursuit. She felt an urgent need to know about him.

  As three more days passed, and she established a routine of going to the stream, basking in the sun, wandering the near areas, she thought she saw a decided growth in that small arm. To prove it, she tied a fragile vine tightly around the forearm and when, in just one day, it was broken and fell to the grass, she knew that a miracle was happening before her eyes and she fell to her knees, faced the northwest, the direction of the storms, and prayed to Ahtol, the du who made the lightning. She had chosen Ahtol as her personal du—for all dus were worthy—because he was, at least, visible and loud in his flashings and thunderings, even if he, like all dus, seemed utterly unconcerned with the plight of a mere pong. Next day, as she lay on her stomach drinking from the cool waters of the creek, she heard a sound that caused her to leap to her feet and look around wildly. When the sound was repeated, from a point closer to her, she did not hesitate. She ran, heedless of the pain in her left foot, a pain that grew from day to day, a pain that made the swollen, discolored foot feel as large as the rest of her body. She leaped, caught the branches of a tree, lifted herself and, tearing her already ragged garment, climbed high. The animal ambled out from dense growth to pause and sniff the air. It lumbered to the water, drank, tensed, catching her scent, cast around for a moment and then moved with frightening speed, head low, to stand below her. It was huge, standing one-and-a-half times taller than she when it reared, scratched the bole of the tree with long claws and opened its huge mouth to show discolored, deadly, sharp teeth. She could smell the feral scent of its breath as it roared up at her.

  The animal was death. Omnivorous, savage, so powerful that the Devourers hunted it in groups, with the strongest of bows and iron-tipped arrows. But she was safe in the tree, although, for a moment, she considered climbing even higher.

  After a long, long time, the animal went away. It disappeared downstream. She waited while the sun climbed to midday and began its descent before she climbed down and, all senses alert, scurried up the slope. He was there, unchanged. She did not like the idea of a farl being so near. If the omnivore decided to hunt the slope, if it came to the clearing, he would make a pleasant snack for the beast, and there would be no place for her to hide. She began to look around. The nearest climbable tree was too far way. However, there was a small cleft in the rocks just below the clearing, a narrow opening that was too small to admit the huge farl, but large enough for her to jam herself into and be out of the animal's reach. She tested it for size and discovered Duwan's weapons, wrapped carefully in his winter clothing. Musingly she tested the swords. They were of fine metal. She knew a bit about weapons, because her father had been a weapons maker pong before his death. The longsword was heavy. She could heft it, but wielding it was too much for her thin arms. She took the shortsword, buckled it to her small waist, and drew it, swung it. She had no illusions that she could kill a farl with a shortsword, but, if caught in the open, she could at least draw a bit of the beast's blood before dying. She took both weapons with her when she walked back to stand musingly before him. "If you would only awaken," she said. "Your arms are strong and powerful." She touched them, one by one. The left arm was as large as the right now. "Wake up," she whispered. "Wake up." She sat before him, longsword and shortsword at her side. She started from near sleep, for there was a movement, and for a moment she couldn't place it. She looked around, ready to flee for the cleft in the rocks. The movement came again and she caught it out of the corner of her eye. He was moving his left arm, flexing his fist. Muscles rippled as the arm lifted, lowered, lifted, flexed.

  Eyes wide, more healthily purple than they'd been when she first encountered him, she backed away. The arm continued to flex and move, as if exercising, for the rest of the day, although his eyes did not open. She slept restlessly, for he continued to move. With the morning sun, a glory of a sunrise, golden red and bursting over the hills to the east, she examined him closely. The arm was still.

  The farl came shortly after sunrise, came silently at first, so that when it gave its chilling roar and charged it was almost at the edge of the clearing. She leaped to her feet, shortsword in hand, and, taking one despairing look at him, helpless, she chose her own life and ran. The movement attracted the animal and it moved heavily but with speed to close on her while the rock cleft was still beyond her reach. She smelled its fetid, panting breath, whirled, sword high, and made one powerful sweeping slash that laid open the farl's furry cheek and brought a scream of anger and pain before its weight thrust into her, sending her flying to land heavily, the animal leaping to stand over her, stinking maw dripping saliva mixed with blood into her face. She screamed.

  Throughout the night Duwan's dreams had been more vivid. Those he saw were nearer. He dreamed that he was back in the valley in the time of the long light, lounging in the light of Du, Alning by his side, a sweet, summery breeze blowing in his face. Overhead were the lights of the sky, and that puzzled him, for when Du came the dim distant lights disappeared, but they were there and he was filled with a sense of well-being, a wholeness. He could use his left hand. He plucked at Alning's delicately colored fronds teasingly with two thumbs and a finger. Du rose in blessed warmth. He needed to see. He was sleeping, and he couldn't open his eyes, and he needed to see, to praise Du. He felt the strength in his arms, flexed them. His feet were a part of him, but oddly distant. He tried to move and smelled the freshness of good earth as if he were in the young house again. He rested, felt t
he golden rays of Du on him, feasted, drank, felt himself bursting with nutrition. One eye cracked, and light dazzled him and he saw Alning, but changed, thinner—no, not Alning. There was a dazed, warm contentment in him. He took his time in opening the other eye. His hair was so long, falling in front of his eyes. He lifted his left hand and a surge of joy elated him, for he had fingers to push the hair back from his eyes.

  Movement came suddenly. The female—not Alning—on her feet, running, a strange roaring, a feral sound, dark, flashing mass. He heard the female scream and saw her turn to face the thing, a thing unlike anything he'd ever seen, a thing out of legend, one of the great creatures of the past, of the Land of Many Brothers.

  His right foot came free with a snapping and cracking and a sucking sound. Then his left. The female was fighting the animal, taking a rather admirable slash at it with a shortsword, and his longsword was at his feet. He jerked his left foot out and the female went down and screamed once more, the sound quickly drowned out by the angry roar of the wounded animal. He felt his tendrils trying to withdraw, but could not give them time, ran on tendril covered feet, longsword in hand. The animal slapped at the fallen female with one paw and great, bloody welts appeared on her bare shoulder. Duwan yelled warning. He had never taken life, but in that moment when there was no time for decision he knew his duty, for the life of a Drinker was more precious than the life of an animal. In this moment requiring action his training took over, training so well drilled into him by Belran the Leader that it was instinctive. He knew nothing about the anatomy of the animal, knew of it only from legend—and this was one more instance where it was being proven to him that the tales of the old ones had not been fabricated. He raised the heavy longsword and, positioned himself slightly behind the huge beast's head, a head that was lowering, mouth wide, teeth dripping, to engulf the head of the female. He struck, felt the blade hit bone, heard a loud snapping sound. The beast fell heavily directly atop the female, its spinal column severed at the neck. Frantic movement, uncoordinated, did some damage to the female underneath, leaving claw marks on her exposed legs.

  Glorying in his strength, in his wholeness, glancing in awe at his left arm, complete once again, Duwan had to exert all his strength to push the animal off the female. She was alive, breathing, but she was unconscious. Still a bit dazed, Duwan looked around, remembered the stream at the foot of the slope, lifted the female. She was quite light, all skin and bones. He took only an instant to wonder why she was starving in a land of plenty.

  Her clothing had been further damaged by the attack of the animal, and clung to her by shreds. To determine the extent of her injuries, Duwan removed the garment. She lay on moss at the brink of the stream. He cleansed her wounds. They would be painful, but not fatal. The worst claw gashes were on her shoulder. Her skin was pale, not as rich and smooth as his own, or as that of Alning. She was thin. Her bud point was enlarged, and, although he had never seen such—drinker females who had grafted were modest—he knew that she had performed, with someone, that act of which he had dreamed often of performing with Alning.

  He had finished cleansing the shallower wounds on her legs when he noticed her left foot. It was discolored, festering, inflamed, quite nasty looking, an old wound. He examined it, saw that it needed lancing, used the point of his knife and narrowly escaped having the accumulated putrescence jet into his face. He squeezed out the rest of the bad juices and saw the black tip of the splinter, cut away dying flesh, exposed the soggy wood, drew it forth and it was followed by bright, fresh, healthy blood. He closed the wound with a pulped mixture of two tissues from fixed brothers growing along the stream, applied the same healing mixture to her other wounds, and sat down to wait. Her swollen, exposed bud point held a certain fascination for him, so he covered it with her torn garment.

  She awakened with a start, jerked her head upward, moaned and fell back to be comatose for a few minutes longer. The next time she opened her eyes Duwan said, "Be at rest."

  Her eyes, he saw, were purple, like an evening sky before a storm. They examined him, wide, searching.

  "Master?" she whispered.

  "You are not hurt badly," he said. "I have treated your wounds." She raised herself on one elbow, groaned as her injured shoulder pulled, tossed aside her garment casually and examined herself.

  "The farl?" she asked.

  "Farl? The animal that attacked you? It is dead."

  "Good," she said. "Now we will have real food." Shocked, Duwan was speechless.

  "The haunches are best," she said, trying to sit up. "There will be so much of it that we won't be able to eat it all before it spoils, but, ah—"

  "You would eat flesh?" Duwan asked.

  She looked at him. "Who are you?"

  "I am Duwan the Drinker."

  "An odd name."

  "And you? You are Drinker."

  She looked puzzled. "I am Jai."

  "You are Drinker," he said, for as he had worked on her injured foot he had seen the small pores from which would grow the tendrils, should she have need to return to the earth.

  "I don't know what you mean," she said. "Until I ran away I was pong in the city of Arutan."

  Duwan shook his head. She spoke as a Drinker, but her words were, occasionally, misshaped, slightly askew, and he did not know the words pong, and Arutan.

  "I have been starving," she said. "Please, please, cut a great slice of meat from the haunch of the farl. As hungry as I am I can almost eat it raw."

  Duwan reached for a life organ on a particularly succulent fixed brother, breaking it away carefully. "If you are hungry, here is food," he said.

  Her eyes went wide. "It is forbidden."

  He took a nibble of the leaf, thrust the rest toward her mouth.

  "Must I, Master?" she asked.

  "Eat," he said. "You will need your strength to heal your wounds." She closed her eyes, swallowed, took the leaf and began to chew it. Her eyes opened. "Good," she said, reaching for the fixed brother, which was quite near her, tearing away several leaves.

  "No, no," Duwan said. "Gently, and carefully." She would have stripped the fixed brother had he not restrained her, gathering more for her from other fixed brothers, taking only a small portion of their life, thanking each as he did.

  "At least I will die with a full stomach," Jai said, as she munched.

  "I think," Duwan said, "that we have much to learn from each other. When you are rested, we will talk."

  Chapter Six

  It soon became apparent to Duwan that the female, Jai, was not the most articulate of Drinkers, that, indeed, her ignorance was astounding. Nor was he the most experienced of interrogators. His curiosity was great, but satisfying it was complicated by Jai's tendency to throw in words with which he was not familiar, words that did not have the sound of the only language Duwan had ever heard.

  "Slowly, slowly," he said. "You speak of pong. What is or are pong?"

  "I am pong."

  "You are not Drinker, female?"

  "I know not this word, Drinker."

  "I am Drinker. All are Drinker."

  "You have the basic form of pong, but more beautiful," she said. "Yet you could pass for Devourer."

  "Again," he said, "I know not that word." Unless, he thought, it also meant Enemy. "Are the Devourers the Enemy?"

  "Enemy?" She mused. "Does that mean one who is against you?"

  "One who kills, who takes."

  "They kill," she said, "so I suppose they are enemy." Duwan sighed and looked up at the sky. "Long, long ago this Land of Many Brothers was the home of the Drinkers. The Enemy came from the south. You cannot be of the Enemy, for you are Drinker." She looked puzzled. Irritated, he lifted her good foot and pointed to an area of many small pores. "This shows that you are Drinker," he almost shouted. "Do these Devourers have such pores on the bottoms of their feet?"

  "I have never had occasion to examine feet," she said. Duwan reached for a tasty life organ from a nearby brother. Jai's eyes followed the
movement of his hand. He sighed, plucked another life organ, handed it to her.

  "You act as if the weeds are alive," she said.

  "Alive? Of course they are alive."

  "But not as we are alive, surely."

  "All life is a oneness."

  She looked away, moved uneasily.

  "That troubles you?"

  "Master," she said, "I cannot think in such lofty terms. I see myself, and then I see a weed."

  "But this small, fixed brother," he touched a life organ gently, "feels, drinks the sun, and it can die."

  She shrugged. "I am trying to understand."

  "Both you and I and this small brother are of the earth and for the earth."

  "At any rate," she said, "I am your pong."

  "Just what does a pong do?" he asked.

  "We work for the Devourers."

  "Not for yourself, not for the group?"

  "We are allowed to grow enough food to keep us alive, that is all we do for ourselves."

  "To the north I saw ones who looked Drinker beating others who also looked Drinker with a lash," he said. "What way is that?"

  "The way of Devourer and pong."

  "Have you been beaten?"

  "Not often," she said. "No more than three times. Once I was beaten unjustly, for something I didn't do."

  He frowned. "Are you implying that it was just the other two times you were beaten?"

  "I had erred," she said calmly, without resentment.

  "The Devourers drive pongs to do their work for them, beat them. Why don't these pongs simply rise up and slay the Devourers?" She laughed. "Impossible."

  "Are there so many more Devourers than pongs?"

  She looked puzzled. "No. No. We are many, but— Well, you simply don't understand. They are—mighty. They are—" She took a deep breath. "It is impossible."

  "Are the Devourers immortal, cannot they be killed?"