Beneath the Eye of God (The Commodore Ardcasl Space Adventures Book 1) (18 page)

A long silence followed. It was broken when the Commodore muttered, "On the other hand, I could be wrong. We may well have just met the illustrious Feathered Shield himself."

"He cursed you pretty good," Malie said.

"I'm sure he did. And I have been cursed by experts. Is he gone?"

"I don't think so, just tired. His bones have been here forever. The old men said he died here in the last battle but he never spoke to anyone until I came along."

"Why does he not die?"

"They took his skin. The invaders took his skin. He will not die until it is returned."

"But it must have been destroyed or rotted away centuries ago."

"I don't know." Malie turned back to the figure. "We used to talk a lot but I never asked him about that. He may not want to talk to me anymore," she added sadly.

"The white robe he wears appears to be made of the skins of his enemies," Elor said. "Skin such as Leahn's."

"And I think I know where his skin is," Leahn said almost inaudibly. The others turned to her. "It's on the wall in my father's study. It's always been there. I saw it when I went there in my dream. Why else would anyone save a thing like that?"

Malie turned to the Commodore, blue fire flashing in her eyes. "You could get it for me," she said slowly in a voice that was not hers.

The others drew back in surprise, then horror. "You tried to take the child's honor," the Commodore cried incredulously. "Now you take her body?"

Malie blinked and the fire was gone. "Oh dear," she gasped. "I didn't know he could do that."

***

They sat the child down against the wall, her brothers and sister anxiously around her. "It was him, wasn't it?" Alira asked. "What did it feel like?"

Malie looked up at them wide-eyed. "It was as if he was standing beside me, but inside. We were both looking out and he just said what he wanted to and then he left." She paused and thought a minute. "I knew him. It was just like when he speaks to me except there seemed to be more of him. He was awfully excited." She looked up at the Commodore. "You will get his skin back for him, won't you?"

"It must be my destiny to live a complicated life," the Commodore said sourly. "All we had left to do was copy some old books, drop Leahn off at her uncle's and go spend our money. Now we have a case of demonic possession to deal with. Why are things never simple?"

Leahn was surprised. "You were going to take me to my uncle?"

"Of course. What are friends for? I was even going to hold your coat while you sliced off his head or whatever grisly vengeance you have in mind."

Elor returned to the Commodore's side and said in a low voice, "We have examined the room thoroughly. If this was a trick, it was skillfully done. We find no wires, speakers or any kind of control devices. Our measuring device has suffered a meltdown. If this is indeed Feathered Shield, the last priest-king of the forest empire, he would have been the final repository of centuries of sacred lore concerning the summoning and management of the inner power of this world. It is not beyond credence that he became so enraged at being skinned alive that he called upon that power, concentrating it here in his physical being in a residual focus so strong that we monitored it as a hot spot on a planet which is itself, unusually strong in these emissions."

"Look at the mural on the wall," Leahn said. "It must be of the last battle between the colonists and the forest empire. And look at what's painted over the doorway where we came in."

There above the door on the wall facing the skeleton was a crude painting of a figure in a spacesuit hanging upside down from a rafter.

The Commodore laughed out loud. "For 500 years he sat here and stared at this image of his last victory—a victory won even after his death—while his enemy's body slowly turned to porridge inside the pyramid Feathered Shield built as his own tomb." He turned back to Malie who had risen unsteadily to her feet. "That was Feathered Shield's enemy we found inside the pyramid, wasn't it?"

Malie replied in her own child's voice. "His father, Bluestone Mask, chose to live in peace with the aliens. They were few in number and they did not want to live in the forest. Their weapons were very powerful and worked on principles his people did not understand. The aliens settled far away. Bluestone Mask chose to ignore them and to concentrate on building his empire based on the water that suddenly became plentiful when the ground shook and the gods opened the great water pit.

"Feathered Shield continued his father's work. He even changed his people's religion so that human sacrifice—the taking of skins—did not play so prominent a part. But the aliens remained in his mind. As the power and extent of the forest empire was growing, theirs seemed to decline. Many of their weapons no longer worked and they turned to sword and spear."

"Technological regression," Elor said. "Colonists often try to take the technology of their home planet with them. But machines, especially complicated ones, eventually break. And without the factories and foundries to keep them supplied with spare parts, they slowly become useless. It usually takes two generations."

"So their technology was falling apart just as the forest empire was reaching its peak," the Commodore said. "It must have made the colonists uneasy."

"Some of them wanted to live in peace," Malie said. "But many did not. And by then they had horses. The great beasts had never lived here before. That made their dreadful white warriors as swift as the wind. And they called down the pillar of fire from the sky. Though the warriors of the empire were far greater in number, in valor and in honor, the aliens would call down their pillar of fire and burn hundreds to death."

"Ah," said the Commodore. "The colonists decided to attack while they still had an ace in the hole—their spaceship. They didn't have the manpower so they decided to take on the forest empire while they still had the firepower."

"The white warriors fought without honor," Malie said. "They killed for the joy of it. They took skins without ceremony and trampled them in the dirt. They killed women and children. When they took the capital, Feathered Shield scattered his people throughout the forest where the pillar of fire could not see them. Then he and his nightbird warriors laid in wait along the roads, they struck at night, they crept through the treetops as quietly as cats. They struck and ran and struck again. They killed the white warriors one and two at a time.

"They even struck back into the heart of their captured city and killed the fierce captain of the aliens. His warriors dressed him in his white suit with no face so that the worlds to come would know him always as an alien. As a final insult, they laid him with ceremony in Feathered Shield's own sarcophagus.

"Their captain's death made the fury of the aliens even greater. They called down the fire from the sky again and again, driving the nightbird warriors back and back, finally to this place at the very edge of the sea.

"Here Feathered Shield would retreat no farther for he had learned the secret of the pillar of fire. There was one alien who spoke to it, who called it down to pour its death upon the people. This one alien was always in the rear of the battle with white warriors all around to protect him.

"Feathered Shield called half his warriors here to await the final battle. The rest he sent out to strike and draw the enemy here. When the aliens saw where Feathered Shield had gathered his men, they went to call down the pillar of fire. That is when he struck. He and a small group had laid in ambush. They struck through the white warriors while all his men attacked. They went straight at the alien who talked to the pillar of fire and killed him and killed his machine as well. When they saw what he had done, the white warriors rode down on Feathered Shield and trampled him. Their fury and cries were terrible to behold.

"They took Feathered Shield while he was still alive and they skinned him and while they were doing that, his nightbird warriors attacked and many more on both sides were killed. The body of Feathered Shield was saved but his skin was lost and taken away by the white warriors in their retreat. For without their pillar of fire, their valor left them. They ran away through the forest. The nightbird warriors followed and killed every one they could find and attacked the last of them in the capital and hung the alien captain's body from the rafters of Feathered Shield's death chamber.

"When it was over, the forest people conferred. They knew that aliens still lived beyond the edge of the forest. But would they now attack and did they also had the ability to draw fire from the sky? The people decided to remain as they were, scattered among the trees where the fire could not see them. They decided never to return again to their great cities. And they never did."

There was a moment of silence in the darkened chamber as Malie finished her story. Then the Commodore spoke. "And the sacred books the priests rescued from the lost city were brought here for safekeeping?"

"Yes. Feathered Shield says you may do with them what you will if only you will recover his skin. Without it he can never truly die."

"How many books are there?"

"Eleven."

"Well, I should really see them first, but I'm a pushover for a sad story. You tell Feathered Shield it's a deal. As one warrior to another, if his skin is still around, I'll find it and bring it to him."

"And since your serpent warriors have discovered it already," Malie said, "Feathered Shield will show you the alien machine that he killed." She nodded to Erol who was sitting on the floor beside the skeleton's stone bench. He reached beneath it and withdrew something. The others pressed cautiously nearer to see what it was.

A mummified hand severed at the wrist still gripped the handle of a square metallic box. A stone ax was sunk deep inside the mechanism.

The Commodore whistled. "A 500-year-old calldown box. They were operating their ship by remote control, using the fusion exhaust to fry their enemies. Without this, they couldn't bring it out of orbit. They were marooned here forever. No wonder its loss took the fight out of them."

Chapter 12

Three days later the Commodore called his aircar. The intervening time was spent examining and recording the books saved from the fall of the forest empire. Each was made from a long strip of bark fabric a foot high and up to fifteen feet long. It was covered on both sides with a white coating more like plaster than paint. Then it had been folded, accordion fashion, so that a series of pages was formed. These were painted on both sides with glyphs and pictures. Most dealt with the rituals meant to appease long-forgotten gods. Two were histories of the creation of the world, the forest and the people.

As he carefully recorded each page, Ohan found himself marveling at how much his people had created and then lost, how far they had gone along one road before they were forced to turn aside and take another. He wondered where they would have ended up if they had been left alone, where he would be now. He could not picture himself dressed in feathers, chanting to these barbaric gods. The speculation made him dizzy. He decided to accept the world as it was and hope for the best.

He was seldom alone. The children spent most of their time riding and caring for the horses the Commodore had given them but one or two were always on hand, watching gravely as he fed data from the sacred books into the twins' computer.

At school Ohan had been introduced to the wonders of machinery—electricity, computers and the rest. That is, he had been told such things existed and he shouldn't be surprised if someday he encountered some of them. He had tried to appear as sophisticated as possible when, every time the twins reached into their packs, they brought out a gadget even more amazing than the previous one. It never occurred to him to ask how they worked. It never occurred to the children not to ask how they worked. Unfortunately, they asked Ohan.

He began by repeating what Elor had told him—how to turn the computer on, how to orient the scanner and counter, how to position the material to be entered and finally, how to enter it.

The children watched silently as he demonstrated the relatively simple procedures. He showed them the readout in Universal and even pointed out where the computer had encountered a new word or phrase and had printed alternate translations in addition to the one it felt made the most sense.

His audience, in this case Alira and an older brother, nodded gravely. Then came the inevitable question. "Yes but how does it do all that? What's inside?"

Ohan was ready. "Electronics," he said importantly.

Alira showed no mercy. "What's electronics?"

"Well," Ohan began, as the realization crept over him that he was already in over his head, "there are these little bits of metal and crystal that are stuck together in such a way that the little bits of electricity go . . . uh . . . "

Alira's gray eyes measured him coolly, cutting, he knew, to the very depth of his ignorance. "I think there must be a very smart man somewhere," she announced. "This machine asks him the questions and he tells it the answers." She surveyed the computer critically. "But I don't think he is inside. Even if he were very tiny, there would be no room for his desk and his papers and things."

The logic of the child's solution impressed Ohan. He proceeded to explain radio, or at least the idea of it that he had picked up at school. One box transmitted sound waves through the air to another box. He could feel Alira's estimation of his technical knowledge rise.

"Yes," she acknowledged. "That must be how they do it." When she went out to ride, her place was taken by Kholran and a younger brother. When the question come up this time, Ohan was ready.

***

The aircar was another marvel Ohan never expected to see, let alone ride in. The age of space travel had touched his planet but lightly. His world had little of interest to the rest of the universe and so was allowed to go its way unhindered. There was a single spaceport on the far continent but it seldom had more than two or three ships touch down in a dozen seasons.

While aircars were a bit more common, there being twenty or thirty on the planet, Ohan accepted their existence without ever expecting to see one.

The Commodore's was apparently a standard model that did not please him all that much. "Damn rental," he grumbled. "The twins had to practically rebuild the thing to guarantee we wouldn't have to swim home."

It was white with a few dents and a green stripe. It had large darkened windows all around and looked big enough for half a dozen people and their luggage. The Commodore used his calldown box to guide it silently to the beach and then in under the trees.

After Erol checked the machine, the Commodore invited the children inside. They spent the rest of the day arguing over whose turn it was to sit in front. With its shiny impact-glas body and smooth plastic seats, Ohan found the car as alien an environment as he had ever experienced. The children deferred to him when he expressed an interest in sitting in front. There, like them, he caressed the wheel and stared in silent wonder at the controls.

He had accepted as obvious the fact that the Commodore and the twins were different. They had lived very different lives on worlds far away. Yet they spoke the same language, laughed at the same jokes and were driven by the same human needs as he was. They had accepted him as a comrade and he had accepted them. But sitting in this wondrous vehicle, so totally alien to anything he had ever experienced before, brought the realization of his companions' differences with sudden force. He could no more see himself in a world where this aircar was commonplace than he could see himself among the pyramids of Feathered Shield's world.

He got up and stepped out of the door into the forest—
his
forest. He walked back into it until the trees were all around and he could see nothing else. Then he walked a little farther and stopped to listen. There was the sighing of the sea wind in the treetops—not quite like home but close enough. He climbed into the branches and became a part of the forest.

Toward dusk, Leahn joined him. She climbed up silently and sat beside him. Neither spoke for a while. "How did you find me?" he finally asked.

She shrugged. "I'm a pretty good tracker, sport. I had a good teacher. And the kids told me where you'd gone. They seem to be keeping an eye on everybody. Making sure we don't steal the silverware, I suppose."

"I'd forgotten how far away the others had come from," Ohan said. "The aircar reminded me. It's hard to think about people from other worlds. I guess I climbed up here to make sure I was still a part of this one."

"The aircar reminded me of something too." Her voice sounded strained. "It reminded me of how soon we can be in the highlands. I've wanted to go there. It's the one thing that's always been in my mind but I thought I'd go there slowly and as I got closer I'd have time to think about what I was going to do, to plan it and get used to it."

"Maybe you're changing your mind."

"No," she said firmly. "I'd face him right now if he were here. It's just that I've waited so long and now it's so close. Does that make any sense?"

"I don't know. I've never hated anyone as much as you must hate your uncle."

"I've lived with this hate for so long, I know I'll be different when it's over."

"You could be dead."

"That would definitely be different."

Ohan leaned against the warm trunk. Leahn relaxed against him. "I would hate it if you were very different," he said.

"So would I, sport. So would I."

They climbed down and walked back to the others. The

Commodore had opened the vehicle's emergency food supply and was passing out samples. "You poor little swabs, raised all your lives on fresh fruit and seafood. Never to have tasted an energy packed, vitamin and mineral enriched, concentrated nutrition bar guaranteed to contain a complete and balanced portion of every nutritional substance known to science except flavor, freshness and digestibility."

The children loved them.

He sent them off to finish bedding down the horses and preparing supper, then turned to Leahn and Ohan who had entered through the other door and settled into the middle seats. "Why so glum, comrades?" he asked. "Here on the brink of a new adventure, I should think that you, my dear, would be particularly excited at the prospect of gaining your long-sought revenge."

When Leahn didn't answer, Ohan found himself saying, "Things are moving rather quickly. She's afraid she might change after she . . . "

"Change," the Commodore snorted. "Yes, indeed. Killing often changes a person. When they see how easy it can be, many people change dramatically—usually for the worse. But as for moving quickly, I do not intend to simply drop you off at the front door and let you start hacking your way in. We have other goals besides yours. We have your father's collection to examine and a skin to retrieve."

The sun had gone and the car was dark inside. He pushed a button and the ceiling began to glow. He turned his seat around and looked closely at Leahn. "I said I would take you to your uncle and I will, but we are still a team and I still call the shots. We have several things to do first. It has been my experience that there is always more than enough time for killing, but let me decide when that time has arrived." He paused. "Understood?"

Leahn nodded. "Splendid," he said. "Then I see no reason why we can't leave tomorrow. There's only one problem that I can foresee."

"He wants to go with you." It was a tiny voice from the back of the car. Ohan turned but saw no one until he peered over the back of his seat. There was Malie curled up in the corner. "He wants to go with you," she repeated.

The Commodore went around to the back and slid in beside her. "I was afraid he might." He put his arm around the child. She hesitated a moment then snuggled close to him.

"Who?" Ohan asked.

"Feathered Shield," the Commodore replied. "He's been stuck inside that crumbling skeleton for 500 years. Then, all at once, he found himself in this child. He doesn't want to give that up."

"Mostly he wants to die," Malie said. "He's very tired but the hate and sadness are so strong in him that he can't. Not until his honor is restored, along with his skin. He hides his feelings from me. He says they would be too strong for me but I can tell they're there."

"Is he with you now?"

"Yes."

"Can you make him go away?"

"He says he will leave if I ask him to."

"Do you believe him?"

"One nightbird warrior does not lie to another."

"Will he speak to us?"

"No. He says he made a mistake when he spoke through me the other day. He thinks it frightened me. He will not do it again."

"Did it frighten you?"

"Yes but that was the first time. I don't think I would be frightened if he did it again. It was just unexpected."

"Do you want to go with us?"

"No. I'd rather stay here and ride Ruddy."

"Ah yes, Rudyard Kipling."

"He prefers to be called Ruddy. But Feathered Shield says we won't be gone long and that I should see some of the world while I have the chance. He says I am too bright to spend my life in this out-of-the-way place." She laughed. "He says there are worlds to conquer."

"Remind him that you are only a child."

"He says he sometimes forgets that. He says that even as a child, his father was preparing him to be a great king."

"Let me speak frankly to you. The Commodore lifted Malie up and placed her before him on his knee. "To both of you. I do not like this arrangement. Dead kings should remain that way and not go around troubling little girls. Growing up is difficult enough without this kind of distraction. My fear is that Feathered Shield will grow to like using Malie's body and will not leave it even if we find his skin."

"Oh no," Malie said. "He wouldn't do that. He wants very much to die. I can feel that."

The Commodore regarded her thoughtfully. "Very well. You may go with us. But only so we can get him out of you as soon as possible."

Malie smiled and climbed down from his knee. "Thank you, Commodore." She almost bumped into Elor who was standing in the dark just outside the illuminated aircar. "I'll go make sure Ruddy is all right. Supper will be ready soon." She skipped off into the darkness.

The Commodore turned to Elor. "Would you care to venture an opinion?"

"The development of multiple personalities in a single troubled mind in not unknown. These alternate selves even give themselves names and evolve diverse personalities."

"You mean she may just be imagining Feathered Shield?" Leahn asked.

Elor shrugged. "A sensitive child in a lonely land, loses her parents and is taken in my a grandmother and two elderly scholars who introduce her to the lost ritual of a forgotten civilization, not to mention the skeleton of a long-dead king. It is certainly possible."