Tibo had no choice but to follow.
The estuary was fringed by a muddy plain, itself bordered by walls of forest. Working their way inland, father and son followed roughly defined paths that followed the edge of the forest, or cut in among the trees. Out on the mud birds worked in great flocks, exotic types that Tibo didn’t recognise and Deri couldn’t name. In the deeper water Tibo saw fish swim, bronze and gold, unfamiliar, and what looked like eels, and stranger shapes, long and sleek with crusty backs. Once he saw a long, flat head that seemed to be all jaw, opening and yawning, revealing rows of teeth. These beasts were why, Deri said, you had to be careful of going in the water, or even near it.
Towards the end of the day they cut away from the water and pushed into the jungle. The trees were impossibly tall and green and laden with vines and lichen, and the ground was choked with undergrowth so thick you had to slash your way through with your bronze blade. Deri knew the forest to some extent, having travelled here at the death of the last Annid of Annids a decade earlier, and he knew which fruit was safe to eat. You could find rabbits and deer here, he said, brought over the ocean in the deep past by Northlanders. And there were other sorts of animals to hunt, such as big clumsy creatures like huge rats that fled at their approach.
But there were other, still stranger forms lurking in the forest. Once Tibo heard a cry, almost human, and he saw a shadow flitting through the high branches, like a child, a thing that clambered and swung. And, late on as the light faded, he saw two yellow eyes peering out of the green gloom around them — a black face, a slim muscular form. But when he looked again it was gone.
He told Deri what he had seen. His father grinned, his teeth white in the gloom. ‘Perhaps it was a jaguar.’ The word was strange, not of the ancestral language of Northland. ‘The god-animal of the Jaguar folk. You are honoured; the jungle is welcoming you.’ But after that Deri kept his bronze sword drawn and in his hand, and stayed subtly closer to his son.
Deri called a halt for the night at the edge of a wide area of swampy land. They found a dry space away from the water, and spread out a cloth over the ground, and hung another from a tree branch to discourage the insects. While Deri gathered dry wood, Tibo started a fire using a flint and a striking-stone from his pack.
Then, before the light vanished completely, Deri beckoned to Tibo and led him to the edge of the water. Here an extraordinary tree grew right out of the water, a complex tangle of trunks and branches draped with vines. Deri took off his shoes and stepped carefully into the water, leaned down and dug in with his bare hands, scooping out crabs that he threw up the bank to Tibo. Then he took a knife and began prising off oysters and mussels that clung to the tree roots. ‘This strange waterlogged tree is the whole world to these creatures.’
Tibo, avoiding the crabs’ snapping claws, smashed their shells with rocks. They heated a stone slab over their fire, and cooked the crab meat in strips, and popped open the mussels and the oysters.
Night seemed to fall quickly here. Tibo was grateful for the light of the fire, which kept the looming forest shadows away.
When he woke the light of day was seeping through the seams of their thin tent. His father was still asleep. Tibo slipped on his boots and pushed his way out of the tent, naked save for his loincloth. The dawn was not far advanced, but the sky was already bright, the air already hot, and the jungle was full of birdsong and the distant cries of animals. He walked down towards the tree with the crabs and loosened his grubby loincloth. He disturbed birds that flapped away, huge and unreasonably colourful, squawking their protest.
And as he was pissing against a root he saw the girl. He jumped, and felt warm liquid splash against his leg. He had no weapons, not so much as a blunt knife.
The girl was standing on a low rise, watching him. She was naked save for a skirt of dyed cloth loosely tied around her waist. Her skin was brown, her bare breasts small. She was slender, shorter than he was. He couldn’t tell how old she was. Her hair was tightly tied up, and adorned with brightly coloured feathers. She was holding a bag of knotted string, within which a small creature was curled up, like an oversized rat.
She grinned. Her teeth were grooved, he saw, striped with some red-orange dye.
She didn’t offer any threat, Tibo told himself. He had just crossed an ocean to speak to these people. He smiled back. ‘Hello.’
But she flinched, spat something guttural, and from nowhere produced a stone knife that she held out, pointing its tip at him.
‘It’s all right.’ Deri stood beside him, as near-naked as Tibo was. ‘These people have their own ways of speaking. To her, you were being threatening, or rude. Or both.’
‘I didn’t mean to-’
‘Follow my lead.’ He smiled at the girl, covered his eyes with his fists, and bowed. Then he straightened up, opened his hands palms outward so that it was as if his hands were his eyes, Tibo saw. Then he carefully lowered his hands so his true eyes were revealed. ‘I saw her with my body, then my spirit. You aren’t real until you’re seen properly. To her, it was as if you were a corpse that just sat up and spoke.’
Tibo copied the hand-eye movements as best he could.
The girl seemed to relax. She tucked the knife into her leather belt, and made the eye gesture, first to Deri, then Tibo.
‘Try not to do anything else to alarm her. And put your cock away.’
Tibo hastily rearranged his loincloth.
The girl jabbered something in an alien tongue, full of clicks and stops.
Deri shook his head. ‘I don’t understand all that… Ki-xi wes-tar. Deri.’ He gestured. ‘Tibo. Ki-xotl t’xixi…’ The girl’s eyes widened, and she looked puzzled. Evidently the way he spoke wasn’t always clear, and he stumbled over the clicks with his tongue..
In the end she grinned again, showing those grooved teeth. ‘ K-xa!’ And she turned and ran off.
Tibo frowned. ‘Where has she gone? What did you say to her?’
‘The only thing I know how to say. That we’re from Northland, and the Annid is dead. If we’re lucky she’ll have gone off to tell somebody about it.’
‘And if we’re not lucky?’
He sighed. ‘I’ll just have to try again. Or you can try. I’ll teach you. All those tongue-clicks are hard work. Now come on, let’s get cleaned up here and get moving.’
9
With their packs on their backs, their swords in their hands, they pressed into the jungle, the way the girl had gone. Soon they came to a narrow track through the dense green, so faint and meandering it might have been made by animals rather than people. To his relief, Tibo saw that the jungle was clearing, the land rising, and the tree cover above began to break up to reveal a sky sparsely littered with clouds.
They came to a ridge of earth, grassed over but clear of trees that stretched away through the green to left and right, a dead straight line.
Deri snorted in triumph. ‘The work of the Jaguar folk!’ He strode forward boldly and clambered up onto the ridge.
Tibo followed, and found himself standing on the bank of a dyke, a tremendous drainage gully that cut through the forest. Paths were laid out on both banks, tracks of wood pressed into the earth.
Deri stepped out along the path.
‘This is big,’ Tibo said, hurrying after him. ‘Bigger than anything I’ve seen at home.’
‘The great works in Northland dwarf anything on Kirike’s Land, which is after all a small island. And they’d dwarf this too, but this is respectable. We’re approaching their heartland now…’
They reached the edge of the forest and broke out into the open air, still following the spine of the dyke. It wasn’t as hot here as at the coast; a wind blew from the north, chill and faintly damp. Tibo saw they were crossing the flood plain of a mighty river, sparsely scattered with stands of trees. In the far distance loomed mountains, the angular blue hills he had glimpsed from the sea. And at the feet of the mountains the land rose up into a plateau, edged by ridges and gullies, like a tremendous sculpture.
The whole of this landscape swarmed with people. Smoke rose everywhere, especially from that dominating plateau, and houses sat squat on the plain. Deri said the plateau was called the Altar of the Jaguar.
They came upon a party of people waiting for them, gathered around a kind of wheeled cart. Tibo recognised
