He was warm in her sad gaze...
...Gazda’s eyelids fluttered open, and he saw below him the black fog from the sickly trees had crossed the clearing to crawl the jungle depths.
There was no forest floor. The world was silent.
A churning column of smoky black grew up from this murk until the crimson eyes upon it blazed directly at him.
Gazda cried out and leapt away, but the bark beneath his feet was wet...
...he fell into the clinging darkness.
CHAPTER 8 – Savage Breast
Gazda decided that he must have drifted off. It was rare for him to sleep at night, but there could be no other explanation.
Or the fall had knocked him senseless—if he had fallen at all—which he was beginning to doubt, for he had awakened astraddle the branch with his back against the tree and he could not have climbed back up without remembering or waking.
Below him, the black fog that had covered the jungle floor had faded with the rain.
If it had ever been there at all. More likely he had dreamed that also, for how else could he explain the pillar of fog with burning eyes.
The downpour had dwindled to the slow drip of raindrops from the foliage that crowded him, and the growing humidity had heated the night air. From his perch, he could see across the clearing to where gentle gray mists rolled and drifted by the tree-nest, though a darker fog still lingered close to the ground by the black and sickly grove where it clashed with a brighter haze that came through the forest from the great blue water.
He must have dreamed it all.
Music. He was surprised to find the word still resounding in his ears, yet Gazda could not conjure up the sounds he had heard. Perhaps that had been a dream as well.
And yet, images from his vision yet assailed him, and so, surely he had heard the music.
It must have been a weapon of Fur-nose’s night ape tribe.
He remembered the confusion of emotion and pain that it brought upon him—the dizziness that grew as the females jumped and turned and danced.
“Dance,” he said, in a language no ape would understand.
The music had affected him, somehow distorting his mind, and adding thoughts that were not his own.
“Taniec. Dans,” he said, again. Weighing the sound of it with his ears, and then he added, “Musica.”
It had not been the words alone but what they described that had conjured the disturbing images and sensations in his mind, and he wondered if Harkon might help him understand what had happened—if she had encountered such a thing before.
For if it was a weapon intended to raise the visions and weaken him whenever the invaders so wished it, then it seemed the words remained within him still.
Gazda growled, emboldened by the constant night noises that had returned with the failing rain to fill the jungle, as though that jot of normalcy had brought new courage with it.
Another growl escaped him, for smoke yet curled up from his lair. So the invaders were no dream.
An ironic grin cracked his features when he remembered the “music” had stopped before his retreat, yet its effect had seemingly followed him. A defensive weapon it must have been, and its effect had increased at a distance.
He would be cautious.
Sliding silently along from branch to branch, Gazda slipped closer to the clearing until he found a perch from which he could watch the tree-nest. With the rain trailing off, he knew its occupants might come out, and despite the power of their “music” and “dance” he wished to learn more about them before deciding on a course of action.
He hoped he was out of range.
And as king and silverback, he was charged with killing or exiling any invaders encroaching on his lands, and yet he hesitated. If they were his or Fur-nose’s tribe, then allies they might be, and if they shared his strength and cunning, slaying so many of them would test the night ape past his end.
As he lay there with his chest pressed against the bough, his ribs shuddered at the throb of his heart, rhythmically it ran: lub-dub, lub-dub... And the shadow of music arose in his thoughts: da-da-da-da duh, da duh, da duh...
But its effect was dispelled when the tree-nest door swung inward and open.
Lub-dub...
A creature stepped out onto the platform that was the living likeness of Fur-nose’s bones. A hairless ape like Gazda, pale-skinned and fully fleshed on hands and face; yet it was covered with garments much like what the night ape had found in the tree-nest and seen in the skin-stones.
The creature was almost Gazda’s height and wore a thatch of curls atop its head, while around its nose a tuft of dark-gray hair grew that kindled the night ape’s greatest superstitions.
If Fur-nose could not live again, then surely this was his blackback son. Old Baho had told the stories of the thunder-hand, and described its master many times.
This one barked in a deep voice and another night ape stepped out, followed by the dim light from the open door. This one was thick and squat, and had heavy white tufts growing on his red cheeks—sideburns like those upon the apes in Gazda’s tribe. The white-haired one moved slowly, also, and his actions were rigid.
Old. Gazda nodded, thinking of Baho’s sometimes arthritic movements.
A low growl started unbidden in the night ape’s chest as a third male moved out to stand by the others. This one was tall and his skin was as black as Harkon’s.
And in his hands he bore a thick branch, and upon one end there was a flat and shining stone!
Like Omag’s murderous cane!
Gazda bared his fangs to the night. Were these creatures in league with the traitorous Sip-sip, then—or had they robbed a king of his revenge?
The night ape’s excitement leapt again as another reality struck home. The black skin on the third! Could it be that Fur-nose’s tribe of night
