Fossil Hunter

*35*

Afsan lay on the grass outside of the palace, the sun warming his back. Next to him lay Gork, its thick tail touching Afsan’s own. Afsan tried to conjure up a picture of the grounds, but it had been so long. Grass: green, of course. And the sun, brilliant white. The sky, mauve, most likely, and cloudless, judging by how warm the sun felt. Daytime moons? Surely. This was noon on the 590th day of this kiloday. He calculated. The Big One would be high in the sky and waxing. Swift Runner would be much lower and almost full.

Still, it had been so long since he had seen any of these things. The picture still came when he willed it, but how true the colors were, how accurate the details, he could no longer say.

Sound was more real, as was smell, and touch. He could hear the buzzing of insects—a small swarm above his head, larger chirpers over in that direction, the smell of pollens, of grass shorn by domesticated plant-eaters that had been tethered near here. And the hard ground beneath his belly, the roughness of the grass blades, a pebble under his thigh, not exactly comfortable, but not irritating enough to warrant changing his position.

And now the ground vibrating slightly. Someone walking toward him. Afsan lifted his head.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Dybo.”

“Dybo.” Afsan relaxed again, letting his long jaw rest against the ground. “Your step is lighter than it used to be.”

“Yes,” said the Emperor, who, judging by the way his voice had changed location, was crouching a few paces to Afsan’s right. “How do you feel?” asked Afsan.

“To my considerable surprise,” said Dybo, “I feel better than I’ve ever felt before. But I’ll tell you: when all this is over, I I eat an entire hornface as a reward.” Dybo paused. “That is, of course, if I win.”

Afsan’s tail was sticking up in the air. He flicked it absently to disperse insects. “Think positively, my friend. And, by all means, Keep thinking of that hornface, if it motivates you.”

There was quiet between them. The comfortable quiet of two old friends, a quiet that neither felt a need to fill. The bugs in the distance continued to chirp.

“Afsan?”

“Yes, Dybo?”

“How do you assess me, compared to Rodlox?”

Afsan reached over to Gork, and slid his hand soothingly over the beast’s leathery hide. “I have never seen Rodlox.”

“No, of course not. But you must have an opinion.” Cork’s hide had warmed mightily in the sunlight. If the lizard had been alone, Afsan was sure it would have shuttled into the shade, but Gork was always reluctant to leave its master. Afsan pushed himself up onto his feet and followed the slight swelling of the ground caused by distended roots in toward the trunk of a nearby tree. Gork padded along next to him, hissing contentedly. The shade was cool. “Rodlox is loud and belligerent,” Afsan said at last.

“And I am not,” said Dybo, as if it were a failing to not be those things.

“You are peaceful and, well, pleasant.”

“He’s stronger than me, Afsan. Even after all of this training, sure he’s still stronger.”

Gork nuzzled against Afsan’s legs. “Physically, yes.”

“And, Afsan, I have lived in awe of your intellect since we first met. I know I’m not the brightest person in the world.”

Afsan said nothing.

“If I’m not the strongest, and I’m not the brightest, then perhaps Rodlox is right. Perhaps I should not be the leader.”

“There is something else to consider.”

“What else can there be, besides intellectual and physical prowess?”

“There’s goodness, Dybo. There’s moral rectitude. There’s doing the right thing when the wrong thing would be easier. Those are your strengths, Dybo. And those, more than anything else, are what a good ruler needs.”

Dybo was silent for a time. “Thank you,” he said, and then: “But those traits sound flimsy against muscle and brains. Do I really have a hope of winning against the blackdeath?”

“If there’s a god in heaven, you’ll win.”

Dybo answered wistfully. “Coming from the person who took God out of the heavens, that does little to comfort me.”

Afsan’s expression was carefully blank.

The blackdeath had been held captive for many dekadays now. Its pen was a giant area just north of the arena, hastily walled off by fences of stone. Indeed, the pen itself was bigger than the actual arena. The blackdeath had tried to scale the stone walls, but could not, and, although it occasionally still tried—perhaps having forgotten its previous attempts—it had mostly settled into its life of captivity.

At the south end, the pen’s walls connected with the pointed apex of the walls to the diamond-shaped arena. Through a gate in the arena wall, a shovelmouth was driven into the pen every ten days or so, to provide food for the blackdeath.

Dybo often watched the blackdeath. Ladders had been built up to the top of the stone wall, and Dybo sat for great lengths of time on the edge, his feet dangling down the inside of the wall, his tail dangling off the outside. He observed that the blackdeath only seemed happy when it was stalking and killing the shovelmouths.

It was a horrendous beast even here, even caged, but it had a beauty and a nobility about it. Dybo’s observation perch was upwind of the creature, and so long as he sat still, it paid him no attention. Next to him on the wall’s upper surface lay a small satchel containing books, papers, and writing leathers.

Dybo was surprised to hear the sound of flexing wood made by someone coming up the ladder he’d leaned against the outer wall. He swiveled his head around and saw that Rodlox was ascending. Dybo got up and walked along the wall’s top edge—it was barely wide enough for that—until he was about five paces from the top of the ladder.

Rodlox reached the top and instead of walking five paces in the opposite direction, thereby putting the traditional territorial buffer between himself and Dybo, he simply sat directly down. Everything about the governor of Edz’toolar bespoke challenge.

The movement on the top of the wall caught the blackdeath’s eye. It let out a thunderous roar. Dybo took some pleasure in noting that, just for an instant, Rodlox’s fingerclaws danced out into the light of day in response. He was not as fearless as he liked to appear. Dybo was a gifted mimic—in his younger days, he’d been known for his humorous impressions of the voices of the palace staff. He thought about copying the blackdeath’s roar to see again the sight of Rodlox frightened, but prudence got the better of him. Instead, he simply said nothing.

“You spend much time up here, looking at that beast,” said Rodlox. “It must be frightening for you, to see the creature that will cause your death.”

Dybo’s tone was lackadaisical. “Whatever you say, Rodlox.” He went back to looking at the dumb brute. The other dumb brute, that is.

Suddenly Rodlox was pointing at Dybo’s right hand. “What happened to you?”

Dybo lifted his arm. Two of his fingers were missing. “This, you mean?”

Rodlox’s teeth clicked together nastily. “Does the Emperor stuff his face so quickly that even his own fingers get chomped off?”

There was an ancient gesture that Dybo thought briefly about making, but this hand lacked the key digit needed for it. “No, Rodlox, nothing like that. I lost these fingers while practicing.”

Rodlox apparently didn’t really care about Dybo’s injury; the digits, after all, would grow back soon enough anyway. He looked down at the blackdeath, slowly pacing the length of its pen. “I can beat that creature with one arm tied behind my back,” Rodlox said defiantly.

Dybo’s expression was inscrutable as he also looked down at the caged beast. “I can do better than that,” he said at last.