Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

Donovan did so, adding, “And D.Z. it would not be a good idea to let Blankets and Beads come between that object and the mesa.” He signed off and tucked the comm. back in his breast pocket.

Méarana, watching him, said, “How did you hide your comm. from the Harps?”

The Fudir grinned with Donovan’s lips. “There’s always one place you can stick things where most folks won’t look.”

The path to the top of the mesa was steep. Bavyo assured them that there were no turnoffs to lead them astray. He then wished them good fortune and turned to the main trail. Méarana cried with astonishment. “Wait!”

But Chain said through Watershanks, “He walks his own path. The Oorah trail is not his trail.”

Billy Chins grunted. “Some guide.”

“I will go with Bavyo,” Chain announced. “He needs a woman to walk beside him, and how the barbarians used Skins-rabbits will not matter to him.” She, too, turned her feet to the main trail, speaking a few words with Watershanks as she passed.

The others gathered round. Teodorq watched the two Emrikii depart. “That can’t be good.”

“Watershanks,” said Méarana, “what did she tell you?”

“She assured me that the Oorah consider a guest as their most precious treasure.”

“Fine,” said Paulie, “but without we have an interpreter, what can they tell us?”

Donovan stood to the side with a thoughtful frown, running his fingers across his scars. “Oorah,” Méarana heard him say. “The people of the village? Do you think it could be, or is it just a coincidence?”

The way was steep, though unlike the Longfoot trail, there was no point at which they had to resort to toe- and handholds. But the air was thin and cold, and there was trouble catching one’s breath. Coming to a primordial lava flow, the trail passed through a slot cut through the rock and fashioned anciently into stairs. In the rock were carved the runes:

Donovan stopped and ran his fingers over them, feeling out the shape of the figures. “Kapartār,” he said, as if to himself. “Could that be ‘guhbahdāw’?” He stood, staring and silent.

“I suppose it could be,” said Teodorq. “But for my eyes it could be ‘For a good time, summon Tsuzi Elkhorn.’” Paulie laughed with him.

Méarana said, “Donovan, what does guhbahdāw mean?”

“Hmm?” The scarred man turned from his contemplation of the carving. “Oh. It means ‘beware.’”

Teodorq looke at Paulie. “That can’t be good.”

Paulie said, “Stop saying that.” And the mountaineer made a sign with his left hand to avert the evil.

“Pedant talks about phoneme shifts. A ‘bh’—or ‘v’—tends to become a ‘b,’ for example; and a ‘b’ becomes a ‘p.’ But sometimes people pick up phonemes from neighboring folk and ‘b’ may become ‘bh’ again. This looks to me like the old Tantamiž that we saw in Madéen O’ Loons, or on the old captain’s logs that Greystroke stole from the Harpaloon temple.”

“I don’t mean that,” said Méarana. “I mean, what are we supposed to be wary of?”

“Life.”

“We needed a sign to tell us that?”

Méarana started into the cut, but Teodorq suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders, lifted her up, and set her down behind him. “I think,” he said, “that this is what yuh hired me for, babe. Paulie, you take rearguard. Donovan, Billy, in the middle with the scholar and the lady.”

“I can handle myself,” Méarana told him.

“Yeah? That’s what the late Tsuzi Elkhorn said to me at Whisker Bluff. But she was only half-right, and it was a whole fight. So, shut up, babe. Without yuh, there’d be nobody to sing my story. I mean, yer the reason we’re here an’ not somewhere else. My head would be decorating a spike outside Josang prison, and yer old man would be a drunk in a Jehovah bar. And Debly, here, would be playing with himself and swabbing people’s cheeks instead of being on this here quest where his name might be remembered for something that matters.”

Sofwari began to protest, but Teodorq had already started up the cut. Donovan paused before following him. “I don’t know,” he said with a grin. “The Bar on Jehovah might have been the better choice.”

Méarana pushed him along. “Move along, old man. Mount your head on a spike or mount it on a bottle of uiscebaugh, you’re embalmed either way.”

The passage took them up onto the lip of a wind-whipped parapet. Emerging, they saw that the rim of the mesa was a ridge that encircled a great barren bowl of a valley. It was at least a thousand double-paces from lip to lip. The village of the Oorah was strung around this bowl like a wreath woven of greens and fir branches. Fields were set in terraces in the side of the bowl. Below them, huts nestled. Inward of the huts was barren rock: no vegetation grew, no trees, no bushes.

“Like the caldera of a volcano,” said Sofwari as they made their way around the ledge.

“Except here,” Méarana said, “the fire comes down from the sky, not up from the ground.”

Thin lines of people filed into the caldera, each person carrying something which he laid in a great pile in the center of the bowl. Through the stiff wind they heard the faint murmur of singing and the people swayed to the rhythm of it.

“Offerings to the approaching god,” Sofwari guessed.

One of the supplicants, turning back after dropping her offering, pointed and raised a cry, and heads began to turn their way.

“Perhaps we have interrupted something,” said Watershanks.

Donovan stepped to the edge of the parapet and cupped his hands. “Halloo!” he called. “Nawn inki yergay mbetão!”

This caused a flurry of activity beneath them. People ran to and fro, sleeves were tugged, hats held out to shade eyes, more fingers were pointed. Finally, an old man was led out. Despite the cold, high-altitude air, he wore nothing beside a short skirt and what looked like a dusting of talcum powder over his chest, face, and arms. He bore a staff made of a thick, twisted tree limb and his hair was a rat’s tangle. An acolyte held a megaphone to the man’s lips.

“Ungloady pr’enna?”

Donovan thought about that, then shouted back, “Onkyawti por enya?”

Now the priest, if such he was, appeared puzzled. Then he made a sign on his body and said, “Ongalodai per enna?”

Donovan smiled. “He knows the ancient dialect!” he told the others. Then he called, “Naan Donovan. Naan ingey irke vendum!”

Tangled hair bobbed as the priest nodded vigorously. “Vanakkam! Ullay waruvangal.” He pointed ahead of them. “Munney po! Munney po!”

Donovan turned to them. “He says welcome and come in, and we should go forward.”

They found the path down through the terraces half a league farther on along the parapet. But once down to the next level they had to “pinnal po,” go back the way they had come to find the stairs to the next terrace down.

“I had wondered about that,” said Billy Chins. “Their village occupies the low ground, which disadvantages them. But they have created a maze through their crop terraces, so an invader cannot charge straight down. Though if the Emrikii learn to make rifled muskets, they could stand on the parapet and pick off people in the village.”

“The Harps could take this place,” said Watershanks. “They could rappel down the sides of the terraces like they did down the cliffs at Candle-town.” Whether that thought heartened him, he did not say. The Harps, in any case, were far away and getting farther.

The entire ring of habitations was called Ūr, or Oor; but different segments along the ring were called by different names. When Méarana and her company finally emerged onto the terrace where the houses were set, they found themselves in Mylap Oor, or “Peacock Town.” There was a great stone statue of a peacock there under the shade of what they called a “funny tree.” The peacock was said to be the goddess Fahbády worshipping the god Žiba. That one god might worship another struck Méarana as peculiar. Maxwell certainly did not worship Newton! And since the stone peacock gazed nowhere but into the empty bowl valley, how did anyone know what she worshipped?