Beautiful Blood

15

Try as he might, Rosacher could find no viable reason why Teocinte’s national integrity should be preserved at the cost of Carlos’ life. Aside from being vain about his appearance and his skill as a hunter, the king had no apparent flaws. Over the next few hours he discussed with Rosacher his intentions for the people of Temalagua, a grand design involving land reform and the gradual elevation of the peasant class by means of education and the opportunities presented by an emerging industrial state. He treated all around him as equals and they clearly loved him—not only the villagers, but also his guards, who engaged their king in rough yet good-natured repartee, and those who, upon hearing of the king’s presence in Becan, had made their way to the village in order to pay their respects and, in some few instances, to ask that he decide some matter of local controversy—this he did with uncommon grace and charity. A case in point, Gregorio, a farmer from the town of Sayaxche whose wife had left him for another man—all three parties came before the king to offer testimony. Gregorio’s wife, Bedelia, did not deny that Gregorio was a decent man and a good provider, but they had married sixteen years ago when they were but children and she had fallen out of love with him and in love with Camilio, who owned a dry goods store. Since her union with Gregorio had proven childless, and as she was already carrying Camilio’s child, she felt justified in moving on with her life. Gregorio claimed to love Bedelia still and, though not a violent man by nature, he had been humiliated and was plagued by thoughts of retribution. For his part, Camilio wanted to avoid bloodshed, but did not believe this would be possible under the circumstances, since he was unwilling to foreswear his love for Bedelia and refused to relinquish his parental rights to the child. The king adjudicated the matter thusly: “In my palace there are many lovely women, the great majority of them yet unwed. I invite you, Gregorio, to come to Alta Miron and live on the palace grounds and work in my gardens, this in the hope you will find there a more suitable wife. If at the end of a year, you have not found a wife or are otherwise unhappy in your estate, you may return to Sayaxche.”

Carlos then turned to Bedelia and Camilio. “You will see that Gregorio’s fields are worked and worked well for the term of one year, with all profit going to Gregorio. Should he return to Sayaxche, the fields will revert to his ownership. Should he not return, the fields will become yours. As to the child, is his parentage in dispute?”

Gregorio lowered his eyes and said, “No.”

“Then the child shall remain with Bedelia and Camilio,” said Carlos. “But I hereby direct and declare that Gregorio be named the child’s godfather. It is my hope that this shared responsibility will over time heal the breech between you.” He turned again to Gregorio. “A condition attaches to my offer: you will leave within the hour for Alta Miron, thereby avoiding any further conflict with your wife and Camilio. I will give you a paper signed by my hand and sealed with my ring to present at the palace gates. You will be installed in your quarters and on the morrow you will begin what I trust will be a fruitful and happy life.”

All parties appeared satisfied with this agreement, Camilio less so for having to take on the burden of working Gregorio’s fields, but Bedelia expressed her contentment with the king’s justice and it was evident from Gregorio’s smile that he had overstated his love for Bedelia and would not be returning soon to Sayaxche, exhilarated by the potentials of life at the palace and a prospect of work far less onerous and better paid than that of a farmer.

Carlos’ rendering of this judgment, the facility with which he had delivered it and the kindly yet firm manner of handling a ticklish situation made an impression on Rosacher. It reminded him of how he had come to deal with people, except that with his winning charm and patience, his clear intent to be even-handed in all things, Carlos seemed a better him, an idealized Rosacher, one who did not manipulate for gain but was motivated by the desire to govern fairly. The idea that he was about to kill such a man grew ever more unappetizing and Rosacher’s guilt was amplified when the king invited him to the palace upon the conclusion of the hunt so that he could select from amongst the rare birds in the royal aviary a bird or two of his choosing, this in compensation for his assistance in trapping the beast that had terrorized the villages of Becan and Dulce Nombre.

“I believe our golden caiques have recently reproduced,” said Carlos. “Perhaps you would consider one of their children a fitting reward.”

“I would be honored by such a gift,” said Rosacher.

In mid-afternoon they rode to the camp established by the king’s guard on the banks of the Rio Coco. An area some forty feet in length and half that in width had been cleared about the king’s tent, situated on the verge of the water. A table and chairs had been placed in front of the tent and it was here that Rosacher and Carlos seated themselves, attended by one of the guards who provided a meal of sandwiches, chicken and pork, and a good burgundy. Riflemen had been positioned here and there in the surrounding jungle, setting up a crossfire, and both Carlos and Rosacher kept their rifles at the ready. Cerruti sat on the ground at the edge of the jungle some thirty feet away, joined there by a group of men from Becan also armed with rifles. That he and Cerruti were being kept separate caused Rosacher a modicum of unease, but he told himself that this must be a question of class and, though it seemed out of character for Carlos to make such distinctions, he likely was bound by some personal regulation that prohibited his association with a ruffian of Cerruti’s stamp…or it might be that during his interview with Cerruti, which had occurred while Rosacher slept, he had developed a distaste for the man and did not relish his company. The disquiet Rosacher felt in relation to this state of affairs gradually ebbed, washed away by Carlos’ affable and diverting conversation, but his anxiety over Frederick and the murder of the king did not abate. Whenever possible, he tried to catch Cerruti’s eye and, when he managed to do so, he gave his head a surreptitious shake, thereby hoping to communicate his desire to have Cerruti call off his pet and end their mission. Once he thought Cerruti responded with a minimal nod, but he could not be confident that this had been anything other than a twitch, since certain of Cerruti’s behaviors—long stares into nowhere and a general unresponsiveness to the men about him—gave evidence that he remained traumatized. Rosacher reached a point in his mental process at which he recognized that he had done all that he could short of making a full confession to Carlos, an admission that would guarantee his execution, and realized that he had put his fate into Griaule’s hands or, assuming the dragon’s indifference, had left it to chance.

As dusk gave way to night, the lingering afterglow of the sun reduced to a ragged band of indigo at the edge of the world, torches were lit, lending an air of barbarity to the encampment. Insects sizzled, frogs bleeped and belched up deeper sounds, the river gurgled placidly, a night-blooming cereus yielded its soft perfume, and Rosacher drank most of a second bottle of wine, and not because he was desperate—he had bypassed desperation and gone straight to an acceptance of his lot. If this was to be all of life, so be it. He’d had enough of striving, of contending against the forces of man and nature (he was convinced that the two were hopelessly at odds), and he surrendered happily to the kingdom of wine, the nation of tipsiness, and whatever constituency those entities embodied. The night was exceptional in its clarity. Stars like wildfire orchids sparked in the overhanging boughs of the great trees and the color of the sky, a rich, deep blue, a royal blue, seemed the product of a curdled mass of light behind it, as if a small galaxy had been brought close to the earth but was held just out of view, so as to illuminate an intimate scene on the riverbank, a pocket of tranquility at the heart of a diseased and trembling world.

“Richard…” said Carlos. “May I call you Richard?”

Rosacher froze and before he could think of a clever lie, something that could extricate him from a circumstance he had only begun to comprehend, he realized that his reaction had already given him away—yet still he made the effort and said to the king, “I beg your pardon?”

“Are you aware, Mister Rosacher, that there is no such bird as a golden caique?” Carlos asked.

“I assumed you spoke out of ignorance,” Rosacher said. “I didn’t think it my place to correct you.”

“I might believe you if you were not Richard Rosacher, but since you are…” Carlos made a comically sad face. “I don’t?”

Rosacher rummaged about for an escape, some trick of words to persuade Carlos that he was not this Rosacher; but he had drunk too much and was too far gone along the road of surrender. “What are you going to do with me?” he asked.

“It’s as I said. You’ll be my guest at the palace.”

“But what will be my punishment?”

“Why should I punish you? Have you committed some crime? True, you operate a business of which I disapprove, and you are the de facto representative of a government that has been no friend to Temalagua. And I suppose you and Mister Cerruti have entered the country illegally—but the penalty for that is a fine and expulsion from Temalaguan soil.”

“Your predecessors have chosen to interpret ‘expulsion from Temalaguan soil’ rather liberally. The sentence of expulsion has frequently been carried out post-mortem.”

“I am not my predecessors,” Carlos said firmly. “You will return with us to the palace and be given quarters among my guards. Your movements will be circumscribed, but no other restraints will be placed upon you. You may eat and drink what you wish. A variety of women will be made available. These conditions will continue until you disclose the reason for your presence in Temalagua. After that you may do what you will. Leave. Stay. I have no intention of harming you. Should you decide to stay, well, I’m aware of your accomplishments—I’m certain you will have much to teach me, particularly as regards managing a business. And I’m equally certain that we will identify areas of common interest and have a great deal to discuss. You’ll be a welcome addition to my court. Of course…” The king’s smile seemed an article of complacent self-assurance. “You may choose to confess your motives here and now, and thus make all this unnecessary.”

“What leads you to think that I would ever reveal my motives?” Rosacher asked.

Carlos’ placid smile resurfaced. “We are much alike, Richard, you and I. In fact, I think we may be very nearly the same person. However, I have the advantage over you in that I have been this person since birth, while you have been forced, either by circumstance or some more powerful agency, to acquire the skills that have shaped our mutual character. Having this advantage, I know things that you do not, and one of these things is that eventually you will become bored with the unchallenging life I offer and will reveal your secrets if for no other reason than to create a dramatic episode.”

Rosacher could not deny the truth of these words, but even as he admitted to Carlos’ estimation of their kindred souls, it was as if he were receding from him, looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope, a view that enabled him to see that Carlos was, indeed, a well-intentioned man, a man capable, should he live, of doing great things, of changing the course of a nation and raising up an entire people from poverty; yet he would achieve this not because he was an altruist or a saint, but rather because he was a narcissist. Like all narcissists, like Rosacher himself, Carlos was likely prone to sudden shifts in temperament and, though by all reports the king had never varied from his benevolent pose, it was a pose. And thus it was possible that one day an event would transpire to turn him from a man whose ego was nourished by enacting good deeds to one with the capacity for unimaginable evil. Rosacher’s impression of Carlos had been so thoroughly transformed, he felt at sea, inclined to let the night go forward without intervention, and he said querulously, “None of this would have occurred had you been more cautious in your foreign policy.”

Carlos’ smile faded, replaced by a wary look. “I don’t follow. To what are you referring?”

“Your alliance with Mospiel,” Rosacher said. “Your designs against Teocinte.”

“Are you mad?” Carlos chuckled. “I have no designs against a country that is ready to tear itself apart. As for Mospiel, I’d sooner lie down with a barba amarilla than join with the prelates in any enterprise.”

“Teocinte has never been so strong as now,” said Rosacher.

“Perhaps I’ve been misinformed and your ties to the government in Teocinte are not as close as I imagined.” Carlos splashed wine into his glass. “Could you be unaware of Breque’s activities during the past year?” He sipped the wine and held the glass up so it caught the light; then he cast a sidelong glance at Rosacher. “Why have you come here?”

Rosacher ignored the question and said, “Councilman Breque has been a competent administrator. I haven’t been diligent in my oversight for some months now—my interests lay elsewhere. But I trust Breque to do what’s right for Teocinte.”

“Then you placed your trust in a fool or a madman. Or both. Breque sends me letters reaffirming Teocinte’s long-standing friendship with my country, and at the same time he has squandered a fortune on naval weaponry. Weaponry that can have no other purpose than an attack upon our ports. I might be concerned about this, but I have it on good authority that he has emptied his exchequer and has insufficient funds with which to buy ships. But you must know of this!”

Rosacher, shaken by Carlos’ assertion, said, “How did you get your information? Are you certain it’s accurate?”

“Oh, yes! In a short time, a few months, six months at best, Teocinte’s economy will collapse. No matter how much mab is produced, your debts will come due well before you can expect to receive payment. They have already come due in many instances. Breque will have to sell his weaponry and reduce the price of mab in order to sustain even a feeble economy.”

“The purchase of a few weapons…I can’t see how that will topple the economy.”

“Do you call seven hundred cannons a few? Six thousand rifles, the latest Russian model! One hundred armored war wagons designed to traverse the jungle, each large enough to carry a company! But you’re right. These are only Breque’s most recent expenditures, the ounce that tipped the scale. In the shipyards of Mataplan lie the keels of seventy great vessels that he has commissioned, intended to carry an invasion force…yet he cannot afford to complete them. I could recite a long list of Breque’s ridiculous purchases. Apparently the man had designs on the entire littoral, perhaps the entire continent. But to whatever end, he has accumulated more weapons than he has soldiers, more ships than men to fill them. I have no fear of Teocinte. Your country is doomed. It’s Mospiel I fear, for once Teocinte has been gutted by this idiot Breque, they will rush in and impose order, and there will be no buffer state between Mospiel and Temalagua.” Carlos paused. “You have been duped, my friend. That much is clear from your reaction. But this raises the question, for what reason were you duped? And how does your presence here relate to that fact?”

A mosquito whined in Rosacher’s ear. He slapped at it and, as if the slap were a cue, a grumbling noise issued from the jungle, then a roar that might have come from the throat of Griaule himself, so shattering it was—this followed by a volley of rifle fire and screams.

Carlos and Rosacher grabbed up their rifles, aiming them at the jungle. More screams, and Frederick, accompanied by a splintering of twigs and branches, burst from the shadowy foliage—Frederick as Rosacher had never before seen him, solidified into that bear-like shape that prior to this moment had only been hinted at, except in an artist’s depiction. Standing on his hind legs, slashing at the air with taloned paws, roaring as rifles continued to fire, Frederick’s torchlit reality was far more frightening than his portrait had been. In that posture he must have measured twenty feet from tip to toe, his body covered in coarse black fur, and as he swung his elongated head from side-to-side, its form that of a strange fruiting, some sort of mutant melon or squash, his face came into view, a leathery mask, slightly less black than the fur, that seemed to have been stamped onto the stump-end of a severed limb and had over time become a part of that limb, its nerves and musculature connecting, annealing with those of the stump, growing capable of gross movement, producing snarls and leers and various other expressions of rage and lust. His eyes were rheumy, redder than the artist had portrayed, and were set at more of a slant above the cheeks, giving him the aspect of a Tibetan devil god; but this was no brightly colored, ritualistic abstraction of evil, this was evil itself, evil incarnate, fanged and drooling and monstrous, with a lolling tongue and a furrowed brow and a quality of insane vacancy that somehow dominated the face, that was its base emotion.

All his thoughts of an alliance with the creature fled, scattered by fright, Rosacher fired, fired again, saw bullets strike home, eliciting an even greater roaring, dredging up gouts of blood from Frederick’s cheek and forehead…then a shout from behind him: “Into the river!” A hand caught at his shoulder, yanked, and he pitched off the bank, landing on his back in the water. He went down beneath the surface and came back up sputtering, still holding his rifle, and sought purchase with his feet, but the river was too deep. He wiped the water from his eyes and saw Carlos’ head an arm’s length away. Four or five heads were visible farther upstream, but Rosacher could not identify them. Grumbling, Frederick—his body bulkier, more elephantine—prowled the water’s margin and Rosacher thought that his lie about taking refuge in the river might have been intuitive and that they were safe. And then in the dimness, though he could not be sure of what he saw, the torches no longer flickering, the world drenched in shadow…he thought he saw Frederick lean out over the bank and extend his neck to an improbable degree, stretching to a length of four or five feet, bending to the river and snapping off one of the heads. Shouting in panic, the other swimmers flailed at the water. Rosacher let loose of his rifle, dove beneath the surface and swam as hard as he could for as long as he could without taking a breath. He came up for air and then dove again, repeating this process over and over until, exhausted, he fetched up against the far bank, tucking himself into a fold of shadow, an indentation in the clay, and clung there, alerted by every stirring and sound, however slight. At some point he passed out and when he awoke, his teeth chattering, he saw that a gray dawn had broken over the jungle. He hauled himself up onto the bank and stripped off his wet clothing. A gentle rain began to fall and, gathering his clothes into a bundle, he sought shelter beneath a giant silk-cotton tree, finding a dry spot amidst the roots that stretched out on all sides like the tails of caimans whose heads were trapped beneath the trunk. He stared blankly at the great gray-green dripping presence that pressed in around him, with its feathered fronds and nodding leaves the size of shovel heads that yielded a pattering like the drumming of childish fingers on the skin of a thousand small drums. The rain began to slant downward and its noise grew deafening; a chill settled in Rosacher’s bones. He had no means of making fire and so he set forth walking, jogging when he found it possible…not often, because the trail he followed went uphill and down, often at sharp angles and with only a few yards between slopes. Rocks and roots jabbed at the soles of his bare feet, forcing him to a slower pace—he could not bear to put on his boots, because they reeked of the river and were packed with silt. He had not the least idea of his location or of the direction in which he was going. His thoughts congealed, his mind slowing as had his feet, and he became a sluggish machine capable only of lurching forward.

After a while, a very long while, it seemed, he smelled meat cooking. He crept along, uncertain whether he would find friend or foe, and shortly after that, he saw up ahead an embankment atop which an enormous tree had fallen, creating a natural shelter. Beneath it sat the king, shirtless, yet still wearing his riding trousers. Rosacher felt a measure of bitterness on seeing him so at ease. Relative to Rosacher, he was the picture of contentment—he had made a fire of branches and twigs, and was roasting the spitted carcass of a smallish animal. The prospect of warmth and food enticed Rosacher, but he hesitated to approach, mindful of how he would be received. Carlos carved a slice of meat from the animal’s haunch with a skinning knife and laid it on some leaves to cool…and that was too much of a temptation for Rosacher. He started forward and, glancing up from the fire, Carlos said, “Richard! I thought you had drowned.”

Rosacher dropped down beside the fire. His teeth still chattered and Carlos built the fire up, adding twigs and leaves until Rosacher’s body had soaked up sufficient heat to allow him to think and speak. “What was that thing?” he asked, accepting a strip of meat that Carlos extended on his knife tip. The meat was greasy, but good.

“It’s nothing I’ve seen before.” Carlos sawed at the carcass. “I don’t suppose you’ve encountered any other survivors.”

Rosacher shook his head, No, and his teeth began to chatter again. Carlos urged him to rest and spread his clothes by the fire so they could dry.

Once his chill had passed, Rosacher had a second bite of the meat. “This is good. What is it?”

“Agouti.” Carlos nibbled and chewed. “No one at court cares for the meat—they think it fit only for peasants. But I’m quite fond of it.”

After Rosacher had finished his first piece of meat, the king carved him another. Rosacher had a bite and then, recalling why he had come to Temalagua, he asked Carlos if he knew what had happened to Cerruti.

“I can’t be sure,” Carlos said. “It was too dark to see clearly, but I think he was the one the beast decapitated.”

His response started Rosacher to wondering why Cerruti had gone into the water. Had he been moved by instinct or had he been pushed? And if what Carlos told him was true, what did that say about the relationship between Cerruti and Frederick? His head was spinning and he was incapable of focusing on these questions, so he asked how Carlos had made his escape.

“I saw you go underwater and followed your example.”

If Carlos said more, Rosacher was not aware of it, for he lapsed into unconsciousness. On waking, he discovered that the king had covered him with his doublet. He made to give back the garment, but Carlos refused to accept it, saying, “You’re suffering from exposure. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

The rain had been reduced to a drizzle and Rosacher’s trousers were almost dry—he put them on and asked if Carlos knew where they were.

“About an hour east of Chisec, I believe. I haven’t hunted this part of the jungle for years, but if memory serves, we follow this trail for about a half-hour and it intersects with something approximating a road. That should take us to the village.” The king patted him on the shoulder. “Are you up to a little walk?”

“Give me a few minutes.”

“We’ve plenty of time. It’s not yet noon.” Carlos added twigs to the fire. “I should be able to get word to the palace tonight. By tomorrow afternoon you’ll be resting in comfort and I can get about organizing another hunt.”

“You’re going after that thing?”

“If there are no other survivors, I reckon it’s killed more than twenty people. Allowing it to run free would be criminal.”

“But how can you hope to destroy it?”

“If we can isolate it, hem it in against some natural barrier and trap it there, we may be able to set fires around the perimeter and burn it.” Carlos spat into the fire. “I haven’t given the subject much thought, but tomorrow I’ll gather my huntsmen and we’ll come up with a scheme. Something with alternatives in case things go awry.”

However great a narcissist Carlos was, Rosacher thought, one couldn’t fault his courage, though his judgment might be called into question. Once again he tried to put his commitment to the mission into perspective and once again he found himself testing the principles underlying its every facet—his concerns for the business, his quasi-loyalty to the disloyal Breque, and the idea that everything in his life had been a reaction to some fraudulent stimulus. When he first arrived in Teocinte, it seemed he’d had a plan, but he most certainly had not had one since then; he had been coerced and manipulated into every action, and now, understanding this, he wasn’t able to assign a priority to any future action, least of all the murder of a king.

The rain kept the insects down—except for the leaf-cutter ants that carried bits of vegetation along the wire-thin tracks they had etched into the clay—and the two men spoke rarely during the first portion of their walk. Dark shapes in the canopy followed them for a time, but never announced their presence. The undergrowth thinned, the boles of silk-cotton trees became visible, like lotus columns inscribed with a calligraphy of livid green moss, and—in his fatigue—Rosacher imagined that they spelled out variations on his sorry fortune; he died in a green hell, his flesh was consumed by scorpions, beetles drank form the corners of his eyes, that sort of thing.

Carlos’ estimate of a half-hour to reach the road to Chisec proved woefully inaccurate, too short by at least an hour; but reach it they did—a narrow winding track partially overgrown with weeds and displaying ruts caused by the passage of carts and wagons. Rosacher collapsed at the center of the road, his head dropping back, gazing up at the canopy. Carlos sat on a hump of clay covered by an ivy-like growth at the jungle’s edge. “We’ve only a little ways to walk now. Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

“Your minutes seem considerably longer than mine,” Rosacher said with bad grace.

Carlos kept silent, but his displeasure was obvious.

After an interval Rosacher, in lieu of an apology, said, “How can people live in this place?”

“The jungle? It’s not so bad…in fact, it’s fascinating. I love coming here.”

“Spoken like a man with the wherewithal to protect himself from the worst it has to offer.”

The king acknowledged this, making a noise of acquiescence. “You can protect yourself only to a degree. Witness last night. But you’re right. The jungle’s not a human place. People live here because it’s where they were born. They don’t have the motivation or the funds to move elsewhere. Still, it’ll be a pity when it’s all chopped down.”

“I doubt that’s going to happen.”

“Admittedly the forests of western Europe are less pestilent than our jungles, yet when people needed room for expansion, they began to disappear. The same will happen here and then there’ll be no more jungles, no more animals.”

“I don’t believe the countries of the littoral will ever achieve the level of economic stability that Europe has.”

“That seems extremely shortsighted.”

“The countries to the north of Temalagua have too great an advantage over you, both as to their size and resources. They’ve been waging a war of oppression for nearly a century. Look at how the fruit companies have moved in. They’ll continue to oppress you until your leaders show some backbone or develop an immunity to bribes. Present company excepted, of course.”

“Your argument strikes me as odd coming from someone who’s spent decades propping up one such leader.” Carlos scratched his calf vigorously. “But it’s true. We have to have better leaders in order for our corruption to assume the guise of statesmanship.”

Rosacher laughed. “You’ve got me there.”

“One way or another, whether under our aegis or that of some other country, the jungles will soon be a memory. My father used to hunt jaguar in this very region and now you’re lucky to catch sight of one.”

“I’ll consider myself lucky not to see one,” said Rosacher.

“You might not say that if you’d seen what I have. A day’s ride from here there’s a lake to which my father used to take me. Lake Izabal. We’d find some high ground that overlooked the water, and hide in the tall grass before dawn, and wait for the jaguars to come down to drink while the morning mist still obscured most of the world. Watching a jaguar emerge from the mist—it gave me the feeling that I’d gone back to the days of creation.”

Carlos leaned back, braced with both hands thrust into the dark green leaves. Rosacher was about to make an observation, a rather snide observation, when the king sat up straight and gave an exclamation of pain and shook his left hand—a banded snake no more than twenty inches long had sunk its fangs into the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, dangling there like a primitive ornament, striped red, yellow and black. Carlos’ eyes locked onto Rosacher’s. He appeared eager to speak, to communicate some desperate intelligence, but all that issued from his mouth was a throaty exhalation. Then he fell back, his face buried in the vegetation, the snake yet attached to his hand. The body underwent a series of tremors and lay still. And Rosacher, who had scrambled to his feet, looked on in confusion and shock as the snake retracted its fangs and slithered away among the leaves, disappearing with a flick of its tail that he found almost insouciant.

Knowing the king to be dead, Rosacher nonetheless searched for a pulse. Finding none, he felt suddenly imperiled. The jungle shrank around him, the air darkened, and the sounds, the scritches and chirrs, the buzz of flies, the chips and chirps from thousands of throats, many heralding the revolting feast that the king would soon become, signaling a troop of tiny nightmare creatures to gather at the banquet table…the horror of the natural world assailed him and he backed away, casting his eyes about so as to apprehend the next terror, the next sinister shape. To have survived the night and now this! Had his failure to assassinate Carlos caused the snake to enact Griaule’s will? He forced himself to be calm and bent to the king. Turning the body, he removed the skinning knife from the sheath belted to his waist. Carlos’ eyes showed all white beneath his drooping lids. Froth had collected at the corners of his mouth. Rosacher had the thought that he would be blamed for the king’s demise. The idea was not entirely without justification. If he had not brought Frederick to Temalagua, the hunt would never have occurred…though he could scarcely be blamed for the snake, unless he was culpable on a cosmic level. He started to walk away and realized that Carlos had given no indication of which direction to take. He scanned the road in both directions, hoping to spot some clue or, barring that, to glean some intimation from the surround, some sense of human passage; but there was nothing other than the steady drip of the rain, the oppressive greenery, the phantasmagoric shapes made by the intersection of leaves, vines, stumps, mold and the shadows that defined them and the imagined beating of a predator’s thirsty heart. The king’s corpse seemed to have acquired a gravity that would not relax its grip, pulling at Rosacher. He covered Carlos’ face with a handkerchief found in the doublet’s pocket and the gravity dissolved. Since the king had been bitten on the left hand, he decided to go in that direction. He went a few steps, thinking how he should tell people what had happened—he had been on a hunt with Carlos, disaster struck and they had fled downstream, winding up near the road where Carlos had encountered the snake. But so much context was missing, it felt like a lie, and he supposed he felt that way because he had not been certain if his appreciation of the man was accurate. Carlos may have been a narcissist, yet perhaps his variety of narcissism was as close as humankind could aspire to producing a good man. He contemplated saying some words over the body, but couldn’t think to whom he should commend the king’s spirit, and so he set forth walking, heading for Chisec, for some fresh green hell, for whatever came next, focusing on the road ahead and trying not to let his mind linger over what might be following behind.