Zadayi Red (37 page)

Her body sagged.

His talons squeezed a final time, and his pincer tore her throat out.

He let her drop. One-Ear’s body
pflumphed
into the dust. The pack backed away, mewling. Within instants they slunk away.

Tsola’s drum punctuated his victory.

When he woke up, he needed a few moments to realize that he was back on his aerie. He gaped at the mountain world spread around him in every direction. He marveled again at the perpetual sunrise. He stood up to stretch and discovered that his hind leg didn’t hurt. He felt his neck—the feathers weren’t even ruffled.

What did you learn?
said Tsola inside his mind.

“I won,” said Zeya, something atavistic in his voice.

What did you win?

“A fight to the death.”

What did you conquer?

“Dogs that wanted to kill me.”

Maybe you’d better sleep.

“I will.”

He awoke floating in darkness.

He spoke. He heard nothing, not human voice, not bird call, not panther roar. He yelled. If he made a sound, emptiness ate it up. Yet somehow, deep inside himself, was Tsola’s drum.

Then he had an unexplainable feeling. He was trapped. He had to get out. Out! Out right now!

He swam through the air, if this place had air. Faster, furiously he swam. Except that he didn’t seem to move.

Maybe he had no way to tell. He had nothing to judge by, no places he could go toward or away from. Maybe he should swim again.

Am I a spider dangling from a long thread?
He reached gently over his head with a paw. Nothing there. He groped left and right. Nothing there. Beneath his feet. Nothing there. What was holding him in place?

He screamed in terror. And heard nothing.

Tsola’s drum massaged his mind.

Something real, where is something real?

He had a brainstorm. He reached a paw to his own throat.

The paw eased through the air and touched nothing.

He felt for his belly. He had no belly, or hindquarters, or head, or . . . He groped gently for his
do-wa
and found nothing but empty space.

He could not scream in terror. No throat to scream with. No tongue. No lips.

He slowed somehow. A realization slowed him. Dim at first, very dim. Shapeless as a mist that went on forever. Coalescing slowly, consolidating into a shape-shifting cloud.

I am a consciousness without a body. A consciousness without a world. A consciousness alone in the universe.

He assessed things.
This is a dream.
Except that it wasn’t.
It’s a dream.
Too real for a dream. He gave an order.
Whatever you are, get out of here.

He shook his head and was perched on his aerie.

He said aloud, “I told it to go away and it did.” He shook his head in amazement. Now Tsola’s drum sounded like a companion.

He made himself turn his head and take in the view all around. How spectacular the world looked from here. He laughed. Spectacular and weird and funny. What could be weirder than a world that disappeared when you told it to? What could be funnier than being a panther-bird? “Oh, world,” he said, “you’re a joke when you aren’t a terror.”

Not bad,
said Tsola in his head.

“Was it a dream?”

You tell me.

“No dream is that real.”

Right. Describe to me what’s happening to you.

“My mind is a little wobbly right now.”

Do it.

He told her about the pack of dogs, and then about the . . . He didn’t know what to call it. “Maybe the experience of absolute aloneness.”

Are these fears of yours? Long-time fears? Dark-of-the-night fears?

“It feels like they’ve always been inside me.”

So they are.

Zeya walked down a winding path, but he couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet. He felt like he was walking on fog. Four slender trees lined the path on the right side in elegant order. Each one was as tall as five men, and spaced about twenty steps apart. Grassy fields spread behind them. On the other
side of the path were tangled woods, wild with weeds, bushes, trees, the normal jumble of a forest. He didn’t care about that. He was drawn to the perfect symmetry and beauty of the trees on his right.

He walked toward them to the beat of Tsola’s drum. A man stepped out from behind the first tree. He stood at attention and as Zeya approached, cocked his spear. It was Nub Ear, the first of Inaj’s assassins. His torso was still bloody from the knife Zeya buried in him, and he had the unseeing eyes of the dead.

Zeya felt twisty-creepies crawling up and down his spine. Deliberately, he disregarded the fear and said, “You’re not real. You’re a villain from my dreams.”

Nub Ear lowered the spear and stepped back behind the tree. As Zeya passed, he could see nothing behind the tree but air.

Half-Shaved Head, though, jumped out from behind the next tree with fierce energy. His skin was loose and sagging from his watery death. As when he toppled into the pool, he held his knife ready.

Zeya said, “If you stab me, I won’t feel it.”

The sentinel beside the next tree was Knob Chin, holding a blow gun. To Zeya’s surprise, his eyes were also glazed with death. The wounds Su-Li gave him must have turned foul.

“Don’t pretend,” said Zeya.

He came to the last of the trees, and Zanda stepped out, dangling his war club and spinning it in a tight circle. His throat was still bloody, and a shard of cane as long as a human hand jutted out from it.

“My uncle,” said Zeya, “shame on you.”

Zanda disappeared.

“Tsola.”

Yes
.

“They’re my monsters.”

Think so?

“I’m creating them.”

Then do something about it.

Zeya sat on the bank of the river, occasionally dabbing his beak into the water. In the slow-drifting current he watched the perpetual sunrise, the colors waving with the gentle swells. He grinned at this absolutely incomprehensible world. He loved it.

Off to his left lay a log thicker than his leg and longer than his body. It was half hidden in weeds and covered with furry green moss. It gave the impression of being ancient, and more than ancient, a predecessor of Time itself.

Tsola’s drum spoke of time or eternity.

Off to his right lay a log that, except for minor details, was identical.

They were both slinking through the grass toward him.

The slinking was very slow. He’d been sitting here, perhaps, for the time it would take to gnaw the meat off the bones of a captured rabbit, if rabbits died in this land, which they didn’t, and if eagle-panthers ate here. The logs had moved in that time perhaps the length of Zeya’s black, furred leg. The signs were small, certain grasses smashed, the tops of tall weeds stirring.

They were water moccasins, of course. For them to show their bodies as olive-colored was only the smallest change. He wondered if they would open their mouths and show the insides, white as the most brilliant clouds. He didn’t think so. Showing their mouths was a threat. Instead they would just strike.