Shrine of Stars

Chapter Fourteen Slaves

“They may be a mighty people,” Pandaras said, “but they must like a snug house. Even I would find one of those huts cramped.”

He stood beside Yama at the edge of the forest, looking across the valley which stretched away on either side, a wide flat grassland studded with little villages that were linked by narrow red paths running beside ditches of green water, each village a cluster of mud-walled huts and strips of cultivated land enclosed by thorn hedges.

“I don’t like the look of it,” Pandaras added. “See how thick and tall the hedges are. These people must have fearsome enemies. Surely now is the time to call on something that will take us far from here.”

“That would be too dangerous,” Yama said. “Prefect Corin may have survived the fall of the garden, and he must not know where I am.”

In fact, there were very few machines here—fewer than Yama had ever known in a world where innumerable machines sped everywhere on unfathomable errands; not a tree might fall in the most remote forest without a witness.

“I don’t see how he could have survived,” Pandaras said. “I’d like to think it possible, because that would mean poor Tibor might have survived too. Forgive me for my presumption, master, but you cannot live in hiding forever. You cannot waste your gift.”

“Do not speak of what you do not know,” Yama said sharply.

“I know a bad feeling when I get one,” the boy said. “Look at our friends. It’s as if they’re going to their doom.”

It was early in the morning, with the sun only just clear of the peaks of the Rimwall Mountains. The forest folk had risen before dawn, and had been uncharacteristically subdued as they walked the last two leagues to the edge of the forest above the valley where their masters, the Mighty People, lived. Now they were removing the flowers and quills and feathers with which they had adorned their squat bodies, scrubbing away patterns of mud and pigments with bunches of wet grasses, combing out mud which had stiffened their coarse hair in ornamental spikes. They had walked naked through the forest; now they took loincloths from pouches and packs and stepped into them. Their torcs had been carefully wrapped up in oilcloth, and buried on a rocky point beneath a flat slab of sandstone.

The forest folk lined up, shivering in the chill gray air. Their chief, Yoi Sendar, went from one to the next, checking that every trace of adornment had been removed. When he reached Yama and Pandaras, he said formally, “Below is the home of the family of Mighty People which owns us. We go to them with our gifts from the forest. You do not have to come with us, my friends. We have enjoyed your stories and lies and boasts in the forest, but we take up a different life now.”

“I need to find the temple,” Yama said.

Yoi Sendar shook his massive, ugly head from side to side. It meant yes. His baggy skin was bleeding from the places where he had drawn out his decorative quills. He said, “Perhaps you can please the Mighty People in some way, and they will let you visit it.”

Pandaras said, “Why are you so afraid of them? If they rule by fear, then they are not worthy to be your masters.”

Yoi Sendar would not meet the boy’s stare. “They have always been our masters. It has always been so, ever since the long-forgotten day when the Preservers set us in our domain. Our masters have changed, but they still need us, as you will see if you come with us.”

“There are many different peoples on the world,” Yama said, as Yoi Sendar stumped off to the head of the line of his people. “Why do you deny that simple fact, Pandaras?”

“People everywhere are all the same, if you ask me. They are scared to be free. They make themselves slaves to stronger men because it is easier to be a slave than to be free. It is easier to worship the past than to plan for the future.”

“You have some extraordinary notions, Pandaras.”

“You taught me that, master, but I think you have forgotten it.”

“Did I? Well, I was younger then, and more foolish. Perhaps my bloodline ages more quickly than even yours, Pandaras. I feel as old as one of the Ancients of Days.”

Pandaras said, “I have kept one of their stone blades. Please don’t stop me, master, if I have to use it to help us escape. The thing in your head wanted you to be its slave, and I don’t think you’ve quite shaken off the notion.”

Yoi Sendar raised both hands and gave a hoarse shout. His people lifted up their heavy packs of caterpillar meat and followed him into the valley, walking in single file down a narrow path that snaked through tall yellow grasses toward the nearest of the villages of the Mighty People. Yama saw that the mud huts inside the thorn hedge were separated from each other by an intricate arrangement of walls and courtyards. Each had its own exit tunneled through the thorns, and as the bandar yoi inoie came down the slope, figures began to emerge from the tunnels, scrawny and stooped and gray-skinned.

Pandaras whispered to Yama, “If they have changed, then it can’t have been for the good. They seem a poor kind of people to me.”

“Do not be quick to judge,” Yama said.

The Mighty People spread out in a ragged line beneath a stand of cotton trees. A gang of children chased about, shouting or throwing stones or clods of earth at the adults, dodging stones thrown back at them. Men and women and children wore only loincloths, like those which the forest folk had put on. They were all bald, and the women had withered dugs which hung to their bellies.

When the forest folk drew near, the Mighty People ran forward, brandishing whips and clips and rifles. They shouted sharply at the forest folk and at each other. As the forest folk were quickly separated into groups of five or six, one of the men went up to Yama and Pandaras and stared at them with unconcealed cupidity before turning and shouting to the others that these strangers were his. “I am the Captain! You all remember that!”

The Captain’s voice was shrill and grating. He had small, red-rimmed eyes and a sharply pursed beak of a mouth. When a small child toddled too close, he screamed, “Get away or I’ll shoot,” and aimed a blow with his rifle at the child. It bared its teeth and hissed, but backed away slowly, staring at Yama and Pandaras.

“Don’t you worry,” the Captain told Yama. “I’ll make you my guest, and your slave here will be looked after by my slaves. As long as you have my protection the others won’t dare touch either of you. I’m their Captain, the richest and most powerful of my people. They try and kill me many times for my power and wealth, but I’m too clever and too strong.”

Yama introduced himself and Pandaras.

Pandaras said, “I am not a slave, but the squire of my master.”

The Captain spat at Pandaras’s feet and said to Yama, “Your slave is insolent, but you have the look of a fighter. That’s good.”

Yama said, “Are you at war, then?”

“Our young men have gone to fight in the great war of liberation,” the Captain said. “Meanwhile, we look after what we have, as is only natural. We are all of us rich here, and other families scheme to take our wealth from us, but we will defeat them. We will grow richer and more powerful than any in the Valley.”

Yama said politely, “I have heard much of you from the bandar yoi inoie, but it is interesting to see for myself what you are.”

“Where did these clots of filth find you? Yoi Sendar! Yoi Sendar, you ugly tub of guts! Come here!”

The Captain snapped his whip above the heads of the cluster of forest folk he had rounded up. Yoi Sendar stepped forward, his heavy head bowed. He said in a small voice, “All we have gathered, master, we give with open hands and open hearts.”

The Captain struck him back and forth across his broad shoulders with the stock of the whip, raising bloody welts. Yoi Sendar stepped backward, still staring at the ground.

“Filth,” the Captain said. He was breathing heavily. A muddy stink rose up from him. “They cannot change. Everything is always the same for them. They do not realize how we have been transfigured. They are a great burden to us, but we are strong and bear it.”

Yama looked around. Most of the skinny gray Mighty People were driving their groups of forest folk into the tunnels of clay-plastered wicker which led through the tall thorn hedge. Even the gang of children had four or five of the oldest of the forest folk, and were fighting over the single pack of caterpillar meat which had been brought to them.

Several of the Mighty People shouted at the Captain, complaining that he could not keep the strangers to himself. “Watch me do it!” the Captain shouted back. “You don’t think I’m strong enough?”

The Captain seemed to be in a permanent rage. He turned suddenly and fired his rifle in the air, and an old woman who had been creeping toward him stopped and held out her empty hands. “I know your tricks, mother,” the Captain screamed. There were flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth. “Try and take what is mine, and I’ll kill you. I swear it!” He turned to Yama and Pandaras and said, “She could not keep her slaves and tries to steal food from honest folk. You will be safe with me. I give you some of my own food and water, and you will help me.”

Yama said, “We are strangers, dominie. We have come to visit your temple.”

“Temple? What has this filth been telling you? They are the fathers and mothers of lies. They lie so much they no longer know what is true. You come with me. I will keep you safe.” The Captain snapped his whip at his group of forest folk. “Bring your tributes. Poor, rotten stuff it looks, and not much of it. You’ve all been lazing about in the forest instead of working hard. But now you’ll work. I’ll make sure of it. Hurry or I’ll make you bleed!”

The compound of the Captain’s hut was enclosed by a high mud-brick wall topped with briars and broken glass. It was ankle-deep in red clay kept wet by a leaking standpipe. A few pygmy goats were penned in one corner, whisking at flies with their tails while they cropped in a desultory way at a pile of melon husks.

The Captain supervised the unloading of the smoked caterpillar meat with brutal impatience. When the last string of meat had been hung on the rack outside the hut, he dismissed the forest folk and told Yama to send away his slave.

“Find out what you can,” Yama whispered to Pandaras.

“I think I have the best of it,” Pandaras whispered back. “This is as bad a place as I have ever seen.”

The hut was mean and cramped, with no furniture but a little three-legged stool. A sleeping platform was cut into the thick wall. A solar stove gave out dim red light and an iron pot of maize porridge bubbled on its hot plate. The beaten earth floor was strewn with dry grass in which black beetles rustled; there was a nest of banded rats in the thatch of the roof. Everything was dirty and stank of goat and the Captain’s stale body odor, but gorgeous portraits of dignified elders of the family stood in niches here and there, meticulously rendered in oil pigments and framed in intricately worked metal, and the bowl into which the Captain scooped a meager measure of maize porridge had been lovingly carved from a dark, hard wood.

When Yama commented on these things, the Captain was dismissive. “These are old works from the old times. A few trinkets from all the worthless stuff we had then. We are much wealthier now.”

The maize porridge was unsalted and unflavored pap, and the portion no more than three spoonfuls, but the Captain expected fulsome acknowledgment of his generosity. It seemed that he had great expectations of Yama, and as he boasted and blustered, Yama soon learned more than he wanted to of the way the Mighty People lived now that they had been changed by the heretics. Each adult had his or her own hut and strip of arable land, jealously guarded from all the others. As in the quarters of the Department of Indigenous Affairs in the Palace of the Memory of the People, husbands lived apart from wives. As soon as they could walk, children were abandoned and had to join the half-wild pack which lived outside the village fence. Those who survived to sexual maturity were driven out of the pack, and had to find or build their own hut and their own field strip, or else live in the grassland as best they could.

Every man or woman was a nation of one, and spent most of their waking hours hoarding their scant possessions. They had discarded their old names—the names from the time before the change—and if they had new names they told them to no one. There was no love, no pity, no mercy. All these things were regarded as signs of weakness. There were only lust, jealousy and hatred. The old and sick had to fend for themselves, and were usually killed by the pack of children or by an adolescent who wanted their hut.

The Shadow gloated over this. We will make all men like this, it whispered inside Yama’s head. Slaves to the things they desire most.

The worst thing of all was that the Mighty People considered this way of life to be the highest possible form of civilization. The old ways, when the family had herded cattle and prized the craftsmanship of their pottery and metalwork and art, were despised. The cattle were all dead, killed either by poison in acts of jealousy or slaughtered because it was too difficult to guard them in the pastures, which had grown rough and wild. The Mighty People had a taboo against entering the forest and relied entirely upon the forest folk they had enslaved for meat, and for most of their supply of fruit and tubers too, for their field strips were poorly maintained, the crops stunted and diseased. More work went into guarding the field strips than into cultivation.

The only thing that united the Captain’s family was a hatred of the neighboring villages. Everyone contributed the labor of their slaves toward defense of the village against other families. The Captain had plans to expand his family’s territory, and he expected Yama to help him. He walked Yama around the boundary of his family’s land, never losing sight of the village, and showed off the network of ditches and ponds which had been built long ago by all the people of the valley to irrigate the land with water from lakes high in the foothills of the Rim Mountains.

“If we can control these, then we can control all the land around us,” the Captain said.

“What would you do with it?”

“Eh, why we would own it, of course.” The Captain gave Yama a crafty look. “That’s the first thing. All things flow from ownership.”

It seemed to Yama that the Mighty People were as much slaves as the bandar yoi inoie—perhaps more so, for the forest folk had been coerced into slavery, but the Mighty People had made themselves slaves of their own free will. By prizing ownership above all else, they were themselves owned by the things they coveted. He remembered how the forest folk had hidden their torcs at the edge of the forest, and thought that he could guess what had happened to the paintings, pottery and metalwork made in the time before the heretics had kindled a Change War here.

The Captain launched into a long diatribe against the neighboring villages. The feud was only ten years old, but it was packed with treachery, ambushes and murder. All this, the Captain swore, would be avenged.

He worked himself into a fit of rage and at one point unslung his rifle and aimed it at various parts of the sky before he clacked his lips together and slung it over his shoulder.

“A fighter like you,” he said, “could profit greatly here.”

“I am only one man.”

It seemed that everywhere Yama went, people wanted him to kill other people. He was sickened by it. “There are plenty of slaves,” the Captain said. “It doesn’t matter if they are killed because we will have the slaves of our enemies. We will make our enemies our slaves.” He clacked his pursed mouth at the thought. He said, “You will be rewarded, of course. Their stores of the old stuff will become mine, and I will let you have some pieces.”

“It is my understanding that the old stuff is worthless.”

“To People like us, of course. But to those less refined, like yourself, it would be a great prize. Even the piles of shit our enemies hoard would be worth something to someone like you.” The Captain did not mean the insult, Yama saw. He believed himself to be the center of the world, and so all other men were naturally his inferiors. He told Yama, “Rare metals, precious stones. As much as your slave can carry. A great prize for perhaps only a little work.”

Spit on his treasure, the Shadow said. Take the rifle and shove it into his mouth and make him beg for his life. Kill him. Kill them all.

It raved on, but its words were feeble sparks. Yama ignored it.

They were walking back toward the thorn-fenced village. Yama was trying to think of some way of refusing the Captain without angering him, but then he saw something that made him change his mind.

The pack of children was quarreling in the shade of the stand of cotton trees. At first Yama thought that they had caught an animal and were tearing it apart, but then he saw that they had killed one of the forest folk and were stripping raw meat from its bones with their teeth. A girl sat apart from the others, gnawing on a double handful of bloody entrails. Three of the smaller children kicked the remains of the severed head about in the dusty grass. The eyes were gone and the skull had been smashed to get at the brains. Nearby, two of the forest folk sat with their arms wrapped around each other, rocking back and forth and keening in sorrow.

The Captain glanced at this and said, “None of the children’s slaves last very long. We make sure they get the runts of the litters. And the old, of course. No sense keeping a slave that’s too old to work, eh?”

Yama had not thought to wonder until now why there were no old men or women amongst the troop of bandar yoi inoie. He controlled his disgust and said, “I must talk with my servant.”

“Don’t take long,” the Captain said. “I want to get back to my compound. It doesn’t pay to leave it in the hands of slaves. A man must look after his wealth himself, or he is not a man and does not deserve it.”

So he and Pandaras were prisoners, Yama thought. He had only suspected it before. He had been a fool.

“I’m glad I’m not stuck with that old goat,” Pandaras said, when Yama found him. “What does he want of us?”

“You saw what happened to the children’s slave.”

“I heard the screaming. Yoi Sendar wouldn’t let me go near.” Pandaras glanced at the chief of the forest folk, who sat listlessly with several of his family in the shade of a big cotton tree. “It is easy to see how it is with these Mighty People. They are each a kingdom to themselves, master. They do not trust anyone, not even their own children. This is a crazy place. I told you we should not have come.”

“We must find the temple, Pandaras.”

“I asked about that, but the forest folk have suddenly lost their tongues. What is wrong with them, master? Why don’t they defend themselves?”

“They are indigens. They know only what they have always known, and cannot imagine anything else. Once upon a time they lived in harmony with the Mighty People, exchanging food hunted in the forest for food grown in this valley, each race enriching the other. But the Mighty People changed.”

“They are evil, master. No people preys on another!”

Yama thought of the Amnan, who had hunted the fisherfolk until his stepfather had put a stop to it. He said, “Certain bloodlines see the indigens as no more than animals. And so here. But I have never seen so wretched a people as the Mighty People. They are not evil, but gripped by a kind of madness.”

“I would call it evil,” Pandaras said. “I suppose we are prisoners here. Yoi Sendar thinks you are an honored guest. He is pleased that he has brought us to this place.”

“The forest folk are used to bringing people here. The Mighty People were once extraordinary artists and artisans, and I expect that in the old days many traders came here. The Mighty People have no interest in trading now, but the forest folk cannot understand that.” Yama explained the Captain’s plans for war against the neighboring villages, and said, “He thinks that I am a cateran.”

“So you are, master. Everyone in the world can see it but you.”

“You are supposed to be my slave, Pandaras. I think it would be a good idea if you acted like it. The Captain has treasure hidden somewhere close by. I think all the Mighty People do.”

Pandaras nodded. “The old stuff is all in one place, according to Yoi Sendar. He was boasting about the riches of this village as if they were his own. I didn’t believe him until now because he wouldn’t tell me where it was.”

“Yoi Sendar is loyal to his master. You forget the torcs the forest folk wore. Where did you think those came from?”

Pandaras struck his forehead and laughed. “I am a fool, master. I am close to a fortune and failed to see it.”

“I am going to ask the Captain for proof of the fee he has promised for making war against the other villages.”

“You have a plan, then. That’s good. You are recovering from your ordeal, master.”

“Money is not important. Things are not important. Look around you if you do not believe me. I do not do this for money, Pandaras,” Yama said. “I do it because I must.”

He explained his plan, then made a show of knocking the boy down and kicking him, drawing his blows as much as possible. When he returned to the Captain, the man grumbled that he was free enough with his time. “I have not forgotten that my time is yours,” Yama said. “I spend a little of it now so that you will win great things later.”

“If that was my slave, I would kill him.”

“He is all I have.”

“You can have plenty of slaves after we have conquered our enemies.”

“You promise much, Captain, but if I am to fight for you I would like to see a token of these riches.”

“You will have enough when our enemies are broken. Most of it must come to me, of course, but you will have your share.”

“I would see something of it with my own eyes,” Yama said. “What harm in that? You have said that you regard it as worthless.”

The Captain stared up at Yama suspiciously. He said, “It will come to you in good time.”

“No man can trust another. You have taught me that. I must see how I will profit before I agree to help you.”

The Captain went cross-eyed in an effort to contain his sudden anger. He said, “I should kill you!”

“Then you would certainly have no help from me.”

The Captain turned away and stamped and breathed heavily until he was calm, then said grudgingly, “It is a matter for all the village.”

The Mighty People argued for a long time, past sunset and into the night. The forest folk lit lanterns and hung them from the lower branches of the cotton trees.

The Mighty People were all in a rage with each other, and nothing was resolved until a man went for the Captain with a long knife and the Captain shot him in the belly. More shouting, this time mostly from the Captain.

The wounded man was carried off by his slaves. Later, the Captain came over to where Yama was sitting with Pandaras.

“We will take you there now,” he said grumpily. “But you must be blindfolded.”

All the villagers came because no one trusted anyone else. They were prisoners of their own greed and suspicion. The Captain was quite happy to explain this as he walked beside Yama. He said that it was a sign of their superior way of life.

“Anyone who goes to the hoard alone is killed by the others and their stuff is divided up.”

“How would you know if someone went there?”

“We all watch each other. No one can leave the village without the others knowing, and if someone does not come when he is called, then he must lose all he owns.” The Captain added, “Also, we keep watch on it. You could not find the place, but even if you did, we would know straightaway.”

As well as being blindfolded, Yama and Pandaras had their arms bound. In case of trouble, the Captain said, although Yama guessed that it was because the Mighty People thought they might have friends waiting in ambush. The filthy cloth tied over his eyes was not quite lightproof—he could dimly see the flare of the torches carried by the handful of forest folk the Mighty People had brought with them—but he did not bother to try and memorize the twists and turns of the path which led always upward. He silently endured the stink of the Mighty People and the spidery feel of their sharp-fingered hands as they guided him left or right. Pandaras began to complain volubly, but then there was the sound of a blow, and the boy said nothing more.

Yama found when the blindfold was at last removed, that he was standing at the edge of a tall cliff. It was too dark to see the bottom, but the Captain told Yama that it was a long drop. “We throw down those who try and cheat us,” he said. “They break on the rocks far below and jackals eat their brains. I’ll do it to you if you try any tricks.”

Yama said, “Do you not trust me?”

“Of course not.” The Captain clacked his lips. He was amused. “And if you said that you trusted me I would not believe you.”

Yama sketched a bow and said, “Then we understand each other completely.”

The Mighty People surrounded them. Several of the forest folk held torches made from the branches dipped in pitch, which crackled with red flame and black smoke. Two held Pandaras, who sat on a flat stone with his arms between his knees and a strip of cloth tied over his eyes. All around was a desolation of boulders and creepers and stunted trees, with the edge of the forest a distant dark line against the black sky. It was midnight. The Eye of the Preservers was almost at zenith, a smudged thumbprint that shed a baleful red glow.

The Captain dropped one end of a coil of rope over the edge. The other was looped around a knob of rock rubbed as smooth as a dockside bollard.

“Climb down,” the Captain told Yama. “There is a cave hidden behind creepers not far below. Look inside and you will see a great store of the old stuff. Our enemies have much lesser stores, of course, but even one tenth of one of them will be a great treasure to a man like you. Do not stay there long, or we will cut the rope.”

Yama held out his bound hands. “You will have to untie me.”

There was an argument about this amongst the Mighty People. Some wanted the Captain to climb down with Yama and others suggested that someone else should climb down, because Yama was the Captain’s property, but no one wanted to volunteer because that meant risking all for the benefit of everyone else. At last the Captain prevailed. Yama would be released from his bonds, but he would have only five minutes to look at the treasure or the rope would be cut.

The rope was knotted at intervals; even though Yama was carrying one of the smoky torches, it was easy to clamber down it. They will kill us, the Shadow said, but Yama ignored the crawling sparks of its voice. A draft of cold air blew from the cave mouth, stirring the leafy creepers which hung over it like a curtain. Yama kicked them aside and, clinging one-handed to the swaying rope, thrust in first the torch and then his head.

Here was the treasure of the Mighty People: broken pottery tumbled in heaps; flaking paintings covered in gray mold; exquisitely carved chairs riddled with beetle and glowing in streaks of foxfire where fungus rotted the wood; intricate metalwork corroded by verdigris.

The Captain’s voice drifted down from above. “You see!” he shouted, “You see that we are a very rich people! Now you must return, or we will cut the rope!”

Yama looked up. The Mighty People stood along the edge of the cliff, silhouetted against the flare of torches. He said, “Now that I have seen your treasure I know exactly how to help you,” and threw his torch onto a stack of chairs half-turned to sawdust by white emmets.

The Mighty People did not realize what had happened at first. Yama had plenty of time to find a good handhold beside the cave mouth before smoke began to pour out of it. The creepers dried and withered in the heat. Howls, from above, then a scatter of rifle shots. Something unraveled past Yama, striking his shoulder as it fell. The rope had been cut.

It was not difficult to climb sideways along the cliff. The creepers were strong enough to bear Yama’s weight, and there were plenty of hand- and footholds. The Mighty People were too busy trying to save their treasure to search for him. They swarmed down the cliff on ropes, but none thought to take anything with which to beat out or stifle the fire. They hung from their ropes and shrieked in rage at each other. One man lost his hold when flame belched out of the cave mouth and he fell screaming into the darkness.

Yama climbed over the edge of the cliff, strode through the circle of forest folk, and pulled the strip of cloth from Pandaras’s eyes. The boy showed his sharp white teeth. Blood, fresh and bright, matted the sleek hair on top of his head and trickled down his face. He said, “I will kill whoever it was that struck me. I swear it.”

“We will only do what we need to do,” Yama said. He took the sharp stone blade from Pandaras’s shirt pocket and sawed through the rope which bound his arms, then turned to the forest folk and told them, “I am your master now. Do you understand? I took the Mighty People’s treasure and gave it to the air.”

Yoi Sendar stepped forward and said humbly, “You must kill me, for I have failed my masters.”

“I am not going to kill you,” Yama told him, “but you will be changed. You will go back to the village with Pandaras and bring the rest of your people. Do it, or I will kill all of the Mighty People. The others will come with me.”

Pandaras said, “How will I find you, master?”

“You will be with the chief of the forest folk. He will know how to find me. Go now, as quickly as you can!” When Pandaras and Yoi Sendar had run off into the darkness, Yama went to the edge of the drop and shouted down to the Captain. “When I saw your treasure I knew what to do at once!”

The Captain howled and brought up the rifle and shot at Yama, but he was shaking with rage and the pellet went wide. Recoil swung him like the clapper of a bell and he dropped his torch when he slammed back into the cliff. It tumbled away, dwindling to a point of light that suddenly flared far below and went out.

Before the Captain could aim his rifle again, Yama said, “If anyone tries to kill me or to climb up I will cut your rope.”

“I will kill you! My slaves will kill you!”

Two or three of the other Mighty People got off a few pistol shots, but the angle was too difficult and the pellets hit the rock-face beneath Yama’s feet or whined off into the sky. The Captain shouted at them to stop and a woman said loudly and clearly, “You did this. You are not my husband. You are not the father of my children. You are nothing, Tuan Ali.”

It was the Captain’s secret name. He screamed with rage and swung around on his rope and tried to aim his rifle at his wife, but she was quicker and shot him twice with her pistol. He dropped from the rope and vanished into the darkness below.

There was a silence. At last the Captain’s wife said, “Are you there, cateran?”

“I do not want anything from you except your slaves.”

Some of the Mighty People began to shout threats, but the Captain’s wife shouted louder than any of them. “Try and kill him if you want, but he’ll cut your ropes before you get halfway up.”

The Mighty People could have easily overwhelmed Yama by swarming up their ropes all at once, but he had guessed that it would never occur to them to act together. He said, “I am freeing you too. I free you from the past. Do you understand? When I have gone you can go back to your village and take up your lives.”

“Tuan Ali was a fool to trust you,” the Captain’s wife said. “I had eight children by him, but I am glad he is dead. You have started a war, cateran. We will need slaves, and if we cannot hunt you down we will take them from our enemies. Pray that we do not find you. I am crueler than Tuan Ali.”

“I am going where you cannot find me,” Yama said, and turned away and led the remaining forest folk into the forest.