Dunecat looked out at the rain from under his tarp and let out a frustrated breath. He hated rain. Drought, he could tolerate, even thrive in… but this was just nasty. And people chose to live in it! His leather thongs were saturated with bog water. Every step sent cold water up between his taupe toes. He shivered, then took in a deep, settling breath. He had to get back on the road. Waiting for the spice god’s first big downpour to finish would be pointless. For all Dunecat was aware, it could last forever.
The Ashlander rolled up his tarp and untied his ropes, setting them about his trekking pack in their usual places. Then he fetched his walking stick tipped with its lion claw. He buried his waste ditch with an idle scrape of his foot, then looked for the dull orb of the sun to inform his directions. He headed back toward the main road.
Spice Village lay on the other side of the forest, gathering sunlight, spared by the torrential rainfall around it for a perfect afternoon in the grace of His making. Dunecat, a desert lover by design, hated seeing so much green in one place. To him, greenery spoke of infection or disease.
He spit, wiped his mouth, pulled his scarf back up around his sand-blasted face, and shook out his clothes to help facilitate their drying faster. He made his way across paths laid between rice patties and fish hatcheries. He tipped his straw hat at a girl carrying springlings and daffodils in a basket. She smiled briefly at him, but then averted her eyes when she saw the catskin wrapped about his neck, its broach covered by the sun-bleached skull of his soul’s kin.
Right. He was an adult here. He was a beast. He’d almost forgotten about the spice god’s little rites of passage. Rites and seasons and cycles were all His domain, after all. Dunecat’s Ash King was not so particular about His practices, nor the practices of His people, many as they were.
The cat-in-flesh finally came to the outer buildings and walked upon a house with bigger eves than the surrounding hovels. There were new shutters fixed to the outside of the house’s windows, made of wood rather than lacquered straw. Roses were hung above its doors to dry and wildflowers were just starting to bloom. Luxuries like that usually belied educated lot-owners, or at least well-off tenants. In either case, they would be able to direct him to the shaman.
Dunecat knocked on the front door using his walking stick and his lion’s claw scoured a mark of passage on its face, something only his own lot would be able to identify. The door opened after a moment and a woman with dark red hair and a dog’s mantle answered with a raised eyebrow. “Are you S’hea of the house?” Dunecat asked.
“Say-hey-uh?” The woman shook her head. “I’m Lete-Frue Coyote.”
Dunecat wanted to smack himself in the face. Of course they wouldn’t call themselves S’her and S’hea here. Here there was all kind of class hierarchy. Frues and jarls and chiefs and lete-jarls and chieftesses and servas--Lete-Frue meant she was the wife of a powerful man, but not a lord or a king or a god. He nodded. “Je! S’hea is the Ashword for such a title. Good. You are a knowing woman, Lete-Frue. I am looking for one such powerful man, known to you as Shaman Wolf. Where might I find him?”
“You are a long way from home, Ashlander,” Coyote said, the copper-backed eyes of her spiritual counterpart were set about on top of her head, regarding him with both suspicion and amusement.
“Yes, and tired of it. But I must see your shaman. I am on a divine journey, bearing a message of spiritual import.”
“From whom?” the woman demanded, implying she wouldn’t give up the location without a stake in the proceedings.
“The Ash King, of course.”
“You’re a shaman!”
“No,” Dunecat said with a laugh. “No, we have no such thing. I was contacted very directly from my god, in-dream. I have something I must tell Shaman Wolf just as personally. Call me Speaker if you must.”
“I will take you to him,” she said, pulling down her dog’s half-pelt to shield her eyes and grabbing a shawl of black sheep’s wool from a peg near the door.
“Such finery, Lete-Frue,” Dunecat commented, but the beast only smiled at him and motioned for him to follow her. She was wearing a red tunic, but it was clasped about the waist by a dust-colored dog’s tail, tanned and worked to accomodate a buckle made of canine teeth and a fowl’s wish-bone. She was built like a farmer, with muscles wound about her arms and legs, but her complexion spoke of a kind of cleanliness that only maidens ever really saw. For those reasons, he couldn’t tell if she was of working or mothering age. His own mother had left him with the Dreaming Nomads when he was just a boy and he only remembered her as a scared girl.
Dunecat figured such a woman as the Lete-Frue didn’t need a man, but he wondered what kind of man she would tolerate. He didn’t have to wonder long. When Coyote disappeared into a leather tent near the center of the village, he saw her smirk at him once before beckoning him inside. Inside, other women wearing dog mantles, and nothing else, rose from their sitting places to greet him with bows of their furred heads.
Red Coyote said, “Wolf, an Ashland speaker wishes to seek your counsel on behalf of another.”
A man wearing a wolf skin was sitting with his back to Dunecat, but even at the distance, the Ashlander could tell the man was huge for a Spicer. He stood slowly and turned to regard The Ash King’s messenger. Wolf had a lanky, brutal-looking body and, besides the cowl he wore about his head, the only thing that adorned his figure was a black-furred loincloth sporting the mummified genitals of a very male wolf.
Dunecat swallowed noisily.
“Speak, Speaker,” Wolf commanded in a guttural voice.
“I was commanded to betray these words to your beastly ears alone,” Dunecat said, glancing very obviously at all the naked women within the too-hot tent. A bead of sweat rolled down his back, setting somewhere above his pants’ tie. His wet toes itched. These things highlighted a sudden hyper-awareness blossoming within him. He realized rather belatedly that he had willingly walked into a wild wolves' den.
Wolf nodded once and his gold eyes flicked to the red-haired coyote. “Tell the others to go. You stay.”
“Is Lete-Frue your seer?” Dunecat asked. “Otherwise, she cannot.”
Wolf took a threatening step towards him and Dunecat calmly put two hands on his walking stick, turning the claw to point toward the shaman.
Finally Wolf snorted under his breath and gave them both a jeering sort of a smile. Then he nodded once at the red-head and said, “Tell your husband I appreciate his many offerings, but today I will make my company with an outsider.”
“Do not eat him,” Red Coyote said and gave Wolf a coy little smile before leaving with the others who had already begun to gather outside.
Finally, the cat and the wolf were alone and they regarded each other in full. “I am apex in these lands,” Wolf said. “And, as I understand it, your shawl is that of a sand lion. The last time I met your like, I killed him and ate his testicles in front of his caravan.”
Dunecat laughed, trying not to give way to his nervousness. He wrung his hands on his staff instead of going for his own manhood. He was only half-certain Wolf was trying to intimidate him. He remembered his S’her warning him about Spice Village and its folk. S’her hadn’t wanted him to go. “You have only seen one woman, Kitten. Let one of the others go,” his Tentmaster had begged. But here Dunecat was, slightly wishing he had taken S’her’s offer. He internally shook off the doubt. Dunecat had been assured safe passage by his god, personally. If he let himself become afraid of this backwater witch doctor, what did that say about his own faith?
Aloud, Dunecat asked with false bravado, “I take it was unpalatable?”
“Chewy,” Wolf said with a smirk. “But your like are apex in your own lands. You are the greatest predator that the Sandsea has to offer.” The way Wolf crooned the compliment hinted that he didn’t take Dunecat very seriously.
Dunecat shook his head. “Not so. Cobras hold apex. Always have.”
“False modesty, Dunecat. Your kin eat cobras,” Wolf said. He obviously knew more about the Ashlands than anticipated. Dunecat regretted coming so quickly. Perhaps a trip to the archives at the temple would have done him some good in preparing him for the beast before him.
He was barely a man wearing the skin of a cat.
This Spicer before him was a wolf in a man’s body.
“You have a message for me,” Wolf stated, saving the Ashlander the burden of reply. The lupine creature sat cross-legged on a deerskin and gestured for Dunecat to do the same. It seemed he had taken the foreigner’s measure and had already decided he wasn’t challenged by his presence in the slightest. "What tidings do you bring me?"
Dunecat closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he saw Beyond the Veil of Waking Time and read off the glittering gems and bones therein. "The Dream Keeper wishes to inform you that your offering to The Spice King was accepted for the first time in a hundred of his cycles. A Bastard Queen reigns in the star of your beastmaster."
"Im-pos-si-ble," Wolf spat in clipped syllables. His lip curl revealed filed meat teeth, yellowed and scoured black with overuse.
Dunecat read on: "The Red Child was seen by Dead Mother and The Deathless One. She will unite the four corners of the world and tear down its builders. Shamans, speakers, readers, and sightless will be ended. Dreams will be made real, seasons undone, words unwritten, and time will be as it once was before Sunless Day."
Wolf was on his feet when Dunecat opened his eyes. There was fury plastered across his features. The beast slowly said, "I stand accused of undoing the world, eh?"
"Je," Dunecat said simply. "But I came here to tell you there is hope."
"The god of dreams is also the god of games?" Wolf whispered neutrally.
"I, not my god, bring hopeful Spicewords on behalf of our kindred builders."
"Speak," the wolf hissed.
"I have already been to the beaches of Star City and the peaks about the Temple in the Vines. When Summer is brought to your lands by your god, a reader of The Cloud Queen will come, bearing a spineless book. In its pages, She has detailed a solution to our Bastard Queen problem… and The Spawning King has supplied its requirements. He will send His sightless priest to your lands come Harvest."
"And then?"
The Ashlander shrugged. "Your god will be weak when Winter comes. When you make your offering again, your chance to strike the Bastard Queen will present itself… but I will not pretend to know details. The details will come with Summer." Dunecat got to his feet using his walking stick and he met Wolf's yellow eyes from beneath the brim of his straw hat. He pet the skull of the cat affixed to the skin about his shoulders, taking comfort in its protective presence. He said in a muted tone, "The Ash King bids your dreams remain as dreams, Wolf… and I bid you good health and dry nethers."
Wolf remained motionless as he said, "Do any of these builders see me as builder of this threat?" Dunecat thought the way he said builder implied Wolf didn’t see himself as the rest of the priesthood. Perhaps Wolf didn’t see Dunecat as anything more than a child--just another pawn in some great game...
"N-No," the Ashlander said slowly. Then Dunecat made a protective sign over his face. "They blame your god only." It was a blaspheme for certain, but such things were forgivable in the eyes of his own god.
The smile that came over Wolf’s face was serene. He almost looked beatific. "I am His shaman… I am as much to blame for Spring as He. I am the one who chose His offering, Little Beast.”
Dunecat couldn't hide his surprise at Wolf's admission. He didn’t even anger at the dimminitive address. He made another protective sign over his face. "Then… you are to blame, Shaman Wolf. But you will also be our salvation. Stand firm, and do not follow any wave on the horizon. It is not water you will find there… only m-mirage." Reciting scripture made him feel better about the whole thing. He bowed, in the way of a Spicer, and turned to leave the tent. He had to get back to the Ashlands. He had to warn his Tentmaster about Wolf’s volatility, and his sinful hubris. He would know what to tell the other builders in the other nations. S’her always knew what to do.
Wolf spoke after him, "Tell your Dreamer His words do not fall on deaf ears, Speaker.”
"I-I will," Dunecat said without turning, gripping the leather entrance flap. Then he fell forward, something striking him in the head with enough force to knock him out of the tent. His shoulder hit the grass-stubbled dirt on the other side and the wind left him in a gargling cough, spraying brackish red across the well-trafficked earth. He meant to turn himself back over and stand to run, but another arrow hit him in the spine and his body went lax, filled with numb fire and nothing else. He struggled to cough again, but his tongue was in the way, motionless and unresponsive.
Wolf stepped over to him and he only sensed the other's foot on him because of the way his own body shifted. The black, wrinkled sack of the beast dangled dangerously close to his face as Wolf crouched over him and bent down to grip the arrow in his neck. "Tell Him I serve no one but The Spice King. Tell Him that I am only flattered that God would approve of my offering. It is good to know one is… loved." He pulled the arrow free and darkness swallowed the cat forever.
When Dunecat opened his eyes, he stood on four legs before the Great Dreamer. His ears rotated back, sitting against his furred skull in submission. He chittered softly, "My King."
The Ash King regarded the little dream before Him.
Dunecat said, "I have died in Your service."
The Ash King nodded once.
Dunecat said, "You promised… You would protect me."
The Ash King nodded again.
His voice broke as he asked, "Why am I d-dead?"
"I promised to protect you on your journey to deliver My message," The Ash King said succinctly. When Dunecat's eyes filled with tears of indignation, the Dreamer laughed under His breath. "Welcome home, Little Dream. Come back to Me. Return to My imagination. Return to My sleeping Self. Be as ash and sand once more."
"It's not fair," Dunecat mewed to himself and his shape dissolved as it was pulled into the writhing tornado of stars and sand and bone and ash that was his god.
"That Wolf… is a beast after My little brother's heart," The Ash King said to Himself, chuckling.
It was the last thing Dunecat ever heard before he became as all his God's creations once were: just another dream; just another grain in the sands of time...
ns 15.158.61.8da2
