The Temple of Vitus Read online

  The lead scout agreed with the logic as did the others, concluding that the foreigner had a sound plan. With solemn ceremony, Risgan boarded the craft and poled his way out. “Wait, I will take these oars with me too—only to test them for their efficacy. Wait here, carpenters! Watch for my return. Not a word to Og!”

  The relic hunter was well out on the river when the restless pygmies gave concerned shouts. Risgan gave a satisfied nod. He waved a florid greeting to the throng who huddled dourly about the shore like a pack of crows in black moods. There were indignant yells, pushes and shoves which grew to blows. At that instant, the saturnine Og chanced to storm the beach with his minions. The lead scout stammered his explanations to the war-king, pointing glibly at the outlander far out on the river, but he was picked up by the ears and dashed down by the giant. Og jumped on his back and the others bludgeoned him to death with clubs. The newly-arrived warriors stamped their feet and beat at their chests, gesticulating at Risgan with frustration and malice. Risgan smiled and gave back waves of thanks. Hollers and shrieks reached his ears as he poled across the dark water. Darts came plopping in numbers, too close for comfort and he hastily steered away. “Foolish heathens,” he grumbled. “What a waste of weaponry.”

  Bad blood had been stirred and Risgan made efforts to dull his contempt. The acquisition of the raft had been an unexpected surprise and he applauded his ingenuity in procuring it. To work! he thought. Fair distance must be made before the pygmies could catch up with his craft, or somehow work some inconvenient mischief.

  Risgan’s craft was afloat, not a symbol of perfection, but one of utility and he poled his way cautiously down the shore, eye alert for unfriendly activity in the trees.

  He saw none. Only jade dark foliage. The light slanted westward and merged with the brooding silence. Twice he thought to spy green-purple eyes peeking out at him, human eyes, red-rimmed and suspicious, but he could not verify it. That the pygmies made these northern extents their haunt seemed doubtful, even incredible. Risgan’s suspicions were confirmed in the late afternoon when river folk shafted arrows at him, narrowly missing the flesh on his arms. One ripped his sail and rendered it useless. He kept far away from the western shore after that incident; only his pole guided him in the swift current.

  Large fish surfaced often, some swimming close by with ribbed fins and pale orange eyes. Risgan guessed these to be ‘snargs’ and he huddled ever more cautiously toward the centre of the craft. Hundred foot high mandrakes choked the shoreline; some dangled out over the water like huge, poised ostrich. If he looked carefully enough, he thought to spy massive woven nests perched in those heights and sometimes the odd brown ape-armed quadruped climbing down with supple dexterity. Usilmars! Risgan had heard of these creatures, but never thought to encounter them. At other times, he thought to see strange conical dwellings lurking beyond the trees, with tufts of smoke rising from their tops, but he could not be sure from this distance.

  The river widened and the current slowed. Risgan grew hungry. He did not dare risk a landing, for the dusk coming upon the land was the ripest for wandering prey. He bore his hunger, swallowed his apprehension and the crushing darkness that fell most swiftly. Few stars shone in the vast sky and the crescent moon was only a thin sickle shrouded in haze.

  On the other side of the river, Risgan heard the squeal of victims, the pounce of gibbeths. He stared into the dark folds, a weave of menace. Mandrake trees with monolithic trunks and spidery branches stared back at him. Risgan shivered and hunched ever more sombrely in the centre of his craft. Gradually he gained confidence; by day he drew a line from some old coil he kept in his pouch. He tied a metal hook at the end and fished for walleyes and river gizza. When he dared land, he cooked his meat with furtive hops about the fire, fearful of what horror might jump out at him. He left immediately to the relative safety of the middle river. The forest was a thick mass on both sides with unknown menaces with eyes piercing through the shadows.

  For five days he travelled in such wise, silently and alone down the endless expanse of river. One day he was surprised by a river tribe, when he made a secret landing and was confronted by a dozen men and women while he readied himself to bite into the fried salamander he had caught. They had crept on him like panthers, bare-chested and decked with shells and beads and gazing at him with soft indigenous brown eyes. They had long noses, brown faces, and wore oiled moccasins for footwear. Skirts of withe hugged their waists. These were no pygmies—but were of impressive height and sported long dark curly hair tied back in brown plaits.

  Risgan realized that flight was useless. He assumed a confident ease. “What can you tell me of the lands north?” he inquired.

  The spokesman, a tall angular-faced man with a hunting pike in one hand and sheaf of darts at his belt, responded kindly: “The river flows to the land of civilized men. From there our knowledge ends.” Surprisingly, Risgan could understand their dialect. It was not too broad for his ears. “We know little of the city,” continued the spokesman, shaking his mane of long, grey-shocked hair, “other than its name is Fugis, or Uksoma, as we call it in our mother tongue. Some of the residents’ fishing boats come sailing up the river, only to fall prey to wading gibbeths or the merciless patter of our sleep darts.”

  Risgan nodded with barely-masked anxiety. “I know this place by dream. ’Tis surrounded on three sides by lake. Nevertheless, this comes as useful knowledge, else I would have paddled to my doom.”

  The native acknowledged the fact with sober click of his tongue. “There is no lake that we know of at Uksoma, only the river Vlon. My name is Nalsi, Chief amongst these proud peoples of the Fuzuli. And who are you?”

  “Risgan, Relic Hunter of Zanzuria—and it seems—” with sardonic reflection “—somewhat of a vagabond these days on a forced mission.”

  The chief nodded with sober forbearance. “How came you so far on such a rude craft? This mishmash of wood should have sunk days ago.”

  Risgan admitted as much. “I stumbled across savages far upriver, small white pygmies. They cowered under a hulking leader of theirs, a certain Og with a skull head. Under my guidance, we built this raft together, in search of bounty on the hither side of the river. Before I could show them boons, they fought amongst themselves like badgers for who was to go, and I was forced to flee on this raft to escape their poisoned arrows.”

  The chief nodded sadly. “These are the Aluka and it does not surprise me. A horrid lot! We steer clear of them. They strip men of their hides and use them for grisly purposes. Og will one day come to ruin adhering to his barbaric principles. In fact, it is said the gods hated the Aluka so much, that they made them all small as monkeys, but I suspect it is only the green furze they eat so rapturously with their meat.”

  Risgan did not find it unlikely, muttering that he had some experience with Og and the savagery of their hide-stripping.

  The chief grunted tersely and made no supplementary comments. “Well, you are amongst friends here, Risgan. Rest assured. We smell hostility and dark magic in weak men, of which you are not one. Come! We invite you to our village, unless you prefer dining on salamander alone?”

  Risgan gave a grateful laugh. With cheerful camaraderie the group escorted the wanderer to their meagre settlement, which as it turned out, was constructed in a U-shaped glade hewed from the wood itself, and rested only a few furlongs north. The tribe made their location downriver, set in the interior of a dense dark green wood they called Ferna.

  A circle of rude straw and mud huts dominated the village. Woods encroached to the back and a muddy pool lay to the side where women were bathing their children. An ancient fire pit ranged in the centre of the common area, surrounded by a bed of soft sand on which dancers and entertainers could gambol. Risgan saw the pale bellies of two dozen dugouts upturned down by the shore. He praised his luck for finding these river people and not barbaric pygmies. Toddlers frolicked in the glade with wooden toys of carved animals; some women transported jars of seeds and fresh wat
er on their heads. A sinister shrine lurked at the perimeter of the encampment mounted with animal skulls replete with gaping mouths leering into the depths of the forest, a sight which caused Risgan a grimace.

  A feast was set in order; a hustle and bustle came to the common ground. Men went out with spears to return from a quick hunt with fresh ibex and baskets of herbs. Day was turning to dusk; orange cloud darkened and an eerie glow descended over the forest.

  A strange, somewhat sinister man gave Risgan a queer look as he approached. He was tall, long-legged, a barefooted individual garbed in a weave of tanned river reeds from chest to knee. He held a spiral cane of mandrake wood in a fist and stared shamelessly at the outlander. The fetish was etched with charms, fish scales and strange stones, jingling when he thrust it in the ground at the retriever’s feet. “I am Xoltux, Village Shaman and Spirit-chaser,” he announced proudly.

  “A worthy position. I am Risgan, Retriever of curios, not unlike those embellished on your staff, minus the fish scales, of course.”

  The shaman ignored the remark. He motioned to Nalsi’s private tent-hut. “The chief’s wife is ailing and noise is forbidden. Nalsi is distraught.” Risgan saw the woman lay apart in an open tent on a soft bed of leaves. The chief knelt at her side, clutching her limp hand, inviting Risgan to greet his beloved and share with him his anguish. Risgan obliged. The woman’s breath ran in ragged gasps; a demonic fever seemed to rack her body, giving her face a greenish cast. Her upper lip trembled, her body lay drenched in sweat. Rivulets of sweat ran down her sopping scalp to soak her long silver hair in gleaming beads. Risgan was moved and found she could only glimpse him through one cloudy eye, but he saw, in that wilful gaze, that her spirit was strong.

  The shaman, Xoltux, came up behind him and spoke in a commanding tone: a serpent’s voice, sweet as mandrake sap. “Spirits have infested the lady Varwa’s body! Filled it with ague, perhaps a large forest troll or swamp sloth. We comfort her as we can, but she cannot last for too long.” The spirit-chaser knocked his macabre charm cane thrice on the ground. “So it is told to me by the forest gods.”

  Risgan nodded, unmoved by the shaman’s pretentious speech. He was somewhat taken to pity for the old woman into whose eyes he peered again. Hope glistened there. Struck by a flash of insight, Risgan recalled the kindness of the service the river people had proffered him and decided to take a risk. The shaman had departed with the chieftain to confer in the glade and Risgan snuck back to the hut and thrust the youth talisman’s brilliant curve into the woman’s trembling palm. “Here! Do not be afraid!” he whispered.

  The gem flared. He watched it as with a sudden inexplicable glow, the woman’s eyes lit with a striking blueish light, and Risgan started, for it was the sign of some miracle at work. He left the talisman in her palm for some seconds before he pulled it back sharply. Clearly, the magic had done its work. He thrust the thing deep in his cloak. It would only cause him woe if he were not careful. He gave a satisfied nod. Unknown to him, the shaman had glanced back, and when he saw the foreigner bending over the chief’s wife gripping a strange object, he had rushed over to investigate.

  The shaman stood menacingly over the two, a shadow taller than death. He gazed in disapproval. He threw out a gnarled hand and pulled the retriever away. “Here, foreigner! This is not your place. What do you do?”

  Risgan had already concealed the talisman in his pouch and did well to give an innocent exhalation. “It looks like bad weather tonight, Xoltux; I think we’ll have to batten down.”

  The shaman gave a rancorous grunt. He looked at Risgan with utmost suspicion. A strange mistrustful smirk polluted his proud, gloomy face as he looked down upon the ailing woman. She seemed to rest peaceably without the ragged gasps. With no large compassion, the spirit-chaser prodded Risgan back to the fire where the common glade was lit up with torches.

  Risgan was prompted by others to drink a foul brew: a mix of herbs and alcohol, though he secretly suspected it came from the large vat he had spied earlier from which they had poured snake heads and vole feet. The shaman assured their guest that the beverage was harmless, conducive to ‘sharpening the mind’ and ‘bolstering the senses’. It also provided the ability to separate truth from illusion.

  “No doubt, true,” remarked Risgan.

  “There is no ‘doubt’,” snapped the shaman with a trace of haughtiness.

  Risgan found simple truth in the avowal, for he saw the trees around him weave in symmetry, like moths and spiders in flight, and the village figures dance like fairies, growing tall and thin and crooked and crouching like grasshoppers. Meanwhile strange domesticated forest dogs continued to rove about the common glade like boars, tearing at hafts of meat that the villagers had tossed down. Their barks and snarls grew unruly. Women danced around the fire with more abandon now while men told unearthly tales of the forest. There was laughter and light-hearted challenges, jokes and repartee. All sat cross-legged on the sand or lounged on low couches made of antler and vine. Under the influence of herbal brew, Risgan was entertained by the newness of it all; the chief garbed him in the gown and vest of the visitor, black owl feathers dipped in fish fat and woven with leather thread. He invited him to share an anecdote or two of his own. Risgan regaled the villagers for an hour speaking of his exploits with the bottled sorceress Afrid and a masked marauder and the fat patron, Zemore at Bazuur, who were either dragged to the donjon or strapped to the back of a direful isk.

  “You have seen these isks before close up?” whispered several in awe.

  “None other,” Risgan answered modestly.

  Not wishing to overstep his bounds, he turned the podium over to Narsi. “And what of you, wise Chief? How did you come to be the leader of this fine people?”

  All leaned back, awaiting the chief’s words.

  The chief spoke: “We are an old race, going back to the time when the moon was a huge stone owl flying across the night sky, rather than the dead egg it is now, wobbling in its predictable course. My people have inhabited the Ferna forest since time immemorial. We were old when the isks were young! And you, Relic Hunter?” Nalsi asked curiously “—you seem a youngish man for all these escapades and capers you speak of.”

  Risgan proffered a small chuckle. “’Tis not easy to explain, Chief—” Nor was it easy to explain his fortune of youth. He had squinted at his reflection in the river not a day ago, and looked over a decade younger than when he had left Zanzuria.

  The chief laughed. “You are a honest man, Risgan, and I will tell you of our people. They flew from beyond the sun. Few from beyond the woods know that after Bezran the Great slew the Great Gibbeth, our clan came into its empowered years, and this was a millennium ago. The Great Gibbeth had been stalking men for moons beyond memory. Ozran was our first leader; he was christened ‘Elder’. The moon rose and fell in flights of fancy and the Wise Owl fled from behind the gibbous moon to swoop down upon us and cover the forest with its magical grey wings. An age of shadow came over us. Our skin grew dark and blood-like as you see. We lived in fear, while dark things crept from the woods and bred, but the old owl finally melted away over the ages of sun and we were bathed in light once more to hunt and fish and roam the forests in freedom. We stayed free of the river, never crossing its banks to explore the other side where our ancestors claimed the Wise Owl’s kin would someday be reborn and come to shroud us with their darkness.”

  Risgan frowned in surprise. “The forest is not dangerous then as it used to be since the owl’s disappearance?”

  The shaman gave a great hoot. “The only reason we are not descended upon and mauled by gibbeths is because I have protected these grounds with strong and powerful magic. Regard the fane, the gibbeth skulls!”

  Risgan took solemn notice of the shrine. It wound away to the forest with its twisted skein of antlers, bone and horn.

  “If you look closely,” Nalsi stated shrewdly, “you can see the one-eyed fanged statuary with the furry appendages, a fanciful interpretation of a
kodo in heat. During daylight hours, the forest sleeps and the kodos lie dormant.”

  “But at night,” the shaman roared, “the ghosts haunt and the owl flies!”

  Risgan muttered a note to strap himself into bed, or curb his nasty habit of sleepwalking.

  The remark earned several chuckles. Several of the younger members rose to pour Risgan some more qualack.

  The chief ignored the merriment. “Xoltux is my older half brother who chose the path of spirit-chaser well before I was born. It was before I was slated to rule the clan, given the elemental nature of our spiritual and practical disciplines.”

  Xoltux absorbed the information with masked displeasure. “Nalsi is wise as men go,” he intoned grudgingly, “perhaps not as clever or all-seeing as me, but to his credit, the shaman always advises the chief on policy-making regarding the future of the clan. Only yesterday I opened the breasts of two small owls and discerned a long winter and the deaths of many men.”

  “This is dispiriting news,” observed Risgan. Secretly he believed little could be had in butchering owls, nor did he tender much faith in the auguries of magicians or mystics. “For a fact I know the Pontific of my own people hired a magician-divinator who wrongly forecasted the conjoining of the seven clans who signed the treaty of Marsis, if this is any reflection on the nature of divinations.”

  The shaman curled his lips into a thin sneer. “It seems that your ‘divinator’ needs to take lessons from a person of repute, like myself. He needs somebody of quality versed in the old traditions.”

  “He would be better off,” agreed Risgan, “studying the old wisdom, but I am not one to judge or counsel men on paths who are wiser than myself.”

  “Well said!” cried Nalsi, thumping Risgan on the back. “You are a wise and sensible man! Do you care for another nut-cup of this qualack?”

  “Gladly.” Risgan tipped his cup.

  So the night passed in less troubled tones with the slosh of forest ale, dulcet songs and convivial banter. Two fellows brought out a queer instrument with double necks of four goat-gut cords and plucked the strings while a third bent low to slap the bottom like a drum. A sweet, haunting melody filled the glade, accompanied by the women’s humming a soft chant. Risgan swayed to the music, obviously infected with the qualack, while the villagers caroled on in approval.