Chapter 27 The Most Primitive Religion

"Are you from Eju? You carry a cat around with you, and you even cook for it before you cook for yourself." That was what Metatron asked Amon when they made camp that night. He had short, curly golden-brown hair, very fair skin, and a high, straight nose; he was strikingly handsome, and in the eyes of most girls in this world his smile must have been charming, while the teeth it showed were very white and very even.

Amon asked, puzzled, "Why does cooking for the cat first make me a man of Eju?"

Metatron said, "Egyptians worship cats and take them for incarnations of the gods. Only someone like that would pamper a cat so. Isn't that so?" When he had gotten a clear look at how young the divine artist who saved him really was, he had been astonished; but Amon had offered no account of where he came from.

Amon smiled and answered, "Oh, this cat belongs to a friend of one of my elders, who asked me to take good care of it. I am indeed from Eju. My name is Amon. I began studying divine arts when I was very small, but to this day I am still only a second-rank divine artist. You said you come from Barron City, the royal capital of Barron Kingdom — so what brings you to these deep mountains inside Hatti?"

He had already given himself away in the heat of the moment, so he might as well go along with it and pass himself off as a divine artist from Egypt; Metatron could hardly verify his identity in any case.

Metatron said, "Hatti? This is Barron territory! ... Well, maybe I'm the one who's mistaken. There aren't any clear boundary markers out here to begin with. To be honest with you, my great-grandfather was a divine artist too, but he died here in the wars long ago. I've come to look for the traces he left behind. Honored divine artist, and what brings you to a place this remote and dangerous?"

Amon thought of something for no clear reason; he paused for a moment before answering, "My business is much the same as yours. A high priest lost something here many years ago and ordered me to find it. He told me it would also count as a trial."

Metatron blurted out, "Did you offend him, that he'd send a divine artist as young as you out here?" Then he added, "I don't mean any offense. It just slipped out."

Amon waved a hand, altogether unbothered. "It really is a punishment. I did some things badly, and I'm willing to accept it."

Metatron laughed. "An ordinary high priest could never trek through these mountains to get here. He must have dropped something while he was flying. If it's somewhere near, I can find people to help."

Amon said in surprise, "Find people? Who is there to find out here? Aren't you here looking for your ancestor's traces yourself?"

Metatron explained again, "I've been here several times already. I've gotten to know the biggest dwarf tribe around. They're probably the ones who know this area best; we can ask them to help you search for whatever was lost in the mountains."

Amon said, "Cave-dwelling wild folk? You deal with their tribe too? And what happened today — how did you end up at that pool and stir up those iron-armored beasts? I've never seen mutated iron-armored beasts like those."

Metatron answered, a little embarrassed, "I haven't found my ancestor's traces, but I have gotten friendly with the dwarf tribe here, and I often trade things with them. This tribe has no other good goods, but they know how to smelt refined iron blanks, and those are worth a lot. I've needed money for these trips into the mountains over the years, so I do some trading with them. This may still be inside Barron, so it doesn't count as smuggling, does it?"

Refined iron is a government monopoly in every country, and private trading in it is more or less against the law. But Amon couldn't be bothered with that sort of busybody business, and asked casually, "So you came for the ore sand? Do you mean to smelt refined iron yourself?"

Metatron blinked. "Isn't this your first time here? How do you know there's top-grade refined iron ore sand here?"

Amon shrugged. "It is my first time here. But you can pan the finest refined iron ore sand out of iron-armored beast droppings. I've known that for ages!"

Metatron froze. His expression turned very strange in the firelight, and he muttered a curse before he said, "So-called top-grade horsehide-steel ore sand is actually iron-armored beast droppings! That damned chief never told me that."

Amon froze too. "Ah, so you didn't know? Then what did he tell you?"

Metatron said resentfully, "The tribe here produces the finest refined iron blanks, far better than ordinary refined iron. Where I come from it's called horsehide steel; carry one small piece out of the mountains and you make a good profit. But the output is tiny.

I asked the chief whether we could get more. He said the ore sand was hard to dig, and that the silt deposited around a pool in the mountains was rich in the best horsehide-steel ore sand. But an iron-armored beast king lived in the pool, and collecting it was terribly dangerous — none of his people dared come."

"I reckoned I was a mid-rank warrior myself and could handle one iron-armored beast king, so I sneaked over here by myself. I wanted to kill the beast king and let those dwarves see what I was made of. That chief never told me there were four of them, and he certainly never told me the ore sand was iron-armored beast droppings. I nearly left my life here. Lucky I ran into you."

Amon looked at him and couldn't help laughing out loud. The laughter grew and grew, and then Metatron was laughing too. The two of them roared at each other, and the echoes rolled through the night mountains. Schrödinger, dozing, lifted its head and gave the two of them a deeply displeased look, as if to say, What's so funny? Have you no shame?

When the sun rose the next day, Amon, leaning on a branch for a walking stick and carrying Schrödinger on his back, followed Metatron on up toward the heights. He had no intention of asking the cave-dwelling wild folk's tribe to help him find Bel, but asking around about anything worth noting in these parts would be useful all the same.

From a distance the clouds on the high mountains looked like a floating sea; once you walked into them they were a drifting mist. Amon was about to pass through the cloud layer for the third time. Halfway along he suddenly heard a noise ahead; he stopped and planted his staff, saying, "Metatron, there's a sound up ahead. It doesn't sound like an animal — it sounds like people's footsteps."

Metatron leaped onto a big rock, raised his sword, and peered ahead. After a while he suddenly bellowed, "Link! You old bastard, get over here! ... You lied to me good. Just wait till I get my hands on you!"

A group of people came out from the trees where the mountain path turned. The one at their head was the "old bastard" Metatron had cursed; he didn't look old at all, thirty or so at most. His skin was a little dark, though it was the fairest among these people. He wore clothes stitched from animal hides, and on his feet was a pair of shoes woven from hemp straw — he was the only one among them wearing shoes — and he was the chief of the cave-dwelling wild folk's tribe in these mountains.

The moment Link saw Metatron he hurried forward. "You've wronged me! I heard you'd gone to the cold pool where the iron-armored beast king lives to dig ore sand. By then it was dark and there was no way for me to come find you, so at first light I gathered the tribe's braves to come rescue you."

Behind Link followed more than thirty "braves." Some carried crude bows and arrows, some carried long spears with iron heads lashed to wooden shafts, and the weapons of a few others were interesting indeed: long, thin, rough flat bars of refined iron, ground to a point on one side and edged, good for both thrusting and chopping, but never shaped into anything like a blade.

These people weren't really so very short, and Chief Link said they were the strongest braves of the tribe, the tallest of them all — yet they were only about the average height of an ordinary grown man. So there was a reason the cave-dwelling wild folk were called dwarves.

The moment Metatron saw Link he jumped down off the rock and raised his sword as if to rap him on the head with the flat of the blade. "Wait for you to rescue me and I'd have been eaten by the iron-armored beasts long ago! Didn't you say there was one iron-armored beast king? How did I run into four!"

Link let out a loud "Ah!" and his mouth dropped wide open while he fended the blade off half-heartedly with the short staff in his hand. That short staff of his was made from the bone of some unknown beast, and it even had a godstone set into it; it looked very much like a divine artist's staff.

He looked Metatron up and down. "You got back in one piece? Yesterday you slipped off alone before we'd even finished talking, and I kept telling you not to go off on your own. What you met wasn't the iron-armored beast king, but the big iron-armored beasts that guard the king's den. The beast king himself generally doesn't come out until after midnight. ... Four big iron-armored beasts! Are you all right?"

Metatron pulled from his pocket a hooked, pointed thing of yellow-black, a little over five cun long — his "trophy" from the day before, the beast claw he had sheared off with a single stroke — and brandished it with a touch of swagger. "Look at this, all of you! A noble divine artist was kind enough to help me, and I cut this claw off with my own hand."

The crowd gasped in wonder. Link eyed the claw in Metatron's hand a little enviously and asked curiously, "A divine artist? What divine artist? A friend of yours?"

Metatron answered smugly, "Not just my friend — my lifesaver. You ignorant old fellow. You've never even heard of a divine artist, have you? He's a good deal more impressive than those little tricks of yours!"

Only then did Amon step out from behind the big rock. These cave-dwelling wild folk had never even heard of divine artists, which spared him the trouble of introducing himself. Everyone simply took him for Metatron's friend and a guest of the tribe, and he was welcomed up the mountain together with Metatron.

The tribe did indeed have the features of "cave-dwelling wild folk." It was built on a flat half-slope beneath a low cliff. Many natural caves ran along the rock face, and these had been cut wider by hand until people could live in them. In the largest cave a fire burned; tribe members took turns bringing firewood each day so that it never went out. It was the common source of fire for every household in the tribe.

The dwarves here already knew how to strike fire with flint, but that blaze was also a symbol of the whole tribe: the great cave with the burning fire was the equivalent of a temple in an ordinary town, and the open ground before its mouth was where the whole tribe gathered. There were houses as well on the slope not far from the cliff, built of timber and thatch with mud plastered over the walls — crude, but solid enough.

The people who lived in the houses were the tribe's higher-status folk. Metatron was clearly much respected here: a house was set aside for him alone, and Amon lodged in that same thatched house.

That day at dusk there was a gathering in the tribe. A crowd of people hopped and danced in a circle around a pile of firewood on the open ground, passing Metatron's beast claw from one to another and mimicking all sorts of chopping blows, as though they had cut the claw off themselves, their faces utterly rapt.

Amon and Metatron, who had fought the iron-armored beasts together, sat in the seats of highest honor, right at the mouth of the great cave with the burning fire, alongside Chief Link. Metatron whispered in Amon's ear, "This is the best part of their day. They'll dance until the fire dies down before they go off to sleep."

Amon whispered back, "What are they doing with that claw? Every one of them looks drunk."

Metatron said, "It's a ritual. They imagine they're gaining the power to slay wild beasts. It gives them confidence and courage, so that they needn't be afraid when they hunt and can succeed every time. Some kind of sorcerous prayer, anyway."

As they talked the sky gradually darkened. A dwarf took up a branch and went into the great cave for fire, by the look of it to light the pile of firewood on the open ground. Amon suddenly remembered something from the message the Old Madman had left him; gripping his slender staff of refined iron, he rose, and pointed his other hand through the air at the distant woodpile.

A wind rose and went spiraling around the woodpile. Light appeared in the wind; the light became threads of fire; the threads of fire turned in the wind into leaping, tongue-shaped flames; and the flames set the woodpile alight. It was only the simplest fire elemental summoning art, but worked together with an air elemental art, the effect was uncanny and dazzling.

The dwarves dancing around the fire all stopped in their tracks, and the others sitting in the circle all rose to their feet. Then Amon saw every one of them prostrating themselves to him, faces full of reverence and dread. Chief Link was bowing to him too, and Amon heard him say, plainly enough, "Messenger of the gods, you have brought warmth and light!"

Seeing everyone else do it, Metatron stood and bowed to Amon as well, but he sneaked a wink and whispered, "You're really something. That was a beautiful trick! Pity I'm not a divine artist, or I'd have been playing with that all along."