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On the packed earth at the shaman's feet were six half-foot-long sticks. Every now and then he'd pick these up, shake a large gourd rattle while shrilling some sort of a chant, and then he would throw the sticks into the air. Afterward, he'd study the pattern they made on the ground.
The prisoners had been in the cabin for three sleep-times. Aside from a beating by children and women when they'd been brought in, they hadn't been ill-treated. The food was good and plentiful. Their evacuations were regularly emptied from large bamboo buckets, which were washed out before being returned. And they were let out, one at a time, to exercise.
Shortly after they'd been locked up, a female had started language lessons. She stood outside the door and held up objects, giving each its name. It wasn't easy to imitate the pipings, but it could be done.
Sloosh could only buzz. The teacher, however, soon was able to make a correlation between his modulated sounds and hers.
The lessons made the cat and the dog, who'd also been shut up with them, nervous at first. After a while, they got used to it.
A good part of the time, the shaman sat casting his sticks. Other times he would leave the village on some business, no doubt sinister. When he was absent, the children would come close to the door and talk to the prisoners. The captives made more progress conversing with the youngsters than with the teacher.
A Tsimmanbul captive, whose paint showed he was of an enemy tribe, was brought in by a war party.
He was put in a hut and stayed there, except for exercise, for ten sleep-times. The shaman visited him frequently, always taking in with him a fiber cage that held a giant firefly. At the end of this period, the captive was taken away. The whole village celebrated this, beating drums, blowing whistles, playing flutes, twanging tortoise-shell harps, chanting, dancing, and taking turns daubing the captive until he was a solid black color.
Then he was bound and carried out of the stockade in a palanquin. Everybody but the guards went with him. At the end of seven sleep-times, they returned. The palanquin still carried the prisoner, but he was only a skull and skeleton. The clean-picked bones were dumped out onto the ground. The shaman took the skull into his house, and the bones were burned in a huge bonfire amidst another wild celebration.
Sloosh said, "Note that there was a small hole in the breastbone and several in the top of the skull."
"What does that mean?" Vana asked.
"I don't know, but we'll find out, though I suspect we won't like it."
He paused, then said, "Still, why should they take the trouble and expense of feeding us and teaching us their language only to kill us? It doesn't seem logical. I'll admit, though, that this conclusion is based on insufficient data. Their prisoner, from what I heard of his pipings as he was carried off, spoke the same language as the others. Perhaps the victim is required to give certain responses in a ritual. That might explain why we've not been killed—as yet."
This speculation seemed to be wrong. What the Tsimmanbul wanted, at the moment, anyway, was satisfaction of their curiosity. When the captives were fluent enough to answer detailed questions, they received a barrage of them. Where did they come from? What was their tribal life like? What were they doing here so far from their homes? Was the plant-man a god, demon, or just what he seemed to be?
The idea that they thought he might be a god and yet could be so easily caught intrigued Sloosh. He asked the shaman, Fat Bull, their main inquisitor, why this was.
Fat Bull replied that catching gods and demons was the main business of his kind, the Naraka
This was the generic name of this species, Tsimmanbul being the Yawtl's name for them. Their captors'
speech didn't have consonants or vowels. The prisoners had arbitrarily assigned these sound-values to the modulation units so that they could use the Naraka
Fat Bull explained that in the begi
"That's a myth," Sloosh said in his own language so the shaman wouldn't understand him. "Very interesting, though."
"We make raids on other villages and Houses," the shaman continued. "Be they Naraka
Yawtl, human, or Ski
He pointed at his house, the largest in the village.
"And our enemies also raid us, though so far we've been more successful than they. However, we have caught a god who seems to have turned the tables on us. He's caught us. I don't mean that he's taken any of us captive, but he might as well have. We can't move him, and he insists that we sacrifice someone every thirty sleep-times. When we don't have enemies to give him, we have to use one of our own tribe.
We don't like that at all."
"I don't blame you," Deyv said. "Nobody likes to be killed. But I must admit I don't really understand what you've said. How can a god force you to take sacrifices to him if he stays in one place? Which I assume isn't close to here?"
"Who can read the minds of men, let alone the minds of the gods? He has some reason, Phemropit does.
Actually, we can't talk to him. So we don't really know what he wants. But it's much safer to assume that he does require sacrifices. He hasn't rejected any, so he must want them.
"We've been economical, though, killing two birds with one stone, as it were. We make the sacrifices ask the god certain things. We think that if the god does finally reply, he may come to dwell in my house. And then I, I mean we, would have great power. With this we could exterminate our enemies and from then on live in peace. We'd also be able to use their fishing space and to have more babies. In time, we'd become so numerous and powerful that no wandering tribes would dare settle down here."
"An old story," Sloosh said in Archkerri. "The once too-peaceful Tsimmanbul are now as savage as you humans."
Deyv said, "So we'll be the next sacrifices?"
The shaman smiled, a ghastly thing to see.
"Yes, unless we take some more enemies first. I'd like you to be even better in our language before you go to talk to Phemropit. You have wandered far and wide, if your story is true. You come from different tribes. Perhaps you might have the wisdom and experience which we stay-at-homes lack. You might ask him the right questions. If you do, you won't be killed by Phemropit. And you'll be set free."
He paused, then said nonchalantly, "By the way, that cube. I've spent much time in my house looking at it. What is its purpose?"
Sloosh started to buzz. Deyv said, "Shut up! Now is no time to tell the truth!"
He spoke to Fat Bull. "That is a magical weapon of immense power. Unfortunately, it is so destructive that we can't use it without destroying ourselves. If we'd set it off when we were caught in the net, we'd have slain ourselves and the netters, and the jungle would have been blown apart, and a great flame would have swept to the sea and burned your village and the people in it to ashes within a second.
"One of the things we were seeking was a shield we'd heard about. This belongs to a witch. We were going to steal the shield and use it to protect ourselves when we did unleash the weapon."
Apparently, the shaman believed the big whopper. He said, "That rod sticking out of the cube? Does pulling on that release this terrible magic?"
"If you also use a certain chant at the same time," Deyv said.
"I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me what it is?" Fat Bull said.
"Certainly, if you release us," Deyv said. "You may have the cube as a gift in return for our freedom."