The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (9 page)

Captain looked down at Demane, then all around.
Who are you? Where am I?
said these looks. The backsplash of other men’s blood freckled his face, which was some stranger’s, it was so pummeled and cut. His cyclopean left eye glared, his right one swollen up blind. The knuckles of his hands were raw gore, the flesh stripped in spots to glimpses of bone. By slow changes in stance and expression Demane marked the captain’s return from wandering among ghosts and memories, to this night, these people.
He stepped away from Demane’s hand. He slumped to one side, swayed as though to fall and then, catching himself, painfully stood back upright.

Of course a doctor who was also lover would wish for nothing except to say, Let me help you. But more forthcoming than anything a man can ever say aloud—whether you may care for his wounds, whether you may watch over his sleep—is the silent testimony of his bearing and demeanor. For the body tells all to him who knows the language, and doesn’t lie. The captain would sooner have leapt into the fiery lake atop Mt. Bittersmoke than accepted even so much as a shoulder to lean on.

Captain staggered off, one-leg-dragging, into darkness and glare. Brothers flushed from his way like pigeons from a loose dog.

Messed Up mumbled and stirred.

T-Jawn knelt beside Demane. “I should be only too happy to fuck right off again, if you are still wroth with me. But, please, Sorcerer, permettez-moi: shall I take feet or shoulders?”

“Salright.” Demane lurched to a squat and then—making faces, all a-tremble—came to standing: hefting Messed Up in his arms. “I got him.”

“Mais, mon vieux! Are you
quite
sure . . . ?”

“Yeah, Jawny. Just get em out the way for me.” Demane nodded toward the brothers uselessly crowding in. And to that most useless pair:

“Xho, Walé!” Demane called. “Tell me where y’all staying at.”

Nearby, in some travelers’ barracks. The adobe hall was low-ceilinged, the doors narrow, and most of the brothers shared the biggest room in back. Men dropped onto their pallets, and into sleep within a breath or two. A few sat up whispering in the dark, rehearsing the night’s events to one another. He laid Messed Up on the pallet nearest the window. Demane blinked to clear his eyes.

No longer bleeding, the nose was swollen tight as if to burst. He propped Messed Up’s head on a rolled sheet, broached a jar of sterile water, and washed away caked blood. Flexing tiny muscles, praying under his breath, Demane began to nurse down a precious drop of ichor from his third eye.
Forgive me this venom. It is weak and will save a life, taking none. In
tsoa
they say, Let us hasten to the heat death, for its arrival is inevitable. Yet in TSIM we say, No; we shall keep on fixing the machine unto the last moment. So then account me TSIM
tsoa
, spinning on the Tower’s right. Forgive me this venom . . .
Those brothers still awake gaped blindly toward this catechistic mutter. The light too dim for their eyes, they started at the little sounds Demane made, taking from his bag and putting back.

He prayed, blinking, and then at last his tongue deliquesced. It split into tapered, coiling halves: the hot prehensile right, the cold secretory left—from which expressed a droplet viscid as quicksilver. Demane scooped up the mercurial drop in his venom sac, and faster than eyes rewet themselves with a blink, lashed half his tongue across a full yard, stroking its load precisely across the crushed bridge of Messed Up’s nose. At once the black swelling went brown. Demane, blinking, allowed the vitriol a moment to anesthetize, to sink as deeply as bone. Then he pinched the nose’s jumbled rubble back into order. His tongue sealed and shortened, trembling and achy. Estranged from his own emotion and fatigue, he cleaned wounds, sewing some. He kept having to blink to clear away his leaking tears. And why tears? Why
not
? This night had been long, trying, and widely various in its trials. And now that the last of the fires was all put out, he must not forget to grab by the neckscruff the rascals who set this blaze, and make them contemplate the smoky ruins.

“Xho and Walé, you two listen up.” Demane began to pack up his
medicia
. “What happen is, sometimes qaïf can go bad, see, and [mycotoxic fungus] grow on it . . . like a rot, you understand? That’s why you don’t smoke it.
Shouldn’t
. Smoke some bad qaïf, and it [can induce choleric schizophrenia] . . . mess up your head for good. That’s what
he
done a long time ago, what messed him up in the first place. Qaïf
poison
, very dangerous. It’s [an insult to the homeostasis of body and mind]. You understand me?” Well, how can they, fool? You’re speaking half in your own language!

Anxious to demonstrate rehabilitation, Xho Xho and Walead said, “We ain’t smoking no more.”

“Nope. Not again, uh uh.”

“I don’t even really
like
qaïf, never did. You, Walé?”

“
Hell
no—I
hate
that shit!”

There was a bit of back-and-forth over whether that one dude, or Messed Up, or indeed some other dude, had first thought it a good idea to do something so bad—“Myself, I was like, ‘I don’t think we
should
, though, y’all. I don’t think it’s
right
.’”—but certainly neither of
them
, the two boys concurring here, had been the original instigator.

Such eagerness to create space between present self and past sins obliges adults in the room to wonder whether callow youth has really wised up. “What if the fo-so had showed up?” Cumalo spoke harshly from the dark. “What if Captain had gone upside y’all peanut heads hard as he did Messed Up?”

“He
has
before.”

“Yup! Cause, remember that time? I couldn’t see straight for
days
. . .”

The noise of frustration Demane made turned to a huge yawn. His burning eyes, all at once, would hardly stay open.

T-Jawn groped for Demane’s shoulder. “You sound all done in, Sorcerer. Vous pouvez partir, and take your rest. Messrs. Xho Xho and Walead shall retire for the evening, while Cumalo and I keep our eyes on things. I daresay no further mischief can be forthcoming from our sleeper—not tonight, non?”

So Demane left.

There was to be, after all, no rendezvous, laid up together under palm tree fronds on the banks of Mother of Waters. That hope had always been a mirage, though anticipation of it had carried Demane through all the weeks of the desert crossing. Now he’d find some spot in the open air to sleep beside the lake. But not quite yet: a night so evil required exorcizing before sleep. Wise words, or even the company of wisdom though nothing was said, would be enough. Along empty alleys, Demane returned to the piazza. The throngs there had become stragglers, and the awful fluorescence of the greatorch banked down to a sulfurous glow. And yes: Faedou and his jar even now sat against the wall. Demane took seat beside his elder brother. Content to say nothing, they watched the remnants of the night revels.

A lone drummer beat his jimbay with closed eyes, inspiring the feet of the last score dancers. Two of the caravan’s merchants, Qabr and Iuliano, slowstepped tiredly and in synch among those final revolving few. The two men possessed the same fine manners, eloquent hands, and trim small size: alike as twins, though obviously
not
kin—the one being pale and sharp-featured; the other dark, full of mouth and nose. What a blessing, what wonderful good luck, Demane thought, to make this long crossing with such a friend to share the travails. Never did you see those two apart! One night years ago perhaps they’d twirled through the piazza’s crowd and bumped into each other for the first time. And now, in memory of that first night perhaps it was their habit to dance away another whenever passing through town—

“
Tch.
” Faedou sucked his teeth, scowling. “It ain’t right.” He nodded toward the merchants dancing. “You know them two be smoking, right?”

Demane shook his head. “No, Faedou, not those two.” Men of such quality would never touch qaïf, and he said so.

“No, man.” With thumb upright, Faedou pursed his lips and crudely mimed the act he meant. “You know—‘unnatural connections.’” He turned his head aside and spat. “
Faggits
.”

“Slate,” Demane said finally (for you need to be braced when such a roundhouse comes in, or else it knocks the breath right out of you). He clapped hands down against his knees. “Bout time for me to go lay down.” He stood and while turning away tapped Faedou’s shoulder. “Don’t be out here all night, old man.”

Demane made his way to the lakeshore. The moon had set. Passing the canvas slums, his steps in the gravel brought some lady to a tent’s open flaps. She was about the age of his own mother. From within, he heard her pickney sleeping, a child’s slow, even breaths. The matron could have made out his silhouette, nothing more, in this dim starlight; still, she called to him, “Sex you, poppy?” as he went by.

By Mother of Waters he unfolded a buffalo hide onto the sands, and stretched out. The lake breathed coolly over his skin. The sand beneath his groundsheet leached heat up into his body. An unbroken field of stars, the sky glittered without a single spot wholly dark. His blood whispered to him of the first Home,
there
, a flickering as yellow as firelight, no brighter than ten billion other stars. Demane might still have people up there. Cousins.

And with her to marshal us, we then were able to bind the wild depths of time and space, as well as those [anachronisms] and [extradimensionalities] that had come ravening therefrom. We asked,
How shall we call you,
and she answered,
Howsoever; for my name has no acoustics but is rather [scent-pheromone-fragrance] and you lack the faculty to [utter] it.
So we named her Preema because she was first in power. Preema, before taking leave of us, said
let one of you magi forsake your Enclave and assume dominion over that place. For the Wild Depths cannot remain so but
must needs
be mastered
. Before any could obey her, we were beset by the dragons that burnt Daluz, and iron dogs which came out of the eastern bush; there was also war with Hell, with the so-called Children of the Lie; and earthquake and plague and famine racked our friend and neighbor, Great Olorum: so that for all of a generation, and much of the next, the talents of the magi were sore-tried. By the time of the Respite, no magi living knew how to effect that mastery which Preema had enjoined; but anyway the Road was still holding safe three centuries after laying the greatwork, then as now.

from
[ancestral eidetic memory] of the magi of the Ashëan Enclave

Hey, I gave you the choice, didn’t I? Sit jawing or make love. And you didn’t choose “talk,” so don’t try to change it up now.

Southbound from Mother of Waters, eldest brother rode his burro between the two youngest, and told them tales—filling up the green brakes and jungle the caravan approached with a tribe of rapacious cannibals.

No. Suresh paid me no mind; I told you that he wouldn’t.

The name of this cannibal tribe was supposed to be “
sharken
”: so called because they had mouths full of crooked sawteeth in double rows, like the pale man-eaters that preyed upon fishermen and pearl divers on the northern coasts; called
sharken
too, for that way of theirs, lurking invisibly in the shadows: until such moment as they brought down swift, terrible death upon the unawares.

You have to understand, man. They sank whole fortunes into this caravan, Suresh and the merchants. The Great Father, God, couldn’t make them turn back or aside now. We’ll just have to keep an eye out, you and me.

These folk—extraordinarily plump and well fed, fanged and wholly merciless—refused all meats except for tender cuts flayed off the shanks of men—and boys, especially—who set unwary feet off-Road while traveling through the Wildeeps.

Mmm . . . but no more, D.
I’m serious now. That’s enough. Are you listening? Are you going to let me go? I need to get down to the emburdening. And you need to go roust the brothers out of bed, make sure everybody gets over to Suresh’s on time. And unless I say so, D.: no brother steps off-Road,
nobody.
You tell them.

He wanted only to savor this mood, pure joy. Demane dropped a word to the wise, but decided that somebody else, just this once, could go about marshaling the scrappy forces of good sense, those few and sore-beset, against the nigh-invincible armies of foolish hard-headedness. Anyway, it was often true that fear best motivated fools; in which case no one was better suited than Faedou, so deft with a scary story, for persuading Xho Xho and Walead to keep to the straight course. That old man could have you jumping at the knock of your own heart!

“Just thought you two might like a little heads up,” said Faedou. “Cause those sharken will fry your ass up with some peppers and onions in a
heartbeat
. Watch out, is all I’m really saying here.”

Xho Xho and Walead doubted.

This one said, “You
know
you lying, Faedou!”

And that one: “Ain’t no cannibals in the Wildeeps!”

“Well.” Faedou wearily shook his head. “It’s on you, then.” There was very much a feeling he’d done all any man could: some folks were just doomed.
Nothing
could save them. “Go on off-Road into them woods if you want to, I guess.” The very cadences of his voice evoked the scene: two young brothers joking, acting a fool, the leaf shadows, some twig breaks, one or the other would whisper (his last words)
Man, did you just hear
that? What was that?
then nothing but screams, blood splattering, limbs in flight asunder from torsos. Both our young heroes ripped horribly to bits. As if to get it right for the eulogy, Faedou asked, “Wha’chall got, sixteen, seventeen years? Not a long life.
Sad
is what it is. But, yeah, I known some brothers to go that young. Always a damn shame, though.”

Walead sucked his teeth. Xho Xho drew a deep breath, trying to make his caved chest seem barrel. “I ain’t
never
scared!” And yet didn’t these two, of all the brothers and merchants, keep most cautiously to the Road? During the hailstorm, Walead and Xho Xho even took a savage beating rather than run for shelter with the rest. The boys pissed from the dirt into the green, fell to the rear of the baggage train for squats right there center-Road, before running to catch up with the caravan’s stragglers.

Aunty was sister neither to his mother nor father, but seven times the great-grandmother of the former, and five times the latter. She’d neglected to die in the way of other people, and came back through the green hills once or twice each generation. When Demane was six years old, Aunty came again and word went around that nobody younger than thirty should fail to visit her next full moon morning. She meant to teach some likely youth or child to work miracles.

“Now, I want you to
stay
your little backside right here in the house.” Demane’s mother held his chin firmly, keeping his gaze fixed to hers. “Do you hear me talking, little boy?”

“Yes, ma’am.” What he couldn’t understand was why his younger brother and older sister—in fact,
the entire world
—got to go to Aunty’s gathering. Everyone except for him. “But I want to come too!”

Whenever Mama took a hard line, sometimes it worked to appeal to Papa. This time, however: “You do what your mama said, Mountain Bear.” His parents looked at each other, an exchange full of tacit secrets. They shed a strange and particular frequency of fear-scent—as before, when Demane used to sniff the air and offer careless remarks concerning someone’s mood, or recent whereabouts. But he knew better now, and never did that anymore,
ever
, so there was no justice in these deserts, this punishment. The family left. He stayed.

Some are hellions, and some children a comfort to their parents; some, take your eyes off them for an instant, and they’re already into every sort of mischief. Until that day, Demane had always belonged to that rare few to whom you might speak one gentle word and then trust to obey. But after the family had gone, he waited a while in terror and excitement—then he too donned his wick-leaf cloak, and ran out into the rainy forest, toward the big gathering-house.

The caravan left the Station much later than planned, not at crack of dawn but nigh unto noon; still, they rode without haste down toward the Wildeeps. It often happens that, when the revels of a night have passed, and the sun sits on high again, a long day follows where nothing much gets done, or only half-assed and very slowly. For the suffering is widespread and horrendous as men repent what they did and shouldn’t have the night before.

Speaking to the general sentiment, Barkeem said, “That Demon will fuck you up, mayne. I’m hungover as shit.”

“Somebody kept passing me the jar, though,” said another brother riding, squinty eyed, at one side. “Do any of y’allses head feel like it’s gon’ bust?”

Yeah
, said a majority.

“We had all better partaken, I warrant, of that potion which does allow the Sorcerer to smile so,” said T-Jawn; “yea, though the sun beats down, and my head cracks apart. For
there
rides a man qui ne sait rien de notre douleur!”

“He
do
look kinda happy, though, don’t he?”

“Damn, Sorcerer; all your teeth showing! What you got to grin about?”

“For real, my dude—I need a sip of whatever
you
had!”

Demane couldn’t dim the grin, nor even get his lips covering his teeth. “Just a beautiful day out here, is all. Won’t y’all let young Demane be glad for once?”

“
Tch
. Cain’t nobody tell me that brother didn’t get him a piece last night. Ain’t nothing but some reeeeeeeally good ass gon’ have a man smiling like
that
.”

“Teef, don’t start up. You know the Sorcerer ain’t been up in them damn tents carrying on. It’s true love or nothing for him. Right, Sorcerer? ”

“That’s right, Kazza. Me and the Station just didn’t get along too good. So it feel nice to be on road again.”

The afternoon reddened and evening came on and still Demane felt in remarkable charity with the world. Slow thunderheads bore down on them. No: as the caravan drew nearer the Crossings they saw it was the towering clouds that stayed put, while their own progress southward overtook the stationary storm.

Men and their burros straggled out along the Crossings’ pebbled north shore. Oldtimers said nothing should have been easier than to look across the broad shallows and spot the Road, a wide black gap in the jungle’s green wall. But fog had rolled east to west across the south bank as far as eyes could see, and hard rain was falling over the Wildeeps, and only over there. The skies above the caravan were clear.

“See, this what they
need
to do,” said Michelo. “Stack up some stones over here on
this
side—see what I’m saying—to mark where the Road is at over
there
.”

“Yeah!” Wilfredo said. “Then you could find that shit, no matter if it was all foggy over the Wildeeps.”

“No,” said Faedou. “Y’all don’t get it. That wouldn’t work.”

“Why not, pray?” said T-Jawn. “Some signpost—a waymark—raised here on the north shore, just across from the Road là-bas: that strikes me a
fine
idea, Faedou.”

“Problem is,” said the old man, “it would be ‘waymarks’ all up and down the Crossings. The Road don’t keep to just one spot. Moves around.”

Across unspeakably vast vacancies, the nearest star blew toward the earth a wind of poisonous fire, which passed harmlessly through the sphere’s upper firmament, never catastrophically across the living surface, thanks to a field surrounding the earth, which fixed the location of all things on the planet by means of subtle pressure-lines palpable to birds, and other sensitive beings. Thanks, of course, to that undimmable brightness in the sky above the Road, Demane could see precisely where it began; but he knew moreover that the Road had shifted in relation to the northbank, nearly three miles eastward from yesterday’s latitude. He wasn’t sure it was wise to admit any of this knowledge.

He urged his burro nearer the riverbank. Six or seven merchants were there wrangling with Master Suresh over what was to be done. Astride his own burro, the caravanmaster peered at the farshore with a hand at his brow, as if a brave pose might help him see through lashing rain and dense fog. Gathered about and querulously howling at him was that quarter of the merchants most difficult to please. The sense of the mob seemed to be that it was too early to call halt for the day; certainly not before reaching the first well on the Road. There was the feeling too that the rain and fog, that the Road should be hidden from view, represented an outrageous dereliction of Suresh’s responsibilities as caravanmaster.

The remainder of merchants, and the brothers, all rested, letting their burros graze or drink. Most lay sacked out in the grass, a hood or sleeve drawn over their eyes, while awaiting some decision to come down. Demane examined the caravan for any other who showed signs of being able to see the sky beacon that marked the Road.

Oh, and whence this high, fine mood of his? Demane had retreated at dawn to a leafy bower in the thickets surrounding Mother of Waters, for the sun rose too bright and timely for further sleep on the sands. But neither had those deep shadows been a site for sleep: he’d just stretched out, just closed his eyes, when the last man expected had come crawling under the briars to him. For such a long time Demane had felt parched and colorless as the landscape through which the caravan had come wending down from Mother of Waters. And how did he feel now, as it got on for dusk, at the threshold of the Wildeeps? Well. Even as this cracked gray earth would revive under the softest downpour, there had fallen on Demane, as it were, a sweet and drenching rain. And just as this dust and these rocks, rained-upon, might sheen over with fresh verdancy, so was Demane turning a toothy grin onto everyone—glad in his heart!—body satisfied, his every thought a hopeful one. Picture the badlands blooming with many-colored wildflowers: some snow-white as eyes rolled back in ecstasy, others the incarnadine of wet lips slack and ajar in desire’s surcease; and little blossoms, springing up among the new grass, mauve as a lover’s bruised flanks, your hands
so
gently steadying his half of the act up and down in place, on your lap. And where’s he, now? There! Captain stood in the water, the reins of his burro in hand, while the hard current creamed about his ankles and its hooves. He stared crossriver and upwards, at that folded lightning bolt in the sky, shining through rain and fog, marking the Road.

Last night’s injuries from the Fighthouse could have been healing a fortnight rather than only one, by the looks. At dawn, there’d been nothing halt in Captain’s movements, no wincing wherever touched. Those torn knuckles had already grown thick dry scab. Demane himself was quick to heal from wounds, but hardly like this, not overnight. Now, at the day’s second twilight, about to cross over into the Wildeeps, even the scabs on Captain’s hands had fallen away, and the skin of his knuckles showed raw and pale, not yet tawnied to the proper brownish gold. His bruises, not livid: faded; and the last remnant wound, his left eye, only a little puffy, but fully open, its sclera white and clear.

Startled, Captain spun about—as happened often when anyone’s regard tarried too long on him. He and Demane spoke then, entirely in nods and glances, a conversation that might be rendered thus:

You see that there?

Sure do.

What should we do?

My man, YOU the captain.

Well, I can’t speak in front of all those merchants. Go and tell Master Suresh for me where we should cross for the Road. . . . Please?

Come on now, I’m just another one of the brothers! You know it’s not right making me talk to the caravanmaster!

All right, all right. I’ll go too and support what you say, but you speak for me. Let’s go.

Are you ready to admit yet, chump—that you’re the softest touch there is? Demane sighed. Dismounting he gave his reins to the brother beside him. Then, walking over to Master Suresh amidst the fractious merchants, he felt his stomach sour. However well Demane understood Merqerim, he spoke that dialect poorly. In a bad mood, the caravanmaster liked to mock a foreigner nastily, pretending not to understand a bad accent. It was a bit rough on the feelings, to tell the truth. Demane tried to work up a few short phrases in his head. But you were forever changing the ending-sound of words in Merqerim, which had to go in a very precise order, which was also ever-changing . . . About to turn and say,
no, look,
wait
, the objection was checked with a touch. The captain lay a hand between Demane’s shoulder blades, and sliding that hand to the small of his back, top of his ass, steered Demane through the press of merchants. A friend’s touch—a touch that meant nothing, one that didn’t count—would have been flat and firm, not there and gone, so maddeningly light.
Chump!