The great sheets of muscle that clung to his gigantic frame rippled with each movement of his mighty arms, and many apes thought he resembled a moving mountain.
The silverback did bear a deep scar across his forehead and cheek from the lioness’ long fangs, but this became a grim reminder of his ferocity for any ape foolish enough to challenge his authority.
How could any blackback upon his approach forget that Goro was king, and he was a lion-killer who had celebrated his victory over the beasts by sharing their flesh among the tribe and afterward taking the young she-apes Ivee, Udam and Oka to be his queens?
Each of those lovely creatures had borne him a son, and the other apes rejoiced for their powerful king and spoke to a future of peace and abundance for the tribe of Goro.
Though some still whispered and plotted, and the lips upon the most active mouth were twisted by spite and disease.
Sip-sip’s facial deformities had made him utterly hideous by that time. While apes judged beauty differently from other creatures, the open wound on the left side of his face: empty eye socket, exposed teeth, jaw and tongue left him horrible to behold. The entire side of his head had become a rotting lesion that alternated between scar tissue, and dripping infection.
Omag’s “sip-sip” sound had become almost uncontrollable, and was amplified by the copious amounts of pus that drooled sloppily out of the foam-flecked hole in his face.
His physical deformities had worsened also, with the bones in his arms and legs twisting around their centers and distorting the thick ridges of muscle that covered them.
This did little to slow Omag while swinging high in the green canopy at speed, but hampered him appreciably when he moved to the ground. Then the traditional anthropoid “knuckle-walk” was distorted by these malformations into an awkward lurching waddle as his massive muscles compensated for the disabilities with sheer power.
He continued to carry and rely upon the axe-head “cane” he’d adopted long before, and over the time his cradling of and caring for the blade had caught the attention of bolder apes who had nicknamed the tool, still in whispers, “Sip-sip’s baby.”
The cane was integral to his walking over greater distances, and allowed him to adopt a threatening upright stance while braced against it.
Compared to the mighty Goro, Omag was a pathetic thing, deformed and disabled beyond individual survival, but the tribe was wise to remember that the strength of the bull apes was such that it could often overcome physical challenges that would handicap or kill lesser creatures.
Failed though he was and ill, Omag was still a bull ape.
It was also wise to remember he was mentor to the mighty Ulok.
CHAPTER 30 – Skin-stones and Doorways
Gazda was still often haunted by memories of his mother’s death and frequently plagued by boredom so when these things dragged at his spirit; he took trips away from the tribe, days that he alternately used for hunting game, killing Bakwaniri when he ran across any of their trails, and playing jokes on Harkon the huntress. At other times he might spend as much as a week holed up in his lair pouring over Fur-nose’s mysterious possessions.
The artifacts were many and strange, but some were within his grasp. The night ape had studied the former inhabitant’s method of stretching cleaned animal skins until he was able to reproduce the process on his own. The garments Gazda made from the processed hides were suppler and resisted decay far longer than any he had previously possessed, and though they still fell short of Harkon’s fine coverings; it no longer offended his sensibilities to wear them.
He had less luck comprehending the small items laid out on the platform beside Fur-nose’s bones, and with other wood and metal objects he found in the tree-nest that might have been weapons or tools.
The night ape often contemplated a collection of transparent receptacles that he had thought were made of water until he touched their hard surfaces. His studies had yet to illuminate the true purpose and properties of glass.
But most puzzling and disturbing were the skin-stones, curious things that he had only recently come upon.
These were perhaps the most unusual of Fur-nose’s possessions, and the most overlooked. He had found them at the bottom of a wooden box that was filled with broken branches. That box and another like it was partially concealed between the bed and the wall.
He had seen the skin-stones many times but only glanced at what he had thought were regularly shaped stones, and their true properties might have gone “undiscovered” had one not fallen from his grasp when he lifted it in his boredom.
Then a frightening mechanical reaction had occurred, and the “stone” had come apart! The hard, flat outer covering had flown open like wings and its solid interior fluttered apart into many, many thin, straight-edged skins that clung together along one side—only to have the skin-stone later return to its original hard shape after he worked up the nerve to lift the thing and allow its rigid covering to swing back into place.
So that it could become solid again!
Whatever their actual purpose, these skin-stones had further darkened the mystery of Fur-nose and Gazda’s night ape tribe for when the skins had fluttered open, he found inscribed upon them many lines of small, twitchy shapes.
At first the night ape mistook them for bugs or bits of dirt, but then he realized they would not brush off, and instead stayed in organized groups that followed the straight edges of the skins.
He had yet to comprehend the true nature of these skin-stones, though he could observe some of their facets, for there were stranger things that he had found in them.
While some of the skins had
