Primal Thought and the Simple Mind
Chiapos tried to imagine what kind of devastation could take place but such stretches in macabre conceptualization were beyond him. He could only think of the here and now. If there might be a bleak future for Mallog’mor’ach, how would that affect him? Was he to give up his Challenge and not visit the curiosity stops of Tanejul and places east? Was he to accompany Cenan to whatever secret place the Mammoth of the Tester may hide and listen to the Mammoth's instructions? The boy did not know. He wished that his path had not crossed that of the Appointed Servant’s. He wished that his journey could have been just an idyll romp through places already familiar to him through the Challengelore.
Yet, if his path did not cross Cenan's, the high priestess would be still unaware of The Aura in Ascension as she newly termed the little boy, Martok. And consequentially, the Mammoth, himself, would be ignorant that there was a new threat to his mystical kingdom. And maybe by the time he did find out, it would be too late for Mallog’mor’ach. If he had not collided with Martok and felt the material composition of the lad, none of this would have taken place. If he had not decided to take on the Challenge back in Rainwater, all of Mallog’mor’ach would have been unwittingly at peril and ill-prepared to fight for its freedom against an incarnation of evil. Chiapos began to feel that it was a providential fate that led him step by step in becoming the siren of impending disaster for Mallog’mor’ach. He could not now stop following the trail that seemed preordained for him to take. He took up the path being blazed by Cenan.
Night fell shortly afterwards and with it came a blustery and unusually cold wind. They walked steadily onwards. Chiapos was not prepared for the near freezing temperatures. He had not wrapped himself a winter parka for his journey. He had fully expected that many months would pass before he required one. 'The Challenge always provides' was an old village adage that he had grown thus far to accept. But on this bone-chilling night, the Challenge was not providing. He rubbed his hands along his exposed arms to heat them up through friction. With the cold and the wind, there was a dearth of attacking insects. They had all gone into stupor as their minute bodies could not generate enough energy to both combat the cold and their urge to feed. They remained in their daylight hiding places and were not a plague upon any warm-blooded creatures that forded into their domain on this night.
The cold also accentuated Chiapos' need for sleep. His mind was crying for relief from the continuous mental demands of attention and consciousness. There was nothing he wanted more than to stop and get himself some slumber. But Cenan plodded on. He could barely see her ahead of him even though they were only a few feet apart. This trail that she chose must have been a well-used artery of the Tester for there were few boulders, stumps, roots and twigs that tried to trip him as he plowed through the forest's heart of darkness.
They did not speak as they walked. Chiapos had no idea how far the Mammoth's lair was. It might be just a few hours hike away or it could be many, many days away. Cenan moved with an urgency that told him that it was more likely a longer walk than a shorter one.
Several hours had passed when suddenly Chiapos was struck with the impression that the shadow of Cenan that he had been following had slipped away and was no longer to be seen.
"Aaaah!" she grunted. "What was that?"
By that time, Chiapos stumbled forward upon something. His hands landed on something cold and clammy that was definitely not earth nor was it vegetation. He too grunted due to his fall and his sudden surprise. "What is it?" he cried, getting his hands away from whatever it was that left the disgusting impression upon him.
"You mean who was that?" Cenan replied. Although Chiapos could not see her, he sensed that she was searching for some illumination.
A moment later a pocket of light opened up in the night as the Appointed Servant conjured a flame by a means that Chiapos could not fathom. He had little time to ponder this bit of sorcery before his attention was completely swept away by what he saw. "Pitak?" he cried.
What he and Cenan had stumbled over was the body of the thief whom Chiapos had encountered earlier in the forest. The man was lying on his back, his final motions of horror frozen by rigor mortis for his arms were clutching at his chest which had been horribly ripped open. Ribs and organs were exposed in Cenan's frail light. Pitak's jaws were agape in an expression of sheer agony.
"Do you know this man?" Cenan inquired. She did not seem shaken at all by what she saw.
Chiapos was not so devoid of emotion. His stomach felt of writhing, boiling worms. He could not answer the high priestess for he could no longer contain himself. Dashing to the shadows, he voided his stomach. Once it was empty, he continued to wretch dryly. At length, he felt that he had enough strength to revisit the scene.
Cenan was stooped over the body, her hands exploring the gruesome cavity in Pitak's chest. "His heart has been ripped out," she said to him.
"His name was Pitak," Chiapos said through his wispy breath. "He was a bumbling highwayman that would have killed me had he been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to catch up to me."
"I have seen this man in the Tester on several occasions in the past. I always felt that he was up to no good," Cenan said while rising to her feet. With her face lit up by the torch, Chiapos could see that the woman was indeed very disturbed by what she saw. "Still no man, no matter what kind of background or moral disposition, deserves to die the way that this man has died."
"I think I know who killed him," Chiapos offered. "His partner, another scoundrel-type, had murdered Pitak's father several years ago. This man, Samarin is his name, had put it into Pitak's head that the people from my village had done the gruesome slaying of Ven, Pitak's father. I pointed out to Pitak the inconsistency and illogic of his partner’s story and I suggested to him that it was perhaps Samarin who was the killer."
"I remember the man named Samarin," Cenan said. "He was or is in every respect an evil man and I believe you that it would not be beyond him to commit this abominable act but I don't think that he is Pitak's murderer."
"Why?" Chiapos exclaimed. "He had every reason to kill Pitak. Pitak had learned that he was his father's killer and would have tried to kill Samarin himself to avenge Ven's slaying."
"I believe you that Samarin would have tried to kill Pitak but Samarin is not the killer," Cenan reiterated. "Samarin would not have murdered Pitak in this fashion. He was a woodsman and would have used his axe to slay Pitak. If you look at the body, you will see that there are no axe slashes visible. Pitak died a horrible death but a very quick one. He died when his heart was torn from his body. If you look at the wound you will see that it was made precisely above the heart and that there are no clean cuts into the flesh. It wasn't surgically done. It was done in the manner that a bear might tear apart its quarry but a bear would leave a much larger wound. Samarin is not so skilled a killer to be able to do this. Moreover for what reason would Samarin want the heart of his gullible partner? He is not a ghoul or a cannibal!"
Chiapos was at a loss to answer the question. He did not dare get closer to the body to verify the truth of what Cenan just had said.
Cenan continued. "Pitak died at the hands of something that is very primal yet very knowledgeable in the fact that the heart is the vital organ of the body."
"If it wasn't Samarin who did this then? Who was it?" Chiapos asked, dreading to hear the answer. He had a feeling that he already knew the answer.
"I'm afraid that you might already know the answer Chiapos. You have already seen what voracious, carnivorous acts this assailant is capable of committing."
"Are you saying that it was Martok who did this? I don't believe it!" Even though Cenan had given him much proof that the boy was not what he seemed to be, this notion still did not settle comfortably or firmly in his mind. He resisted the thought.
"You have witnessed the Aura in Ascension and saw what evil he can do. No child can catch a rabbit in full flight. No child can rip it apart as if it were a broadleaf. An Aura in Ascension is a very hungry beast. It didn’t experience hunger when it was in its previous incarnation as a living wind. But when it takes on physical form it quickly learns that this state requires sustenance. It develops a taste for those things to which it can inflict the most harm. I'm afraid that your little Martok ate the heart of Pitak," Cenan spoke ominously.
Chiapos dared to glimpse the remains of the thief and noted the wound. He thought of the man's dichotomous motivations - greed to acquire many riches and a sense of fealty to his father. He wondered if Pitak was now with Ven. He wondered if Ven was explaining to his son how it was not the people of Rainwater that had killed him but rather the very wicked Samarin. Out of respect to the returned son, Chiapos started to place leaves over the body.
Cenan took him by the hand. "We have no time for any rituals. We must get to the Mammoth as quickly as we can. Already the Aura in Ascension has the ability to kill a human. This does not bode well."
Chiapos complained that it was not right to leave a man uninterred even a man with as dark a nature as Pitak. But Cenan would not hear any of this and with the Rainwaterman feeling reluctant, the pair moved on. As he walked he could only think of poor Pitak, son of Ven. Ven had been denied a burial as well. Now, his son must share the same fate.
After about another hour of walking, the skies gradually brightened and with it came a symphony of birdcalls as the Tester's wrens and warblers rose from their overnight perches and sang their proud proclamation of rebirth. Or perhaps it was their protest against the cold. Dawn had not brought any new warmth upon the land. It was as frigid if not more frigid than any part of the long night. Chiapos continued to rub his arms trying to garnish some heat from the motion.
With the light, he noted that they were still following the ravine through the heart of the forest. This was territory that he had not seen before yet it still had that Tester monotony firmly etched upon its appearance. He had not spoken to Cenan since they left Pitak's corpse. In the morning visibility he could see that she walked purposefully onward in bold strides surprising for a woman of her size and age. He had managed to get up alongside of the Mammoth’s high priestess and was keenly aware that the woman was in some form of trance-like state. Was she in mental contact with the Mammoth even as they walked? He had to wonder but he dared not speak to her. He did not want to incur her wrath, for wrath it would be indeed, if she were pulled away from her secret communications with her liege lord.
He had an undying urge to ask her how much farther they had to go but he would have to remain ignorant of this knowledge until she came out of her stupor. So all that he could do to bide the time was to allow the Tester to impress itself upon him with its sights and sounds and subtle vistas. The stream that snaked itself along the ravine was resounding with life. Everywhere could be seen ripples in the water as the fishes, turtles and beavers made their livelihoods in the trickling and swift currents.
The thought of catching a fish might have been alluring to him a day ago as a nice diversity from his regular diet of berries and bread but ever since he suckled from Cenan, he did not feel any desire to nourish himself. Even after he had purged his stomach upon seeing the horrible fate of Pitak, he was not hungry. Whatever nutrients the Appointed Servant possessed in her milk seemed to have the property of keeping its consumer well sated. Cenan was very long-lived, could it be that she had passed on her virtual immortality to him? She never stopped to eat nor to relieve herself and now it appeared that he did not have to do so either. This High Priestess to the Mammoth of the Tester was indeed a remarkable woman and he felt a growing admiration for her as well as a desire to remain by her side and to taste of her flesh as well. In the light of the morning, the features that had seemed hard, ancient and rough-edged yesterday had quietly softened into a passive elegance that verged upon the quality of beauty.
Yet, even though he was experiencing these lustful, youthful urges he had to remember who she was and the power that she could wield. She was a lioness and had to be treated with the same kind of caution one would treat the feline. He had to remember that there was another female on the Challenge as well, another female more appropriate to his status and position in life, Straye of Rainwater, the womanchild who went before him. He had not come across any indication that she had followed a similar path as the path he chose in his roaming of the Tester. Generally speaking, the way through this forest was about the same for every Rainwaterman that had accepted the Challenge. It was odd that he had not seen anything of Straye. And now that Cenan was taking him on a completely alternate route, it felt to Chiapos highly unlikely that he would meet up with the girl. This thought did not rest easy with him as he thought of some of the unsavoury characters that he had met already. Would Straye be able to handle herself with the likes of Samarin? There were many examples in the Challengelore of lusty and aggressive woodsmen and highwaymen who sought to overpower a woman from the village as she made her way along her Challenge. Samarin certainly fitted the archetype. He hoped that Straye was too far ahead of this malevolent man to be in any kind of danger from him.
"You are daydreaming." Cenan's voice cracked through his reverie.
He refocused his vision and saw that the High Priestess was looking directly at him. Her eyes appeared focused rather than far away as they had been earlier. She no longer seemed to be in any type of telepathic arrangement with the Mammoth if indeed that was what she was doing.
"The Tester cannot reach an unattenuated mind," Cenan said. "You must allow no other thoughts to enter your consciousness if you wish to experience the primal nature of the Tester."
Chiapos felt that he was being reprimanded by one of the village elders who had been assigned to teach the youngsters. "I saw that you were not paying attention either," he charged back at her.
Cenan smiled. "You confuse muddled thoughts with the Simple Mind."
"The Simple Mind? I thought that only those with cloudy thinking were in possession of simple minds."
"The Simple Mind is the state that one is in when one is encountering Primal Thought." Cenan was speaking mysteriously again.
This bothered Chiapos. "Sometimes I just can't understand you, Cenan. At times you seem almost sagelike and then you babble like someone who is on the verge of being daft. What is Primal Thought?"
"Primal thought, or as it is sometimes called Fundamental Thought, is what your mind experiences when it isn't consumed by other thoughts. It is the pure mind, the Simple Mind. It is sensing but not perceiving. It is knowing without naming." Cenan seemed to be almost childlike in the way she delighted in describing her notions of Simple Minds and Primal Thought. "Primal Thought is the way to The Way."
"There you go speaking about The Way again! I wish you would just tell me which way we are going and how long it is going to take us to get there?"
Cenan ignored his sarcasm. "I know of no better method of getting in touch with Primal Thought and the Simple Mind than to allow one's senses to revel in the glories of the Tester. You were doing quite well a while ago but then you started to let errant ideas to drift into your mind and turn your sunny day into a miserable overcast one."
"You saw that?" Chiapos exclaimed and he started to feel that he was being violated by this woman who seemed to want to be manipulative. "What difference does it make what I think? I thought we are on an urgent mission to the Mammoth. I would think that we would not have time to be whimsical about the splendors that the forest has to offer."
"You are on your Challenge, Chiapos, are you not?" Cenan countered back. Chiapos involuntarily nodded that she was correct in her assertion. "The main aim of the Challenge is to achieve the Simple Mind, to experience Primal Thought. There is no need for you to worry about how far and how long. Primal Thought is outside of the realm of time. I will get us to the Mammoth; you get yourself to the Way."
"This is all too nonsensical!" Chiapos grumbled. "I should just go my own way and let you battle your own demons by yourself."
Cenan did not answer. She had seemed to slip back into that nebulous state that she was in earlier. Was she in Simple Mind? Was she experiencing Primal Thought? Was she in some sort of communication with her patron the Mammoth? Or was she just simply daydreaming? Somehow Chiapos knew that it could not be the latter.
He also knew that she would not be talking to him again for some time. He did not know what to think of the Appointed Servant, whether he liked her or not. He was starting to long for the time in his travels before he met her. The Challenge was a simpler thing to do back then. It was just a journey to gather up stories and memories back then. It was not demanding any examination into the self; it was not striving to reach some abstract notion of Primal Thought. And the more that he thought about it the more he wondered why he was accompanying Cenan and her ancient, archaic code of existence. He should go off on his own and follow the traditional path and maybe even catch up to Straye in Tanejul possibly.
The image of Straye began to become golden in his mind. His mental picture of her was a thing of beauty - probably much more splendid than what the reality of Straye was. By the same token, his perception of Cenan soured. She once again became the haggard, old woman that he had first seen. Gone was the timeless splendour that had sweetened her mien during those moments he was in rapture with her. These colder, brusquer thoughts of Cenan served to make him more conducive in his will to depart from the Appointed Servant’s company and venture onward on his own. At that moment, none of her philosophy and her moral standards meant anything to him. Who needed to find themselves while traversing the bowels of an ancient forest?
Still, even as he grew angrier and angrier at what fate his Challenge was handing him, he was following the footprints of Cenan.
The Misty Veil
Hours passed. Morning gave way to afternoon, which gave way to dusk. They had marched all day through the Tester with barely speaking a word to each other. The topography was gradually changing as they headed north. They were still moving along the stream valley but they were slowly gaining elevation. The trees of the Tester were becoming predominantly coniferous instead of deciduous and the forest floor was no longer a giant compost heap degrading leaf and foliage into soil. Instead it was becoming a haphazard scattering of fallen trees in various stages of decay on top of a thick carpet of browned needles. Interspersed between these obstacles that cared not about human paths were erratic boulders that were covered on the southside by hardy mosses and lichens. Cones and needles were everywhere. It was a remarkably peaceful setting as the setting sun managed to pierce through the tall white pines and gleam brilliantly into the private envelope between canopy and floor. The air was warm and fresh even though one could sense that its underlying nature was still a biting cold. The early autumn with its sweet nature was giving way to its harsher sibling, the middle autumn.
It was in this otherworldly setting, that the bright sunlight made an object a hundred yards ahead of them just glisten as if it were a lost jewel. It was just off their path. This sparked Chiapos' curiosity and he veered away from Cenan's trail to go and investigate the source of this glimmering. As he drew close to it, he saw that what had caught his eye was nothing more than some mosses upon a rock that had grown sparkly by remnant water from an earlier rainfall. He was about to dismiss his little sidetracking when he looked up and saw Cenan start waving her hands above her head as if she were in some form of mortal panic.
"What's wrong?" he called out to her, breaking the silence of the day.
She did not appear to hear him. She seemed to be completely consumed by something. But by what Chiapos could not tell for he could not see anything around her. Perhaps she was being swarmed by bees or hornets? He was not sure but she did appear to be in trouble.
He ran as fast as he could towards her, instinctively clutching at his axe. As he got close to her, he heard something running towards him from behind. Turning around, he thought for a moment that he caught glimpse of a behemoth beast that was covered in flurrying rugged ruddy hair charging down his path. It seemed that there were giant tusks brandished at the front of this wraithish creature. But as quickly as the image had come to him, it had disappeared.
He did not know what to make of this image - was it a mirage or a delusion? He turned his head back to Cenan and saw that she was looking in his direction but it did not appear that she was looking at him. A deathly cold overcame him, chilling the entire core of his body, and then it passed.
Cenan's arms were spread wide and she was slowly going to her knees in a posture of homage.
Chiapos ran towards her and asked her again what was happening. But she was not responsive.
The temperature of the air dropped dramatically as he got within a dozen feet of her. There was something not physically correct about the atmosphere. It did not seem to adhere to the laws of the wind for it was a deep, stagnant, fetid, frozen air that had wrapped itself around the Appointed Servant. It was opaque and it seemed to Chiapos that he was struggling to look through a dense fog at Cenan's form within the misty veil.
Her eyes were open but they were rolled back exposing only a cloudy white deathly glare. Her lips were trembling very rapidly but it did not appear that she was breathing. Had she been gasping, Chiapos would have believed that she was suffocating but her mouth was not agape nor were her nostrils flared as one would expect from the asphyxiated.
Still, he felt that he had to rescue her at that moment or else she would be forever lost. He reached into the mist and grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to haul her out of the strange atmospheric phenomenum that had enveloped tightly around her. She was like stone. She could have been one of those statues in the city of Tanejul that he had often heard tale of in the Challengelore.
What had overcome Cenan? It was a power that he had never come across either in person or in the plethora of stories from the village. No matter how hard he struggled to pull her away he could not budge her. Not even an iota. She was firmly fixed within that strange vaporous anomaly.
Cenan's eyes were still slipped back in her head and still there was no perceivable breathing. Her chest did not rise nor sink. Yet her lips were chattering at an astonishing speed. Her already pale complexion was approaching the hues of virgin snows or sun-blanched quartzstone. He had never seen anybody in any condition even remotely similar to this. He had never been much of a healer during his brief years of life. Treating a minor scratch with an herb was about the extent of his medicinal knowledge. He couldn't even fathom what tonical heroics would be required to draw normal living responses out of the ancient woman of mythology.
There was no way of telling how long she could persist in her present condition and it was very apparent to Chiapos that he had to get her out of the misty veil that surrounded her as soon as possible. Yet she was lodged to this spot as much as the earth's mantle was rooted to its core. After numerous, furious attempts using every bit of strength that he could muster, he collapsed from exhaustion and lay on the ground panting trying to regain his breath and regain his musculature that had gone spasmodic from all of his exertions.
He was just outside of the envelope where the strange phenomena had its outworldly and seemingly deadly grip upon the High Priestess. His mind kept wandering back to what he had seen coming from behind him from the heart of the forest. It was so large, so immense, and so powerful. It seemed that it had an existence that was more primordial than anything that the Challengelore had ever made mention in all of its hundreds of chapters.
He could not help but wonder if it was the great Mammoth of the Tester himself that he had witnessed and that this misty veil was actually the great Mammoth engaged in a secretive communiqué with his Appointed Servant. Nothing in the Challengelore ever gave any description of what the Mammoth would look like. Nothing in the Challengelore ever spoke of how Cenan, High Priestess to the Mammoth, communicated with her master. Was it possible that he, Chiapos, son of Chakka of the village of Rainwater, was the first mortal to ever lay eyes on the mighty being that held dominion over all of Mallog’mor’ach?
The very notion of his involvement in this special precedence in the Challengelore made him feel that he might be ordained to be something important in the history of his people. Of all the generations, of all the men and women who had accepted the Challenge, it was only he that had the privilege of witnessing such a mystical occasion as the interaction between a Lord of the Tester and his Appointed Servant.
If he was so picked out, what adventures lay in store for him? He was aware that he was only at the beginning of his Challenge and that almost every Challenge climaxes with some special event or philosophical revelation. What would be his climax? He has already been involved in more ethereal intrigues than most of his predecessors had been over the last half millennium. The last great Challenge, that of Thedden's, did not involve such heraldic and charismatic characters as Cenan, the Appointed Servant to the Mammoth of the Tester and the Mammoth of the Tester himself!
He pondered over his unexpected glory. He was in danger of lapsing into all manner of reverie of dozens of exciting imagined futures that his chosen path might just take him upon. Vanity and self-aggrandizement were no strangers to Chiapos of Rainwater. He had grown to accept that Cenan was in no danger and that she was, in fact, having a discourse with the invisible Mammoth.
"Chiapos!" a shrill voice scratched through his daydream until it clawed out his attention.
"Chiapos, what are you doing?"
The young Rainwaterman was stripped from his daydreams and saw that the voice did not come from Cenan. She was still in that strange communion with the unseen force. The priestess's eyes were still rolled back, her lips were still trembling, her body was still supine and as rigid as a great boulder. But what produced the voice that he had heard he could not tell.
"Chiapos! Run!" It was definitely a female voice, a familiar one at that, and it was coming from the other side of the stream. He looked up and down the thin, serpentine creek and didn't see anything.
"Run, Chiapos, run!" the voice was frantic and then Chiapos saw from where it originated. He detected some motion in the shrubbery that girdled the opposite bank of the stream.
Without any thinking, he obeyed his caller's command. He dashed quickly through the stream, soaking his feet in its icy waters. He plowed through the bushes without taking any heed of what may lie on the other side. And when he broke free from the bramble, he saw Straye waving her arm at him with the utmost urgency for him to get moving swiftly.
Straye
"Straye!" he cried aloud with full relish. It was his age mate from the village, the one that had gone on before him, the one that he thought he would not meet along the Challenge. It was Straye, the girl who owned a part of his heart even though they hardly ever spoke.
"Chiapos! Follow me! Run!" she whispered energetically as loudly as she could. "We have got to get out of here! This is very, very dangerous here!" She started to race into the thick of the forest, her long thin legs striding with the elegance of a gazelle, her long dark hair flowing like the mane of a frantic pony.
Chiapos chased after her. With each leap, he felt a freedom coming back to him that had been usurped from him by his encounter with the ancient Appointed Servant. It was a feeling that neared elation if it wasn't indeed that grand emotion itself. He was gaining ground onto his Challenge, the Challenge of his own terms, the traditional Rainwaterman Challenge not the constraining one proposed by Cenan, and he was catching up to Straye.
They ran for more than three miles at a pace that made his chest loudly protest. He was not quite sure why Straye wanted to make as much distance as possible from the old woman but he did not stop to demand reasons. It was freedom that he was feeling. It was the song of his heart.
Finally, Straye stopped at the edge of a cliff whose wall was draped green in mosses and lichens and whose summit was obscured by the great canopy of the Tester. Chiapos jogged up beside her and started panting heavily. The mad dash was demanding its toll and it took him several moments to regain control of his breathing and his composure.
It did not take Straye near as long to get her strength back. She hardly appeared affected by the long gallop. She was studying the walls on the cliff while Chiapos panted. It seemed that she was looking for some sort of sign in the greened-over rock face. Her eyes became fixed on a spot and she started climbing up the sheer basalt face towards her selected site. It seemed rather peculiar to him that she would take on such a challenge. The rock face was not exactly what one would term as scalable at first glance. Yet the woman from Rainwater did not cower in her scramble up it.
Finally, Chiapos felt strong enough to start talking. "What's all this about?" he asked. "What kind of danger was I in?" He chose not to make mention of how strange it appeared to him that she was climbing a cliff.
Straye was now about twenty feet above him. She glanced down over her shoulder at him while she started scratching away at some of the mosses on the rock up there with a small knife that she pulled from her belt. "That woman," she said plainly.
"Who Cenan?" Chiapos laughed. "It was that woman who was in danger, not me! Something very, very strange and out of the ordinary has got a hold of her and if it wasn’t Cenan, I would have said that she was being killed by that anomaly."
"Cenan?" Straye responded, turning her shoulders around to look Chiapos directly in his eyes. From his vantage below her, her face seemed a little rougher and hard-edged than how he had remembered it. The Challenge has a way to toughen and to age those who take it on. He wondered if he looked rougher himself.
"That was Cenan, Appointed Servant to the Mammoth of the Tester, back there!" he said somewhat boastfully. Perhaps he was hoping to garner some of Straye's admiration that he would have a connection to someone of such important historical value as Cenan.
Now, it was Straye's turn to laugh. "Cenan, the high priestess! That was as much Cenan as I am the Lord of the Tester himself!" she scoffed. "I didn't know that you were so naive, Chiapos, son of Chakka."
Feeling nonplussed, Chiapos almost gave into making some retaliatory remark but he chose to defend his observation instead. "My reaction was the same as yours, at first, Straye. But that old lady proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is indeed the very Appointed Servant from the ancient Challengelore."
"What! Did she do some hocus-pocus to prove herself to you? Did she conjure up the Mammoth for you to see?" Straye cried while she was holding herself tenuously and acrobatically against the cliff face. It would have given Chiapos vertigo to be in her position.
"As a matter of fact, she did conjure the Lord up!" Chiapos felt like he was well on his way to winning the argument. "That was the Mammoth, himself, back there with Cenan."
"I didn't see anybody with that old hag. She was by herself as far as I could see and she was choking on something by that awful expression on her face. Why weren’t you helping her breathe, Chiapos? Oh, I remember why! You’re not much of a healer, I seem to recall! Have your senses left you along with your judgment, Chiapos? How could you possibly think that the Mammoth was there!"
Chiapos was getting rather angry with Straye because of her flippant remarks. "The Mammoth was invisible right then and there when you came by but I swear to you on my mother Lepti’s good name that I saw him just a few minutes before that! Never, have I witnessed anything so awe inspiring and yet so terrible. Cenan had conjured him up so that she could communicate to him the horrible and urgent news that there is an Aura in Ascension at large seeking to usurp his power."
Straye gave him a look as if to say that she now believed that he had become a lunatic raver. "I have never heard of an Aura in Ascension before and I think that I know the Challengelore as well as any Rainwaterman. I think I got you out of there just in time, Chiapos! If you stayed any longer, all of your sensibilities would have been wiped away by that witch."
"Witch? Are you calling the Appointed Servant a witch?"
"I would call anybody a witch who could so easily erase a once clear-thinking mind and replace it with a babbling, superstitious mushy one as you seem to have right now. And she is not, no matter what you think, Cenan! Cenan died a long, long time ago. You should know that as well as anybody should! Nobody has ever seen her since the very early tales! In fact I might even agree with some of the other young people from the village when they say that Cenan and the Mammoth never existed at all!”
"Don’t be silly Straye! You know as well as I do, that Cenan and the Mammoth actually have lived and still are living! Just because nobody from the village has seen the Appointed Servant since the very early days of the Challenge doesn’t mean that she has died. No one has witnessed her death and until someone does then I will agree with you that Cenan exists no more!" Chiapos exploded. "Besides if you think about it, somebody with all those special powers that the high priestess possessed in those early tales would have a much longer life than you or I could ever hope to have. In fact I would not be surprised that Cenan, the Appointed Servant is an immortal herself!" The Rainwaterman spoke with conviction in his heart.
"You are convinced that that weird old woman is Cenan?" Straye asked again. She had been steadily digging at the rock face with her knife while she spoke with him. What she was doing, he had no idea.
"Yes, I am," Chiapos reaffirmed. "She has given me ample proof who she is. There is no doubt in my mind that that old woman back there is the Appointed Servant to the Mammoth."
"What proof could that be?" It started to seem that Straye was giving him the benefit of the doubt and that she might actually be willing to listen to his conclusions after all.
"Well, for one thing, I no longer require to consume any form of liquid or solid sustenance after I met this woman," Chiapos said proudly. "I haven't had food or water for almost two days now and I don't feel the slightest need for either. That is peculiar, wouldn’t you say?"
"And how did this woman do this to you? Did she cast some form of spell upon you that will keep your belly permanently satisfied? How did this Cenan do this to you?" Straye asked. She continued working at the cliff face with her knife. She had not turned around so he had no indication if she was actually believing him or not. He wondered if he would believe her if the circumstances were reversed.
"I'm not sure how she did it to be honest with you. She fed me once and allowed me to take in more than my fill and that was that. I haven't been hungry or thirsty since."
"That must have been some meal that she fed you. I wish that I could get my hands on such a meal. This constant need to have to stuff your face is taking away from my enjoyment of the Challenge. That meal the woman gave you must have been loaded with all forms of secret herbage and mystical potions. You would expect nothing less from the Appointed Servant of the Mammoth of the Tester!" Straye’s intonations betrayed to Chiapos that she was being facetious if not poisonous.
"Actually, it was just milk that Cenan gave me," Chiapos said with some chagrin. Simple answers to simple questions were always a running theme in all of the Challengelore. Complicated answers always produced complications that would ultimately invariably lead to the listeners at the Commons in Rainwater to either lose interest or to ask questions that muddied the matter even further. Stories that were complicated were never popular at the Evening Fires. His milk response fit in well with the Challenge tradition.
"Milk?" Straye responded, turning her head to look down at him. She stopped what she was doing. The answer apparently surprised her. Maybe the simplicity of his response had overwhelmed her with its intrinsic beauty.
"Yes, all that it was was her milk - milk from her body!" Chiapos said with pride.
Straye's face soured. "Milk from her body? You mean milk from her breast?"
Chiapos nodded with glee.
"You drank from that old woman's tits? That's disgusting Chiapos!" Straye turned her head away from him and she started clawing at the mosses and lichens again with a ferocity that easily showed the contempt that she felt for him at the moment.
"What's disgusting about it?" he cried. "It gave me a kind of nourishment that I had never had before. You would not believe how revitalized I feel because of it."
"I can imagine how it made you feel revitalized!" Straye answered without turning around. Then she mumbled, "Just because an old woman suckled you does not mean that she is the great Cenan."
Chiapos could barely hear her remark given the chipping of her knife against the rock but the comment stung him severely. He had not stopped to think what kind of reaction a woman would have upon hearing that kind of information. He had been a fool. He just now might have lost all hope of ever making his burgeoning relationship with Straye ever blossom into anything meaningful. He had to readjust and edit his wording quickly. "That isn't the sole reason that I think that the old woman is Cenan. She also told me things that only Cenan would know."
"She told you things that only Cenan would know? How would you know what Cenan would know? Are you the Mammoth of the Tester? Oh, come on, Chiapos! Grow up!" Straye would not even look at him. There was an anger in her chipping that might have suggested that she was mentally gouging at his skull.
"No, I'm not the Mammoth of the Tester! But that woman is Cenan! I know it! She knew things from the Challengelore that nobody outside of Rainwater would know. She knows of Zergo, Carmikel's bastard daughter and what she had done to The Mastodon of the Fire Mountains. That is why I know that she is the Appointed Servant!" Chiapos wished that he could place his hand on Straye's shoulder to emphasize the truth in what he said. But his timidity of heights kept him where he was, safe on the ground. “Turn around and look at me and you will know that I believe every word that I say!”
She would not budge. Her eyes and nose were solidly fixed upon her working hands. What she was labouring at, he did not know nor did he care at the moment. All that he wanted was for her to show some faith in him. He was not a bandit like Samarin or Pitak. He was Chiapos, son of Chakka, from Rainwater. The same Rainwater that she came from.
"Don't be so stubborn Straye! You know as well as I do that the only one who knows the truth about Zergo other than our people is Cenan!"
Finally, Straye turned her head. Her eyes were reddened from a battle with impending tears. "If you believe that that woman is the Mammoth’s High Priestess, why did you come running to me when I called? Why wouldn’t you have stayed with her? She looked like she was dying to me yet you have forsaken her just to be with me. I’m not going to breastfeed you Chiapos! Go to her. Afterall I always thought that she was one of your heroes!"
Chiapos was about to bark something back at her but he stopped before anything came out of his mouth. He had no answer to that question. Why did he abandon Cenan - especially at her hour of ultimate need? He should have stayed with the high priestess to make sure that she was not in any kind of peril. What if she was truly in jeopardy back there? What if that strange veil was not the Mammoth? What if it was instead some horrible manifestation of the Aura in Ascension? What if the Appointed Servant was being slowly murdered in front of his unwitting and unwilling eyes?
"I didn't think that you had an answer to that question!" Straye said in an almost withdrawn tone. She turned her head from him and continued at her odd scratching at the stone. What was she trying to do? There was nothing there that could hold any intrinsic value to a child of Rainwater.
The only thing that he could think of was how much of a failure he was proving to be in this Challenge. He could not help the little boy Martok. He failed to defend the honor of his people in the eyes of Samarin and Pitak. He proved to be inept in his handling of Cenan, if in fact that was who she was. He had scorned Straye with his clumsy boasts. And he might have left an old woman to die without giving her any kind of help at all!
His mind was filled with self-recriminations and time was slipping by without his perception. He walked away and seated himself down at the edge of the Tester and stared out into the forest in the direction he believed Cenan to be. Did she live? If so, how was she making out? Was that the Mammoth who had accosted her or was it some evil demon? The Tester was not giving him any answers. It lay there still. The birds and the frogs were not calling out to him any more. If they were making their songs, they were not reaching his ears. He had become deaf to those things that Cenan had told him that he should listen to with a keen ear.
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