by Zach Hughes
"Moreover, we were once called the Children of the Light, for the good one, Du, sends down the power to create energy from nothing more than his own goodness, and this, too, has been stolen from us by the Devourer teachings that our own Du harms us."
If a few younger pongs looked up at the sun, as the season changed and there was warmth coming from the fiery "Du," that was, at first, the only tangible result of the teachings of the priest. Yet he was tireless, and now and again he would see, as he returned to the outlying settlements, a pong push back his hood and feel the good warmth of Du on his face. He had much ground to cover. There were nine more Farkoian cities, hundreds of thousands of pongs, and many, many weary marches through the growing warmth, the spring rains, and the days of wind and dust. A westward detour occupied weeks of the priest's time. In the mountains he found the free runners, thin and hungry after a long, cold winter, still trying to use their weak, inaccurate bows to feed themselves from the sparse animal life.
"You have seen and heard the Master," he told them sternly. "You have seen him sleek and fat and full of life as he lived off the plenty of the earth, and drank in the sun's goodness. You saw the woman, Jai, follow the Master's lead, and you see me now. Am I starving, as you are? No, because I eat of the earth's plenty. Listen to me, runners, listen. The Master is returning. Eat of the plenty. Strengthen yourself so that you can join his holy, victorious army."
"Tambol," they said, "you have exposed yourself to the sun too often, so that the deadly rays have baked away your reason. Leave us with your madness."
"I cry out truth and only the wilderness hears," Tambol said sadly, setting off toward the southeast.
After Tambol's preaching in the city of Arutan, momentous events had taken place. A winter fever had taken the High Master, the hereditary ruler, Farko. At his funeral four hundred female slaves were sacrificed, a disobedient male pong was ceremonially peeled and left screaming on a pole in front of the temple. Young Devourers found that the story was true, that the flesh of a pong, when peeled, was so soft that a straw, thrown just so, would embed itself. The feast was generous. Four hundred female bodies made much meat, and females were tenderer than males. Moreover, using the females as sacrifice helped in two ways to ease the population pressure created by the pongs, who, it was generally known, spent all their nights in breeding activity.
A Devourer, who had stolen, was sacrificed by the High Priest himself, and choice cuts were delivered to the table of the new ruler, Elnice of Arutan. She ate in company with her strong right arm, Captain Hata. As he gnawed a rib bone, Hata, his mind actually on the body of his ruler, a body that was beyond description for its sweetness, talked idly.
"When they peeled the pong today it was rather amusing."
"I can't stand the stench," Elnice said.
As the priests took the first strip of hide he yelled at them defiantly. He said, 'You kill only my earthly body, for I will join the Master in paradise.'
Then, with the second strip, he yelled, "
" 'The Master has come, and he will return to avenge me.' " Elnice was savoring the soft, sweet flesh from the dead devourer's bud. She chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "The Master has come?"
"The prattlings of a dying pong."
"What else did he say, as they began to really get down to it?"
"He started screaming in pain, of course, and between screams he begged for a quick death, promising to tell all about the Master, and how he was going to give freedom to all pongs."
"In going over the law and order reports last night," Elnice said, "I noticed that more than twenty pongs have had to be lashed for exposing parts of their bodies to the sun, and that only in the last few days."
"Indeed?" Hata asked, around a mouthful of solid rib muscle.
"It's probably coincidence," the new ruler said. "Peel a few at random and see what they say."
"Shall I save their buds for you, High Master?" She laughed. "It is a rich diet. A few. But when it comes to buds, I prefer to pick and choose and take them internally in another manner. If you have finished your duties, come to me early tonight."
"With the greatest of pleasure, my ruler," Hata said.
BOOK TWO
Chapter One
Duwan struggled through deep snow, his arms laden with choice, tender needles from tall brothers. He had tired of dried foods, and had ventured into the dim sun of the short, cold, winter day to gather greens. He noted, as he neared the cave, that Jai, too, had ventured out, and he was concerned until he saw that there were two sets of her tracks, the second leading back to the cave. He entered, placed the tender green needles on a rock ledge where the food was stored, and then stood in puzzlement watching Jai using freshly gathered boughs to prepare a bed on the opposite side of the fire from the bed they shared.
"Tonight, and for some nights to come, I will sleep here," she said matter-of-factly, as she patted the boughs into place.
"I think we will both be cold," he said, still not understanding.
"It is necessary," she said.
"Perhaps you will find time, since much of the winter is ahead of us, to explain why it is necessary."
She turned to face him and laughed. Her full face, in laughter, was a thing of great beauty to him. He remembered her as he'd first seen her, thin to starvation, hair unhealthy and lank. She looked the proper Drinker female now, full and fat, even on winter fodder, and the thought of not having his arms around her at night was painful to him.
"You really don't know?" she asked.
"I am but a simple male."
She opened her outer garment, pulled up the undersmock. He gasped. Her bud point had bloomed overnight. The fleshy petals had swollen and colored so that that most intimate part of her flared, gleaming in hues of the rainbow.
"Hold," he said, as she started to cover herself. He had never seen a female in full bloom, and the wonder of it awed him. "Come to me." She walked toward him, her eyes downcast. "We have a long journey ahead," she said, "and although I would be honored to bear your young I will not burden you in your journey with a female with a fat stomach and, perhaps before we arrive, a new young."
He knelt, held back her clothing. From her flowering came a perfume that made him dizzy. He felt his own body began to change, felt his heart beat faster, and felt a swelling beginning far inside him.
"Beautiful, so beautiful," he whispered.
"The air is cold, even with the fire," she said, but she was smiling.
"Lie with me, let me see this wonder," he said, and she went with him to the bed, lay down, allowed him to arrange her clothing until she was fully exposed. He stared for a long time, unable to get his fill of the beauty of that flower of femininity.
"Stop," she whispered weakly, "or you will color, too, and then—"
"I think I color already," he said, pulling at his garments. It was true; he was pink, and the petals were expanding, and his bud was exposed, and even as they both watched, and Jai giggled delightedly, the color reddened to a flame and his breath was short and quick.
"I am going to run to the other side of the cave," she said, pulling away,
"and I'd suggest that you go roll in the snow." She smiled wistfully. "Unless you want me to bear your seed, Duwan?"
"It would be my honor," he whispered, and, almost, he was ready to graft with her and take the consequences. However, good sense prevailed. The journey ahead was long and hard. Only he knew just how hard. He would not, under any circumstances, weaken her with the extra weight of a growing seed. He covered her with a sigh and hid himself, but would not let her go. "You will not sleep across the fire. We will sleep here, but you will sleep with your back to me."
"As you will," she said.
It was by far the most difficult thing he'd ever done, keeping himself from entering that flower of rainbow hues, that perfume-scented orifice to bliss. But he held her and talked to her. He tortured himself by uncovering her during the short days, when the dim light of Du helped illuminate th
e cave, and even as his eyes and nose loved her, he talked, and she talked, and told him of her young days in the pongpens, and how a master had forced her when she was still unopened, and how, after that, until she became gaunt and thin as she grew, more than one of the masters used her. And of the pain. And as she spoke he clenched his fists and hated.
"And of our kind?" he asked. "Have there been many?" She clung to him. "Not many. Nights are long and cold in the pens. We sleep together for warmth, and it happens sometimes."
"You've never been fertilized," he stated, hoping for the answer he wanted, wanting not to think of her carrying another's seed.
"No, the masters who owned me did not want young, and I would fight pongs when I was flowering."
"If, someday, you could grow my seed—"
"I want that."
He was moodily silent, and guilty, for his thoughts went to Alning, for whom he had spoken, conditionally, if he returned within two cycles of the time of long light. He would. Their journey would begin with the first warm days and he would be in the valley before Du retreated to the south again.
"I hate it when you leave me like this," Jai said.
"Leave you?"
"You are far away in your thoughts."
"I admit it."
"You were thinking of her, of the female you left behind."
"True, Jai. That is true. It troubles me. I am a mere male and although I have erred here in this land of the enemy, I like to think that I am an honorable male. Yet I don't feel that it is wrong to graft with you. How is that? And how is it that I can love two females?"
She cupped his face between her hands and kissed him. "It is not love you feel for me, but the love of pleasure, and that is good, and natural, at least in the world as we know it. In an ideal time, perhaps, the code your people follow is good. But pong females are forced, quite young, and used without reservation by any master who desires it, and the pleasure we get with other pongs is the only pleasure in our lives. How can you love two? I have loved not many, but several, and yet I chose no mate, lest I love too deeply and he be taken from me by the Devourers, sold or traded away. The only love you have is the love for your Alning. Don't be concerned. When we arrive in your valley I will be your loyal slave, nothing more." He did not see, in the dark, that tears were wetting her cheeks. "I will always count myself blessed that I have had you for this little time, and if, later, you choose to give me a seed that I may nourish it and grow it and love it, and raise it in the freedom that you will give to all our people, then I will thank that Du of yours, and all the other dus."
"There is only one Du," Duwan said.
"As you will. I will thank him, and demand nothing more." In his desperation, but with good sense still overcoming nature's strongest urge, the urge to graft when two Drinkers colored together, he found that the perfume of her flower tasted like nectar and that his mouth gave her exquisite pleasure, and then the coloration was gone and she was his.
Drinker does not live by love alone, and in the long months remaining he taught her everything he knew about Drinker history, and she taught him the language of the Devourers, and then the snow began to melt and they marched northward, sometimes sinking up to their knees in mud, swimming cold, swollen rivers, finding, as they slept in whispering groves, that Jai was now more sensitive to the whisperings.
One day they encountered two of the Devourers, males, and, being challenged, Duwan killed both with ease. They took fresh clothing and Jai took weapons, a longsword and a shortsword.
"Teach me," she said, brandishing the weapons rather dangerously near Duwan's head.
He laughed and said, "First lesson, don't decapitate your teacher." She insisted, and in the light of campfires he taught her the basic strokes and thrusts. She was good with the shortsword, her left hand being quite nimble, but rather weak with the longsword. However, as the long trek continued, as they passed out of the land of the tall brothers into the marshy, grassy, seemingly endless tundra where flowers brightened the dull landscape as the strength of Du moved northward, following them, her right arm began to develop muscle so that she could truly swing the longsword. She was now dressed in male clothing, taken from the dead Enemy, and he called her his warrior maiden.
The time of the long light had come when Duwan finally saw the smokes of the land of fires in the distance, and it was passing as he led a frightened Jai through the seemingly deadly fields of molten rock. He was eager now, and he set a pace that left them both exhausted at the end of the long days. Ahead were the barrens. He began to recognize landmarks, and, after an extremely long and tiring march, saw the rock formations that told him the valley was but a day's march ahead.
He slept fitfully. If Jai noticed that he seemed bemused and distant she did not remark on it, nor did she try for closeness as he slept on his back, not touching her.
Chapter Two
Belran the Leader had always taken his role seriously, but since Duwan had departed he had intensified the training of the young warriors to the point where no Drinker of fighting age was without bruises. Belran had awaited the coming of the second period of long light eagerly, and, as the beautiful time came, and lengthened, he found occasion often to go to the lower end of the valley, climb the narrow vent, and gaze out over the barrens.
It was pleasant to be alone for a change, away from the respectful but exuberant, young, would-be warriors. He stood on a high, rounded boulder and looked away across the barren landscape to the south. Du was growing weaker, sinking ever lower in the sky, and soon the long darkness would begin and the Drinkers would accept the limitations put upon their activities by the long winter, made bearable only by the many hot, flowing springs that warmed the valley with their steams. The think vines would be directed to close in, to make the houses airtight with their closely locked bodies and cold-resistant life organs, and during that long darkness a few new ones would be sprouted to be entrusted to the good earth in the steam-filled young houses.
There was no sign of movement within his eyesight. Du's dimming light gave the bare stones and pockets of sterile sand a melancholy aspect, and he turned away sadly. He'd been fond of Duwan, who had been one of the most promising young warriors he'd ever taught, but it was not only the thought of Duwan being dead that made him sad. With Duwan died hope, even that weak, reluctantly rekindled hope that had come when, at last, one of the Drinkers traveled to the south. He thought of going south himself. Perhaps it had been too much to expect that a youth with only one arm should be able to overcome the vast distances and the unknown dangers and return.
Soon the long darkness would end all hope, and then—
He was not willing to face the people feeling as he did. He felt a sense of guilt as he walked into the valley, chose a spot near a spring where Du touched the hungry earth and lay down, exposing his chest to the sun. He felt warm and languorous with Du feeding him, and his eyes closed. He awoke with a jerk, his ears searching for the sound that had awakened him. His sword seemed to materialize in his hand as he leaped to his feet to face the ragged, bundled apparition that stood before him, longsword pointed at his belly.
"Greetings, Belran," the apparition said, "I have come to have a rematch of the test."
"Duwan?" The Leader peered into the darkness under the stranger's hood, saw the gleam of orange eyes, let his eyes fall to the newcomer's left side to see, to his disappointment, only emptiness.
Duwan pushed back his hood, smiling broadly. "Well, Leader, may I have my test?"
Belran felt like weeping. So the legend of renewal was false. If that part of the old tales was false, how could any of it be true?
"The longsword is no match for two," Belran said.
"Then we will make the odds even," Duwan said, sweeping his shortsword out from behind his back.
Belran's eyes went wide and he whooped. He dropped his own sword heedlessly—and this action told Duwan more than anything else that Belran was pleased to see him—and slipped between Duwan's swords to embr
ace him. Duwan was laughing.
"Did you meet the Enemy?" Belran asked, pushing himself out of the twining of arms.
"I have met him," Duwan said. "The challenge is great, but the opportunities are greater."
"And does Du shine all year long? Are there many brothers? Is the Enemy strong? How does he fight?"
"Hold," Duwan laughed. "I have much to tell, and I don't want to have to tell it many times."
"You are right," Belran said, his hands feeling the hard muscles in Duwan's left arm. "Come, we must spread this news rapidly. We will have a gathering before Du slips below the horizon to the south."
"My father and mother?" Duwan asked.
"Well," Belran said. "Your grandmother hardens, but is also well."
"And the young one called Alning?"
Belran turned his face away. "She blossoms, and is well," he said. It was at that moment that Jai chose to emerge from behind boulders and Belran's hand went to his sword.
"This is Jai, Drinker, once a slave to the enemy," Duwan said. "She, too, has much information to impart."
They spread the news through the villages as they walked the length of the valley. A growing entourage shouted, laughed, sang behind them. Minstrels flanked the moving mass of people, adding new verses of triumph to the Song of Duwan, for it had become a popular story since Duwan's leaving.
Duwan had known pain, the fear of death, wonder, sadness, the joy of grafting, but the emotions that came to him when he entwined arms with his father and then clasped his mother and the hard, old shell of his grandmother were the most powerful emotions of his young life. He was weeping shamelessly. Even his father's eyes were moist, and tears appeared, clear as dew, on his father's age-coloring cheeks. His mother and his grandmother swept Jai away, leaving Duwan to accept the admiration and the questions of the growing number of warriors. The village square was soon filled, and still they came, from all parts of the valley. Now and then Duwan had a chance to look around, and he had not yet caught sight of the face that he wanted most to see. When the last of the elders from neighboring villages were seated, forming a circle around Duwan and his father, with warriors massed behind the elders, Duwan rose and began his story. He told it quickly and simply, neither emphasizing nor playing down the dangers of the long trek to the south. He presented the Enemy as he had seen him, a potentially dangerous force grown weak with overconfidence and wealth. He spoke of the Enemy's evil, of death and murder and the eating of young, and hardened warriors shuddered and muttered. When he was finished with his story he paused, looked around, caught the eye of Belran the Leader.
