Shadows in the Cave by Meredith and Win Blevins Page B

Guna. If you were not Galayi, an ignorant people who live in caves in the mountains, you would know him as a great chief, none greater in the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men. Our people revere him.” Aku didn’t even glance at the chief—he was transfixed by the triumphant wickedness in Salya’s eyes, evil mirrors of his own.
    Now she caressed the shaman on the neck, shocking behavior at a public gathering. “This is the man I told you about, Father, Maloch, the most powerful shaman in all lands between where the sun rises and where it sets.” She looked at Maloch lasciviously. “His power has entranced me.” She slid in front of Maloch, embraced him with both arms, wound a leg around one of his, and rubbed her body against him indecently. Women in the crowd trilled. Men shouted or laughed.
    Aku could not look away from her.
    “Understand, my father, understand, my brother, Maloch is not my husband. I am his whore. I open my legs to him as the ground splits in an earthquake. His seed floods me as the ocean tides turn a river back up its own channel. He volcanoes forth his seed and fills my belly.
    “Oh, oh”—her moan was a song and she writhed in a wicked ballet—“never have I felt such pleasure. Every day of my life I will degrade myself before him. Every day I beg for his humiliation.”
    Shonan heard only half of it. His eyes flicked over the chief, who seemed mesmerized by the fire. There lay the beginning of the pain.
    “Sing for death,” he said quietly to Aku. The tradition wasn’t to ask for death, but to be ready for death if it came, as it did to all things.
    “Yes!” said Salya, and again in exultation, “Yes! Sing for death.”
    A drum started, and Salya danced around them. “Our women will bring it to you now, first as a seduction, then as a rape, and last as the holocaust of fire.” She waved a languid hand toward the blaze, which now burned brightly.
    Shonan said quietly, “Remember that a warrior who dies fighting the enemy goes quickly to the Darkening Land and immediately is reborn on earth.”
    Salya cried, “Do you, the war chief, believe such an old wives’ tale?” Her laugh exploded up and down in great arpeggios.
    “Reborn immediately,” Shonan repeated. Then he sang,
    “All things pass away,
    Plants must die,
    Animals pass on,
    Even the rocks crumble
    And blow in the wind.
    All things pass on.
    Only spirit is eternal,
    Only spirit.
    Only spirit.”
    Salya stepped close to her father, a burning stick in her hand. “Only spirit?” she asked with a sneer. “Let me remind you of body.” She jammed the flames into Shonan’s belly.
    Shonan howled. Salya cackled.
    Shonan croaked out,
    “Only spirit.
    Only spirit.”
    Aku could only pretend to sing. He stared at the hideous burn on his father’s belly. He gazed at the lewd, shadowy dance of Salya and the shaman. From the burn to the dance, back and forth. The sinuous movements of the dancers made their bodies look like one, her face grinning out from the shaman’s cowl.
    “You will wish your life was more frail,” Salya chanted. “You will yearn for the embrace of death. You feel a splinter driven through your nipple. You get a hint of the flame as one of our women lights it. Slowly, the flame eats the wood. At last it takes the flesh in its fiery mouth.”
    By the flickering firelight Aku now began to see. Many times he had gotten a glimpse of what resided beyond the apparent, beyond the physical. For the first time he welcomed this sight. It stirred his heart. It was possibility.
    “All things pass on.
    Only spirit is eternal,
    Only spirit.
    Only spirit.”
    “Yes,” sang Salya, “it will make you croon for the solace of death, but the slut has no ears. Ten times you will sing to her, but she enjoys your begging. ‘More!’ she demands. ‘More! More!’ A hundred splinters and your body lives on. Oh, what a bitch death is, how evil! But not as evil as your daughter Salya. Let me show you.”
    She