Far-Seer

The fangjaw was low in the grass, its passage mostly visible only by ripples through the blades.

They were closing.

The fangjaw made a sharp turn. Afsan didn’t know why it had done so, but he trusted its instincts. With a yank of his tail, he commanded his runner to copy the fangjaw’s maneuver. As he passed the spot where the carnivore had turned, Afsan saw a crevice in the ground. If he hadn’t changed direction, his runner would have stumbled into it, probably breaking both legs.

Drawo’s runner moved off at an angle, so that he was approaching the fangjaw on the left, while Afsan barreled in from the right. Suddenly Drawo leapt from his mount. Afsan did the same, the ground rushing by beneath him at a dizzying rate. His claws sprang out. He landed on the fangjaw’s shoulders. Drawo missed, smashing into the dirt. Afsan was alone on the creature’s back.

It was twice Afsan’s body-length, but his weight was slowing it down. He felt the thing’s muscles ripple as it moved its shoulders, trying to buck him.

Afsan dug in.

One bite should do it…

The fangjaw arched its neck, trying again to throw Afsan. Afsan brought his jaws together with a crunching sound where the fangjaw’s head joined its body. He twisted, cracking the quadruped’s vertebrae.

In mid-stride, the fangjaw stopped moving of its own volition. But momentum carried it forward, smashing it into the ground. Afsan bounced, but did not fall off his kill. Drawo, brushing dirt from his body, ran over to where Afsan and the fangjaw lay.

“Such skill from an eggling!” shouted Drawo, apparently genuinely pleased, and not disappointed to have been left out of the kill himself. “I’ve never seen the like.”

He stared at Afsan for a moment, as if wondering something, then made a strange gesture with his left hand: claws exposed on the second and third fingers, the fourth and fifth fingers spread, thumb pressed against his palm.

Afsan recognized the gesture. It was the same one he’d seen on his Dasheter cabin door and elsewhere. But the double impacts, first into the fangjaw’s hide, then as the beast had slammed into the ground, had left him slightly dazed. Not sure quite what he was doing, he made a halfhearted stab at duplicating the sign, still wondering what the silly thing meant.

Drawo looked delighted. “I’ll summon the others,” he said, bowing deeply.

Afsan saw no reason to wait for the rest of the party. He tore a large chunk off the beast’s flank. The meat was very sweet indeed…

The rest of the journey was uneventful. Afsan slept under the stars when the sky was clear; in one of the tents Det-Zamar had brought on those nights it rained. Finally they made it through the pass between the two largest of the Ch’mar volcanoes, and spreading out before them were the stone and adobe structures of Capital City.

Home at last, thought Afsan. Then he clicked his teeth, realizing how he’d changed. As much as he’d enjoyed his visit to Carno, it was no longer his home. The Capital was, and he was glad to be back. But he wondered if he’d still be glad after he’d seen his master, chief palace astrologer Tak-Saleed.

*27*

Afsan descended the spiral ramp to the basement of the palace office building. He knew he’d have to endure Saleed’s wrath: anger that he was late in returning from his pilgrimage and fury that Afsan had the temerity to question his teachings. In no hurry to face this, he tarried to look at the Tapestries of the Prophet, peering at them through the reflections of lamp iimes dancing on their thin glass covering. There had been tiny parts of these images he’d not understood the last time he’d seen them, 372 days ago. But now everything was plain. That strange bucket atop the mast of Larsk’s sailing ship: that was the lookout’s perch, just like the one aboard the Dasheter. Those black spots on the Face of God—"God eyes"—were the shadows of moons. Afsan was surprised to see them scattered all over the Face here, instead of just concentrated along widest part, but then he realized that the artist—the famed Hel-Vleetnav—simply hadn’t been a skilled observer of such things, or had made the painting from fallible memory long after her own pilgrimage. Indeed, she’d depicted the Face fully illuminated even though the sun was also visible in the picture, an impossible arrangement.

Around the edges of the tapestry were the twisted, loathsome demons, those who supposedly told lies about the Prophet in the light of day. Afsan had always been horrified at their appearance, but now he looked at them differently.

Surely they hadn’t been monsters, hadn’t been demons masquerading as Quintaglios.

And Larsk himself, the prophet. Had Vleetnav ever met Larsk? Did she really know what he had looked like? She had painted him with a serene expression, eyes half closed. Afsan clicked his teeth. That was exactly right.