Smashing the wolf-people's idol

Smashing the Wolf-People's Idol

Beatriss and Tetsukichi, together with their companions and guides, traveled downstream along the western branch of the Lam River and then turned upstream into its eastern branch, following the directions of Xīngqíliù. Along the way they passed near Quitokai, where they were rejoined by Afu the Priest and his assistant, Ju-Mei, as well as Kreppu-San, a warrior from Zipang who claimed to have traveled with Gwinch and accompanied him during the attack on the slavers' stockade.

Kreppu-San's story seemed plausible enough. As their boat worked its way upriver, he pointed toward a range of jungle-covered peaks and identified them as the mountains behind which the stockade lay.

They were also, according to Xīngqíliù, drawing close to Xitaqa.

That was important. Somewhere near Xitaqa stood the tower that had once belonged to Golthar and that they now believed might be Golfo's prison. Xīngqíliù knew how to find it. But before revealing the route, he demanded the favor he had warned them would be his price.

It was, he explained, also a test.

Xitaqa was an evil place, built by wicked people in an earlier age and still a beacon to those who followed in their ways. If Beatriss and her companions expected Xīngqíliù to lead them there, he wanted proof that they were not themselves servants of that older evil.

He pointed toward a faint trail visible from the riverbank.

Some distance inland, he said, was a cave inhabited by a family of wolf-people. They possessed an idol in the form of a wolf, which they had worshipped until it rewarded—and cursed—them with the ability to assume wolf form and command ordinary wolves. Xīngqíliù claimed that they also preyed upon human beings.

Bring him the idol so that it could be destroyed, he said, and he would reveal the way to Xitaqa.

Beatriss, Tetsukichi, and Kreppu-San were not immediately convinced.

What quarrel did they have with the wolf-people? What if the creatures in the cave were simply wolves? On the other hand, they were being asked to steal an idol, not exterminate its worshippers. Natural wolves would presumably have little use for a jeweled clay statue. And if Xīngqíliù was telling the truth about wolf-people hunting and eating humans, their innocence was somewhat harder to defend.

Eventually they agreed.

They would enter the cave at night, when Xīngqíliù believed most of the pack would be away hunting.

Neither Xīngqíliù and his brothers nor Afu intended to accompany them inside. Afu did, however, offer magical assistance. With Ju-Mei attending closely beside him, the priest prepared two enchanted stones. One cast a steady light without flame; the other muffled the sounds of the bearer's movement. Ju-Mei's role was mostly that of an apprentice—fetching what Afu required, watching the preparations, and listening while his master explained how the charms were to be used.

Then he remained with Afu while the warriors went ahead.

The party disembarked farther upriver and doubled back until they found the trail Xīngqíliù had indicated. It led through the jungle to a cave whose smell and littered entrance left little doubt that it was the den of a sizable pack.

Al-Fitar remained outside to watch for the hunters' return. Beatriss, Tetsukichi, Kreppu-San, and the others entered.

A short passage opened into a central chamber from which several smaller caves branched away. Above them was a ledge. Climbing to it, they discovered a shallow alcove containing exactly what Xīngqíliù had described: a crude clay wolf with gemstones set into its eyes.

The enchanted stone allowed them to move almost soundlessly, but not invisibly.

While they silently debated how best to remove the idol, the ordinary wolves sleeping deeper within the cave caught their scent. Shapes began emerging from the surrounding passages.

The fight was sudden and vicious. In the confined cavern there was little room for maneuver, and whatever doubts the companions had entertained about attacking wolves disappeared once the animals were upon them. They killed those that attacked, seized the idol, and hurried back toward the entrance.

Al-Fitar had seen no sign of the returning pack.

Nobody suggested waiting for it.

They made their way quickly back to the river and rejoined Xīngqíliù, Afu, Ju-Mei, and the others aboard the boat. Xīngqíliù received the idol with evident satisfaction. His brothers guarded it while the exhausted travelers attempted to sleep.

A few hours later, sometime before dawn, howling began in the jungle.

It was not the ordinary calling of distant wolves. The cries were prolonged and piteous, passing from one unseen voice to another along the riverbank.

Whatever Xīngqíliù thought they meant, he showed no desire to investigate. The boat was pushed away from shore, and the travelers spent the remainder of the night anchored safely in midstream.

Ju-Mei listened to the howling until daylight.

When the sun finally rose, Xīngqíliù and his brothers asked to be put ashore. There they performed a brief ritual over the clay wolf before smashing it to pieces.

The idol was destroyed.

The gemstones that had served as its eyes, however, somehow survived the denunciation of evil and disappeared into Xīngqíliù's possession.

Afu apparently saw no theological difficulty worth discussing.

The test had been passed. Xīngqíliù was now more than willing to reveal the route to Xitaqa. Indeed, he offered to accompany the party there himself.

And so, after one more night's delay and one more strange errand in the jungle, the search for Golfo resumed.

Putting pieces together in Menkan

The morning after their battle on the dirty side of Mekan, Tetsukichi, Beatriss, and Al-Fitar were nursing their wounds, and eating a late breakfast at The Nice Inn, when who should walk in the door but Golfo’s wife Phi Phong. She was very happy to see them and at the same time very distraught.

Golfo had been captured or killed or had been captured and was about to be killed. She explained what regular readers already know—not long after they left Quitokai in resumption of their mission to find Gwinch, Goyat, and Kawabi, she and Golfo, along with Tsao Ho and the other monks were ambushed by a large group of men, led by a flying sorcerer in yellow robes. Their brave guides had assisted Phi Phong in escaping their assailants, but when she rejoined Tsao Ho and his monks, Golfo was not among them. Two monks had fallen as well and Tsao Ho refused to risk their mission to go back and try to find them.

When it was time to make camp, Phi Phong convinced one of the guides to help her go back and look for Golfo. At the site of the ambush, they found the dead bodies of the monks, but no sign of Golfo. Phi Phong and the guide returned to Quitokai. Some people there knew of Golthar, the flying sorcerer in the yellow robes, that he was in league with the slavers, and that he may well captured Golfo alive, whether to interrogate him or send him to a mine, or for some other evil purpose. They knew that Golthat lived at an ancient citadel known as Xi Ta Qa, but they didn’t know where it was. Phi Phong decided to go to Menkan, both with the hopes of meeting Tetsukichi and enlisting his aid in rescuing his cousin and with the object of finding someone who knew something more about Xi Ta Qa.

Tetsukichi and Beatriss were interested in helping. And they recounted the story of their encounter with Golthat the previous night. They made a plan to return to the scene of last night’s battle, hoping Golfo might be found there.

But first, they were injured, and needed healing. They visited several temples on the north side of Menkan and received some small measure of expert care for their injuries. They also asked various priests if they had heard of Xi Ta Qa, and received a few blank looks and a few vague answers (“in the mountains.”) And when they returned to The Nice Inn, they found a self-styled holy man waiting for them: “I have heard that you are looking for Xi Ta Qa.”

Hermit :), a photo by aufidius on Flickr.

The holy man, who was named Xīngqíliù , said that he knew the exact location of Xi Ta Qa, and that he, with his six brothers, would take them there. “But I will want a favor from you in return. And horses.” Xīngqíliù also agreed, for the price of 30 taels, to accompany them in their return to Golthar’s hideout in Menkan.

When they returned to the dingy neighborhood in the vicinity of the south end of the wharf, they found a crowd of people milling in the alleyway in a state of restrained excitement. The people’s stares seemed less hostile and they gave the party space to pass. Beatriss knocked on the door of the gate, demanding Golfo. “Go away. He’s not here,” said the people inside. There was a woman’s voice among them, probably that of the woman in black robes. After some argument, the party barged in. Besides the woman in the black robes, there were three men, one of them armed with Beatriss’s bow, which she’d dropped the night before. The woman fled while the men held the party at the gate—briefly.

After dispatching with the men, the party pursued the woman through the house and into the street. Here the party hesitated, but then, noting that the crowd was perhaps very subtly hindering her flight, continued the chase. People in the alleyways, with nods and half-glances guided Beatriss into the alley where she at last captured and killed the woman. The party returned to the house, searched it, and found no sign of Golfo. They did however, recover a good bit of money. Now it was time to make plans for Xi Ta Qa. Learning from Xīngqíliù that Xitaqa was on a cliff overlooking the Lam river, they decided not to buy horses, but instead to pay for everyone to go by boat. And so the next morning they set sail.

Slum on Chao Phraya River Bangkok Thailand 1995, a photo by wordcat57 on Flickr.

through the jungle

The part had been traveling for about 2 days when they encounter a group of four teenaged forest-dwellers carrying, lashed to a pole, the body of a dead spider the size of a large deer. The young men were very proud of their trophy, and although only Deng could understand any of their language, the party all soon came to understand both that the jungles was crawling with spiders and that killing the large specimens was an important rite of passage. They also learned that the young hunters hailed from a village on the edge of the forest about eight days away. Although this represented a significant change in direction, the party chose to travel to the young men’s village.

Tarantula II, a photo by Brayo on Flickr.

With the assistance of the guides, the party traveled more quickly and were able to supplement their trail rations with forest food. They met other local residents along the way. But despite their large numbers, they were accosted by a pair of spider-riding goblins who were armed with long spears and demanded the party’s surrender. Saisho found that his ring did not enable him to control the spiders, and so combat ensued. The spider-riders were quickly dispatched, but the spiders themselves, sustained multiple volleys of magic missiles and arrows before dying.
That night, the group was awakened by the sounds of large creatures crashing through the trees and undergrowth. Although the creatures were not charging their position, they did seem to be moving in their general direction. The locals responded by shouting and stomping and shaking the trees themselves. Gwinch himself tried to approach the source of the sound, using the magic sword he retrieved from Icar the slaver to light his way. Although the creatures retreated some ways from the ruckus caused by Gwinch’s group, he was still able to locate them—three creatures each the size of a small house, with tails on both ends, ears the size of shields, and each a pair of teeth so long they almost touched the ground.
Approaching cautiously, and chanting a prayer, Gwinch reached out to touch and pet one of the elephants who reciprocated in kind. The other elephants, although more reserved, gave their own signs of non-hostility. Gwinch returned to the group and told them to shut up. The next morning the group continued on their way, now accompanied by the three elephants.
They reached the village of Mata without encountering any more spiders.

In Mata, the party encountered an elder with whom Deng could communicate freely, and got more information. Yes, a large band of fighting men had passed through the village several months ago. They came from the North, wore ragged uniforms and demanded information about a lost highway. The people of Mata had little information to give them. The soldiers pillaged and continued their way south toward Pasar. And within a few weeks, another group of men tore through Mata in pursuit of the first, and piling a fresh helping of misery on the local residents. But that was not there immediate concern. Their immediate concern was the evolving cunning of the spiders who lived in the jungle. Although the spiders had always been a menace, previously it had been of a brutish sort, most dangerous to people who entered the forest without proper preparation. But of late, they had allied themselves with the weird goblin creatures who inhabited the forest. Long a subject of legend and again, no match for a brave warrior in broad daylight. Together, these two ancient enemies were becoming a real menace not only within the dark forest, but in the fields and farms surrounding Mata and the other villages in the valley. The party said they’d see what they could do on their way back, and then went on their way to Pasar. They passed through other villages where they heard similar stories, but encountered no other adversaries. Reaching the market-city of Pasar, they said good-bye to the elephants.