inbred and die out. More often we sally against them, warring to keep them in line. The Khyyiani are cruel, loving to torture captives with lingering deaths, and the Sulaki sacrifice captives and even their own people to a bloody god named Ergerborg.'
Johan squinted in concentration. Over weeks he'd tuned his ear to the tiger's antique accent. Now he fixed the twisty tribal names in his mind. 'There's no hope of reconciliation, then?'
'Oh, none. We'd sooner nest with mud imps than those bastards.'
Johan nodded, seeming satisfied, leaving Jedit and Hestia as puzzled as ever. Abruptly the magician turned. 'We've walked one end of Efrava to the other. Now let us venture south, then north.'
'What do you seek?' asked Hestia.
Johan's teeth showed a shark's grin. 'Knowledge.'
Skirting the matted swamp, Jedit warned of mud imps. Johan didn't seem to care.
On their second day circling south, amidst clouds of annoying mosquitoes, Hestia gave a sudden bleat. Her foot had tangled in a snare. Rather than rush to her rescue, Jedit Ojanen unsheathed his black claws and spun a quick circle. Well he did. From both sides in tall bushes popped a dozen evil faces with bamboo blowguns. Johan, in the lead as always, muttered some enchantment and waved a languid hand, invoking an aura of protection. Jedit flicked a paw at a zipping wasp and spanked a poisoned dart aside, then another. A third struck his neck but lodged in his short mane, not penetrating the skin. Two darts shot at Johan stopped a foot away to hang in midair, then slowly sank to the ground. Hestia had slashed the snare from her ankle. Crouching low, she leaped into a slot in the brush, giving a keening cry that set nerves on edge. Jedit bulled into brush after the biggest clutch of imps.
Squawling mud imps scattered through the brush. Belt-high, covered in reddish fur clotted with mud, they had devils' faces with black rams' horns, pug snouts, yellow fangs, and scruffy dark manes. Jedit caught two. One he killed with a swipe of his huge paw, claws splitting the creature's skull. The other he stabbed from behind, severing its spine. A third he tried to kick to death, but it dove into a bush and vanished. Jedit ripped the bush out by the roots only to uncover a gopher hole. Disgusted, he trotted back to the trail. Hestia, her stripes dusty and leaf- strewn, carried an imp's head by one horn. Showing it to Jedit, she pitched it into the brush.
Obviously protected by some magic aura, Johan hadn't moved a pace. He asked only, 'Are these common?'
'As mosquitoes in some spots,' said Jedit. He rubbed his own black nose, which was drilled with bumps. 'Pests. They avoid us in large groups. They live on rats and hogs and ducks, mostly.'
Soon they entered the jungle proper again, nurtured by southward-trending trickles from the river. A herd of tiny yellow deer bounded away from a pool. Everywhere ran game in plenty: water buffalo, deer, wild pigs, red monkeys. Even parrots and giant anacondas and tortoises were food to tigers. Jedit and Hestia ganged up to encircle and kill an animal when hungry. They would gorge, eating flesh, organs, even brains and eyes, then needn't eat for four or five days. Johan seldom ate, subsisting on water and roots and now and then a nest of eggs.
Everywhere, the tigers noted, Johan absorbed the lay of the oasis, until he must know it better than any native. He studied the sky, asked about the year-round weather, memorized hillocks and swamps and open glades, noted the types of trees and how they clustered, tasted the water, sifted the soil for minerals or clay. Whenever the tigers asked why, Johan gave vague answers about 'wanting to know everything there is to know.'
One time, pacing a sun-dappled trail, he asked abruptly, 'Do your people have any legends about flying?'
'You mean,' asked Jedit, 'about tigers flying like birds?'
Hestia put in, 'No, not as such.'
'No true talk of magic carpets or winged shoes or soaring boats?'
Numbly the two tigers shook whiskered heads, and Johan marched on.
Over four months, they scoured all of Efrava, until the only place left unexplored was the village itself. Camping by night without a fire under three teak trees, Johan sat against a trunk, hands in his long sleeves and feet drawn up under his robe. Jedit lay sprawled on the ground. Hestia lay nuzzled against his broad back, one arm around him, as they always slept of late. The tigers were nodding when Johan startled them both.
'I have a confession to make,' said the mage. 'I did know your father.'
Chapter 3
The shaman dreamed.
Alone in the large common hut, in the dead of night, Musata, shaman of Efrava and mother to Jedit Ojanen, had hung the burlap mat to close the doorway, then banked a low fire of coals with handfuls of herbs. Among her tribe, only shamans knew how to kindle fire, for only they dared risk it. Into the fire had gone mystic herbs: rue for keen sight, fennel for memory, toadwort to draw strength from the earth, hyssop for purity, teak bark for inner vision, and many other herbs gathered in secret from the forest of Efrava, for only by imbibing native plants with native strength could a native remain anchored to this plane while sending her mind questing to unseen worlds.
Sitting cross-legged, clawed hands on her knees, striped muzzle drooping on her bosom, Musata inhaled deeply and dreamed. Jedit Ojanen, her wayward son, had been much on her mind lately, indeed on everyone's mind, and Musata kept his face centered in the arena of her mind. Yet before her inner eyes, Jedit's head began to spin, and suddenly she beheld-on the back of his skull-the face of the strange man called Johan. Another spin, and Musata saw Jedit's face again. No, Jaeger's, older, broader, with white sprinkled among the black fur. A triad, she knew, for magic always happened in threes. No surprise, for the three beings were linked.
She cast her net wider. More faces, a sea of them. Hestia's. Her own, Musata's. Faces of humans, strangers. A young woman with wild chestnut hair and a devilish eye. A bearded man, the face of a saint. More people ranged behind them. How many humans were there in the world? Ironically, Musata had never glimpsed humans before, even in the spirit world, yet here trouped a veritable parade. People tied to Johan's legacy, no doubt. He carried remnants of their spirits, or even their ghosts, with him. So who exactly was Johan?
Sinking deeper into a trance, Musata's brain swam in uncharted waters. Tricky business, and dangerous. A shaman who strayed too far risked being lost, her spirit irrevocably cleaved from the corpus. Many a shaman had been found dead, his body shriveled to a husk, the soul unchained. Yet Musata knew her search was important. She could sift truth, if only she could see.
Farther afield fled her astral mind. High, high as the moons, until she shivered in chill upper air. The myriad faces receded, until she beheld the throng occupied a desert far below. Surrounding the desert… She strained, mentally squinting, for her eyes were no longer sharp. Surrounding the horde were three-what?
To the south, where must lie an ocean, loomed a vast black gap. To the north, a single tall mountain smooth as a cone of sugar. To the east and west, smaller mountains in pairs. What meant they?
Smoke filled the hut now, so thick it leaked through the walls, though Musata didn't see it. Her nostrils twitched, rebelling against alien fumes. Yet she bore on, breathing to fill herself with the mystical combined essence.
Hanging in not-air up high, Musata breathed fire and fought to understand the vision. Below lay the black gap, a single mount, and twin mountains, all framing a vast horde of unknown humans. Somehow the picture hung on the stranger Johan, for he was central to this vision, same as her son and husband. Three threes, she realized. Magic trebled. Powerful stuff.
Straining, Musata's head began to spin. The people below were shouting, she realized. Calling a name? Crying for justice? Leaning, tilting until she felt nauseated, Musata began to descend in a sickening spiral. She must get closer to the crowd. Their words, their cause, were vital to her tiny tribe, though she couldn't imagine how the affairs of humans might impinge upon Efrava. Faster she fell, in great swooping circles like a stricken vulture.
A black gap, a lone mount, twin mountains.
None, One, and Two.
The knowledge came as a shock. Suddenly Musata was spiraling out of control. She'd die when she struck the ground. Lurching, flailing her arms, crying out, she fought for balance, for a return to safety, but plunged helplessly
