The Western Mountain (3)
I woke as the sun was going down and made a simple dinner of raw frankfurters.
Dark was coming on. Light a fire to roast anything, or cook a proper meal, and the smell and the glow would spread — and whatever lived on the western mountain might catch the light. If we could see them, they could see us. That was the whole of it.
Franc lay prone in the brush with her body hidden, keeping watch on the western mountain, and I lay sprawled across the top of her head. As the blazing sky burned itself out, she lifted her chin a fraction and whispered.
"Seoha. Something is coming out of the stone buildings."
Franc's voice was loud, granted, but we were more than a hundred kilometers from the place. She could have spoken at an ordinary volume. I nodded at what she'd said and answered.
"Can you make out the shape?"
"Not to that extent. Small, wriggling things... there are a great many of them."
She added that they had begun to move off somewhere in small clusters. Hmm. Even if a Transcendental aberrant waited over there, we were more than a hundred kilometers out. They wouldn't notice us. And even if we closed to within a hundred kilometers, there were no fewer than forty-one things inside a 6.75-kilometer radius of Franc and me, lying dead-still, just as we were. So even if we fell inside a Transcendental aberrant's phase-power detection range, unless it laid eyes on us, the odds of it noticing were vanishingly small.
"If those wriggling things come anywhere near here, tell me. I'll go grab them."
"Yes."
After that, Franc kept up a quiet commentary on what the wriggling things were doing. By her account, they had started slipping in and out of the lakes along the mountain's skirts and the water pooled in the ravines, climbing the slopes and coming back down, gathering at pyramid-like altars.
"Judging by how alike their forms are, I believe they are all of one race. They gather from every quarter, hold still, scatter, then clump together again. It rather seems to me they are living some manner of social life."
"They can raise buildings. We'll have to figure their intelligence is considerable."
"Quite so. Ah — one cluster is crossing the lake and heading left!"
Out on a hunt? Once Franc confirmed they had put a good distance between themselves and the foot of the mountain, I stripped off my jacket, stowed it in subspace storage, and rapped the dozing Darky on the head, telling him to shift into the form of a full-body skinsuit.
"I'm going to catch them. Franc, wait here."
"Yes. If you go straight that way, you should find them quickly."
I told her I'd be back, then launched myself in the direction she indicated.
About nine Space Leaps later, I found seven lizards standing on two legs, like humans. Two Peak-Rank variants, and five High-Rank variants.
The moment I spotted them, I opened as much distance as I could and looked them over through Spatial Perception.
Lizard heads on human bodies, skulls hunched forward. The Peak-Ranks stood around two and a half meters; the High-Ranks, about two. The differences between individuals were considerable. Some, lizard heads aside, had roughly human proportions, while others had abnormally long arms and short legs — gorilla proportions, taken whole. Thin or thick, skin sagging or drawn tight, horns along the back, frills at the throat, scales large or small: lizardmen of every sort imaginable.
The two Peak-Rank variants at the front gripped crooked wooden staves tipped with green gems, red and white pigment daubed in mottled patches beneath their eyes and across their heads. The five High-Rank variants, by contrast, had at most a line or two drawn under the eyes or across the brow, and some wore no ornament at all.
I'd heard that certain primitive tribes in Africa marked rank by painting their faces with pigment. Were these the same? Come to think of it, the staves in the two Peak-Ranks' hands looked less like weapons than catalysts. The more primitive the tribe, the higher a priest's station, or so they said — and the High-Ranks trailing the Peak-Ranks carried a sword, a spear, and a sickle respectively. Safe to assume these had the same custom.
The five lizardmen kept their mouths shut tight, tails swaying in S-curves as they waddled along, glancing about without pause. Hunting, then. The air of things searching out prey.
First, I'd take all seven by mind control.
The instant I decided, I dropped a Blue Space Wall over the lot of them. Their eyes flew wide, pupils dilating.
I dropped straight down, shaped my phase power into a mind-control type, drew out the purple, green, and blue threads of emotion, and worked them into loyalty. Then I met the eyes of the Superior-grade lizard at the very front. Eight hundred and twenty thousand TP burned away. The lizardman's yellow eyes flashed white, then settled back to their original color.
Stacked atop the strain of keeping Darky under mind control, the added weight left the back of my skull heavy and cold. That heaviness, and the TP spent, made it fairly certain the domination had taken — but I ought to run a few tests, to be sure the mind control had seated properly.
"Hey. If you can hear me, blink once."
Blink.
The one painted in a comb-pattern of alternating white and red beneath the eyes, across the brow, and over the head was a thin lizardman, with vivid yellow-green scales you would never see back home and eyes like a chameleon's. The moment I spoke, the black eyes buried under that wrinkled skin twitched, and the wrinkled skin itself blinked shut and open.
"Blink twice."
Blink. Blink.
"Three."
Blink, blink. Blink.
— Whoa. Now that's somethin'.
Darky, who had been watching, burst into admiration at the lizardman blinking on my command. Having the one I'd mind-controlled first gush like that left me strangely unsettled.
Anyway. I released the Space Wall wrapped around the chameleon-eyed lizardman, who had blinked exactly as ordered. He lifted his crooked wooden staff, scratched his head with it, then flicked out a forked tongue and drew it back in.
"زآیا زه تاسو سره مرسته وکړي."
— He's askin' what he can do to help ya.
I hadn't even asked, and here he was interpreting. I stroked Darky's head and told the lizardman to wait a moment. I still had to put the rest of them under.
Freed, and yet with no thought of attacking me or rescuing the others — just standing there blank — the chameleon-eyed one drew looks of open disbelief from the other six lizardmen. Let them look. One after another I hammered the same loyalty into their heads and released the Space Walls. They jerked as if stiffness had seized them, then stared at me, vacant.
Of them, only the two of Superior grade looked at me and each offered a word.
"يو عجيبه احساس."
— Bewildered. Who are you.
"وړاندې کول او د ځانونو د."
— I cannot understand why I feel this way.
The High-Rank lizardmen muttered among themselves behind the first two. By Darky's translation, they were saying they couldn't make sense of the situation — High Grade lizardmen, the mood among them as cluttered as a circle of aunties whispering at market.
One of the two Peak-Rank variants, a thin brown lizardman of a kind common enough back home, kept his snout shut tight and studied me closely with yellow reptilian eyes.
For the moment, I seized them and returned to where Franc was waiting.
The High-Rank lizardmen, fresh from Space Leaping, blinked rapidly and began pouring out words. Five of them talking at once — the sound was like spraying water onto an overinflated balloon and then scraping it with a fingernail. My ears ached. Gooseflesh rose.
"Oh dear..."
Franc seemed to find it painful to hear as well. She frowned and looked down at the lizardmen, while Darky picked through the frantic flood of speech and translated in snatches.
— Uh... so, way I'm hearin' it, they're callin' Boss a newly born hero. Ya got a strong giant female under ya, ya made the lump of chaos submit too, and that one they call Him? uses a transference art — and since Boss used the same thing, they're guessin' Boss is the one who's gonna be Hebelt's new hero?
A giant female...
I glanced at Franc. Her face had colored a little, her expression strange. The lump of chaos would be Darky. And Hebelt — the name of these things' settlement on the western mountain? At that scale, it was less a village than a city.
While I was still working through the words they'd spilled, the High Grade lizardmen had already laced their fingers and were going gekko, gekko, bobbing their heads up and down at me. I had no idea what it meant, and they were loud, so I made them stop.
"You're scrambling my head. Hold still a minute. Which of you is the leader?"
I'd said it with an edge of irritation, and the five High-Ranks froze at once. Not even a breath escaped them as they looked toward the two Peak-Rank lizardmen standing quietly. The green chameleon-eyed one — the Peak-Rank lizard I'd put under first.
When my gaze met theirs, that same green chameleon-eyed lizardman took a step forward and opened his snout.
"زه مشر, gekkuk."
— Says he's the head. Name's Gekkuk.
The one holding the staff set with a green gem had painted red and white pigment in a comb pattern beneath his eyes and across his head. Flashier than the other Peak-Rank variant, the brown lizardman. So the more elaborate the pigment, and the more kinds of color, the higher the rank. That tracked.
Still — if they could hold a conversation in their own language, their intelligence had to be close to a human's. And yet, unlike Hiarid or the First Mermaid, they couldn't deliver their meaning directly. Was there some condition to it?
"Darky. Don't stick those weird endings on. Translate what they're saying as it is."
— Hngh.
Darky protested that they weren't weird endings — they were his very existence. I ignored him. Does your existence change with the hour and the place?
Anyway. I put the question to the chameleon-eyed lizardman who had stepped forward, the one called Gekkuk.
"We're looking for a snake, cut off from the middle of its body. About a hundred meters long, about forty meters thick. Deep blue scales on the upper half, ivory scales below. There's a mark on the head where a horn was broken off. Know anything about it?"
"شته."
— There is.
"Explain. In detail."
"دا د ……."
— Lord Baekcheong was... our hero. On the Day of the Verdant Earth, that one — the hero who descended from God's Land — told the high priest there was a thing that must be done, and headed east. Not long after, the clan's Water God Festival, offered up to Him, spread across the sky. The Water God Festival is a thing that ought to be held on the Day of the Parched Earth. The Manes sensed the strangeness and went out to search, east, the way the one who had been a hero had gone. And the Manes who had gone searching returned, dragging the one who had been a hero.
Baekcheong! They were putting an honorific on the name. These things unquestionably had some close tie to Baekcheong.
But the account didn't connect smoothly. It broke off in hard little pieces. Being lizards, maybe their intelligence ran a little low. That was the thought that came.
"What do you mean, he was a hero?"
"له لاسه سترګې د بدن له لاسه ورکړ. د بيه ټيټه شوې."
— Lost divine power. Lost the body as well. Standing fell.
"Might he mean the body cut apart by you, Seoha, and the horn torn away?"
"...!"
Gekkuk, who had been telling us the story, heard Franc — and the eyes buried under his skin flew wide. His upper body heaved, and he began pounding the ground hard with his tail. I restrained him and asked what was wrong. He shrieked in a voice thick with excitement, kiiik, kiit.
— Don't reckon he knew Boss was the one who took Baekcheong down. Says we oughta raise Boss up as the new hero, yeah?
Moonlight pouring down in the dead of night, a lizardman's burning stare fixed on me — the feeling went past cold. Goosebumps seemed to rise on my skin.
Talk like that would be the loyalty from the mind control doing its work. I paid it no mind and asked about the things that had snagged me while I listened. Who the Water God Festival was offered to. Who the Manes were. Whether Hebelt really was the name of their city. And whether was a hero meant he was a hero no longer.
— The Water God Festival is a rite of water offered to the Dragon God of the Blue Sea, the Lord of the Great Sea. The Manes are the leaders who guide our city of Hebelt, and Lord Baekcheong has lost the divine power that was proof of apostleship, so he is a hero no longer.
A dragon god! So Baekcheong had been an apostle of the Lord of the Great Sea? Then that horn was the proof of apostleship. That would explain the strange energy it had been throwing off.
Which meant these things...
The chameleon-eye's account settled it.
"You're the Sabi clan, aren't you."
"هو."
— That is so.
The moment I heard the answer, I looked at Franc. When it became certain that things had come to pass exactly as she had said, her expression hardened.
The Sabi clan. The race that had gone to war with the Flauvis.
The Lord of the Great Sea had said Baekcheong was the only one who served him alone — and yet Baekcheong was the hero of the Sabi clan? I couldn't believe a presence of that magnitude would lie merely to deceive me.
The loyalty of mind control only planted a will to be loyal to me, built on whatever basic nature was already there. Then this one, too, had surely brought out what he thought, drawn from his own memory and disposition. To confirm it, I'd do better asking one of the others.
I asked the remaining five High-Rank lizardmen in turn. They answered with all the enthusiasm of people hearing about someone else's business — none of it had anything to do with them.
Someone else's business? It's your own race's affair.
Puzzled, I asked the Peak-Rank variant standing beside me — a somewhat plump brown lizardman with a gentle face, the sort often seen back home. What came out was a different story from Gekkuk's.
— Baekcheong may be an apostle who serves Him, but I do not believe he can be called our hero.
A story nothing like the chameleon-eye's. For a moment I wondered if they were running some scheme, then I dropped it. No one under mind control was going to try to deceive me.
But Gekkuk, who had been listening to the brown lizardman, scowled and squawked roughly.
"Agrum! سپين زنګ توکمونه لکه زموږ په څېر دي! زموږ د اتل"
— Agrum! Lord Baekcheong is of the same race as we are! If Lord Baekcheong is not our hero, then who can be a hero!
Gekkuk swung his tail side to side with a furious whoosh and jabbed his wooden staff at the brown lizardman as if he meant to stab him, shouting all the while. Agrum, the brown lizardman, opened his mouth with all the tension of a man wondering whose dog was barking — not so much as a speck of it.
— As I say every time, Gekkuk. That is not your opinion. It is Ahumrek's. The only heroes of our race are Ahumrek and Kalka-kum.
This one spoke cleanly, every syllable distinct.
Gekkuk's chameleon eyes darted, and he opened his snout to say something more. I told him he was noisy and to shut his mouth. He closed it like a clam and glared at Agrum, displeased.
Whether Gekkuk liked it or not, I watched Agrum flick out his forked tongue and lick his left eye, and asked again.
"Why doesn't your story match his? Baekcheong serves the Lord of the Great Sea, and you serve the Lord of the Great Sea the same way, don't you?"
— To explain that, you must first know the class structure of our clan. You seem to be of another race, Hero, and do not know us.
So saying, Agrum went on.
— Within our race there are five classes. Of them, the priest stratum are the Manes of our race, the ones who rule. And from within that priest stratum, two factions arose.
"Factions?"
— Yes. One side are the radicals: Ahumrek, who claims that since Baekcheong is an apostle of the One we serve, he is therefore also our hero. Opposed to that, Kalka-kum holds that Baekcheong is only Baekcheong, and we are ourselves — that Baekcheong and we serve the same god, yet are different beings. We are divided into these two factions. Gekkuk is a Sabi who follows Ahumrek, and I am a Sabi who follows Kalka-kum. That is why our views are entirely opposed.
So that was it.
A society split by class, and factions on top of that. A structure that brought a certain country back in the real world to mind.
"Then the ones who dragged Baekcheong off — that was Ahumrek's faction, the side that sees Baekcheong as their own hero?"
— No. He may not be a hero of our race, but he is certainly His apostle, and so I heard that whichever Manes had their hands free stepped forward and brought Baekcheong in.
...So the reason they'd saved a Baekcheong who was all but dead was simply that they served the same being, and so they helped. That was all.
Aberrants divided into classes, and into factions besides — a little uncanny. But I had no interest in an aberrant social order. What mattered was something else.
"Then if I attack Baekcheong, how will the lot of you react?"
— If you attack Lord Baekcheong without cause... our entire race will rise. But if you have a just pretext, then Baekcheong is a being apart from us. The Kalka-kum faction, to which I belong, will only watch.
At Agrum's words, Gekkuk's eyes twisted with displeasure. As if his temper had snapped, he pounded the ground with his tail and shouted.
"احمق! هم سپين زنګ ورته خدمت زموږ اتل!"
— Fool! Lord Baekcheong, who serves Him, was our hero, even if his standing has fallen! Does it make any sense to divide His apostle from us as a separate kind!
Having shouted so at Agrum, Gekkuk opened his snout toward me, as if in warning.
— You would do well to remember. Should you attack Lord Baekcheong, the Sabi race will stop you to the death. You will be fighting our entire race.
— Those who see it so are only you of Ahumrek, and the Manes who follow Ahumrek. A crisis Baekcheong brought about by tangling cause and consequence — why must we bear responsibility for it? This one uses the transference art that He uses, and commands a giant female and a lump of chaos. Gekkuk. Can you even guess at this one's power? If this one attacks our race, we will be struck down with no means to answer. The extinction of the race — can you, Ahumrek, and Ahumrek's Manes, take responsibility for that?
— Krrh...
Ho. This Agrum — sharp, wasn't he.
From only a few questions, he seemed to have read the hierarchy on this side at once. The abilities I'd shown had probably fed that judgment, too. At Agrum's words — orderly as logic, calm as the surface of a still lake — Gekkuk only let out a hissing metallic sound and glared at him, discontented. Agrum stared straight back with yellow eyes.
Different factions, he'd said. Their temperaments were nothing alike.
In any case, if I attacked Baekcheong, Ahumrek's faction would stand in the way, and Kalka-kum's faction would simply look on.
"If I kill Ahumrek's faction for blocking me, Kalka-kum's side won't sit still either, will they?"
— A fight with Lord Baekcheong and a fight with Ahumrek are different things. If you put the Sabi clan to death, Kalka-kum will of course step forward as well.
This one seemed to know a great deal. I'd have to ask more.
Better suited to conversation than Gekkuk, who was flaring his nostrils, flicking his tongue, and stammering in his excitement — so I kept putting questions to the plump brown lizardman.
"Do you know where they dragged Baekcheong?"
— I heard they are in the midst of moving him to God's Land.
"You said earlier that Baekcheong came down from God's Land, didn't you? What is God's Land? Where is it?"
— The summit of Veltical. It means the great lake where He sometimes reveals His form.
Agrum turned his head and looked toward the peak of the western mountain. So they called the western mountain Veltical.
The summit of that mountain... A peak so high it dizzied the eye, looking higher even than Langue Dran's shell, with a round hollow scooped into the top. I looked at it, then asked again.
"If I go there, is there something?"
— By His mercy, that place is where spex has gathered full. If one convalesces there, even the gravest wound can be completely healed. It is a land of miracles.
"Completely healed?"
— Yes. Ahumrek's Manes insisted that the dying Lord Baekcheong be moved to God's Land, and Kalka-kum's Manes were unanimous in agreeing to his recovery, and so, as I understand it, they are moving him even now.
Spex... the other name the mermaid sisters had used for phase power. So the summit was brimming with phase power. In any case, given time, every wound would heal.
"This one you keep calling Him — that's the Lord of the Great Sea, isn't it? If Baekcheong stays there, do you know roughly how long the recovery takes?"
— To address... Him in that manner is an impious act, but... The time recovery requires cannot be known exactly. However, given the extent of the body's destruction and the loss of divine power, I believe it will take no small amount of time.
Right. Then let me lay it out.
The ones who had dragged Baekcheong off were the Sabi clan. How they'd found him and hauled him away could wait. The Sabi clan had two factions, and if I attacked Baekcheong, one would stand in my way and the other would not. And Baekcheong, to heal the wounds he had taken, was heading for God's Land, said to be full of phase power.
...Not a situation urgent enough that I had to move this instant. Then I ought to talk it over with Franc.