Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (32 page)

When the third bear, and then a fourth and a fifth, arrived Kwasin did not question it. Nor did he do so after all seven of the bears mentioned by Adythne had come and joined in the ritual. By this time Kwasin had lost himself in the dance and now fully believed himself possessed by the spirit of his ancestor, Klaklaku the Man-Bear. And who could have doubted it to see Kwasin thus, leading bear after bear in that erratic dance upon the forest floor! Sometimes he stopped and rose up on two legs, hands lifted up like raking claws; at other times he fell back again upon all fours, swaying back and forth and huffing and growling no differently than the great ursines that trod so closely behind him in the circling path of the dance.

How long the impromptu ritual went on, Kwasin was unsure, but at last he—and he believed the bears as well—grew tired. He knew the dance could not go on forever, and if stopping his wild motions would cause the bears to turn violently upon him, so be it. If he had to die, then at least he would exit this world directly following one of the most supremely satisfying experiences of his life—the exalting of his ancient ancestor’s soaring spirit in communion with the spirit guides of his people. If his bear cousins devoured him, Kwasin knew in the utter conviction of the moment that old Klaklaku would be there to welcome him into the afterlife.

Following the traditional means to conclude the dance, Kwasin leaped high into the air with a roar and then collapsed upon the ground and lay still. Through slitted lids he watched the bears as they attempted to imitate his closing leap—they were, of course, too heavy to jump fully off the ground as he did—and then flopped onto the forest floor in apparent exhaustion. For several minutes the ursines lay there with Kwasin. Eventually, one bear arose and sniffed one of its companions before finally swaying off at a leisurely pace into the woods. Then the other bears followed suit, one after another, until only Parbho remained lying next to Kwasin. Finally that great beast too rolled up onto his feet. He walked over to where Kwasin lay, sniffed him, and padded off toward the north upon some errand only the bear could know.

Contented in a way he had never before known, Kwasin stood up and watched the bear disappear into the woods.

* * *

The next few days were busy for Kwasin, and though he regretted leaving Adythne in the hands of the soldiers while making no attempt to free her, he knew he needed to invest some time and much patience if his plan to help the priestess and her people was to succeed. Still, if he waited too long, he would be too late.

Though he worked hard at his preparations during the day, at night he lingered outside the village walls eavesdropping on the villagers. On the first night he learned nothing of importance, but on the second he overheard two sentries discussing how their commandant, a captain named Riwaphe, intended to sacrifice Adythne to the sungod as an example to the people of Q”okwoqo. The ceremony was to occur at dawn on the morning of the second fire day of the month, in only five days.

Because of this intelligence, Kwasin was forced to speed up his preparations, working well under a timeframe he considered wise. But then, luck—and the Bear God—was on his side. What other sign did he need of the god’s favor than the bizarre congregation of the dancing bears of Q”okwoqo that had communed with him? Old Father Nakendar was looking after him. He hoped. He would need the Bear God’s help if his daring plan was to succeed.

On the morning of the month’s second cloud day—the sixth day since his arrival in the area and the day before Adythne’s scheduled execution—Kwasin set out for the nearby hot spring. His experience with the bears had struck him profoundly, and he wanted to pay his respects to the Old Father before the night of trials that lay ahead and ask the god for his blessing and for strength.

Kwasin made sure to keep a watchful eye out during his journey to the spring. Over the course of the preceding days, he had observed the officers in command at Q”okwoqo make something of a daily ritual out of hiking out to the spring and soaking in the soothing hot waters. Always did the soldiers leave the village at the point when the sun had descended approximately halfway from the zenith of Kho’s blue bowl, filing along the same forest path with a number of local women who, from their attitudes, seemed to be seeking the favor of the officers so that they might elevate their social status in the new order of things. Today Kwasin arrived at the spring in the late morning, well ahead of the soldiers’ expected visit.

He climbed the high, rocky prominence that overlooked the spring, stopping briefly at the ledge upon which rested the great boulder that sealed off the entrance to the Bear God’s cave. After examining the obstruction for a few minutes, he continued on. At the slope’s summit, the land leveled out and Kwasin walked only a short distance before coming upon a scattering of branches and dead brush. He cleared these away and examined the sacrificial opening about which Adythne had told him.

The circular opening was just over five feet in diameter and rimmed with expertly fitted blocks of white, red-veined marble. A thick bear smell came up out of the hole from the black abyss of the cave, and though Kwasin strained his eyes, he could see nothing in the darkness below. Perhaps the Bear God had at last succumbed to the very mortal afflictions of starvation and thirst. It had been at least six days since the priestess had last visited the god and fed him, and for all Kwasin knew it could have been much longer.

“I am Kwasin, brother of the Klakordeth!” he shouted down the shaft. “I have come to help your people, O Nakendar!” His own words came hollowly back at him from the enormous cavern below, but other than the echo, he heard nothing.

“Hear me, Old Father!” he cried again. “I seek your blessing in destroying the enemies of the Q”okwoqo!”

Finally, Kwasin grew tired of staring down into the murk. Concluding sadly that the cave bear must have really died, he rearranged the dead foliage over the opening and went off to look for lunch.

He ultimately found his meal in the form of a termite colony nested high in a tree. He would have preferred to roast the insects but he could not take the chance of building a fire, which might alert the nearby soldiers to his presence. But he needed his strength for what was to come, and so he had to make do fishing the insects out of their nest with a stick and eating them raw. This was not much of a concession; many Khokarsans ate their termites raw by choice.

His belly full, Kwasin climbed down from the tree and lay down in the shade of a great boulder on the rock-strewn slope overlooking the spring, where he thought to rest for but a few minutes. Soon, however, his meal made him sleepy and he drifted off into a deep slumber.

When the sound of laughter and splashing water below awakened him, his first impulse was to pull the sacred pelt of the she-bear over his head and continue sleeping. Then, remembering his whereabouts, he cursed groggily.

He rose to discover Resu’s weltering red eye had already slipped below the western mountains, the heavens staining the forest a dim crimson. Beneath him at the foot of the slope, the band of officers, their two foot soldiers, and the women who accompanied them frolicked in the warm waters, oblivious to the giant that observed them from behind a boulder.

Kwasin cursed again. His hopes to assail the village while Captain Riwaphe and his officers were absent at the spring were now dashed. But then, as the sleep-fog cleared from his mind, he remembered that the Bear God had come to him while he slept.

Or rather, Kwasin had come to the god, for in the dream he had sat before Nakendar in the darkness of his cave. All that Kwasin had been able to see of the god was the eerie glow of his terrible red eyes; the Old Father, however, had spoken to him in a series of huffing growls that, somehow, Kwasin understood. And he had told Kwasin that the sleep that had overcome him was not due to a lapse in the mortal’s determination. No, the god had cast the slumber over Kwasin that he might advise him. There was, according to the Old Father, a more effective way to keep the officers from the village, and one that would not leave the god hungering in his cave-prison.

Recalling the task with which Nakendar had charged him, Kwasin grinned widely.

There was no use in wasting time. He stepped from behind the boulder in full sight of the party below, stretched wide his arms, and let out a cavernous yawn.

Instantly, the laughter and chitchat of the frolickers ceased. The soldiers stood up in the steaming waters, their naked forms glistening redly in the fading twilight, their mouths dark circles of surprise. Then, at an order from the captain, the men scampered out of the pool and began donning their clothes and picking up their weapons.

Kwasin smiled broadly and waved down at the soldiers; then he turned about, lifted his kilt, and mooned them. He stood thus only long enough to hear the soldiers’ curses, then lost no time in ascending the slope. He did not think the men carried slings, but he was uncertain.

When he reached the summit, he waited. The soldiers would have to get much closer if the Bear God’s plan was to succeed.

He grinned when he saw that, as he had hoped, the captain led the charge up the rocky incline, with the four other officers and two infantrymen just behind him. Kwasin felt relieved to discover they carried only their swords.

Finally, the captain, red-faced and panting heavily, pulled himself up onto the summit. As the man did so, Kwasin feigned a startled expression, then turned and sprinted across the plateau. He did not, however, sprint too quickly as he did not want to get too far ahead of the man.

Kwasin looked over a shoulder and saw the captain only a couple of yards behind him, with the other soldiers in a tight-knit group directly behind their superior. Then Kwasin leaped over the scattering of branches before him, swung around, and stopped.

There was a crash as the captain fell through the fragile lattice of brushwood that covered the stone-lined sacrificial opening, then the heavy thud of a body hitting the stone floor of the cave below. The other soldiers, directly on the heels of their captain, could not stop their forward momentum. Kwasin grinned like a demon at seeing their dumbfounded faces just before they tumbled as one into the black pit. Their bodies too thumped hollowly as they made a series of rapid impacts upon the cavern floor.

He bent over the hole and shouted down at the groaning men.

“That is your punishment for sealing up Old Father Nakendar and leaving him to die! May his spirit gnaw on your shinbones for all eternity!”

Kwasin remained at the edge of the hole, listening to the continued groaning and sobbing of the men below. He felt no remorse for dooming the men to die in the cave. After what the soldiers had done to the children and to the Old Father, he only regretted that they would not suffer more.

Suddenly, from somewhere deep in the cave came a hideous, moaning scream. The hair rose stiffly on the back of Kwasin’s neck and the men below began to shout out in terror.

The bloodcurdling scream came again, now nearer to the bottom of the marble shaft. Kwasin bent over the hole, trying to penetrate the darkness, his giant frame trembling. It was not every day that one heard the scream of a god.

The men were now shrieking in utter fright. Then came the sound of slashing claws and a gut-wrenching chomping of bone, followed a few moments later by complete silence.

No, the silence was not absolute. He thought, if he strained his hearing, he could just make out a faint rasping of breath. Then he saw, caught faintly in the evening’s fading light, what appeared to be the glimmer of two large, reddish eyes looking up at him.

Kwasin backed away from the hole, his heart pounding, his body covered in a cold sweat.

Half numb with shock, he stumbled back down the slope to retrieve the sacred she-bear pelt where he had left it by the boulder. Briefly, he looked for the women who had accompanied the soldiers, but they were nowhere to be found. Doubtless they had run off into the woods after hearing the hideous cry of the Old Father.

Shaken to his core by what he had seen and heard, Kwasin could not say he blamed them.

* * *

Kwasin knew he had to move fast. The sky had already darkened and he needed to get back to his camp near the village as quickly as possible. He hoped the bears had not wandered off. If they had, his plan would fail.

As he ran through the dark woods, the preposterousness of what he hoped to do made him wonder at his sanity. But it also exhilarated him. If he was able to beat the incredible odds and succeed at his intent, then his name would forever be sung in the halls of his totem. A new ritual dance would be initiated to record his great deeds for the posterity of all Bear people. They might call it the Dance of the Imprudent Giant, and he would become as legendary as Klaklaku himself.

But more than just vanity drove Kwasin on. When the Old Father had come to him in the dream, he had told Kwasin it was time to choose sides. To stand on the side of Kho, the Mother of All, and give sustenance to the great tree from which all life sprang. Or to turn his back on the Goddess and kindle the smoldering flames that were the lies and arrogance of Resu—to stand with the sungod until his blistering gaze reduced the world-tree to nothing more than a dried and blackened husk. The Bear God had told Kwasin he must either help the people of Q”okwoqo or turn against his totem brothers and sisters and slay them. According to Old Nakendar, it was because Kwasin had for so long remained a disinterested party in the conflict between Kho and Resu that his soul so greatly feared oblivion. Kwasin’s own petty goals and desires were but nothing compared to the flowering of Great Kho’s will or the sungod’s burning desire to murder his mother and former lover, the Creator and Replenisher of all things.

And so it was that Kwasin—defiler of the temple of Kho, exile from the land by order of the Voice of Kho herself—took the side of the Great Mother in the war between the deities. He now recognized the battle for Q”okwoqo for what it was—not merely a local matter, but rather the touchstone of his destiny. Perhaps in his heart he had known this all along but his head had denied it. Was this why, since his return from the Wild Lands, his mother had plagued his dreams with visions of her death? Had she been trying to send him a message from her shadowy station in Sisisken’s dark house—to urge him to stand with the Goddess against the blasphemers or risk the extinguishing of his soul as the snake that had bitten her had struck down her own life? If the nightmares now ceased, he would know.