Shadows in the Cave Read online

  Even through the waves of dread Aku understood. In the council lodge guests were greeted. Here on the dance ground enemies were tortured. Salya stood next to a thick post sunk into the middle. On one side of her stood a white-haired man of great beauty and dignity. Aku did not need to see his headdress clearly to know that he was the chief of chiefs. On her other side gangled an enormous man, hooded, and robed in a cloth rubbed black with ashes. A shaman, presumably, though Aku had never seen a costume like that and couldn’t imagine the face of a holy man beneath that cowl.

  Father and son held each other’s eyes. Though men were building a fire to hold the darkness away, there was little else the two could see, and nothing else in this world they wanted to see.

  Salya touched the elderly man on the hand. “This man who condemns you to death is Guna. If you were not Galayi, an ignorant people who live in caves in the mountains, you would know him as a great chief, none greater in the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men. Our people revere him.” Aku didn’t even glance at the chief—he was transfixed by the triumphant wickedness in Salya’s eyes, evil mirrors of his own.

  Now she caressed the shaman on the neck, shocking behavior at a public gathering. “This is the man I told you about, Father, Maloch, the most powerful shaman in all lands between where the sun rises and where it sets.” She looked at Maloch lasciviously. “His power has entranced me.” She slid in front of Maloch, embraced him with both arms, wound a leg around one of his, and rubbed her body against him indecently. Women in the crowd trilled. Men shouted or laughed.

  Aku could not look away from her.

  “Understand, my father, understand, my brother, Maloch is not my husband. I am his whore. I open my legs to him as the ground splits in an earthquake. His seed floods me as the ocean tides turn a river back up its own channel. He volcanoes forth his seed and fills my belly.

  “Oh, oh”—her moan was a song and she writhed in a wicked ballet—“never have I felt such pleasure. Every day of my life I will degrade myself before him. Every day I beg for his humiliation.”

  Shonan heard only half of it. His eyes flicked over the chief, who seemed mesmerized by the fire. There lay the beginning of the pain.

  “Sing for death,” he said quietly to Aku. The tradition wasn’t to ask for death, but to be ready for death if it came, as it did to all things.

  “Yes!” said Salya, and again in exultation, “Yes! Sing for death.”

  A drum started, and Salya danced around them. “Our women will bring it to you now, first as a seduction, then as a rape, and last as the holocaust of fire.” She waved a languid hand toward the blaze, which now burned brightly.

  Shonan said quietly, “Remember that a warrior who dies fighting the enemy goes quickly to the Darkening Land and immediately is reborn on earth.”

  Salya cried, “Do you, the war chief, believe such an old wives’ tale?” Her laugh exploded up and down in great arpeggios.

  “Reborn immediately,” Shonan repeated. Then he sang,

  “All things pass away,

  Plants must die,

  Animals pass on,

  Even the rocks crumble

  And blow in the wind.

  All things pass on.

  Only spirit is eternal,

  Only spirit.

  Only spirit.”

  Salya stepped close to her father, a burning stick in her hand. “Only spirit?” she asked with a sneer. “Let me remind you of body.” She jammed the flames into Shonan’s belly.

  Shonan howled. Salya cackled.

  Shonan croaked out,

  “Only spirit.

  Only spirit.”

  Aku could only pretend to sing. He stared at the hideous burn on his father’s belly. He gazed at the lewd, shadowy dance of Salya and the shaman. From the burn to the dance, back and forth. The sinuous movements of the dancers made their bodies look like one, her face grinning out from the shaman’s cowl.

  “You will wish your life was more frail,” Salya chanted. “You will yearn for the embrace of death. You feel a splinter driven through your nipple. You get a hint of the flame as one of our women lights it. Slowly, the flame eats the wood. At last it takes the flesh in its fiery mouth.”

  By the flickering firelight Aku now began to see. Many times he had gotten a glimpse of what resided beyond the apparent, beyond the physical. For the first time he welcomed this sight. It stirred his heart. It was possibility.

  “All things pass on.

  Only spirit is eternal,

  Only spirit.

  Only spirit.”

  “Yes,” sang Salya, “it will make you croon for the solace of death, but the slut has no ears. Ten times you will sing to her, but she enjoys your begging. ‘More!’ she demands. ‘More! More!’ A hundred splinters and your body lives on. Oh, what a bitch death is, how evil! But not as evil as your daughter Salya. Let me show you.”

  She bent over Aku, a sharp knife in her hand. She cut a thin line from his widow’s peak down his forehead and his nose, to the edge of his upper lip. He moaned, and Salya cackled. Aku felt the blood run into his eyes, and he could not wipe them.

  Salya’s dance turned obscene now, her hands wildly suggestive. In the red light of the flames she was evil incarnate.

  Something strange happened to Aku. With his vision blurred he began to see the truth.

  The crowd doubled its uproar.

  Shonan sang,

  “Only spirit.

  Only spirit.”

  Aku noticed that his father was twisting his hands against his bonds. Probably he wanted to use the half darkness to free them. Foolish, thought Aku. He turned his mind back to seeing what his eyes could not, the essence of things that lay beyond appearance.

  “When our women tire of burning your flesh,” Salya chanted, “when they see that the pain is too familiar to you, they will inflict an agony you never imagined. Its strength will be as the blazing sun is to starlight. They will bring stone knives, force them under your fingernails, and hammer them deeper and deeper, until the nails peel backward. And when they finish with all ten, they will eagerly remove your toenails.”

  Aku’s mind was torn between his pain and what he was struggling to understand.

  “All this time the crowd will cheer. By the time they are working on the toenails, their bloodlust will be the very air you breathe. They will glory in your pain.

  “As you will exult in it. Galayi warriors like you seek nothing more hungrily than a call to show courage. A warrior rejoices in pain. As pain rampages, honor swells, courage soars. As the body suffers, the spirit triumphs.”

  Women raised tortoise shell rattles to spur on Salya’s dance with Maloch. In the firelight the scene was phantasmagoric.

  “Only spirit.

  Only spirit.”

  “After the toenails, our women will cut you wherever they like. From your lower eyelid down your cheek. Across the arch of your foot. Between your toes. Inside your nostrils. Eventually they will cut your fingers off, joint by joint. And while you can still see, they will chop off your balls, and your cocks. While you can still feel pain, they will gouge out your eyes.

  “All this time only they will touch you, our men will not. Meanwhile I will stroke Maloch. I will dance. I will sing. I will arouse him. I will suck his nipples. My depravity will inspire the women watching to depths of savagery with their own men. But none of them will be as black as the evil that inspires your Salya, your sister, your daughter.”

  In a booming voice Aku said, “You are not Salya!”

  Silence. Salya stopped dancing, the drum stopped, the rattles stopped.

  Now louder: “You are not my sister.”

  Salya smiled nastily at Maloch. “Clever boy, isn’t he, this twin of mine?” She stooped and ran her fingernail along his cut. It screamed.

  “You’re not my twin, not my anything. Where is Salya?”

  Now the shaman spoke in a crawling, lascivious voice. “You’re right, young man, quite right. This marvel
is not Salya. She is whoever I want her to be. As I myself am.”

  Salya-who-wasn’t-Salya pulled her dress over her head and tossed it away. Underneath was … Aku couldn’t have said what. Something yellow-green that was turning itself from flesh to scales.

  Subtly, Aku began his own transformation.

  The shaman said cheerily, “I’ll join you, my dear.” He dropped his ashen robe and hood. His naked body was greenish yellow and serpentine.

  Aku concentrated hard—feet to claws, and claws out of the rope. Maybe the shadows, and their self-absorption, would blind the evil ones for long enough.

  Salya called out, “Drum! Rattles!” and undulated back into her dance. Her body was a dragon’s, head held high, pulsating forward and back, gliding from side to side, tail undulating behind.

  Wings! Aku shouted in his mind.

  To the rhythm of the drum Salya and the shaman slithered toward each other, their reptilian bodies swaying to the beat, their tongues flickering. Their heads began to sprout horns.

  “Yes,” cried the creature that had once been a shaman, “unite with me, my love!”

  Hundreds of pairs of eyes were transfixed by the serpentine twins, all except for Aku’s.

  Now a hideous chartreuse, the dragons slowly entwined their bodies like the tendrils of ferns. They squeezed each other and melded into one saurian monster, thick as the torso of a big man. Thick fish scales with spots of every color popped out on their skin.

  “Where is your sister’s body?” roared the whore’s dragon head. “In the Darkening Land.”

  “Where is her spirit?” cooed the shaman’s reptile head. “I ate it!”

  Aku flapped to the top of the torture pole.

  The two serpents were wholly one. They grew a single eye, and it was a diamond, one said to have the power to foretell the future. In sunlight the diamond would have blinded the hundreds of people. In the firelight it shone enough for the monster to see Aku.

  Aku raised his wings to take to the air.

  The monster let out a hissing roar and, faster than anyone’s eye could follow, sunk its fangs into the owl.

  Aku rowed the air, hesitated, faltered, fell a few feet, and with a burst of effort pulled away. His tail sent up a rip of pain. The monster had only feathers in its maw.

  Aku felt the night air give lift to his wings. Over the pounding drum Aku heard his father cry out, “Meet me in the Darkening Land!”

  13

  High in the charcoal sky Aku circled the dance ground. It was bedlam, bodies surrounding his father, arms flailing, legs flying. Maybe in its indignation at losing one of its victims, the crowd loosed its rage on the other. If so, maybe my father is lucky. Ada, I wish you the blessing of the warrior’s death and rebirth. Aku meant these words, but they gave him no comfort. With a start he realized he had called Shonan “Ada” for the first time, in his mind. As I am losing you.

  He circled a second time but saw only riot. If he flew close enough to tear at his father’s bindings, the dragon would kill him.

  He noticed something very odd. His tail hurt, but his face didn’t. He left that pain behind with his human body.

  “Meet me in the Darkening Land!” Those were his father’s instructions. Aku couldn’t think what to do. He had never felt so confused. Pathetically, he winged toward the cave and landed just outside the entrance.

  “Hello, Tagu. Good Tagu.”

  Silence.

  “Hello, Tagu.”

  Nothing.

  Shards of thoughts broke in Aku’s mind. Tagu, run off. Tagu, dead inside. Tagu dead inside and an enemy hiding behind him, waiting.

  Aku’s breath seized up.

  Think, he ordered himself.

  Nothing.

  Think!

  Nothing.

  All right, human or owl? Go for surprise.

  He went in, flapping his wings and flashing his talons.

  The cave was empty. No enemy, no dog, no blankets, no lashings, no meat, no nothing.

  Someone stole Tagu.

  Which meant they knew his hiding place. They could be waiting outside right now.

  He shot out the entrance high and hard. No enemy shouted, no enemy struck him.

  He floated back into the cave and got the flutes out from behind the stones where he had hidden them. When he had them in one claw and stood on the other, he looked around. This is the home of my enemies.

  He launched into the air. He circled. He sought to order his thoughts. Instead wild pictures and insane sounds inflamed him. Twisting flames scorched his mind. Rampaging drums tore his thoughts to tatters. Screams howled within him like wild winds. His mind shrieked with gales that were songs and songs that were screams—in the racket he couldn’t tell which was which. He thought he would go mad. He circled. What choice did he have?

  He lit in a snag. He commanded himself to calm down, but his body didn’t obey.

  “Meet me in the Darkening Land!”

  Surely that meant Shonan accepted death. Did it also mean he wanted Aku to die? Or did it mean that Aku was somehow to make his way to the Darkening Land and enter as a living being? Once before, in the most ancient times, that had been done. Seven men went there to bring back Morning, the daughter of Grandmother Sun.

  Aku got out both his flutes, stroked them, and held them up in the moonlight. The red one had the power to resurrect the dead, but only in the moments just after death. Maybe he could help his sister, his twin. But her body wasn’t dead—her spirit was. And it was not in the Darkening Land—it was in the heart of the Uktena, adding fire to the dragon’s life. His green flute healed spirits, so the piper told him.

  It was all bewildering. “What am I supposed to do?” He was shocked and hurt by the wail of his own voice. He sounded so young to himself, and so helpless. He hated that.

  He thought. After a few minutes, he told himself, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, but I’m going to take action. Take action, he repeated to himself.

  He threw himself off the snag and flew in a wobble down the hill. Ahead, far ahead, he could see the bay, and beside it the village. He exerted himself and mounted into the sky. He had made up his mind. He would fly over the dance ground until his father was dead. The Brown Leaves would abandon his father’s body—they would not give it the honor of burial. Then he, Aku, son of Shonan, would bring his father back to life.

  Yes, I’m disobeying you. And if we go to the Darkening Land, we’ll do it together.

  He flew along the trail to the village and …

  The dance ground was empty.

  No human figure, living or dead, hung from the stake.

  The village was asleep.

  They had already killed his father. And where did you put his body?

  Aku spent all night and all the next night winging from tree to tree across the plains and through the hills that surrounded the village, always carrying the flutes, the instruments of hope. Aku was no buzzard or eagle, able to soar with fixed wings, attaining great heights on warm winds, capable of covering ground ten times as fast as a man, or faster, and surveying enormous expanses of country. He was a wing-beater, flapping from spot to spot.

  Part of what he learned in those two nights was that his owl sight was very keen, and he was a lethal hunter. His belly yearned for rabbit meat. As twilight slid into darkness each day, he easily spotted hares, dived on them in aerial silence, and killed them with a squeeze of obsidian-sharp talons. He relished the bloody meat.

  At the earliest glimmer of light the first morning, he found still water in a creek and looked at himself. Orange face, beak like a tiny dagger, outcroppings of feathers where his ears might have been but weren’t. Most important, he was huge. His wing span was wider than his human arm span. He had never seen an owl so big. Maybe he could intimidate other beasts—that would be good.

  All night, each night, he flew over, through, and around the village. He learned nothing about his father. Presumably, they had stripped him naked and left him with no
food and no weapons to make the journey to the Darkening Land. Presumably, they had dumped his corpse in any convenient place, vulnerable to wind and rain, to insect, rodent, and scavenger. Where is it?

  He saw no body, no buzzards circling, no ravens hopping around on the ground.

  When he checked the village at dawn and dusk, he only saw people going about the usual tasks of living. He circled farther and farther away, into the hills, well beyond where anyone would have gone to the trouble of carrying an enemy.

  Frustration twisted in him, like a rag wrung tight and tighter until the last drop of hope was squeezed out.

  As he settled onto his perch the second morning, the sun streaked itself across the eastern horizon far out to sea. And with the light, he got the idea. Probably the Brown Leaves had thrown his father’s body into the sea. He had heard of barbarous peoples who did such things.

  Though he should have avoided the visibility of daylight, he beat his way up and down the shoreline. He looked at every rock that jutted out of the ocean. With his extraordinary vision he studied the tide pools. He saw nothing. On a double-check he saw nothing. But no other explanation was possible.

  He winged his way to the hills, downhearted. He would sleep all day and start tonight. He had lost his father. Now he couldn’t do anything but go home, home to Iona.

  14

  The serpent monster roared hideously at the huge owl in flight. Several hundred people craned their eyes star-ward, but Aku was invisible in the darkness, and his flight silent.

  Shonan didn’t waste time looking for his owl son. He seized his opportunity. For some time, as he sang the death song, he had slowly tugged on the thong that concealed the scabbard in the top of his butt crack. Every movement made his belly burn scream. He ignored the pain.

  When the blade reached his belt, he eased it out by its handle. Awkwardly, gradually, barely moving his fingers, he sliced the rawhide ropes that bound his hands. Now, with every pair of eyes on the sky, he threw himself into action.