Robert Adams - The Death of a Legend

“My father came from the mountains to the north, along with his own father and mother, his brothers and his sisters and a few other kin. Where my kind originated, I know not, nor did my father, wise as he truly was. We had dwelt in the mountains for scores, at least, of our generations, and we Kleesahk live longer than do most men, true men.

“Before ever the first true man set foot in the mountains, Kleesahk were there. As to exactly what we Kleesahk are, I do not know that, nor did my father or his fathers. In some few ways, we are like to true men, but in many other ways, we are more akin to beasts; although our shapes are roughly manlike, our minds are much more alike to your prairiecats.”

Bili grinned and beamed, “I never knew of a prairiecat who could make me think he was a fifty-foot lizard when I looked at him; or any man, either, although it has been my honor to know and call friend both the Undying High Lord Milo and the Undying High Lady Aldora.”

Elmuh replied, “Nor, lord champion, have I ever met a true man who could project such illusions, nor can a single Kleesahk do it with a believable reality of appearance. Depending on the number of man-minds we wish to cozen, it takes at least two of my kind to cause men to see that which we wish them to see, and, as you witnessed this day, if even one of those Kleesahk participating is forcefully distracted, the illusion vanishes completely. Far easier is it to cause men to not see that which truly exists before them.”

“Not to see, Master Elmuh?” Bili beamed his bewilderment.

All at once, Bill’s unusually keen sixth sense told him that something beyond the pale of normality was being woven. Then, with a smile, Elmuh beamed, “Look about you, please, lord champion.”

Bili did… and gasped and started, despite himself, in his very real amazement. Not only had the prince and Rahksahnah and the two prairiecats suddenly disappeared, but the fire, the rude shelter, the piles of gear, everything! He sat alone, save for only the gigantic Elmuh, in a tiny forest glade. Yet a questing hand to either side told him indisputably that both Rahksahnah and Whitetip still sat beside him, and the heat beating on his face told him that the deep bed of coals still glowed in the shallow pit before him. But only for a bare second was it thus; then, as if a gust of wind had dispersed a blinding mist, all was again normal and as before.

“That, lord champion,” attested Elmuh blandly, “is not seeing that which exists. It is both simple and easy… for Kleesahk and hybrids of our kind. Right often our young do it self-taught, with no formal training of any degree or description. But I have not yet been able to teach any true man to do it. That Kleesahk talent is how, over the millennia beyond reckoning, Kleesahk have concealed themselves from those of you savage, aggressive, murderous true men who penetrated the mountains and forests and wastes we have inhabited.

“You see, lord champion, we, unlike you true men, do not take enjoyment from causing hurt and pain and death; we kill beasts only for food and men only as a last resort, to save our own lives or those of our kin and loved ones.

“Observe.” The half-Kleesahk gestured. “I wear no armor, Dor do I carry sword or axe or even dirk. And even my simple hunter’s knife is wrought of bronze, rather than of iron or steel.”

“Yes, I noticed that when your hunters went out, earlier,” Bili remarked silently. “Such of their hunting gear as was not of bronze was shod with bone or even with chipped stone. Why?”

Elmuh shook his massive, bone-crested head. “Not from any dearth of those metals, lord champion, but because for some reason that not I nor any one has ever been able to fathom—we Kleesahk experience but scant success in performing our illusions when in close proximity to aught of steel or iron, even a single knifeblade.”

“Yet,” Bili stated baldly, “that huge man—your son— whom I slew back on that plateau, just before the earthquake and the fires, rode in a full steel-plate panoply and swung the biggest steel sword I’ve ever seen.”

Elmuh sighed and beamed in a mindspeak much overlaid with grief, “Yes, poor little Buhbuh could wear and bear steel, for there was but little of the Kleesahk in him, save only for his size and certain other purely physiological features. The blood of the pure Kleesahk is become thinned. In most respects, poor Buhbuh was a man, but a truly mad man. He led that huge band of pitiless outlaw raiders for scores of years—as I have previously informed you, Kleesahk live longer lives than do you true men, and in this trait too, Buhbuh was more like to me and my father than to his true-man antecedents—and, but for him and his savage marauders, long since would there have been real peace, rather than an armed and very uneasy truce, between my lord prince and the folk to the eastward—Ahrmehnee and Moon Maidens.”

“You want peace, then, you Kleesahk and the Muhkohee… ahh, these Ganiks, was it, Master Elmuh?” This mind-spoken query came from Rahksahnah.

“I crave real peace with all my being, my lady,” Elmuh beamed forcefully and with much emotion. “So, too, does my dear lord and his royal father, King Kahl the Third. Brutish, bloodthirsty tribes press us all from north and west, you see. Within our unhappy land are renegades and large families of man-eaters—Ganiks who are become so interbred that most are half mad and some are wholly mad—more fierce and feral and deadly than the beasts whose skins they wear. The very last thing that my lord prince or any of the rest of us needs is additional enemies. Too, the Last Battle looms ever nearer and, even with you now among us, lord champion, we will need every aid we can raise up or borrow.” Rahksahnah beamed, half-questioningly. “Then, my Bili, perhaps we should send for the Ahrmehnee headmen now with us, Soormehlyuhn and…”

“No,” Bili interrupted with his own powerful mindspeak. “There is enough time for that. There is still much that I would know.

“Master Elmuh, when first we met, this morning, you spoke certain cryptic words of my having come into these mountains as the fulfillment of some ancient prophecy. You spoke then, also, of a Last Battle, and you have just done so yet again. You continue to address me as champion. Champion of what, good master? What of this prophecy and this Last Battle?” He paused, then remembered the other thing he wanted answered.

“And, too, back there at the main camp, you said something as I recall of an ‘Eyeless Wise One.’ Is he one of your kind? The chief of you Kleesahks, perhaps?”

“No, my lord champion, the Eyeless Wise One was no Teenéhdjook—which is the proper name for my father’s kind in their own, seldom-used, spoken language, ‘Kleesahk’ being their word for us hybrids. No, he was a man, a true, pure man, but very old, for a full man, perhaps ten scores of years old.

“He came into the mountains wherein my kin then dwelt some fifty years before I was born—nearly two hundred years ago, that is. He rode a small horse, with a score of other horses following him, and with him too were some dozens of those great, long-fanged cats, such as that one by your side.

“His horse had lost its footing on a narrow ledge and had slipped, falling down a steep, shaly slope and pinning beneath its weight the leg of the Eyeless Wise One. Although not really injured, the beast was terrified, and had his mind not been continually soothed by the mindspeak of the gathered cats, he would surely have struggled so violently that both he and his aged rider would have slid over the nearby edge and plunged to their deaths on the rocks far below.

‘The cats did what little they could—soothing the horse and keeping the other horses back away from the dangerous area. But with only fangs and claws, neither of which could find purchase on smooth, hard stone, there was no way that any of them could get to or succor the old man. That was when my father and his two brothers chanced upon that site of impending tragedy.