above and tried to guess where the door to Kur was buried. Odd to think that another world can be so close, he thought. As if you could climb the mountains to the moon by joining it at the horizon.
Ahn-Kha glared at the sun, his ears drooping. "Too hot here, my David. It drains. The sun fixes itself to you like a leech."
"We won't be in it all day. They said it is only a few miles."
Valentine halted and let the men and Grogs walk by. The mixed forces had a sprightly step, though the Grogs panted in the heat. The new acquaintances, the feeling of being among friends-or in the Haitians' case, having allies off the island-formed a bond between the diverse groups.
The column plunged into new forest, vigorous young trees shooting upward, racing each other for the sun. As the land flattened out, they emerged into a field of palmetto, which in turn gave way to better-tended lands. Food crops and orchards surrounded them. In the distance, Valentine picked out the ruins of a mansionlike palace. A newer roof had been grafted onto old walls, though smaller wings of the old building still languished in disrepair.
Glorious gardens surrounded the hilltop half-ruin. Valentine had seen small decorative gardens before, but never anything on such a scale. Flowers representing each color of the spectrum stood in well-tended rows, clipped paths running around and between them, for a mile all around. A lake, shade trees, even a small fountain stood about the earthquake-ravaged walls.
Haitians in their eternal straw hats worked the fields and gardens. They had a sleek vitality to them: the healthy look that an ample diet and activity brings. Valentine had seen many farms and camps under Kurian rule, but never one where the occupants looked so hale.
Papa Legba, as Valentine was now willing to call him with grudging interest, descended from his litter. Valentine
watched rib bones like oversize fingers spread and then close as the Kurian drank in the air.
"Come, come, Valentine, Victo. Walk with me in my gardens. Bring your giant guardian, if you wish. Francier, look to our guests, would you? Take them to a well, and let them pick their desire from the orchards."
TaleOfTheThunderbolt
Some of the sailors elbowed each other as they admired the lithe Haitian girls.
Valentine jerked his chin, and the gesture brought Torres forward. "Keep the men out of trouble," he said, before joining the Kurian. Ahn-Kha sang out a few orders to the Grogs and followed.
Legba made his way, slowly and painfully, to a bleached stone bench in the garden. Victo and Valentine each took an arm and helped him sit. Haitian girls, all muscle and gleaming smile, ran to his aid from the well, bringing water.
"Thank you, my children," the old Kurian said.
"You know what you are called up North?" Valentine asked.
"No. I'm sure my former cousins settled on something outrageous."
"The 'Once-ler.' It's from an old children's book by a man named Seuss."
Papa Legba shook his head. "I haven't heard of it. I don't read much human work. Some Dostoyevsky. A few lines of poetry, perhaps. I know a little Baudelaire."
Valentine watched it drink.
"So Kurians do live off of something other than fear and death," Valentine said.
"Yes, we eat. Though not as much as a human."
"The people here are so strong-looking. I was expecting a bunch of half-dead skeletons. I thought you were just taking their vital aura in doses rather than all at once."
"It is a hard thing to explain, Valentine. You know all life creates aura, even single-celled organisms. To a certain extent, this aura is also projected, just as your body gives off extra heat. The healthier a body is, the more it throws off.
I'm able to live off this part of the aura, though only just. It is a bit like osmosis. I have to be careful when I sleep, however. I was napping in a grove some years back, and when I woke, the grass was dead all around, and I had killed the tree shading me.
"It has not been easy, no. And again no. Perhaps it can be compared to giving up a drug addiction. Except the body does not recover after healing itself of the need for the drug. I live with it, fight with it, every day. A real physical need, like starvation, not the psychological one so familiar to those who give up a habit. I can control myself while awake, but in my dreams, Valentine, in my dreams. When I sleep, it is six thousand years ago, or thirty, and I swill myself into a coma on the sweet screaming auras of your kind."
Legba's appearance flickered for a moment, and Valentine got a glimpse of multipupiled eyes, but the black face returned, licking its lips. "Why does evil have such strength? The thoughts, they grow on you in a way that virtuous deeds do not." Papa shut his eyes for a long moment, and his face became as false as a death mask. He opened his eyes again.
"My children, I've seen evil not just at its birth, but at conception. I was on the councils when we first began to learn from the Anciens about the secrets of aura. I spoke for scientific inquiry, for reason, for knowledge. What harm lay in facts?
"Harm, indeed. It had been so long since our race knew evil, it was as though we had regained the innocence of your Eden. Though the weight of the Opinion went against us, we did not fail in our resolve, so we met in secret. We pieced together what we could, supplemented the rest with our own formidable science that had researched aural energies. We called the others Dau'weem, which has no precise translation in French or English. The closest I can come is 'back-thinkers.' We were the Dau'wa, the 'forward-thinkers,' and held ourselves superior.
"It would be easier to lay the finger on one evil being.